Death of the Dragon? Will China collapse within a decade?

[alhoon]

Some political analysts (this is one example, there are more) are ringing the alarm bells that China will face insurmountable difficulties in the coming years that may lead to an economic and political collapse. And as we all know, when a Chinese regime collapses, the chaotic decades that follow till another one solidifies its position see deaths that make WW2 seem the good ol' days.

Personally, I don't believe China will collapse within a decade, but it is worth examining. It is not impossible although it is improbable.

Economic issues include (from the article): "the nation’s debt has risen rapidly over the past decade, particularly among state-owned enterprises and local governments"
"Trade's share of GDP" which according to the article is over 20%. Despite what the article says, I don't think the vulnerability this creates is to global financial ups and downs. I think the main issue is that much of this GDP is to the West that is not friendly to China. If the West sanctions China - and takes the hurt that comes with it - China would see a severe drop in GDP.

Demographic issues: The population of China is ageing fast because of the 1 child policy.
Now, in my opinion that is not as big a problem as it sounds. Simply put, the Chinese state will probably not provide enough care and resources for the elderly. Those that have kids with the financial means, will be provided for by their kin. The rest ... will face a bleak reality. Think 19th century. If your kids were not around to provide for you, you were in deep, DEEP trouble.


Food and water shortages (My take): China is already experiencing water shortages. On top of that, Climate change and horrible care for the environment put the Food Security of the country with the largest population at risk!

Pressure on the economy and having to take care of their elderly parents by their dwingling means, will anger middle-class Chinese. Food and Water shortages will affect the poor and cause mass protests. Authoritarian measures may not be able to contain the anger.
That's recipe for disaster for the authoritarian Chinese government.

What do you think?

[Lord Thesaurian]

The short answer is, if you believe demographics is destiny then yes, China is experiencing the most rapid aging of any society in modern history and is screwed long term unless they raise their birthrate significantly to balance out retirees with more workers and automate entire sectors. If you don’t, then what we’re seeing could be more of a transition period as Beijing races to narrow tech and productivity gaps as economic growth slows and the external environment becomes more hostile.

As far as repression and shortages are concerned, I don’t think that will be a significant factor in the viability of the Chinese state. The commies welded people in their houses for 2-3 years - probably more viscerally repressive than the experiences of an 18th century French peasant - and didn’t get a rebellion when they let them out, even with double digit and rising youth unemployment and some of the highest rates of economic inequality in the world. That says enough.

Economically, Chinese debt levels are sustainable so long as people keep sending money to China. So no, I don’t think the Chinese regime will collapse. A more relevant question is whether or not Chinese ambitions abroad are as durable.

[Cyclops]

Yeah I bought his book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_En..._the_Beginning

Had to stop reading this sad Malthusian look at possible futures, it was giving me literal nightmares.

The demographic stuff, at face value, guarantees massive famines in many parts of the world in the decade or so. This is accelerated if, as seemed likely in the last days of Trump, US withdrawal from "international police" duties increased.

There's a fairly obvious hole in his thesis, he predicted off the bat the US would fold and hand over Ukraine in the next decade, and when the book went to press the Russians were being kicked out of Kyiv: he had the good grace to point out (in a very late edit) this was a fly in his ointment, but it certainly doesn't negate a lot of his points.

The possibilities of autonomous transport and robot workers don't seem to be hugely explored (not sure, stopped reading) but once again they don't really impact his timeframe.

China is the most vulnerable economy in the world to international supply disruption (the US and then Russia are the two most robust and well balanced, but Russia has enormous demographic challenges) and their demographic nightmare is already rolling: they have been lying about the population figures (among other things) for banking reasons and it looks like they will be less and less able to pay for anything.

Any scenario where the US reduces its oceanic trade peacekeeping dollar is a world where everything becomes more expensive, and the more times a resource or item crosses the oceans the more is spirals up. The money to pay for retooling is depleted by some dodgy banking collapses and in ten to twenty years most populations will be to old to work their way out of it.

It seems plausible that there's not many futures without mass starvation in many places (and especially China) in the next 30 years.

Very depressing reading.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Zeihan has been explosively popular online since Covid, probably because his position is predicated on the end of globalization as we know it. That said, his predictions based on demographics and geography are often too far flung to be falsifiable, I suspect by design. Having never looked under the hood to see how he arrives at his conclusions statistically, I can’t say I find his “China will disintegrate in 10 years and the US will emerge as a shining city on a hill” tone to be encouraging in that regard. His work seems primarily geared toward telling a certain audience what they want to hear.

[conon394]

Collapse seems a bit of a an overstatement. That said it will interesting to see what comes out of collapse of the COVID lockdown approach with seeming no vaccination plan in place to turn to. But I suppose if a lot of the excess death happens out the big cities mapy it can be brushed under the rug. But I suppose the interesting thing we finding out if this study is correct

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content...enEtAl_web.pdf

And China has been systemically overstating GDP for over a decade now - it will XI actually has a lot less room to face population issues, and whatever the black hole enigma of China's debt is.

[Sir Adrian]

Yeah I bought his book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_En..._the_Beginning

Had to stop reading this sad Malthusian look at possible futures, it was giving me literal nightmares.

The demographic stuff, at face value, guarantees massive famines in many parts of the world in the decade or so. This is accelerated if, as seemed likely in the last days of Trump, US withdrawal from "international police" duties increased.

There's a fairly obvious hole in his thesis, he predicted off the bat the US would fold and hand over Ukraine in the next decade, and when the book went to press the Russians were being kicked out of Kyiv: he had the good grace to point out (in a very late edit) this was a fly in his ointment, but it certainly doesn't negate a lot of his points.

The possibilities of autonomous transport and robot workers don't seem to be hugely explored (not sure, stopped reading) but once again they don't really impact his timeframe.

China is the most vulnerable economy in the world to international supply disruption (the US and then Russia are the two most robust and well balanced, but Russia has enormous demographic challenges) and their demographic nightmare is already rolling: they have been lying about the population figures (among other things) for banking reasons and it looks like they will be less and less able to pay for anything.

Any scenario where the US reduces its oceanic trade peacekeeping dollar is a world where everything becomes more expensive, and the more times a resource or item crosses the oceans the more is spirals up. The money to pay for retooling is depleted by some dodgy banking collapses and in ten to twenty years most populations will be to old to work their way out of it.

It seems plausible that there's not many futures without mass starvation in many places (and especially China) in the next 30 years.

Very depressing reading.

Everything Peter Zeihan says has to be take with a salt mine. The guy makes hundreds of predictions and relies on the law of mathematical probability to say "aha, I was right"

[swabian]

Yeah I bought his book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_En..._the_Beginning

Had to stop reading this sad Malthusian look at possible futures, it was giving me literal nightmares.

The demographic stuff, at face value, guarantees massive famines in many parts of the world in the decade or so. This is accelerated if, as seemed likely in the last days of Trump, US withdrawal from "international police" duties increased.

There's a fairly obvious hole in his thesis, he predicted off the bat the US would fold and hand over Ukraine in the next decade, and when the book went to press the Russians were being kicked out of Kyiv: he had the good grace to point out (in a very late edit) this was a fly in his ointment, but it certainly doesn't negate a lot of his points.

The possibilities of autonomous transport and robot workers don't seem to be hugely explored (not sure, stopped reading) but once again they don't really impact his timeframe.

China is the most vulnerable economy in the world to international supply disruption (the US and then Russia are the two most robust and well balanced, but Russia has enormous demographic challenges) and their demographic nightmare is already rolling: they have been lying about the population figures (among other things) for banking reasons and it looks like they will be less and less able to pay for anything.

Any scenario where the US reduces its oceanic trade peacekeeping dollar is a world where everything becomes more expensive, and the more times a resource or item crosses the oceans the more is spirals up. The money to pay for retooling is depleted by some dodgy banking collapses and in ten to twenty years most populations will be to old to work their way out of it.

It seems plausible that there's not many futures without mass starvation in many places (and especially China) in the next 30 years.

Very depressing reading.

These things mentioned here are actually quite plausible outlooks for the future. And it's really not outrageous doom and gloom, it's pretty well known crap actually. I'm gonna read that book myself, I guess. But it's not only China that is facing an abyss. Whatever. I'm not gonna participate in a discussion with knowitalls who think no major external disruption could ever happen in their lifetimes and it's really fruitless and not even fun anyways. Good luck to everyone however.