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Demographics are big. But Zeihan also evaluates countries based on their geography, taking into account things like energy supplies, food production, and naviga

Demographics are big. But Zeihan also evaluates countries based on their geography, taking into account things like energy supplies, food production, and navigable rivers.

DennisP 4y ago
And in all those factors, the US has enormous advantages over basically everyone. The US has more navigable river than the rest of the world combined, no nearby threats, is self-sufficient in energy and food, has great ports on both oceans, and is better off demographically than most other advanced countries. China on the other hand has horrible demographics, and imports 85% of its fuel and agricultural inputs. It has a large navy but only 10% of it is deepwater-capable, plus it's hemmed in by fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles. China has become a great economic power largely because the US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Were China as intrinsically disadvantaged, or the US as advantaged, as you frame it - then this would be quite a strong argument further in favor of the view that as technologies equalize, economic output becomes dominated by population. The economic gap between the US and China per capita continues to shrink at an exponential rate. This is the US GDP/capita divided by the Chinese GDP/capita for the past 40 years in nominal terms: 1990 - 75x 2000 - 38x 2010 - 11x 2020 - 6x As China has more than 4x the population of the US, 4x is the cutoff where they will also have a larger economy in nominal terms. They've of course long since greatly surpassed us in PPP terms. US GDP/capita : https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... Chinese GDP/capita : https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capi...
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Most of China's production is on behalf of the US and other countries. It enriches the political elite and Americans, but does not directly benefit the rest much.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Yes but you're missing my point (or rather Zeihan's). China's disadvantages have not mattered, but only because the US protected global trade. Because of that, since WWII it hasn't mattered whether you had all the resources you needed, or a navy to protect your shipping lanes. If the US stops doing that, then China's disadvantages will suddenly matter a lot. On the other hand, demographics hasn't been a problem for China in previous decades because their demographics were fine until recently. Now their population is retiring in large numbers and they don't have many kids growing up to replace them.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  Zeihan stans regurgitating 101 Zeihan US strong PRC weak argument, and forget that in geoPOLITICS, the political component is as important as geography. Natural advantages can only do so much if they are squandered. Even Zeihan concedes this. Also some basic media literacy when evaluating his claims designed to sell expensive dinners to wealthy American exceptionalists. Rudimentary critical analysis like: >US has more navigable river Go do a search of country with most internal navigable water ways, it's PRC with more than 2x of US. This is basic tier fact check. US technically has a lot of exploitable waterways, but PRC has much more significant urban/manufacturing clusters linked via the waterways. Vs US waterways are primarily used for transport of bulky primary Ag goods... barge freight in US is massively underutilized because US is systemically bad at infra upkeep (drediging / maintenance etc). Politics > geography. >has great ports on both oceans. Has great port potential but poor quality ports due to inability to build infra and reliance on human labour. Go look at list of port rankings, PRC has 8 out of top 10. Like does it really matter US has deep water coasts to accomodate 10,000 world class ports when economics preferences consolidating large scale ports. Or that PRC infra capability can simply dredge out huge port projects at still fraction cost/time of US building on the most ideal site. Politics > geography. >is self-sufficient in energy Only on the most surface analysis. US is self-reliant in the sense it has resources in the ground that are economically exploitable. Versus PRC with massive imports to maintain production, implication being US can trivially choke PRC inputs via blockade/embargo (act of war)... by targetting shipping. Here is the reality, US is only as self sufficient as 130 vunerable refineries can process petro products which sustains everything including ag inputs. In event of war, which those musing US blockading PRC shipping forget actually will be, PRC can retaliate by compromising these refineries with cyber warfare, or in event of full escalation conventional hypersonics. There's a reason Biden told Putin/Xi that he considers cyber attacks on US infra comparable to initiating physical war. In age of vunerable networked infra nodes, during an actual shooting war, US is more vunerable and less self sufficient than EVER simply because adversaries like PRC has the capabilities to compromise critical CONUS infra. Like gunpower ended actual fortresses, network and conventional global strike capabilities ended Zeihan's fortress america. Politics (PRC indigenous defense drive) > geography. >has horrible demographics China actually significantly better off demographically TO COMPETE with US vs just about everyone else. Yes there's broad demographic decline, but S&T investements and academic reforms has massively grown the segment of educated / skilled talent. Huge population base effect = PRC generating something like 4.5M STEM talent with exploding pHDs, about all OECD combined. This is multitude more than US can generate domestically + immigration. PRC is only getting better demographically equipped to challenge US primarcy. Think of how JP/SKR/TW consistently moved up value chain, destroyed US lead in semi, even though most they had shit tier demographics but moved up value chain by converting new gen disproportionately into STEM. PRC is doing that with 20x more talent and will be going after every sector. What else does declining population imply? Less import dependancy and more strategic options. Politics (PRC investment in human capita) > demography. Granted does not negate, but there's demographic divident political hacks at PRC scale. >large navy but only 10% ... >US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day This is whoefully out of date, PRC has been building mid-tier sized European navy every year, hulls of surface combatants are all blue water capable. But ultimately PRC simply choose not to take on global commitments and freeloads off the US... because why would they not. Apart from courtesy anti piracy, and foreign port visits, PRC likes to stay within IndoPac and turn SCS into Chinese lake. With PRC ship building capacity, it would be trivial for PRC to build a replenishment fleet comparable to USN and replace US policing duties, which would open up global basing options for others who want to freeload off PRC. Ergo US has to fulfill commitments or else they lose hegemonic competition/perks to others who are willing. Now go look at USN readiness / retention decline and the sad state of the fleet due to massive over commitment / tasking and ask yourself why PRC would stop an adversary while making mistake. Or circle back the PRC global hypersonic developments and translate that to port strikes, the TLDR is USN naval assets are single deployment assets, less if replenishment fleet gets scrapped. >fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles Zeihan was wanking about surrounding PRC with AShMs at a time when US policy / wonk writings thought this was a great idea (it is), but when US foreign policy tried implement said 1st island chain plan last couple admins, they found very few takers. TLDR is majority of ASEAN/region is neutral and no one is really suicidal enough to be PRC missile sinks in a Sino-US war. Right now the only takers is Japan, TW, and maybe SKR. And bluntly, if you look at current/trending force balance differential in region and future PRC military aquistions, PRC doesn't even need a navy to completely destroy major US ally in the region, who are all islands and existentially vunerable to import disruptions. Not to mention these allies are more liability in actual war... because PRC attacking them will trigger security commitment in 1st Island Chain where US does not want to fight. >China has become a great economic power This is peak US exceptionalism wank, China has become a great economic power because it exploited US failures in domestic and foreign policy. People want to think it's US benevolence when it's actually US incompetence that built modern PRC. There's a reason why US vs PRC competition is about systems and not just geographic blessings. It's not geography that's massively failing US, it's the politics. Whatever you think of PRC/CCP politics, so far it's closing the gap faster than US can contain.

Demographics are big. But Zeihan also evaluates countries based on their geography, taking into account things like energy supplies, food production, and navigable rivers.

DennisP 4y ago

And in all those factors, the US has enormous advantages over basically everyone. The US has more navigable river than the rest of the world combined, no nearby threats, is self-sufficient in energy and food, has great ports on both oceans, and is better off demographically than most other advanced countries. China on the other hand has horrible demographics, and imports 85% of its fuel and agricultural inputs. It has a large navy but only 10% of it is deepwater-capable, plus it's hemmed in by fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles. China has become a great economic power largely because the US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day.

somenameforme 4y ago
Were China as intrinsically disadvantaged, or the US as advantaged, as you frame it - then this would be quite a strong argument further in favor of the view that as technologies equalize, economic output becomes dominated by population. The economic gap between the US and China per capita continues to shrink at an exponential rate. This is the US GDP/capita divided by the Chinese GDP/capita for the past 40 years in nominal terms: 1990 - 75x 2000 - 38x 2010 - 11x 2020 - 6x As China has more than 4x the population of the US, 4x is the cutoff where they will also have a larger economy in nominal terms. They've of course long since greatly surpassed us in PPP terms. US GDP/capita : https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... Chinese GDP/capita : https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capi...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Most of China's production is on behalf of the US and other countries. It enriches the political elite and Americans, but does not directly benefit the rest much.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Yes but you're missing my point (or rather Zeihan's). China's disadvantages have not mattered, but only because the US protected global trade. Because of that, since WWII it hasn't mattered whether you had all the resources you needed, or a navy to protect your shipping lanes. If the US stops doing that, then China's disadvantages will suddenly matter a lot. On the other hand, demographics hasn't been a problem for China in previous decades because their demographics were fine until recently. Now their population is retiring in large numbers and they don't have many kids growing up to replace them.
dirtyid 4y ago
Zeihan stans regurgitating 101 Zeihan US strong PRC weak argument, and forget that in geoPOLITICS, the political component is as important as geography. Natural advantages can only do so much if they are squandered. Even Zeihan concedes this. Also some basic media literacy when evaluating his claims designed to sell expensive dinners to wealthy American exceptionalists. Rudimentary critical analysis like: >US has more navigable river Go do a search of country with most internal navigable water ways, it's PRC with more than 2x of US. This is basic tier fact check. US technically has a lot of exploitable waterways, but PRC has much more significant urban/manufacturing clusters linked via the waterways. Vs US waterways are primarily used for transport of bulky primary Ag goods... barge freight in US is massively underutilized because US is systemically bad at infra upkeep (drediging / maintenance etc). Politics > geography. >has great ports on both oceans. Has great port potential but poor quality ports due to inability to build infra and reliance on human labour. Go look at list of port rankings, PRC has 8 out of top 10. Like does it really matter US has deep water coasts to accomodate 10,000 world class ports when economics preferences consolidating large scale ports. Or that PRC infra capability can simply dredge out huge port projects at still fraction cost/time of US building on the most ideal site. Politics > geography. >is self-sufficient in energy Only on the most surface analysis. US is self-reliant in the sense it has resources in the ground that are economically exploitable. Versus PRC with massive imports to maintain production, implication being US can trivially choke PRC inputs via blockade/embargo (act of war)... by targetting shipping. Here is the reality, US is only as self sufficient as 130 vunerable refineries can process petro products which sustains everything including ag inputs. In event of war, which those musing US blockading PRC shipping forget actually will be, PRC can retaliate by compromising these refineries with cyber warfare, or in event of full escalation conventional hypersonics. There's a reason Biden told Putin/Xi that he considers cyber attacks on US infra comparable to initiating physical war. In age of vunerable networked infra nodes, during an actual shooting war, US is more vunerable and less self sufficient than EVER simply because adversaries like PRC has the capabilities to compromise critical CONUS infra. Like gunpower ended actual fortresses, network and conventional global strike capabilities ended Zeihan's fortress america. Politics (PRC indigenous defense drive) > geography. >has horrible demographics China actually significantly better off demographically TO COMPETE with US vs just about everyone else. Yes there's broad demographic decline, but S&T investements and academic reforms has massively grown the segment of educated / skilled talent. Huge population base effect = PRC generating something like 4.5M STEM talent with exploding pHDs, about all OECD combined. This is multitude more than US can generate domestically + immigration. PRC is only getting better demographically equipped to challenge US primarcy. Think of how JP/SKR/TW consistently moved up value chain, destroyed US lead in semi, even though most they had shit tier demographics but moved up value chain by converting new gen disproportionately into STEM. PRC is doing that with 20x more talent and will be going after every sector. What else does declining population imply? Less import dependancy and more strategic options. Politics (PRC investment in human capita) > demography. Granted does not negate, but there's demographic divident political hacks at PRC scale. >large navy but only 10% ... >US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day This is whoefully out of date, PRC has been building mid-tier sized European navy every year, hulls of surface combatants are all blue water capable. But ultimately PRC simply choose not to take on global commitments and freeloads off the US... because why would they not. Apart from courtesy anti piracy, and foreign port visits, PRC likes to stay within IndoPac and turn SCS into Chinese lake. With PRC ship building capacity, it would be trivial for PRC to build a replenishment fleet comparable to USN and replace US policing duties, which would open up global basing options for others who want to freeload off PRC. Ergo US has to fulfill commitments or else they lose hegemonic competition/perks to others who are willing. Now go look at USN readiness / retention decline and the sad state of the fleet due to massive over commitment / tasking and ask yourself why PRC would stop an adversary while making mistake. Or circle back the PRC global hypersonic developments and translate that to port strikes, the TLDR is USN naval assets are single deployment assets, less if replenishment fleet gets scrapped. >fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles Zeihan was wanking about surrounding PRC with AShMs at a time when US policy / wonk writings thought this was a great idea (it is), but when US foreign policy tried implement said 1st island chain plan last couple admins, they found very few takers. TLDR is majority of ASEAN/region is neutral and no one is really suicidal enough to be PRC missile sinks in a Sino-US war. Right now the only takers is Japan, TW, and maybe SKR. And bluntly, if you look at current/trending force balance differential in region and future PRC military aquistions, PRC doesn't even need a navy to completely destroy major US ally in the region, who are all islands and existentially vunerable to import disruptions. Not to mention these allies are more liability in actual war... because PRC attacking them will trigger security commitment in 1st Island Chain where US does not want to fight. >China has become a great economic power This is peak US exceptionalism wank, China has become a great economic power because it exploited US failures in domestic and foreign policy. People want to think it's US benevolence when it's actually US incompetence that built modern PRC. There's a reason why US vs PRC competition is about systems and not just geographic blessings. It's not geography that's massively failing US, it's the politics. Whatever you think of PRC/CCP politics, so far it's closing the gap faster than US can contain.