Aaaaand I was 100% WRONG About China

[Eric the Green]

(08-29-2022, 03:35 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:The demographic and agricultural conditions you and your author assert are flat-out false.
The 1 child policy is gone

Just because the 1 child policy is gone does not mean the effects on previous birthrates are. After all, it takes 20 years and 9 months to grow a 20yo worker, 40 years and 9 months to grow a 40yo manager, etc. Government programs cannot add more people to a given generation the way they can add to the bank accounts of those impoverished by bad policy.

The 1 child policy has been gone for almost that time, at least regarding the "20-year" part. And it was not a bad policy. Overpopulation is a threat to human life and to all life. China's population is not decreasing; it is stabilizing, as all countries need to do. As countries get more prosperous, they need to breed fewer children. And if what you say is true that they don't have enough arable land, then reducing or stabilizing their population would seem to have been the right move.

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Quote: and most Chinese are still farming.

farming with less than 1/3 the arable land per capita than the world average, and less than 1/5 the arable land per capita of the United States and insane reliance on imports of fertilizer from foreign nations (namely Russia and India).
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-inf...per-capita

Chinese have been farming their land with a huge population for centuries and millennia. China is a big country. Such figure-playing is nonsense. China is not on the verge of a food shortage.

China seems to be efficient in managing its affair. Its arable land has been going down, but maintained a level beyond state targets.

"SHANGHAI, Aug 27 (Reuters) - China's total arable land amounted to almost 1.28 million sq km (490,000 sq miles) by the end of 2019, down nearly 6% compared with a decade earlier, according to a once-in-a-decade survey of the country's land use published on Thursday.
The number - amounting to 13% of China's total area - is higher than the state target, which aimed to keep 1.865 billion mu (1.24 million sq km) of arable land off limits to urban encroachment by the end of 2020, the Ministry of Natural Resources said in a briefing."
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chin...021-08-27/

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Quote:China has plenty of minerals, coal and solar power.

Coal they primarily get from Australia and their solar power is not nearly sufficient to meet the needs of their population.

China has its own coal and lots more solar power. Saying solar power cannot supply our needs is just to first delay the transition (by supporting Republicans), and then complaining that there's not enough.

I had not heard that about Australian imports to China, but perhaps if China invades Taiwan, our Australian ally might cut off those imports. Maybe that foolish act could accelerate a crisis and a fall by China. But China is riding so high these days and has such a long and successful history that the sudden collapse you forecast just seems an outrageous prediction.

Still, China can stop using coal anytime it wants to, more or less. Lots more solar energy can be built, including on all their buildings. China is doing a lot already, but it's 2060 target is too slow and needs to be moved up.

A more accurate article tells a different story. China is now the world's largest both exporter and importer of coal, it says. But it is cutting back fast, and it seems Indonesia and Australia are the countries that could be impacted by the decline of this industry, rather than China. "the country is working on building a more independent and self-sufficient energy system. The combination of its decarbonisation commitments and its efforts towards boosting domestic energy security will inevitably lower the country’s coal consumption and imports."
https://energytracker.asia/chinas-coal-i...-exporters

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Quote:It seems you may be putting too much emphasis on the Breton Woods agreement. The internecene wars came to an end because the Allies put an end to them and because Europe could see what condition they left themselves in. Imperialist rivalries came to an end too as The West was stripped of its colonies in the subsequent years.

A time of peace, cooperation and rebuilding following a time of war is not an historical anomaly for Europe (that's basically what 1Ts are). What is an historical anomaly is the way they have stayed at peace for well over half a century. This has virtually never happened in 2000+ years of European history, and it only came about because America put down her foot and kept old conflicts from reemerging.

In part, yes indeed, and also because Europe has progressed, and realized its mistakes.

Europe was widely considered to be at peace for a century after the Vienna Conference in 1815. Except for the reunification wars in the 1860s, and a few wars in the Balkans, this was true. The same sort of qualification is true for your assertion about the "well over half a century" you mention, since it had more Balkan wars in the 1990s.

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Quote:It seems someone has to keep shipping lanes open, if we don't want greedy autocratic powers like China interfering with our global economy.

We will likely see shared agreements to secure oceanic shipping routes, but without the hegemonic oversight of the United States, such measures will lack the consistency of the current order.

We will continue to need to do our part, altrhough it seems in your previous post that you didn't want us to do that. And this part will be larger than others because we are larger and more equipped to do it.

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Quote:But meanwhile the military industrial complex set up after the Pearl Harbor attack continued to function, sending the USA to war in Korea and Vietnam and later to Afghanistan and Iraq. US interests and Keynesian economics were hurt by this. We should pull back from such adventures; on that we agree. It increases our debt, and adds this debt excuse to neoliberal/Republican demands for less social and environmental spending.

The worst part is that we never even needed the oil reserves of the Middle East (the US has always been far more energy independent than the general public realizes). Much of such escapades were done on behalf of our European allies

And we are more energy independent because of the potential of renewable energy. 100 square miles of solar power alone (to say nothing of wind onshore and offshore), spread out over the country and on rooftops, can supply ALL our energy needs. Coal is no longer an option, period! That, my friend, indeed needs to be shut down ASAP! Republicans and their Supreme Court resist this, and thus keep the climate crisis accelerating, which creates feedback loops to make the crisis worse and shut down our hydro power.