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If by "hard mode" you mean throwing your population into a man-made famine, chasing out or killing all the educated people, decimating the country, and then bas

If by "hard mode" you mean throwing your population into a man-made famine, chasing out or killing all the educated people, decimating the country, and then basically enslaving your entire work force for generations in order to pursue some weird ego trip, then yes.

dirtyid 4y ago
By hard mode I mean, a nascent government, stitching together a huge broken country recovering from 100+ years of instability and a couple world wars, in a post world order with active containment by the US as hyper power with 40% of global GBP. VS other Sinosphere countries being mostly US client states and having resources and beneficial policies directed towards development as payment for doing the containment. AKA hard mode. CCP trades some lives upfront to condense 100s of years of development into a few decades. AKA acing hard mode. Operationally this means trading surplus lives for progress. The great leap forward killed millions, but ensured PRC also had the highest industrial capacity amongst developing peers after. Cultural revolution broke traditional social structures = 90%+ unified polity, speaking one language. Purging intelligentsia was overkill, but still had STEM priorities right, both nukes + first satellite developed in this era. In aggregate, disruptions setup/enabled PRC to exploit mass modernization efforts, established industrial bases, and plenty of fungible bodies. Incidentally this is why pluralism of India and old practices (caste) etc is holding up development, India systemically couldn't destroy to renew, now it’s dragged down by the baggage. Here’s the thing about “ego tripping”, when the destination is to grow comprehensive power, and now CCP tripped their way into near peer power status in 50 years, then perhaps the egos planned the trip successfully.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Ha, we'll see about that "near peer" status ;) And we'll see if Zeihan is correct about China falling in sub 10 years. I think it might hold on longer, but who knows.

dirtyid 4y ago

By hard mode I mean, a nascent government, stitching together a huge broken country recovering from 100+ years of instability and a couple world wars, in a post world order with active containment by the US as hyper power with 40% of global GBP. VS other Sinosphere countries being mostly US client states and having resources and beneficial policies directed towards development as payment for doing the containment. AKA hard mode. CCP trades some lives upfront to condense 100s of years of development into a few decades. AKA acing hard mode. Operationally this means trading surplus lives for progress. The great leap forward killed millions, but ensured PRC also had the highest industrial capacity amongst developing peers after. Cultural revolution broke traditional social structures = 90%+ unified polity, speaking one language. Purging intelligentsia was overkill, but still had STEM priorities right, both nukes + first satellite developed in this era. In aggregate, disruptions setup/enabled PRC to exploit mass modernization efforts, established industrial bases, and plenty of fungible bodies. Incidentally this is why pluralism of India and old practices (caste) etc is holding up development, India systemically couldn't destroy to renew, now it’s dragged down by the baggage. Here’s the thing about “ego tripping”, when the destination is to grow comprehensive power, and now CCP tripped their way into near peer power status in 50 years, then perhaps the egos planned the trip successfully.

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
Ha, we'll see about that "near peer" status ;) And we'll see if Zeihan is correct about China falling in sub 10 years. I think it might hold on longer, but who knows.