Anatoly,

In this piece you failed to adress any of the arguments I’ve been making, so allow me to start repeating myself:

Seeing military power as a “direct function of economic power” is an overly simplistic approach, that fails to account for differences in “HBD”. Consequently your approach doesn’t work once we start applying it to nations in the real world.

Please explain why the South Korea did not emerge as a major military power, despite having economic size and military spending comparable to Russia’s levels?

Elsewhere you said:

Military power is a direct function of economic power.

It is true that wars require money, and having more money makes you more capable, but the formula to this “function”, you’re talking about, will be individual for every nation, based upon the differences in HBD. It will look different for China, Russia and the US. Having more money makes your country stronger, other things being equal. “Other things” being all the other factors (beyond average IQ scores and GDP), factors that influence a nation’s military power, which you failed to consider.

English is the world’s lingua franca, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Just like Greek was the “lingua franca” in the civilized parts of Roman Empire.
Perhaps all comparisons of America with Rome are overblown. Perhaps, in the history of the future, China is the analogue of Rome and Europe and Anglosphere are analogues of Greece and Hellenistic world.
No idea if there already is any science fiction depicting this scenario.

Regarding whether they will not be interested in the rest of the world, something which I think Felix Keverich has wrote many times.

Once they will be the biggest economy by far in the world, they will have interests everywhere. It’s inevitable. You cannot be the biggest economy in the world without having trade ties (especially vital are imports of raw materials and exports to pay for them) on basically all continents.

Whether or not the Chinese are interested in ruling the world is moot. They will be forced to get involved everywhere, because they will be so big that they will see vital interests everywhere. And once mission creep sets in, they will be all over the world. Again, even if they initially have no intention of being a big superpower at all.

I roughly agree with all three, but let me add a fourth: Likeability

Unfortunately, the world is going to meet the “Ugly Chinaman” stereotype soon. Arrogant, thin-skinned, super materialist and filled with hubris, China’s bad national attitude is a strategic threat to itself. It doesn’t matter how strong or rich China becomes if it’s hated by others and doesn’t have a bloc of all-weather allies to fall back on. And I’m saying this as a Chinese nationalist.

Xi is gonna have to maintain China’s image and figure out how to make genuine friends with Asian neighbors, not just buy them off with trade deals. Thus far China has not really put forward a competing, universal set of morals, which means it can only play defense (i.e. lose slowly) in the ideological war against liberal democracies.

Worse, most Chinese people think all we need for strategic competition is a growing economy and more military hardware. Very few understand the importance of soft power (most cannot really define it), social values, and moral positioning. For long term Sinotriumph, China must at least adopt a benevolent image, learn to take criticism without flipping out and going “what about America?!” and set itself up as an alternative to the west.

Granted, Chinese society is at an immature stage and things may change. But if Xi simply consulted advisors with social experience overseas, we’d get there a lot more quickly. The next few decades is a critical window for China to establish an alternative to the liberal world order, and it must seize on liberal democracy’s current weakness to fortify its position. If everything goes right, liberal democracy may collapse within 100 years, and China will finally have what it wants: To be left alone.

Disagree about the cultural power – unlike the military one, it’s not a function of economics.

I’ve said it before but basically, China needs to loosen the censorship for the creative spirits of the Chinese people to produce a compelling pop culture.

Japan has true freedom of speech. A big reason for their cultural power is that they produce shit that is original – it can be weird, ridiculous or funny but in any case, they produce far more original, new and exciting cultural content that the whole European Union combined (a counterexample for the supposed advantage Europeans have in creativity) and the freedom they have is a huge factor in this.

There are other subjective factors too, like the Japanese language being more pleasant to the ear and less strange compared to Chinese. You can recognize words and phrases and repeat them easily, and pick up quite a lot of Japanese just by watching anime.

Anyway I am not sure whether the Chinese even need to have a globally popular pop culture, so it doesn’t really matter.

It is only in the past decade that Japan has started generating significant cultural power, a generation after they became rich. By extension, I suspect we may have to wait for the second half of the century for a Chinese cultural renaissance.

You are too optimistic, the Japanese have always been much more succesful culturally than the Chinese. They had an impressive literature and cinema even by the 1930s. By contrast, despite thousands of years of civilisation, China has produced very little culture of interest to non-Chinese.
I also think that live-action Asian TV/film has an inherently limited appeal to mass foreign audiences

Please explain why the South Korea did not emerge as a major military power, despite having economic size and military spending comparable to Russia’s levels?

South Korean PPP GDP is about half of Russia’s. Although, by that metric, India has an economy more than double that of Russia’s without conmensurate military power.

This is a very good summary, thank you.

I just read that according to one source, China is already the clear number 2 in brand power as well, with a global share of 15% (it was 3% in 2008, now more than Germany and Japan combined and those two are fully developed countries with a combined population of around 200 million).

The US still dominates with 43%, but at this rate it seems that even China’s brands will “triumph” in or even by the 2030s.

Source is r/sino: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/9esvgy/china_and_us_dominate_the_brand_value_rankings/

China should overtake the US in R&D (PPP) spending this year? Or in 2019? Or did it happen already? So there’s another metric.

Btw, what do you think of the recent devaluations? It seems to be a repeat of 2014, kind of, but it matters for nominal GDP (which in itself of course isn’t THAT important) and those projections.

It’s it’s obviously quite pointless and impossible to predict long-term exchange rates and hence, nominal GDPs very accurately, but do you still think that China will overtake the US by the mid-2020s? Yuan would need to strengthen quite a lot, right?

On the other hand, China’s GDP might actually be underestimated, as China doesn’t actually use up-to-date methodology to measure its GDP yet, or so I’ve read. Even though many “pessimists” think that’s China’s GDP are faked and overestimated, it could actually be the opposite. Maybe by 20%?

Some very recent reports are also stating that China’s problems with (fighter) jet engines might be almost over too. Has China beaten even the most optimistic predictions? Wouldn’t be the first time to be honest, but SCMP isn’t the best of sources and I haven’t been following these development that closely this year. But here’s the article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2162765/china-nearing-mass-production-j-20-stealth-fighter-after-engine

Beijing-based military expert Zhou Chenming said that China expected the US to deploy between 200 and 300 F-35s – its most advanced stealth fighter – in the Asia-Pacific by 2025, which meant “China needs a similar number of J-20s, or at least 200”.

One of the military sources said the public could get its first glimpse of the new stealth fighter, complete with its upgraded engine, at the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition later in the year.

The article must be taken with a huge grain of salt and it’s not clear where they got those F-35 numbers from. I’m not even sure how those planes are directly comparable. the F-35 is smaller and the two fighters have different roles, etc. And you also have to take into account all the other assets in the region (on both sides, of course).

But if China manages to procure 200-300 J-20 by around 2025 and even if they’ll be mostly equipped with these stopgap engines, it will IMHO mean that the US won’t be able to “defend” Taiwan (i.e. defend China from… China). The end. After that, China would likely beat the US even in a long-term conflict over Taiwan (and the surrounding area). There’s no way around that.

Hundreds of J-20, a very large number of advanced SAMs (S-400s and similar Chinese systems), a sizeable fleet of actually modern SSNs (Type 095s) and SSKs (they already have those) and ASW frigates and corvettes, plus the huge geographical advantage would ensure China’s victory by 2025-30. Of course, the amphibious assault would still be risky and costly, but the end result would not be in doubt.

Is it fair to describe SK as one half of Russia? Perhaps, a one third? Come on, it’s at a qualitatively lesser level. In a hypothetical confrontation, SK will be promptly smashed by Russia.

There are other subjective factors too, like the Japanese language being more pleasant to the ear and less strange compared to Chinese.

True, but up to a point. Chinese songs are very melodious and catchy. Japanese songs are cacophonous.

As military power, there will surely be some significant time-delay. Military strength is significantly as result of past investment. In the USA and Russia, there are many decades of past massive investments in the military, resulting in a lot of current military advantages. China still has many years of investments to catch up.

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If we are talking about a per capita sense, I’m a bit skeptical China ever can match Japan (civilization output, economic development).

Japan is a very productive and elite nationality. The idea China is only 20 years behind Japan, is not clear. It could be a century behind in some ways?

Of countries to compare, it’s a bit unfair to match it against Japan, one of the world’s most developed and refined countries in quite a few areas of civilization.

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In terms of absolute power, I think we all sure now, China will soon reach a kind of superpower level quite soon, as a result of its population size.

China will probably overtake America, to become the world’s largest economy in GDP, before it reaches as high as current per capita GDP of Poland.

Well, not entirely true. Actually invading South Korea would obviously be very difficult, even if the two countries shared a border. Very much depends on the scenario.

The thing is, and I think somebody already replied this to you earlier (it might have been DFH?), that Russia simply spends a larger share of its GDP on the military.

So Russia’s military spending in PPP is maybe $150 billion? So yeah, that’s three times more. Maybe 4 times in reality?

SK’s PPP GDP is also higher than its nominal, but the country is also much more dependent on imports, its MIC is much more limited in scale, there’s probably less “hidden spending,” etc.

Chinese in the “cultural sphere” are the worst White-worshippers in China. So there’s no hope they can create any soft power until the complete fall of the Whiteman.

We should be content to get rich and get strong, never mind the soft power. Most of the “cultural sphere” is so brainwashed by Whiteman, they’re counter-productive.

What about Starcraft and other military esports? Isn’t South Korea a major virtual military power?

Unfortunately, the world is going to meet the “Ugly Chinaman” stereotype soon. Arrogant, thin-skinned, super materialist and filled with hubris, China’s bad national attitude is a strategic threat to itself. I

That goes together with aspiring to be a superpower – America had it, Germany, Japan, even England.

Now that America is trying to “be great again” its trying to resurrect that attitude.

You can’t be a gentle great power – if you’re gentle, then you have no interest in being a great power. One does not simply stumble into great power status. It is not an inevitability based on size and IQ.

One must desperately want it and strive for it, like China is – and this implies a certain aggressive attitude as well as created a host of mood disorders.

Either way, as result of the size of the population, it’s inevitable that China’s going to be much more powerful in the future, even before it only reaches an upper-middle ranking in economic development.

But there will be a great time-delay in military power, relative to their net economic power. China will not rival America and Russia for many years. Unlike these, China didn’t inherit many decades of superpower investment in military and related technologies.

In terms of policy, Chinese population will be likely much more worried about improving their quality of life (which is still low on average), than supporting external adventures of its leadership.

Chinese population see easily that their life is below other countries, and in need of years more internal investment. There are currently reports of problems of intolerable air quality of many cities, of mass poverty in the countryside, and of incompetently managed, centrally planned state investments, with high levels of corruption.

Economy is not “money”, it is productive capacity. The size of your military is a direct function of the size of your productive economy, as you can’t devote more than 100% of GDP to manufacturing tanks.

Population + Economic Production + Technological Development pretty much spells out the material basis of your fighting capacity, leaving out “elan” and not having a fighting age population consisting of diverse overweight crybabies with criminal records, which is a cultural issue.

If social credit works out, a shrine should be erected to Qian Xuesen.

Pot isn’t a basis for national policy, either.

Soft power tends to be negatively correlated with hard power.

When Germany had imperial ambitions, France was the cultural center of Europe. When Germany was the country of poets and thinkers, it had no hard power. Japan only acquired soft power after it was defeated in WW2.

America during its expansionist phase had no soft power, and only acquired it after WW2. This was the beginning of American decline, and America’s superpower status was the result of Europe and Asia having destroyed itself.

The reason is because the attitude needed to create soft power – culture – is opposed to the attitude needed to create hard power.

Ancient China has tremendous soft power – modern aggressive China not so much.

China will probably be a great power for a while but more in the manner of 19th century aggressive European states than America post WW2, and will eventually antagonize enough people that will join together to humble it.

After that, China will probably return to its ancient traditions excavator the aggressive Western thing, like Japan is sort of doing. At that point there will be a chance to develop soft power.

Nor is meth.

OT:

Today the EU has done a trifecta. It passed the ‘worst’ (according to Julia Reda) versions of Art 13 and 14 which includes a ‘link tax’ and ‘copyright filter’ and other disgusting things, it decided to formalise Article 7 proceedings (which could lead to sanctions) against Hungary over migration and it has massively boosted a mostly useless Frontex border force, which will almost certainly be used for adventures abroad over time due to mission creep.

As it becomes more authoritarian and more imperial, I suspect we will see the outgrowth of a eurosceptic left á la Corbyn across Europe. So far, the left has been very pro-EU but hopefully that will change. Today’s trifecta has somehow managed to alienate everyone. Left and right on internet freedom, the right on its incessant attacks on Hungary and the left on Frontex.

Another great AK article.

There are I believe two trends in China that may derail or cause a large pause in it surpassing the US. The first is demographics in that with an ageing population and low birthrate, a refrain that is commonly heard is that China will grow old before it grows rich. Is this likely to be a serious problem?

There have also been around 30 instances of a country’s private debt (loans advanced to businesses and individuals) increasing by 40% or more over five years since WW2, all of which reported a big slowdown or outright crisis in the consecutive five years. In China, private debt grew by 60% over the last five years to 2017, probably the fastest rate in recorded history. That was due to instructions to keep loans flowing in the wake of the 2008 crisis. There are already signs of a slowdown and the fallout from a debt binge of this magnitude has never been seen before.

Debt binge:
https://enterprise.press/stories/2017/02/03/chinas-kiss-of-debt

Funding crunch for VC funds:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/technology/china-startups-technology-economy.html

In a hypothetical confrontation, SK will be promptly smashed by Russia.

Using nukes, yes. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, you couldn’t even get there, and even if you had a common border, it’d be very difficult to occupy it.

Another point, to which you haven’t responded, is that having a huge indigenous MIC is always an advantage when comparing military expenditure levels, since imports are usually more expensive.

Anyway, the Korean military is not very good, because it’s too rigid. I think the Chinese are more thoughtful about what kind of military could work the best. The South Koreans are content to be consistently much stronger than North Korea, which they have achieved without much effort decades ago.

The thing is, and I think somebody already replied this to you earlier (it might have been DFH?), that Russia simply spends a larger share of its GDP on the military.

Would spending more bring SK up to Russia’s level without Karlin’s magic thinking?

Article 7 proceedings (which could lead to sanctions) against Hungary over migration

It was due to rule of law and corruption and whatever. It wasn’t even a very well-written, they could’ve criticized Orbán much better.

But it’s interesting that the “based” Austrian chancellor supported it. Orbán will probably need to enter an alliance with the more radical right pretty soon.

but more in the manner of 19th century aggressive European states than America post WW2

Good Lord I hope not! First, it doesn’t seem to be in their general history to be expansionist. Second, they will have one serious hell of a time trying to colonize the Muslim world the way Europeans did. Sh. Abdul Hakim Murad was once asked about this particular question and he mentioned that the Muslim world seems fine to work with the Chinese and buy stuff from them, but they’ll take American super-power hegemony over an analogous Chinese version any day. I tend to agree with him on that point. The reasons he mentioned were very clear; much more wide-ranging historical contact as well as shared Abrahamic/People-of-the-Book ties.

and will eventually antagonize enough people that will join together to humble it.

Let’s hope this doesn’t have to happen as a result of the previous point because we are talking WW3. Not pretty.

Peace.

They can’t even create a good state-owned propaganda channel – how many Westerners watch/read RT relative to CCTV?

RT has market share in the West because there are receptive market segments for it. Namely, the old school, anti-neoliberal and anti-American Left, which was pro-Soviet or at least Soviet apologists during the Cold War. And the Alt-Right and the anti-neoliberal and anti-American and ethnonationalist Right, who view Russia as traditionalist and at least semi-Western.

China obviously can’t appeal to these market segments. If it went full Maoist again, it might appeal to some old school Leftists. It can’t appeal to the Far Right because it’s not Western.

That leaves the neoliberal, woke, and hip hop based cultural mainstream market. It’s not worth trying to appeal to this market, and there’s a great cost to trying to do so, namely spreading this culture domestically.

Saudi Arabia fights wars without having much in the way of “productive capacity”. The stuff you need to fight a war – most of the time you can just buy. You can even buy foreign soldiers for your wars: Saudis are using mercenaries from Sudan.

If it built a fully independent indigenous MIC (it takes probably at least a couple decades) and spent a similar portion for at least a couple decades, it’d still be less than half as powerful as Russia, because – due to its bigger size – Russia would have more economies of scale. Building 50 airplanes from one type costs usually way more than half of what it costs to build 100.

You can rest assured that China will have no problems with economies of scale, and it already has a mostly indigenous (and mostly self-sufficient) MIC, which will be self-sufficient soon enough.

They had an impressive literature and cinema even by the 1930s.

Anybody who has not partaken of Japanese cinema from its golden age; Mizoguchi, Korusawa…is missing out on some really good stuff.

Peace.

High level of Russia, is also a result of decades of superpower military investment.

Even many new things coming into service now, like Su-34, are projects from the end of Soviet Union, which were neglected in the 1990s.

It’s a result of decades of colossal, superpower level investment in military technology, manufacturing, and many related areas.

So Russian economy is not at a superpower level, but the military power is a result of being one of the world’s only two superpowers of the 20th century.

South Korea, is nothing even in the same league, will never be close to a superpower – it’s also only a very recently developed country.

Forget nukes. Targeting SK ports with standoff missiles will prevent fuel imports and quickly bring entire economy to a halt. SK leadership would then be forced to prioritise between needs of its military and radiply developing humanitarian crisis in the cities.

Two ways to win a war:

1) Destroying the enemy

2) Coercing him into peace.

Coercing SK will be pretty easy for Russia to do. Countries like SK, Japan have grown too fragile to afford prolonged conflict with pretty much anybody. That’s one reason behind their timid foreign policy posturing. And China is evolving similar way.

China used to appeal heavily to individuals seeking a Deist form of morality and social order. I think a transhumanism sans wokeness appeal can work. It’s difficult but all good things are. 天下无难事，只怕有心人.

China is neither Japan nor SK, for better or worse.

Unfortunately I don’t think our hopes will have any impact 🙂

Seriously, though, I think this is just something every great civilization has to get out of its system. Its sort of like the flu or a virus – you get infected and you just have to get it out of your system before you can return to more important things.

Its like a childish adolescent phase. Europe went through it, Japan, the Muslim world – why not China?

I doubt it’ll get as bad as WW3. Its just something the Chinese have to go through now before they can grow up for the second time.

So your advantage would be that while Russia is huge and its largest population centers far from South Korea, South Korea is huge and its economy would take a huge hit if being targeted by Russian standoff weapons.

This tactic won’t scale well against China.

You have a point. Recent hunter-gatherer/herder ancestry seems to be correlated with martial spirit and athletic inclinations. Chinese have been Malthusian farmers for longer than perhaps any other population on Earth and have spent most of their history being ruled by external hunter/herder martial elites.

How come manufacturing powerhouse SK couldn’t develop world class indigenous military technology?

How come China is trailing Israel in arms exports? – actual fact from SIPRI database LOL

Is it just me, or Mongoloids do not seem to have a knack for this thing.

wut

The Yuan lasted less than 80 years, the Qing lasted 276 years. In contrast, Zhou alone lasted about 800 years.

How come manufacturing powerhouse SK couldn’t develop world class indigenous military technology?

Being a vassal of the US requires tribute to the MIC.

Similar to SK, China is growing increasingly dependent on seaborn imports of fuel. Furthermore, Chinese leaders have plans to house most of their population in gigantic coastal agglomerations ( >100 million people each). It will be pretty easy for a capable adversary to disrupt life in these habitats.

I’m not saying that owning China will be as easy as owning Koreans, but it’s a vulnerable society and growing more vulnerable as it’s becoming more prosperous and complex.

China has an aging demographic, is already past its peak as a manufacturing hub due to increasing costs, has rampant capital flight into the U.S., has little meaningful cultural output(unlike both Japan and South Korea), and is sitting atop the worst potential housing bust in human history. Furthermore much of China, lots of Guizhou or Yunnan for example is miserably poor. They have little natural resources, a giant population to feed, and are totally dependent on international trade. No one would confuse China with South Korea if they visited the two places. Pollution is horrible, you can’t drink from the tap, roads are bad, scammers everywhere, all of the signs of a low trust society are there. If China manages to be relatively stable over the next 40 years, I would consider that a huge success for them.

Militarily China is not highly projection based, has little geographic barriers, is facing a declining pool of recruits, and is surrounded by people who don’t like them(having Pakistan as an ally is a bug, not a feature). Personally I think much of China’s military ambitions are defensive anyhow. If they think they can compete with the U.S., they’re crazy. Kim Jong-Il batshit level crazy.

I also am puzzled by the notion that significant cultural impact from Japan is only a decade old.

How come manufacturing powerhouse SK couldn’t develop world class indigenous military technology?

It did to an extent, but because it’s relatively smaller than Russia and it doesn’t want to become a great military power, it found that it doesn’t have economies of scale for it, so its indigenous military products would always be way more expensive than just buying it from its allies. (Meaning the US.) Also it’s politically useful to buy something from the US, because of the trade imbalance.

These issues won’t plague China.

How come China is trailing Israel in arms exports?

In 2016 it was double of the Israeli value, so there’s probably a lot of fluctuation.

Mongoloids do not seem to have a knack for this thing.

Wishful thinking, but we’ll probably see soon enough.

I believe the statement AK made was that “Military power is a direct function of economic power.”

You said, no sir, money is only part of it. I came back and said money, nothing, its productive ability.

You rightly point out that money without productive capacity can buy armaments (if it finds a willing seller).

But it all goes to show that military power is a direct function of economic power, as the Cold War struggle between the USA and the USSR demonstrated, as the Russians just couldn’t keep up with US military spending. I foresee a similar dynamic with Sodom and Beijing come 2040-2050.

Furthermore, Chinese leaders have plans to house most of their population in gigantic coastal agglomerations ( >100 million people each). It will be pretty easy for a capable adversary to disrupt life in these habitats.

Oh, it certainly won’t be any easier than hitting Moscow (something like 10% of Russia alone), or, even better, just a few oil/natural gas fields and pipelines, without which Russia would not be able to use its natural resources any more.

I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically easier about disrupting life in China than in Russia. China is huge enough.

It is completely unsurprising that Russia is a more formidable military power than India and South Korea, notwithstanding India’s far larger population and South Korea’s in-some-ways more advanced and diversified economy.

For one thing, South Korea and India lack Russia’s Massive reserves of oil, gas, and commercially/ militarily valuable minerals/metals.

They also both lack Russia’s vast fertile agricultural land, in absolute terms and even more dangerously relative to their populations.

On the other hand, I don’t know about Russia keeping all of its vast territory longer-term with a steadily declining population.

The year is 2010 and forever will be.

India is dirt poor. Aggregate GDP data is not worth much for dirt poor countries. For example if Africa was a united country, it would still not amount to much. (Okay, India is better than Africa, but you get the point.)

You need to be at least somewhat developed, or else your aggregate GDP would be discounted.

There’s nothing crazy about China thinking it can compete militarily, or in almost any other way, with a USA that faces the collapse of our currency, the coming inability to borrow enough affordable to keep the welfare/warfare State going, and then widespread civil unrest and racial violence.

How about a Mexican secessionist movement across the usa’s two most populous States (CA and TX) — does that sound like a far fetched prospect?

China and any other enemy or rival of the USA merely needs to wait.

How would Russia fare with its two biggest and most significant, most prosperous cities destroyed? What would be left without the Moscow and SPB metro areas, exactly?

Now, how would China fare if it lost Beijing and its second-largest City?

South Korea is actually a major military power. This is huge blind spot comrade Keverich. If you’ve looked at South Korea’s orbat, you’ll notice that they possess more modern tanks, more self propelled artillery, more jets, and now even more major naval vessels than practically any other European power outside of Russia. No one really notices this because 1) South Korea is a vassal state of the US and 2) their armed forces don’t have anything to do but be on guard against North Korea.

The existance of a certain lag between economic power (investment) and military power is a reasonable concept, but Russia has not been spending on its military at superpower levels for 30 years now. Technologies have a tendency of becoming obsolete, so you would expect Russian military to lose ground in global rankings with each passing year…

So how much longer do you think this process can take before Russian military is reduced to Indonesia’s level? 🙂 Indonesia is set to overtake Russia in PPP GDP sometime in the next decade.

But can they penetrate Russian air-defense umbrella, and stop incoming Russian missiles, because this is how I would fight them?

Comparing SK with European countries means nothing, as these countries are effectively demilitarised. Even so Western Europe appears to have much stronger arms industry, as reflected in their exports.

The U.S. is still the major export market for most of the world, especially China, it is still the top destination for capital flight, has long been the place where people park their funds when economic crises hit. There is no reason for this to change, and if it did, it would leave China with a whole lot of worthless Treasury bills. A collapse of the U.S. dollar would be a disaster for all of East Asia. I also see no reason why the U.S. Central Bank will suddenly become subject to the whims of the Chinese, it doesn’t work like that.

But none of that is going to happen because their is no alternative to the U.S. dollar. No other major consumption led economy with even close to positive demographics. No other large population country with major population centers in both the Pacific and Atlantic. Even in the event of a large global collapse, the countries most impacted would be those most reliant on international trade. That isn’t the U.S..

The idea of Mexican secessionist movement is a laugh.

There is absolutely no reason why this process of convergence must stall at any point

moving all global production to only one region of the world can’t work long-term cos it depends on the other regions having money to buy the produced goods and as production is off-shored the economies of those other regions gradually stagnate and die – Europe, USA, Brazil, Turkey etc – so ultimately China will require their own population to rise up to 1950s USA level middle class to provide the demand.

now i don’t know what proportion of China’s industry is foreign owned but they’ll want to move to cheaper locations if wages are allowed to increase to the necessary level but i assume most Chinese oligarchs think the same way (?)

so i think there will come a time when the Chinese government will need to nationalize everything to stop the oligarchs moving which one way or another will throw a spanner in the works.

Thus far China has not really put forward a competing, universal set of morals, which means it can only play defense (i.e. lose slowly) in the ideological war against liberal democracies.

i think this is true in principle but the western populations are being replaced by the same people who off-shored western industry and what percentage of the replacements believe in those values?

so although this will probably still be an issue for a while it’s currently not looking likely to be an issue long-term imo.

China’s long term problem is how to prevent the banking mafia doing the same thing to them after they wipe out the West.

It was due to rule of law and corruption and whatever.

the decision was due to Hungary currently refusing to replace its population on the EU’s orders – the eradication of Europeans being the core purpose of the EU.

How come manufacturing powerhouse SK couldn’t develop world class indigenous military technology?

the US doesn’t want them to

In military technology and manufacturing, time-lag can be very slow, and also many projects requiring colossal investments initially (which many countries will never make).

Russia has a century of experience (for example) military aerospace development and manufacturing, which was reaching the highest levels of superpower investment through around 4 decades from around 1950-1990.

True, the latest planes coming into the air force now, like Su-34, were developed in the 1980s- so new introductions now, are many of them still from that epoch of colossal investment, like harvesting investments from 30 years ago.

China, by comparison. was mainly only copying licensed replicas of Soviet planes, while in poverty until recently,

Even now, the most common plane in China’s air force is a copy of MiG-21 – a plane probably which was obsolete by 1970s.

Currently, for their newer models, they still have to import the jet engines from – guess where? Russia.

Recent hunter-gatherer/herder ancestry seems to be correlated with martial spirit and athletic inclinations.

agreed but modern warfare requires those things less and less

What percentage of America’s population knows what “Deist” means? Has an interest in ethics? Transhumanism? It’s got to be low single digits, if not less. See Karlin’s recent post on “The Idiocy of the Average”.

yes, people keep talking about this as if both USA and China are advancing but China are advancing faster and then guessing when they will overtake – whereas what is actually happening is the USA is being deliberately destroyed as part of the banking mafia’s move to a new host.

the betrayal of the old host is part of the process of moving to the new one.

Perhaps that was the underlying reason, but that’s not what the vote was about, it was about a bunch of other issues.

Recent hunter-gatherer/herder ancestry seems to be correlated with martial spirit and athletic inclinations

How’s that working out for the Saudi military?

This is a feature, not bug, if you want China to isolate itself from the rest of the world like me. Face it, the developed world is facing declining populations and immigration inundation. The evil empire, the United States, is blessedly the furthest one along this route. The rest of the growing world, is full of stupid and dangerous people whom the Chinese should rightly be wary of and have nothing to do with and are of no account. 100 years is generous. By 2050, the US already only 62% non-Hispanic white, will be in the mid 40’s even with ZERO immigration legal or otherwise from today because of differential fertility rates. All the prognostications of eternal American hegemony relished by American imperialists rely on the assumption that new Americans, like New Coke, are just as good as Old Americans and thus Demographics are going to save the day. Karlin, like many of us here, are quietly or not so quietly laughing at this idea.

China is already taking over parts of Africa…https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-143959.html

Well said on likeability.

But I don’t think China needs to do everything in one go. It will have time to build itself up economically and find its footing culturally over time. This is pretty much what Japan did and what Korea is doing.

I also agree on China needing to make genuine allies, especially with its East Asian neighbors. If China wants to make a cultural impact, that is where China should look first.

It’s probably more complicated than that.

There’s no history of major indigenous Russian military tech developments until the importation of Western European experts and techniques starting with Peter the Great and then more recently in the late 19th and early 20the centuries with the import of US and Western industry and tech.

I don’t know that much about pre-modern Chinese and Eastern history but they did seem to have some indigenous stuff going on with rocketry weapons and the like.

You could also make the reverse argument: why isn’t Russia able to be a manufacturing powerhouse in consumer or capital goods if it has world class indigenous military tech? Even in a non-military sector where it has a lot of interest, like energy, Russia has had to use American horizontal fracking tech.

It’s true that Russia would beat SK in a war, but obviously there are major factors besides military tech at play. The Nazis had more sophisticated military tech during WW2.

This is a good article and I agree with its central point.

There is absolutely no reason on this Earth why China will not reach the same level of economic development and per capita income as Taiwan or South Korea. Anyone arguing otherwise has to come up with a very compelling argument to support their position.

I do think Japan is unique.

But if you look at how Korea has grown its cultural reach I don’t think it is beyond China to accomplish something similar over a longer time period given their communist history.

Remember, they have Hong Kong which is a fully civilized place full of culture to learn from.

I don’t understand the reason why China needs to build that many ships. If it wants prepare for war with the USA then the only thing it should be planning is how many Americans it can wipe out with nuclear weapons and how many of its own citizens it can save. If it needs these ships to go on far away adventures then does it not already have enough?

Korea (Germany and Japan) grew under direct US control. There was no way it was allowed to have a strong military or even a credible military adversary. The phony adversary (Russia) was always too contrived by US to be taken seriously by Korea (or Germany or Japan).

Arrogant, thin-skinned, super materialist and filled with hubris

You can find somewhere in Tocqueville his observations that Americans had a great need to be praised and were rather intolerant to be compared negatively with other nations.

Limited war.

This is furthermore assuming that there is no serious US economic crisis during this period

Are we to assume there will be no major economic crisis in China?

I have to say that I am slowly drifting into the China skeptics camp. Not for any particular reason but due to posts like this. Everyone and his dog are Sinotriumphalists now. Gives me the willies.

Why can we be confident that China is on its way to superpowerdom?

The Economic war by US against China has started. All we await is an official renaming of the official US enemy from Russia to China (very 1984 with Winston Smith’s job of re-writing all reference copies of the Times being done with a search Russia replace China by Google and FB).

It may be that the US waited too late and will lose but the battle has started already, and China is at much greater risk than you suggest.

Right now we have the isolation of the bad guys – Iran, Turkey, Russia. This is not 3 biggish countries joining China, this is a massive trench being dug between Europe and Russia, ME and China and everyone and Turkey.

There is also geopolitics to consider.

Assuming Western Europe and Korea/Japan remain American vassals, the alignment of the US-Russia-China would be based on each country’s respective relative power. If China was indeed becoming as powerful as you say, the US and Russia would align together to counterbalance China, and China’s rise and relative power would be mitigated.

It is only in the past decade that Japan has started generating significant cultural power, a generation after they became rich.

Wat? If anything, the Japanese cultural power has slightly declined in the past decade.

AK said:

Why can we be confident that China is on its way to superpowerdom?

If China had nuclear parity with the USA, it would generally be considered a superpower now. C0nversely, it won’t really be a superpower on par with the USA, even with a larger GDP, until it has achieved nuclear parity.

China has already overtaken the US in terms of GDP (PPP) in the mid-2010s at the latest {2012 article}, and will almost certainly repeat that in nominal terms by the early 2020s.

From 2012-2017, China’s nominal GDP rose from 53% of the USA’s to 62%. And China’s GDP growth is slowing down. So reaching >100% of the USA’s nominal GDP by 2025 seems optimistic.

How do you know they aren’t just trying to mimick Gospodin Karlin?

Lol AaronB plagiarized some paragraphs from my few weeks old comments, so I have to agree with them.

Japanese influence is getting larger and larger every year – amongst young people. At least in what I see, teenagers now are much more likely to be under their influence, than people in their 20s (who grew up 10 years ago).

There’s going to be some kind of wave of American, French, English, Russian, etc, hikikomori growing up, in a few years.

Japanese influence is getting larger and larger every year – amongst young people. At least in what I see, teenagers now are much more likely to be under their influence, than people in their 20s (who grew up 10 years ago).

Probably linked to the rise in autism

Yes I probably underrated the reach of Korean culture becauase all of it I have seen or know about is awful.

I can’t see how a limited war does not end in nuclear war, if ships start sinking then there is no way that things can be deescalated. The USA is run by fanatics (SJWism, neoliberalism, cuckservatism, these are all cult minded ideologies) they would sooner engulf the world in nuclear fire than admit their society is inferior.

You might be correct, since what everyone believes is often wrong, but unlike the stock exchange, there is no reason to be a contrarian just because too many people believe in it. How many people believe in Sinotriumphalism in some obscure corners of the blogosphere matters very little for China, so if you only base your opinion on too many others thinking that way, then your thinking is wrong. It would be correct if China was a stock and too many people (including your cab driver and hairdresser) were talking about it would be a sure sign that the stock is overbought. But it’s just not a stock.

I remember having read a few articles back in the mid-1990s at high school about China, and then thinking that they could easily become the next superpower. My thinking was based on the fact that China was growing at rates achieved by other countries in the region previously, and those countries were already pretty developed like Japan (fully developed) or Taiwan and South Korea (approaching developed levels). I didn’t understand or know anything about HBD, but it seemed obvious that China with a similar population would reach similar levels.

I remember mentioning it in geography class, and everyone was laughing that China was just a worse and less developed version of the USSR. I still remember it, and so far I proved correct.

I laughed.

There is every reason. Taiwan and South Korea are both homogenous, small countries with most of the people located in a small number of cities. If things get really bad there is at least the possibility of importing the things they most need. For a country of 1.3 billion that is not a possibility. The kinds of problems China has to deal with just to meet people’s food, water, and electricity needs are enormous. Becoming rich from export led trade is a totally different proposition for a nation of 1.3 billion compared to 27 million, or even 127 million in Japan’s case. Taiwan also has an extra advantage in that the Japanese built a lot of stuff there.

People want to keep comparing China with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and it’s fair up to a point, but you don’t have to look very hard to see in many ways China is not like these places. All of those countries are clean, efficient, low corruption, and relatively high trust. You don’t expect the buildings to fall apart for no reason, or to get intestinal parasites from drinking the water, or to run across Pakistani hitmen like you can in Hunan, or to find large numbers of people living with no electricity or running water, for ordinary people to throw their trash everywhere, or to have children being given fake vaccines, or for the country’s official statistics to all be in a fog of uncertainty in terms of their reliability etc. Some of these problems those other East Asian nations didn’t even have when they were poor.

China is similar to other East Asian nations in many of its weaknesses, low arable land, poor natural resources(aside from coal and some mineral reserves in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, they have almost nothing), difficult to navigate waterways(building a giant dam in the middle of their best river isn’t helping), and dense, aging populations. But it lacks most of the strengths of those other countries(other than high IQ). The optimistic prediction is that they will grow a little bit over time, will lift some more people out of poverty, and maybe the building quality and pollution in some of the big cities will improve a little. That’s assuming nothing major happens to damage world trade. Reaching per capita levels of Taiwan or South Korea, when economic growth has already slowed down, when fertility is low, where is that economic growth going to come from? Hard to have that much consumption led growth with a declining population. Their manufacturing boom peaked years ago. They’re a natural resource importer. They’re also a poor place for nuclear or renewable energy. Since manufacturing went down much of the new investment is in junk finance. How are they going to grow at such massive levels?

Probably the most significant being Japanese loan-words coming into the youth I know: tsundere, waifu, zettai ryoiki, kawaii, moe. Other words like kamikaze are so common to basically be naturalized.

ROK has not developed a significant military for the same reason Canada does not have a significant military. They are not real countries. They are vassals of USG.

The biggest arguments against is demographics and debt. Chinese debt (really private corporate non financial) increased rapidly after 2008. Chinese demographics are likewise around the 1.6 ish range with 17.3 million births (92% of which is Han Chinese or close enough) last year so similar to Western Europe.

Debt in and of itself isnt bad, and high debts are not a problem as long as you can grow faster than them. It’s only an issue when growth slows down and bad debts pile up.

The demographic arguement is that only a young and growing population can create economic growth and thus China’s “bad” demographics will stall economic growth.

On the surface, these arguements sound convincing enough and indeed the China-skeptics make a very convincing case if your thought patterns have been completly dominated and shaped by liberal thinking and it’s heuristic roadblocks.

The thinking basically goes bad debt > financial crisis > Chinese are eating each other on the streets. If you are a liberal finance junkie who stares at trend lines and curves all day then any negative change in the numbers looks like the end of the world. If you have a longer more historically grounded view of development, youll see regular panics, financial crisis, bank runs, devastating wars, all of which is followed up by more economic growth. NPL loans, bubbles and bursts, are speed bumps compared to the historic forces of gradual productive capital accumulation, increased labor specialization, an intelligent and productive population capable of problem solving. Which view you subscribe to basically depends on if you think an “economy” consists of financial instruments rather than things.

The demographic situation is more complex and grimmer. Modernity is wrecking China just as it is wrecking every society that isn’t composed of sub 85 IQ morlocks. Though even here there are historic counter arguments. France actually spent the entire 19th century with a slight demographic deficit yet was able to rapidly industrialize and close the gap with Britain during the same time. Ireland wasn’t just demographically stagnant but actually lost huge numbers of people, first to the famine and later to a massive emigration outflow yet was also simultaneously able rapidly develop and likewise gain ground on Britain. The entire argument for the black death as a catalyst of Capitalism in Western Europe relies on the argument that labor scarcity made it more valuable and increased wages and the search for more efficiency. This debate whether China can overcome it’s demographic challenges for growth is basically answered by whether or not you believe the next (smaller) generation of Chinese that is both significantly better nourished and better educated, and all around healthier can be more productive than their parents who were born in between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The degree of this productivity differential will determine the continued catch up speed to e industrial West.

Ironically some of the precursors to modern hydraulic fracturing best practices like multilateral drilling were Russian innovations.

Hikikimori are just intelligent people opting out of the empty culture of making money, hustling, inventing technology, and gaining status that fewer and fewer people can seriously claim is leading anywhere.

They are all just Bartleby The Sctiveners.

It is really a return to historical norm – especially for Japan, an East Asian culture. Historically there were always large numbers of people intelligent enough to see through the delusions of the rat race – they would become monks, hermits, wanderers, wandering tradesmen, or take up simple positions as craftsmen that would allow them lots of free time for contemplation.

Society made space for such people.

Spinoza was a humble lens grinder – if he was alive today he’d have to work multiple jobs at Starbucks just to scrape by. Einstein was a postal clerk – today, the culture of the USPS is one of overwork and hustle.

Hikikimori are just a revolt against stupidity and pointless activity. Its entirely natural that this should begin in Japan, because Japan has always passed more quickly through the stages of the disease of modernity, and because East Asia has always had the world’s richest tradition of contemplative idleness. This is a country that produced a medieval classic called Essays In Idleness.

China is going through a rebellious adolescent phase where it has to strut around like a peacock on the world stage, and Korea on a smaller scale has to prove itself also – Koreans are very insecure.

Only Japan is ready to begin entering the post-modern phase, and rediscover its East Asian cultural heritage.

I fully predict we will be seeing the same hikikimori phenomenon in Europe, and a bit later, in America, as more and more people opt out of the culture of pointless work, often only to create technology of ever decreasing significance, and we enter the post-modern phase.

That will be a return to the historical norm.

Hikikimori are just intelligent people opting out of the empty culture of making money, hustling, inventing technology, and gaining status that fewer and fewer people can seriously claim is leading anywhere.

Of course, watching childish cartoons is much more spiritually fulfilling than having a family.

Your argument has a fundamental error mistaking cause and effect in that it assumes the bourgeois behavior of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore today are historic causes of economic growth rather than social luxuries stemming from them. This is probably because you are a young millennial whose depth of experience amounts to little more than the circle jerking on r/China. All of them were a lot more corrupt, a lot more polluted, and a lot more declasse, and a lot more dog eat dog than you realize if you have lived there in the 90’s, 70’s, or 50’s. It’s not that these problems didn’t exist back then. It’s that there was no internet echo chamber to amplify everything.

It’s a good start.

There’s going to be some kind of wave of American, French, English, Russian, etc, hikikomori growing up, in a few years.

There already are. They just go by other names, like “incel” or “NEET”. I believe “NEET” is actually originally a Japanese term that is now also used in the US.

Zhou was a very long time ago, before the Chinese had much experience with alien races. You must admit that China has not made a good showing against outsiders over the last 2000 years. If Chinese weren’t such profitable tax cattle, they’d probably be gone by now. China’s strength will never be in conventional warfare, Chinese men are not a very martial bunch. The most effective strategy for the Chinese is exporting their women to competitor nations until the competitor populations become as docile and tractable as themselves.

Your reality is very interesting, please continue to live in it.

Sebastian Kurz is first and foremost an opportunist, therefore not a reliable ally.

“It’s not that these problems didn’t exist back then.”

The claim was not that the problems didn’t exist, it’s that they didn’t exist to the same extent. The buildings the Japanese built in both China and Taiwan when they occupied them were better than most of the designed to fall apart junk being built in China now. That’s a fact. While you are probably correct that some of the social ills I mentioned are not critical to economic growth(although that’s not really necessary to my argument, if they correlate with economic growth that works just as well for me), some of the things I mentioned actually are sources of inefficiency. Not having the population vaccinated or having higher levels of corruption are not good for economic growth. Again, we’re talking about China reaching per capita levels similar to Taiwan or South Korea, it takes a lot for that to happen.

Also in the case of Japan specifically I think you’re flat out wrong. Even before you were born these differences were there. Some of these differences regarding China and Japan can go back to the Meiji Restoration. Japan did not have a ruling dynasty selling off portions of its land to Russians just because it was afraid they wouldn’t do the proper honors at court. Or to have military commanders decide not to show up during major battles. You can try the seniority angle all you like(and I don’t read Reddit), but you know perfectly well that China in many ways is a very different place from Japan even in the 1950s. If you think differently, just go to Taiwan there’s plenty of old infrastructure there to prove you wrong.

Yes, you can make sort of a parallel, in the past Japan say used to make inferior knock-offs of Western products and they over time improved, in their case to the point of high efficiency. But to over-extrapolate and think China is going to be as developed as Taiwan or South Korea, given all of the problems it has, I think is unlikely.

And no, even in Korea, which was poorer than China, not all of these things were a problem to the same degree. A country as large as China with its location and history inevitably will have to deal with types of problems those other countries will not, or will not to the same degree. China is different, that’s the point of my response to the sentiments in this thread. Note I never claimed Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan never had any problems with corruption, cohesiveness, etc.

Singapore had no Chinese descended people, I learned today.

The lack of zombielike “cohesiveness” is a strength rather than a weakness.

the idea that economic growth can only come from population growth is propaganda for cheaper labor

100 people with 10K disposable income = 1000K

200 people with 5K disposable income = 1000K

50 people with 20K disposable income = 1000K

so there’s two ways to get growth – 1) the same number or fewer people with *higher* disposable income (through the running dogs of capitalism sharing out the proceeds of increased productivity rather than keeping it all for themselves) or 2) increase the number of people while maintaining the *same* level of disposable income (which almost never happens cos driving down wages is almost always the reason for increasing the number of people).

i’ve noticed the stealth japanization of youth culture among my own younger relatives – including the females – i wonder if it’s anything to do with less pozzed gender roles?

(ninja girls sure but at least they look like girls)

Japanese culture today appears to be produced entirely by and for 11-year old girls, so no wonder it’s relatively more popular among young people. Even then, is it really more popular today among normie kids than during the times of Power Rangers, Tamagotchi, or Pokemon? Or, for that matter, during the time of Godzilla?

Among adults, Japan has been steadily losing mind share. Certain kinds of Japanese soft cultural power had all but collapsed in the adult world since 20-30 years ago. For example, this cartoon was painfully true back when it came out in 1991. Now, not so much.

Martial spirit also seems to be correlated with the percentage of a nation’s best men who gravitate towards weapons engineering and professional military service. Martial spirit may also correlate with how much punishment a population is willing to take before resigning themselves to subservience. If we ever arrive at a point where the martial characteristics of a population are irrelevant to the war-fighting potential of their nation, then we would probably already be past the point of human relevance in any field.

Alfred McCoy recently offered a much more nuanced piece here covering the same sort of terrain, but comes up on a totally different conclusion. A conclusion based on a much more detailed examination of the importance of soft power, that China does not yield and most likely never will, in order to rise to the mantle of world hegemon:

▼Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. Apart from its rising economic and military clout, China, like its sometime ally Russia, has a self-referential culture, non-democratic political structures, and a developing legal system that could deny it some of the key instruments for global leadership.

https://www.unz.com/article/beijings-bid-for-global-power-in-the-age-of-trump/?highlight=china

Read the whole thing to get a better appreciation of his arguments. His ideas make sense, unfortunately, Karlin’s fall far short.

People just don’t seem to understand survivorship bias. Almost all of the old buildings in Taiwan built during the Japanese colonial period are gone. The only ones left are expensive government showpieces, the best of the best. Japanese residential real estate from anything prior to the late 80’s was absolute garbage. Piss poor insulation, paper thin walls, it simply wasn’t built to last and indeed was regularly torn down and rebuilt every 2 or 3 decades.

I don’t disagree with you that the social mores in the late Edo period and the late Qing were very different. Part of the reason being that the Qing government wasn’t even Chinese at all, but a Manchu occupation. Not hard for the government to sell out the country when the government is composed of a parasitic foreign ethnic elite far more scared of native uprisings than giving up territory. Likewise not hard for a post Taiping regional proto warlord to fail to come to the defense of a government where decision making is monopolized by Manchu princes. Where the official Imperial army is filled with Manchu officers who prioritize ethnic loyalty over competence.

Your arguments of “degrees” of corruption and anti-social behavior doesn’t amount to much without empirical data. It’s really nothing more than opinion cobbled together by Western press headlines.

4. I’m no military expert either, but keep reading the comments – I’ve already outlined my plan to easily pwn SK!

3. US is going to enjoy a similar advantage over Chinese. As Dmitry has noted, the most common fighter jet in Chinese airforce at the moment is actually a clone of Soviet MiG-21

2. Figures for Russia’s military spending fluctuate in line with current exchange rates, but it has been around $60 billion for the past decade. Would doubling Korea’s budget produce a major qualitative change? That’s a really important question that I’d like you to adress: you think military power is a direct function of money (“economic power”), so how much more money SK will need to spend to match Russia in military terms?

1. I picked Korea, because it’s the only Mongoloid country besides China that has a half-decent military. You might have noticed that Mongoloids, despite their numbers and productivity, have rather weak militaries.

Just noticed that your graph shows significant economic downturns for both Japan and South Korea right about where China is. The real test for China is not if can avoid a major economic disruption, it can’t and really no one ever has, but rather how quickly it can recover. South Korea’s dip seems to coincide with the 1997 Asian economic crisis, Japan’s seems to be the late 70’s oil spike.

Boring. The future of China hinges on whether it will become an appropriate incubator for the “Jews.” If it is amenable, the country will rise; if it is not, the people will be liquidated as necessary.

I would suggest more attention be paid to the newer techniques of biological and psionic warfare. Nuclear weapons probably are no longer permitted to use and are carefully monitored by alloanthropic entities.

Einstein was a postal clerk – today, the culture of the USPS is one of overwork and hustle.

Correction: Einstein was a patent clerk. Big difference.

It was not a mindless repetitive job like postal clerk. He was examining patents submitted by creative people. It fostered his own creativity in Physics.

The vast majority of posters here really really really want to see the USA fall. For some it’s becuse they humiliated the USSR, for others it’s becuse they really hate Jews and associate the USA with Jewish power and for others like the ones you are getting a lot of flak from they are incensed by male Asians being the low point on the sexual totem pole in the west. Seeing those Asian 6,7, and 8s go with white male 4s and 5s is enraging.

As a result wish casting is the basis of all these projections. The disaster scenario of course is stalled Chinese growth overwhelmed by demographic issues leading to a fissure in the Chinese state.

i’m inclined to agree – as nations get more pozzed i think they’ll gravitate towards poison as their primary war fighting weapon – and that will be that

Soft power tends to be negatively correlated with hard power.

Seems true. Like how we had Shakespeare and the Elizabethan golden age of England before the British Empire. During the British Empire days, we got a lot of great British literature and culture but I doubt if all that could rival the cultural achievements of the Elizabethan age.

when a country is catching up it can accommodate a huge amount of rolling investment capital fueling very rapid growth – when the catching up process gets close to the end that tidal wave of investment no longer has anywhere productive to go and usually ends up causing a massive bubble of some kind – usually property.

i assume this is inevitable and so what matters is the speed of recovery.

Good article, but a bit wrong about the Belt and Road initiative which is just half assed over inflated PR to disguise patronage to favoured private and otherwise state owned companies. The biggest caveat is that China wants to be as strong as the United States, it doesn’t want to BE the United States. It doesn’t have the power, attitude, or even the inclination to be the hegemon of a new world order. It does however have the capability and intent to tear apart the current one. What comes afterwards will be likely similar to what came before. A return to 19th century norms rather than late 20th century ones. America’s past strength was built on overwhelming economic security that enabled overwhelming military superiority. People shared America’s values because people always follow the strong like the social primates we are. America’s present, is in a situation where not quite so overwhelming military superiority disguises it’s much smaller economic base. It’s outside influenced is backed primarily by force as states stay pay deference to America because she has the biggest guns, however all the talk of shared values is nothing more than hollow sophistry that will crumble to ashes the moment the 7th fleet is sent to the bottom of the Pacific.

Obviously, that question was meant as a joke. There is only one country in Asia with the potential to match Russia in military power, and it has yet to do so, despite allegedly outspending Russia by 200% in 2018.

You need to explain this. At which point China’s economic power turns into military power, and they stop buying Russian military equipment?

Yes, in part, but it’s more than that. As wrathofgnon noted, it’s an entire coherent mythology of life so it bypasses wokeness while still being moral and even univeralistic in a way.

And objectively, a lot of it is artistically and narratively sound while Western media has counterintuitively made “being transgressive” so obligatory to be predictable and it impacts the artistic quality adversely.

One of my deepest disappointments with the post Deng leadership is the relatively poor state of the Chinese military today as opposed to what it theoretically could have been. Defense spending as a total proportion of the government budget is down to 5%. The US is spending almost 18% of it’s budget on defense. Even assuming this is modestly underreported, China’s naval and air buildup is still far too modest. If it had spent in proportion to what the US budgets, it would have today a massively overwhelming presence in the Western Pacific. I’m talking 90 guided missile frigates and 60 guided missile destroyers in 15 years massive, bigger than every other country combined massive. 150 new tactical fighter aircraft per year massive.

As iffy as Putin is on Russian security (Putinsliv and Soviet relict ideology and all that), the Russian deep state still is still keenly paranoid about US intents and maintains robust military and nuclear force relative to it’s economy. The essence of strategy is to do what your enemy doesn’t expect. The Trumpidor and various neolibs/neocons expect China to fold under a protracted economic war. China should massively expand in preparation for a kinetic one and increase it’s nuclear deterrent by an order of magnitude to match.

I am tempted to say that within 20 years we will all know definitively one way or the other, but we all know that isn’t true at all.

If China fails to rise, the Sino-triumphalists will produce reams of statistics and “hard facts” and claim the anticipated rise is imminent…just 5 more years…any day now…it can’t fail…statistics…sheer size of the population….IQ…
IQ….IQ….IQ….IQ…

If China does succeed in rising, the Sino-pessimists will claim it’s a temporary blip that’s about to reverse itself any day now…we can’t know if it will last…its only because the West made a mistake and isn’t really attributable to China…its only because China stole Western technology…the essentially docile nature of the Chinese means a revitalized Mongolia will conquer it any day now…Chinese aren’t a martial race…

Long live the Eternal Debate!

I’m getting my popcorn.

1. China is not a rules-based society — never has been, perhaps never will be. I’m skeptical that a nation can become a superpower if it can’t efficiently coordinate its population.

2. It’s unclear whether the Chinese can fight. A superpower must have some ability to impose its will militarily on others; a preference to get others to do your dirty work (“cat’s paw”) isn’t enough.

3. China has no experience with — and more importantly, perhaps no desire for — international leadership. As mentioned, it likely wants to be left alone, but the anarchy of international relations means that one must essentially mobilize or be preyed upon (in which case, see 1 and 2, above).

4. China’s GDP figures are inaccurate (Li Keqiang said so many times) — a consequence of 1, above.

5. Perhaps most importantly, nobody likes the Chinese. Anywhere. Hell, even the Hong Kongese hate mainlanders.

Well, the mindset needed to create culture seems opposed to that needed to create hard power, and you gotta take your pick.

Of course, its not a 100% correlation. Some culture can coexist with hard power, and vice versa.

Thanks for the correction.

I’m not sure why you are so hell bent on your Russia vs. Korea scenario when there are no hostilities between the 2 countries.

But keep in mind that Vietnam defeated the much stronger American forces, and Afganistan defeated the much stronger Russia.

So what’s your point? There are so many factors involved besides your battle simulation you have made.

One thing you haven’t mentioned is how much wealth from oil and resources Russia gets. Russia like Saudi Arabia can afford to spend much more on armed forces than either Japan or Korea.

– Privately-owned tankers will not visit areas with “missile activity”.

– When in a port, tankers are attached to a pipe, and this is how oil, LNG are offloaded from them. These are choke points. Targeting this infrastructure will cause fires, debris, including the remnants of destroyed tankers, other damage, that cannot be quickly fixed, especially if the missiles keep coming at you. South Korea is a major importer of LNG. There are 8 regasification terminals in the country. LNG is highly flammable. 🙂

– A simple Kaliber will suffice IMO. They can be launched from land-based platforms. 1 US Tomahawk missile costs 2 million to produce. Kaliber could be cheaper. It would be a good idea to procure a decent amount of them before going to war with SK.

Anatoly, you left off this major factor of China’s accent. When the world’s currencies collapse, China will be able to back their currency with gold as they have over 20,000 tons at the low end. At this point they probably have closer to 30,0000 tons.

https://www.gold-eagle.com/could-china-actually-have-30000-tonnes-gold-reserves

#5 is wrong…

Just as an example, one of the most popular calligraphers around the Muslim world is Chinese:
http://www.hajinoordeen.com/gallery.html

I was able to buy one of his works for my mother at a conference a few years back.

Peace.

pick a people you have no respect for and imagine they have the same number of ships as the US – would you be worried?

the US military is being rotted from the inside by SJWs e.g. all the ship collisions – it won’t be long before they are incapable of effective large scale operations.

(special forces will take longer but eventually even they will succumb)

There is a lot more pop culture Japanese influence now, than 10 years ago. Their influence just greatly sweeping with teenagers.

Maybe it’s partly with help of increasing internetization of culture, and infantilization of the generation (which has been contributed also by America with success of Marvel Cinematic Universe over the last decade).

Some kind of subtle visual culture influence, which is Japanizing the unconscious despite our language barrier with them, saying you don’t have to grow up, and keeping Amiibo Figurines is ultimate of cool and hipster.

As for different things like business culture prestige, and high culture prestige – these are with smaller audiences. Japanese high culture has been fashionable since the 1880s, but audience size for this is smaller.

It’s not wise to underestimate adversaries. The US had 3.9 million births last year, 49% of that still is non-Hispanic white. The enemy always has a say and there is still plenty of fight left in America. I mean the H-man thought the Slavs were all commie untermensch and we all know how that turned out. Just because I want and fully expect the American pozz imperium to crumble doesn’t mean that once their hegemony dies they will just disappear. America will still be the 2nd strongest military/economic power in the world and that by a fairly significant margin. It just wont be powerful enough where everyone has to do what she says but will still be strong enough that no one can afford to ignore her.

South Korea military is controlled by the US as long as they are at war with NK. Did you know that?

Japanese artists and high culture, were already changing European art history by 1880s.

Japan won Russo-Japanese War already in 1905, defeating Europe’s largest country, and Europe’s most important rising power.

By 1930s, Japan are following the same colonial path in Asia, as European great powers, simply a few decades too late.

In 1940, Mitsubishi Zero – possibly the best fighter plane in the world in this stage of the war.

There was disruption ending in nuclear bombing by America. But inevitable rapid recovery of Japan surprises not more than equivalent postwar recovery in West Germany.

Japan’s engineering ability, high cultural contribution and civilized lifestyle – it’s demonstrably known to the world over the century. In China, we have almost an opposite story of modern history. China were a disaster zone and failures until the early 2000s. Some of this attributable to communism of course.

Now finally, we some sparks potential from them – I think of surprisingly quality of Huawei smartphones. But this potential in limited areas so far (i.e. there’s no vast cultural productivity displayed, unlike Japan which was already a major influence in visual arts in 1880s).

In military terms, Japan was a major military power by beginning of 20th century, while China has showed no military ability

–

So I agree with overall theme. I’m sure China will continue developing and they will become the world’s largest economy by around 2030.

But there is not evidence yet of a “spark of genius”, – yet this “spark” was evident to observers of Japan over a century ago, and observers of Germany over two centuries ago.

Its because like I said, the younger generation prefers fantasy – they are beginning to see through the pointlessness of modern life.

Japanese culture is full of fantasy and has traces and ethos of an older feeling, that life is sort of an illusion.

What you consider serious adult things – is increasingly being seen as childish nonsense.

Its the same reason for the growth in popularity of the Marvel universe.

There is a close connection between fantasy literature and religion – other worlds, magic, etc – so we can see this as a positive step towards religion.

The Pozz Imperium…

Get thy nails done, warrior.

Peace.

That’s pretty funny.

Strangely formidable, I’m gonna have nightmares.

fair enough – my prediction is a complex organism like a modern warship requires rigorously enforced minimum standards at *every* link in the chain and as a result can’t survive becoming SJW-complaint – but time will tell.

I suppose that’s nice. Consider the fact that Chinese have been outspending Russia for a decade, but have yet to catch up. They should have at least mastered all the techs by now. 🙂

The problem is that with 51 million people to Russia’s 140+ million, South Korea would run into a ceiling long before it would reach parity with Russia, no matter how well-trained and equipped its soldiers are.

RT can appeal to segments of the Left because of the Soviet legacy. Whataboutism isn’t sufficient. That’s just basics, and something everyone does. China would have to liberalize socially in a significant way or revert to Maoism to appeal to some segment of the Left again.

I’m familiar with Anglin and some of those types applauding some of China’s policies. But that’s qualitatively different from the appeal that Russia has to some of the elements of the Far Right, which goes behind mere support or admiration for certain policies. For example, Richard Spencer supports Russia because he views Russia as “the sole white power in the world”.

The problem with trying to appeal to “those faggots” is that you run the risk of damaging your domestic population and turning them into “faggots”. It’s hard to firewall everything.

Yeah, I know you’ve been a legitimate China booster since way back, and that’s fine. What worries me is that everyone had become like you. And I mean not so much bloggers and online commentators (who cares about them) but our wonderful corporate sector.

These guys have serious herd mentality and stampede hard. The convention wisdom at this moment is that no matter what your company does it has to “get an exposure” to China. This is what they all say right now, from a lowly management consultant to the “visionary” CEO. China is the future, blah, blah, blah. If you try to argue they look at you like you have two heads. Risk? What risk? Everyone knows that China will continue to grow, and grow, and grow, and grow…

This is what makes me uncomfortable. The parallels with the past instances of disastrous groupthink are obvious. In my mind, this makes it very possible that “something’s going to happen soon.”

Japan has definately hit on a lot of cultural high marks. But keep in mind that people have always criticized Japan for the same things people are criticizing China on.

In HBD circles, I most hear praise for Japan only when China is brought up.

Not entirely true – even during first contact, European explorers have always mentioned that the Japanese have had an especial appreciation for art and cleanliness. So there’s something special there.

But yes, many of the modern comments about China are similar to those about Japan. By and large, though, the mass don’t distinguish and kind of just ramble on. But that’s life.

It can all work out if they hire Karlin as a media strategist for the current bargain price.

In my mind, this makes it very possible that “something’s going to happen soon.”

it will

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

but in geopolitical terms will it be more than a speed bump?

Perhaps this will happen. I can’t make predictions and neither can anyone else. I can only predict one thing – whatever happens, it’s going to look obvious and inevitable in retrospect.

I don’t think that China is interested in ‘tearing apart’ the current world order. After all, it would lose its largest market for its goods, and what sense is there in destroying the US economy, where it already owns so much of its debt? I do agree with most of the rest of your sentiment:

…it seems that China should be content to just fill the shoes of a great country content on becoming the world’s undisputed ‘economic hegemon’ minus the imperial trappings of ‘world hegemon’. With China and Russia already jockeying for position in Central Asia, along with Turkey and Iran as smaller bit players, I don’t really see how the US can exert more control over Eurasia in order to avoid Brzezinski’s admonition? The ‘Great Game’ is poised for an interesting contest to the very end.

Pot isn’t a basis for national policy, either.

I feel like this should be a pinned reply to all of AaronB’s comments.

Though even here there are historic counter arguments. France actually spent the entire 19th century with a slight demographic deficit yet was able to rapidly industrialize and close the gap with Britain during the same time. Ireland wasn’t just demographically stagnant but actually lost huge numbers of people, first to the famine and later to a massive emigration outflow yet was also simultaneously able rapidly develop and likewise gain ground on Britain. The entire argument for the black death as a catalyst of Capitalism in Western Europe relies on the argument that labor scarcity made it more valuable and increased wages and the search for more efficiency.

This debate whether China can overcome it’s demographic challenges for growth is basically answered by whether or not you believe the next (smaller) generation of Chinese that is both significantly better nourished and better educated, and all around healthier can be more productive than their parents who were born in between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The degree of this productivity differential will determine the continued catch up speed to the industrial West.

This is a solid argument, but one in which you do not need to rely on history on. It’s enough to simply read the data.

When people talk about demographic strength it should really be about quality instead of quantity. There are reasons to be skeptical about China’s rise – chiefly much more rapid debt build-up compared to SK/Taiwan during their rise – but demographics in terms of age structure is not one of them.

It takes several decades to master some technologies. Now they will probably do most of them faster (if they threw enough money on the problem), but there are so many areas where they have zero experience that I’d expect at least some of those to be flops.

This is where China has a big advantage over South Korea, it has worked with all types of weapons for several decades.

The other issue is what AP mentioned, less people means a smaller pool to choose your engineers and officers from, so it’d be a long shot.

Again, it’s not an issue with China.

Significantly, not one of the issues we found with South Korea would affect China, or at least not nearly to the extent it affects South Korea.

Seems the old link is (currently) down. Here’s a back-up:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23077

One of my deepest disappointments with the post Deng leadership is the relatively poor state of the Chinese military today as opposed to what it theoretically could have been. Defense spending as a total proportion of the government budget is down to 5%. The US is spending almost 18% of it’s budget on defense.

They were obviously waiting for the economy to catch up. Also apparently they wanted to develop a modern weapons system before mass production, and not mass produce obsolete weapons which then would cost a fortune to maintain (thereby slowing down the eventual modernization). This strategy meant that they will theoretically be able to reach parity with the US earlier, but be weaker until it happens.

But this temporary weakness was a feature, not a bug, because they didn’t want to scare the Americans into taking them too seriously.

These views of yours, have you expressed them to some Chinese Chinese? What do they think? Someone I know born in China but raised in America was like,

why doesn’t China just ban all Hollywood movies.

His rationale was

banning hollywood movies is like so straightforward. just a cost benefit analysis. do they benefit china? hardly at all. do they harm china? yes it perpetuates racial hegemony

He was also like,

Doesn’t China not have enough nukes? They have only in the low hundreds. Shouldn’t they be having ten times more than that, to, like, match what the US and Russia have?

跟母亲说了他的中国应当全面禁止好莱坞之观点，得以

书呆子呗

为回应。

那就是说你那么仇美，望美帝国主义，美自由主义土崩瓦解，彻底崩溃掉？崩溃到什么程度才能让你满足？

ENGLISH PLEASE OK?????????

Yeah; I also found your “It is only in the past decade that Japan has started generating significant cultural power” remark weird. What progress has Japan made in the world cultural sphere between 2008 and 2018? I thought Japan’s cultural power peaked in the 1990s, following right behind its economic power, arguably peaking with the Tamagotchi.

India is the world’s fifth largest industrial producer with industrial capabilities superior to any country outside the West,Russia and East Asia and fourth largest spender on armaments.

It’s economic size is roughly what China’s was 10-15 years ago..

Everyone and their dog mocks the idea of “American nation”, since people of America are more diverse than those of Nigeria. (Which is quite shit , if you know your GWAS.) I think a tenth are polytheistic, a sixth are black, a quarter are atheist, a third speak Spanish, and more than half don’t vote (mostly because they do not care about the last unifying myth of the state, “democracy”).

That being said, it’s been 150 years since US hosted morons of the kind seen in HK or Taiwan. True, the British base in HK has been eliminated, but it was the result of British generalized withering. Taiwan is an American colony and 24-hour away from becoming a full-scale US base if need be. The locals are as impotent and / or seduced as Ukrainians or “liberated Syrians”. They’d rather join EU than their “nation”.

Despite all the talk about Chinese being communitarian, and anti-individualistic, there is one community which never engages them – their nation. If you kill a million of them next door, they just chew their noodles, as long as they think they will survive.

And this is why China will never get to Japan level. Fifty years from now, Taiwan and Guantanamo will remain under US occupation. It will be difficult to project anywhere, if Americans control what is supposed to be their territorial waters.

Richard Spencer supports Russia because he views Russia as “the sole white power in the world”.

What kind of neo-nazi is Spencer? Hitler and Himmler would be aghast: the Russians are mongrelized untermensch, dummkopf.

Btw Putin, like Lenin, Yeltsin and many if not most Russians, does looks a bit mixed. Check out his Chinese doppelgänger:

Oh brother. Another “India Superpower 2030” Indian.

India is not 10-15 years behind China. India is 25IQ points behind China and will need generations to catch up, if it can. When it comes to IQ, Indians lag behind all but the lowest IQ Africans.

No matter how much Indians spend on its military, it still has one of the weakest armed forces in the world. The only country India will be able to go toe to toe with will be other Indian type races like Bangledesh.

I always thought it to be a good idea to compare today’s rising China to the late 19th century’s rising United States; the U.S. had surpassed Britain in GDP and population in the 1850s, had surpassed China in GDP in the 1880s, and had surpassed the whole British Empire in GDP during WWI. It was certainly the leading economic power in the world by 1920. Yet, aside from some minor gunboat diplomacy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, its participation in WWI, and the Spanish-American War, the United States was certainly not a world power in 1920 (it didn’t even join the League of Nations!), was not a major attraction for famous emigres, wasn’t even a more important cultural power than Britain, and was arguably less important in world cultural output than either France or Germany (other than maybe in films). That started to change during the 1930s, and by the end of the 1940s, the U.S. was the world’s only other superpower due to a series of accidents highly fortuitous for its status in the world, as well as the world’s undisputed leading cultural power. Just like America, China will, in the next few decades, have its moment. Those claiming the 21st century will be a second American century remind me of the people saying in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the 20th century will be a British century.

with industrial capabilities superior to any country outside the West,Russia and East Asia

superior industrial capabilities versus Antarctica, checkmate

You have demonstrated your own rather low IQ with this post.

India is in terms of GDP per capita roughly where China was 10-15 years ago.

India is the world’s fifth largest industrial producer.

India is in terms of overall technological ability is superior to any country outside the West,Russia and East Asia.

Those are irrefutable facts.

Only a low IQ dimwit will describe a country with nuclear weapons and ICBMs,the world’s fourth largest Air Force and a million man army as one of the weakest in the world.

nominal terms (2-3x that of the United States)

I think this should be evaluated carefully because the difference between 2 or 3-times is huge in terms of global influence.

In 2040 the Chinese population: 1.45 billion; US population: 400 million.

In 2017, South Korea GDP per capita in nominal terms was exactly 50% of US GDP per capita.

If in 2040, China can manage to get to a GDP per capita of 50% of the then US GDP per capita, the Chinese economy will be 1.81 times larger than the US economy.

China has some advantages and also quite a few disadvantages in its way compared to South Korea.
China’s biggest advantage is simply that America won’t be as strong in the future as it was before. In 2040, America will not be as economically efficient as it was 20 years before due to a more diverse population. However, California is minority-majority and it is only a moderate drag on the economy in overall terms. Due to a more diverse population, I think America will be a rich country rather than a very rich country in 2040.

I’m not a China skeptic. I’m Chinese and work in the financial economy so I want to see success. However, I must admit flaws and would rather focus on how to eliminate or ameliorate the flaws rather than premature victory.

Underinvestment in human capital – Unlike South Korea or Taiwan, at this stage the under investment in childhood nutrition and education in rural areas is worse and the results from PISA of rural Chinese children shows it. There’s still malnutrition in some parts of China because the welfare state for even the poorest areas is very feeble.

Urbanized Chinese males are laggards compared to East Asian peers – Something that seems entirely unnoticed even in the HBD sphere is how unusually bad urbanized Chinese males are doing in the advanced economy. In finance and law, Chinese women are making a better show than their East Asian peers. In venture capital, at the partner level, women in China are almost twice as represented than women in Silicon Valley. In one big investment firm’s legal department I encountered 28 women out of a department of 30. If urbanized Chinese males don’t contribute as much as their East Asian peers to the advanced economy, will it have an ultimate effect on GDP?

Aging population – Although the aging population problem is finally recognized, there’s not much 2nd child incentives can do at this point considering the cost of raising a kid in a Chinese city and apartment ownership. China is 20 years behind South Korea but only 5 years younger.

Xinjiang – This is the most minor problem in terms of economic damage but pacification of the Uighurs is proving to be very expensive and a huge distraction that will get worse when Syria is finally liberated and the surviving 10,000 or more Uighurs fighters and their families try to come back home. I hope enlightenment seizes hold across China and also Russia and finally there can be a conversation about getting rid of problem border regions and the minorities that can’t be assimilated living in them by granting independence. With China that means southwest Xinjiang and Russia it’s the NCFD.

I agree that India is not totally insignificant. But I think my original point stands: India is not where it should be in terms of military power based on its aggregate GDP and military spending data.

It doesn’t mean that the India-hating squad is fully correct. But it’s not going to catch up with China in the foreseeable future.

India currently has a GDP per capita where China was in 2005-06. But India doesn’t grow as fast as China due to lower growth rate and currency depreciation (while the RMB appreciated). Taking into account India’s growth in the last 10 years, expected currency depreciation, and inflation, India should reach China’s current level sometime between 2045-50.

What do you think is the possibility of very draconian policies to reverse birthrate declines being implemented in China.

I think everyone recognizes the need for birthrates of roughly 2.1 and China can see Japan’s stagnation in large part due to falling birthrates so do you think policies like extremely high penalties for couples who don’t have 2 or more Children after say 7 years of marriage ( With exceptions for medical conditions)comparable to those imposed on couples that had more that one child at the height of China’s one child policy likely?

By the 2040s, China will have by far the world’s largest economy in both PPP-adjusted and nominal terms (2-3x that of the United States), its most powerful military, and comparable navalpower and elite scientific production.

Yes, if the US does not use military force after economic measures fail to slow China’s growth.

As with my standard “futuristic” projections, all this assumes there are no radical discontinuities in our world – no machine superintelligence,

Dennett expects that machine super intelligence will be a good 50 years away, but he only started saying it was possible after reading Pedro Domingos’s 2015 book. China will be in a position spend the money necessary to to create machine superintelligence by 2040, I expect there will not be much of anything by 2050.

Any views of Verzilov’s sudden heath problem days after being in police custody.He disrupted the World Cup and Putin loves his sport (promoting Ice his Hockey team members ect).

increase it’s nuclear deterrent by an order of magnitude to match.

Why? What does 1,000 nukes v. 100 nukes do in terms of deterrent effect?

Defense spending as a total proportion of the government budget is down to 5%.

Why does China need to spend 4% of GDP on defense rather than the current 2%? Does the Chinese military have global responsibilities like the US? No, it just needs to be concerned with the Pacific (and currently an inexplicably small presence of 2-3 divisions facing India). 2% of GDP is more than adequate.

Have you considered how much more economically weaker China would be if an additional 2% of GDP went to the military rather than the high speed rail network and other infrastructure over the last 3 decades? Do you think China with a larger military and a GDP per capita of $6,000 is stronger than the currently smaller Chinese military with a GDP per capita of $9,000?

Have you at all factored in how much more secure China is now since the Maidan in Kiev and its consequences have made it impossible to blockade China because Russia and China are now firm allies? Military spending should actually be adjusted downward to 1.5% of GDP since the Maidan.

I can’t imagine how that would be practical. The power of the state over people’s lives has dwindled considerably.

First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher

You can’t just rely on someone else to do the fighting for you.

And simply by providing the appearance of weakness, you will invite further aggression. This misses also the valuable material science knowledge, etc. gained from buildup of a MIC.

This is a terrible mentality.

Your comment doesn’t sound like it has any analysis behind it. I have 3 questions for you.

You can’t just rely on someone else to do the fighting for you.

Russia doesn’t need to join in any fight with the US, it will be instrumental if it keeps on shipping oil while the US blockades the world’s sea lanes.

Why not support other countries so that they can do fighting instead of you? In particular, this means supporting Iran. China will take over a lot of the financial burden of Syria reconstruction as announced in July to allow Iran to concentrate on building its defenses.

misses also the valuable material science knowledge, etc. gained from buildup of a MIC

What do you think is better: a larger military and MIC with a GDP per capita of $6,000 or the current military and MIC with a GDP per capita of $9,000? Money diverted not just to the MIC but a huge military payroll and pensions sucks up economic development. Imagine in what shape the economy would be in currently after 30 years of military spending diverted from railway construction. Having a bigger economy funds mega science projects and more mundane research and development a lot more than high levels of spending on the MIC. And this doesn’t even address how much weaker of a position economically and geopolitically China would be with a lower GDP per capita at this point. Too many people who advocate for high military spending seem to essentially have the mentality that money grows on trees and is not a limited resource.

simply by providing the appearance of weakness, you will invite further aggression.

It is simplistic to say everything short of acting tough right now is a sign of weakness and doesn’t take into account the specific context of China’s rapid potential and the long term path to acquiring truly impervious strength. If military spending were reduced to 1.5% from 2%, the slowdown would be noted and I suppose some in US strategic circles would regard it as a sign of a less confrontational stance, the success of US pressure, and China’s underlying weakness. I’m not certain though it would be interpreted as such in the mainstream US strategic view as China’s economic clout and Belt and Road outreach would continue and US strategic circles would feel threatened by the vitality of expansion of non-military sphere of influence.

And then your view doesn’t take into account the benefit of China avoiding military confrontation at such a weak, vulnerable stage when with just 15-20 more years of tranquility, China will be able to reach a developed stage. At almost 2-times the size of the US economy, it will be very hard for the US to consider a strategy to confront China. That’s true strength and it is risked by the current stupidity in the South China Sea.

Have you considered how prematurely showing strength in military spending and confrontation will result in an early response from the US that could cripple China’s ability to clear the final 15-20 years before becoming nearly economically impervious?

So you are bragging that India has more technology than Africa and South America? Congratulations…I guess.

The FACT is that India still can’t get its population to poop in toilets. Anyone who has been to South America and most parts of Africa will tell you that these places feel much more civilized than India. So when you say that India is more technologically advanced, I am not buying it.

As far as the Indian military, when has India ever successfully won a war against a non-Indian country?

Indians are the opposite of a martial people, and no matter how many planes you buy they won’t do squat so long as you have Indians piloting them.

Next few decades:

US: Hegemon whose full-spectrum dominance will continue to decline with continued “browning”.
Russia: Sufficient talent and a strong enough streak of the barbarian to play spoiler, nothing more.
China: Somewhere between the US and Russia.

Speculatively, once it feels sufficiently threatened, will the US attempt some sort of destabilization of Xinjiang via some Central Asian vector?

Isolationism means China will be surrounded by a hostile, westernized world. It will be outnumbered and pressured from every direction, and increases the chance of western values seeping into China. It’s not a tenable position.

China might not be interested in a global war of ideology, but ideological war is interested in China. Fight back or the world’s stupid, dangerous people will be at our throats.