In a very interesting speech at the National Conservatism 4 Conference in Washington, D.C., Asia Times Business Editor David P. Goldman had quite a lot to say about China's plans, progress and possibilities. I'll embed the 15-minute video below, followed by an excerpt from an abridged transcript of his speech. I very strongly recommend that you read/watch at least one, if not both.
The world’s scarcest resource is young people who can work in a modern economy. Empires of the past fought over territory. China’s goal is to control people.
In 1979 China took a nation of farmers and turned them into industrial workers, and multiplied GDP per capita 30 times. Now it plans to turn a nation of factory workers into a nation of engineers — think of South Korea. That’s a messy and costly transition. But China is doing it.
In 2020 I wrote of China’s plan to Sino-form the Global South. It knows a lot about getting people who make $3 a day to make $10 or $20 a day.
China’s population has been in decline, but its highly educated population is growing:
Ten and a half million university graduates, up 60% in 10 years, 2X our total – and a third are engineers. That’s more engineering graduates than the rest of the world combined.
South Korea quintupled industrial production between 1990 and 2010 while its factory workforce fell by a fifth.
Will China collapse? Compare the US and China aggregate debt burden: the US is 262% of GDP, and China is 278% of GDP –
But China lends the world a trillion dollars a year and we borrow a trillion dollars a year. Countries with positive growth and big current account surpluses don’t have financial crises.
. . .
The other big thing China got right is the transformation of the Global South. It doubled exports to the Global South since Covid – now exports more to the Global South than to all developed markets. Assimilates billions of people into its economic sphere. It did this with 200 soldiers deployed outside China versus our 230,000.
We spent $7 trillion on forever wars. China spent $1 trillion on Belt and Road Initiative investments. Who got more influence?
Forty countries have applied to join the BRICS group.
This isn’t about authoritarianism versus democracy. China’s exports to democracies like India grew as fast as exports to Russia. The Chinese are incurious about how barbarians govern themselves. They want to make the world dependent on Chinese technology and supply chains.
There's much more at the link. It's essential reading to understand how strong China has become in the world economy, and how much ground we have to make up to catch up. Of course, China faces internal problems of its own, including a shrinking workforce, debt crises and others - but it's built up an economic "cushion" that's enabling it to tackle those problems step by step, rather than having to deal with them all at once.
I hope the Trump administration is aware of these issues, because they're going to drive US foreign policy for years to come, whether we like it or not. We may have different priorities, but we're going to have to spend so much time reacting to China's priorities that we may not have much available to act on our own.
Peter
11 comments:
Yep....and meanwhile we have to teach remedial English and third grade math to college freshmen before they can take actual classes. Trump can't kill the Department Of Education soon enough.
Children are the future. China's lack of them due to one child social planning is a problem as the Han as they call themselves don't breed with others. That and during one child SONS were preferred to the abortion of girls.
If China can get Taiwan back peacefully (due to America's shield collapsing) the male female ratio will be helped.
High social status mainland Chinese already marry Taiwan ladies. So, it's a political not social issue here.
Meanwhile in America as Dan pointed out we create HS and College "Graduates" that cannot do basic math, read above the old school 5th grade and cannot figure out what bathroom to use. Good times (need I add a sarc tag here?)
An easy way to eliminate or at least redirect that excess make population is to send them to war. Given that China is stamping out war ships like toasters and their massive increase in weaponry output of all types at least equal to ours, but in far superior numbers, should be a clue.
You need that many engineers when all you can do is hijack and reverse-engineer.
China hasn't invented anything original since gunpowder.
If that ever changes, then I'd be worried.
Meanwhile, their dreams exceed their capabilities, and lust and envy are a dangerous combination with industrial capacity.
Just ask Germany's neighbors from 1914-1945.
There's more Chinese than there were a hundred years ago. They have reversed the 1 child policy. The Chinese gov't is ruthless with its own people, but when I was there on a job several years ago the Chinese I met were supportive and enthusiastic. They are racist and see themselves as the master race. However, they don't want an empire, but they do want enough strength to have security. Read Marco Polo's travels, the Chinese gov't has always taken what it wants. At their core a communist or warlord is about being able to take what they want.
Say what you want about the inability to invent, they can reverse engineer. We're on a path, thanks to DEI and the DOE to having problems keeping the lights on, not so the Chinese.
I doubt they will invade the US. No one sane or 90% insane would want the problems. They don't need to defeat us militarily. They are part of BRICS, and just demand payment in Yuan or rubles or gold. Or just sanction us. A lot of our luxury items are made in China, but a lot of feeder stock as well. They can crash our economy anytime and the average Chinese citizen will love them for it. There are the rumors of military age males in the US, both Chinese and hispanic. Just trip us up and we'll be no threat. Drones and hypersonics are limiting infantry and carrier warfare. Eventually there will be counters. 1 in 6 of our subs are sidelined for maintenance they are not getting. We have 55 deployable subs and 2 oceans. People say you need 3 subs to keep 1 deployed, but its closer to 4. At best 9 little subs in a great big ocean with limited torpedoes meant to fight warships, not the cheap things you would use for merchant sea denial. OBTW, some of those subs are boomers, so 9 is probably inflated although with a surge you may get 16 for an initial 2-3 months. Not all will come home if we go hot. Guess what happens to China's economic power and exports if we can't or won't fight sea denial? It rhymes with nada. China has over 100 times our current ship building capability - they can win any industrial war, which is what war at sea is all about. As they used to tell us in officer school - quantity has a quality all its own.
China has won the industrial war even before a shot is fired. It will take us years to undo the offshoring and regulatory damage that has driven critical manufacturing offshore. The US is very clean, very little pollution compared to EVERY other country I have visited because we exported our manufacturing and attendant pollution. We crippled our nuclear power industry, our coal industry. Green causes way more pollution and ... Then there is our education system and the current workforce we have. By the way, I'm not blaming the young - Our children are as we taught them to be.
If we leave China alone, let them take Taiwan and do whatever else, I'm pretty sure they will leave us alone. They will take economic advantage of us when it suits them. We need to get our own house in order. Blustering about demographics and their inability to invent things is a good way to lose a shooting ware.
If China invades anyone, it would be Australia due to their closeness and vast natural resources. Australia ships many barges daily to China of Coal, LNG, and many other products. So much so that the Australian government does not include it in their countries so-called global warming calculations.
Does no one care what the Chinese think? There’s about a 50% chance that any high level Taiwan official you meet is solidly in favor of reunion with mainland China and you can take it to the bank that their foreign policy and defense strategies have been thoroughly dominated by them. Why in the world anybody thinks we need to prepare to fight China over China or over seabed resources under the China Sea is a mystery to me….except the need to find some donkey to pin trillions in defense acquisitions on. Remember the stupid Domino Theory or any of the rest of that nonsense? Faced with no enemy for the first time in over 110 years we are hellbent on finding one.
>That’s more engineering graduates than the rest of the world combined.
Them and India. The media has been telling me that since the 1980s. I'm still waiting for them to do something original, or even usable.
As for American high school grads, the 'statistics' (use Twain's definition) includes legal and illegal alien kids (40 millionish?), as well as the millions of black kids being culturally genocided in blue cities, and doesn't include private and home schooled.
Elon Musk couldn't have done SpaceX anywhere else.
china is working on solutions - https://lighthousenewsnetwork.com/china-unveils-new-peacekeeper-drone-comes-with-built-in-tea-kettle/
I vote for Siberia. It can't get any closer to China, and there's no need to cross water. Sure, Siberia is relatively undeveloped, but with 100M able-bodies standing by in China, development can come quickly. Russia is still in decline. Only nukes are useful to keep control of Siberia. And war between Russia & China without the U.S. involved sounds OK to me.
And right now, he's my favorite African-American.
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