Aaaaand I was 100% WRONG About China

[JasonBlack]

(08-27-2022, 04:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, China has been an autocratic empire for about 3000 years or more.

China has been autocratic for 3000 years, but that doesn't mean this was a single continuous autocracy. They have collapsed multiple times throughout their history. For example, part of the reason why Asian moms and grannies fall into the tiger mom archetype is that there are still people with living memory of their own family having to cannibalize each other to survive under the famines induced by Mao.

Quote:So I don't think they are going to fall apart on that account.

Neither do I. They're going to fall apart on account of crumbling demographics, food shortages, resource dependencies and other issues

Quote:But they are and always have been vulnerable to periodic civil war, and more-recently revolution-civil war.

Agreed.

Quote:Being a libertarian, I doubt Zeihan is right about very much here. Sounds like exaggeration to me.
The idea that they import 85% of their energy, mostly from the Persian Gulf, seems absurd given all their coal plants and their huge solar energy farms. The assertions of poor agricultural output seems strange considering most of their population still pursues agriculture. The assertions of such a drastic population decrease and related assertions are ridiculous.

He gets almost all his data from readily available government databases. "He's probably not right because he's libertarian" is a character assassination.

Quote:But, if even a bit of his claims are true, it would seem unlikely that they will be the overwhelmingly greatest superpower in the world. But we in the USA sure have been making their prospects for becoming #1 easier over the last 40 years with the policies that your author believes in!

actually, the policies that he wants are...probably more in line with what you want. I would rather let most of Eurasia burn and focus on America. He wants something akin to a Breton Woods 2.0