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This is the optimistic view, meaning that once those countries that have a large number of competitive middle-class strivers have caught up, the pressure will s

This is the optimistic view, meaning that once those countries that have a large number of competitive middle-class strivers have caught up, the pressure will subside, and some things will come back. There is another angle to this, which is that China won't have to fight the red tape, regulation, NIMBYism, being stuck in local maxima and the general lack of vision, optimistic outlook on the future and belief in the system working that has befallen western countries. All we do is to pump ever more money into the markets and go deeper into debt. At one point, this will stop working. Some say this is already happening: is inflation real, or not?

h0l0cube 5y ago
That view is very optimistic. History has shown that power isn't willingly ceded by any government, it takes action from the bottom up. Maybe this will happen in China, but it seems the government has been pro-active in quashing uprisings, and has already laid the technological framework to maintain its police state. China needs it's version of Chernobyl before people would be ready to risk their lives to change the government, the problem is that the new failure modes have global impact. And as we've seen with the spread of Covid, China has actually gained political capital from its mistakes, at least domestically, and also harmed the political situation of it's western competitors. Perhaps China will now wait long by the river while the rest of the world cannibalizes itself.