6 ms·

> I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and China taking its place Chairman Xi made sure that won't happen. Maybe they'll take over Taiwan with

by petre 3y ago

> I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and China taking its place Chairman Xi made sure that won't happen. Maybe they'll take over Taiwan with disastrous consequences for everyone, but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up. They might also exert their influence in Africa, the Midlle East and Central Asia, at the expense of Russia. I'd argue Chinese influence in Central Asia is somewhat better than Russian influence, which has only created frozen conflicts that Russia can reignite whenever it's convenient for them (see Nagorno-Karabah). If Chinese trade with the US stays at current rates, there's less risk of war between China and the West. As usual, Dan Wang's yearly letter is not only beautifully laid out but also an eye opener.

inglor_cz 3y ago
"but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up." I am not that sure anymore. The Russo-Ukrainian war shattered a lot of my illusions with regard to rationality of leaders. A country with a very bad demographics started a war by deploying clearly insufficient forces (200 000 soldiers are nothing when compared to the size of Ukraine; Germans deployed 12x as more soldiers in 1941 to conquer Ukrainian SSR) and the result is an enormous fuck-up and unendong slaughter of young population which, with current TFRs, will never be replaced. If Putin can make such a bad judgment, Xi can as well. It is not as if Xi tolerates more dissent/negative feedback to his rule than his Russian counterpart.
- dmpk2k 3y ago
  It seems the Russians were trying to scare the Ukrainians to the negotiating table. And it worked too, for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Timeline_of_negotiations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ... Now it's just butchery on an industrial scale. How nice.
  - petre 3y ago
    These are "negotiations" held in bad faith like the Minsk agreements. They're meant to buy time for Russia to build up another invasion force.
    - dmpk2k 3y ago
      The Minsk agreements were highly favourable to the Russians, since they were basically forced on the Ukrainians. That’s why Poroshenko was going around saying Ukraine would never abide by them. Claiming the opposite is just muddying the waters. Up is down in wartime, I suppose.
- graemep 3y ago
  Yes and no. Putin could rationally expect no direct western intervention or even the level of support we have given. We did nothing when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014, and we did nothing when they invaded Georgia. The threat to invade Ukraine was originally made at least as early as 2008 and we did nothing in the intervening years to deter it. Taiwan is very different. Xi also knows it is of far created economic importance to the west (and the US in particular) than Ukraine is. The miscalculation was primarilly political rather than military. They expected the Ukrainians to roll over rather than fight. Possibly they believed their own propaganda (and their experience from the 2014 invasion) and expected a lot of Ukrainian support. The invaders were not even prepared to fight and the planning was lead by the FSB, not the military. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ym9TDs6Dg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ym9TDs6Dg
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "Yes and no. Putin could rationally expect no direct western intervention or even the level of support we have given. We did nothing when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014, and we did nothing when they invaded Georgia." This still sounds like a huge gamble with very high stakes. Ukraine received a lot of Western weapons between 2014-2022, and it was those weapons like Javelin that helped stop the original Russian armored onslaught. International politics does not reliably work on the principle "actor X hasn't done Y before, so actor X won't do Y now". There may be thresholds that, once reached, change the entire situation. To look at a historical example, the Allies did nothing when Hitler re-occupied the Ruhr, they did nothing when he annexed Austria, they allowed him to take Sudetenland and later they did nothing when he annexed the rest of Bohemia and Moravia. But with Poland, the threshold was crossed once and for all.
- badcppdev 3y ago
  TFR = Total Fertility Rates
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    Thank you I googled and got only got Tensor Flow docs and something about aviation.
thriftwy 3y ago
Russia has nothing to do with Nagorno-Karabakh (indeed, in many ways this ethnic conflict has caused the demise of the USSR, not the other way around). Nagorno-Karabakh is not in Central Asia. There are no frozen conflicts in Central Asia, though there are some feuds.
- petre 3y ago
  Any one of these can be re-ignited. Ukraine or Nagrono-Karabakh are just two more recent examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory_of_the_former_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory...
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Any Muslim country indeed may have an islamist insurgency and/or a Cotton revolution staged by CIA. Not sure China is great against either one threat. But the claims that there are any frozen conflicts there are unfounded (no strong claims of one country on the lands of another country in the region), and about Russian involvement also unfounded (it did help secular Tajik win the civil war in a coalition but that's mostly it).
maxglute 3y ago
>but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up. Why? PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years, and even with shit tier TFR they're producing more bodies than any modern military needs, and will continue to under the most pessimestic demographic projections until end of century. They have decades to try and try again, because they can replicate US expeditionary military model with even less than fraction of their population and industrial output. Ultimately IMO PRC doesn't need to dominate, or take over west/really US tier of hyperdominance, which it can't. But that's also exactly why it's fine and even prudent for PRC to take over TW and bring pyrrhic disaster for everyone. In terms of cold interest calculus, the west, being at the top has more to lose, and historically, you displace regional hegemon with force. Meanwhile PRC got plenty of excess/surplus workforce past 2050s for reconstruction. The TLDR is PRC comprehensive power by herself is going to increase / close gap with west. And even if she doesn't want war, structure forces / trends won't dissuade her, and if anything incentivizes escalation.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  Its weird to see a country refered to as "her".
- berserk1010 3y ago
  > PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years China is not. There is a trend in China for companies to not hire people over the age of 35. Also, their unofficial youth unemployment rate is something like 45%. In addition, 1 billion people live in poverty in China https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-people-monthly-income-2000-yuan-poverty-1856031 https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-.... That means those people don't have the knowledge/connection/skillset to contribute. Lastly, Chinese population is expected to shrink to 600B even faster than 2050
  - maxglute 3y ago
    China is. At current PRC STEM / skilled labour production rate, they're on trend to generate 50-100M new skilled workers in the next 20 years. Those are growing bodies already born and accounted for. That's multiple times more than US is set to gain in people via all methods birth/immigration. In the next few years, PRC will have more skilled talent IN WORKFORCE than US in absolute numbers. It's exactly beause relative skill across workforce is still low, currently 20% vs developed countries for 60-80% that PRC has incredible skilled demographic divident to squeeze. It's how JP/SKR GDP doubled/tripled after TFR crash 20 years ago, by training up new generations into more skilled/productive work. Hence PRC similarly marching to advanced economy workforce composition is - objectively the greatest concentration in high skilled talent within one coordinated system in human history. Even at lower relative % of skilled workforce, due to PRC population denominator, that means PRC will have significantly more aggregate knowledge/skill/connection than any other competitor. PRC broad unemployment rate is 5%, youth find jobs within a few years. Right now you have massive cohorts of new graduates post academic expansion who don't want to settle for jobs they think are beneath them, but eventually, like all humans, they will. It's going to take a few years because PRC kids have no crippling student debt, can mooch off parents living at home, and don't need to work 2 part time jobs to make ends meet. Even if 40% of youth unemployemnt was durable, implying 40% of PRC skilled workforce end up not working, which is an idiotic hopium position to draw analysis from, the remaining 60% is still MORE aggregate skill pool than again, any other competitor, at any time in past or projected future in next 30-50 years. Which if you care about geopolitical balance/stragetic competition, is the cohort and period worth considering. There's no credible model where PRC population will dip to 600M in 2050. On poverty: there's 600M, on 1000rmb disposable household income, 900m on 2000rmb. That again, that's precisely why they don't matter for growth. That 60% of population constitutes merely 10% of GDP. Most of GDP/productivity in advanced/modern economy driven by the minority of skilled workforce. In PRC case, the minority in developed tier1/2 regions. The same cohort responsible for 90% of the GDP is set to increase by order of magnitude within the next 20 years. They're the real growth drivers. That growth will trickle down so the bottom 60% can eventually charge 10rmb for a haircut instead of 5rmb and live on 2000/4000rmb instead of 1000/2000, but ultimately their contribution to development is/was always going to be marginal. You don't need everyone to be high skilled, and with PRC population, modernization timeframe, they couldn't. But going forward they can certainly have more absolute/aggregate skilled labour than US+partners, and still have a few 100 million stuck in informal economy doing shit all. And right now that's where impactful demographic trend is heading.

by petre 3y ago

inglor_cz 3y ago

"but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up." I am not that sure anymore. The Russo-Ukrainian war shattered a lot of my illusions with regard to rationality of leaders. A country with a very bad demographics started a war by deploying clearly insufficient forces (200 000 soldiers are nothing when compared to the size of Ukraine; Germans deployed 12x as more soldiers in 1941 to conquer Ukrainian SSR) and the result is an enormous fuck-up and unendong slaughter of young population which, with current TFRs, will never be replaced. If Putin can make such a bad judgment, Xi can as well. It is not as if Xi tolerates more dissent/negative feedback to his rule than his Russian counterpart.

dmpk2k 3y ago
It seems the Russians were trying to scare the Ukrainians to the negotiating table. And it worked too, for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Timeline_of_negotiations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ... Now it's just butchery on an industrial scale. How nice.
- petre 3y ago
  These are "negotiations" held in bad faith like the Minsk agreements. They're meant to buy time for Russia to build up another invasion force.
  - dmpk2k 3y ago
    The Minsk agreements were highly favourable to the Russians, since they were basically forced on the Ukrainians. That’s why Poroshenko was going around saying Ukraine would never abide by them. Claiming the opposite is just muddying the waters. Up is down in wartime, I suppose.
graemep 3y ago
Yes and no. Putin could rationally expect no direct western intervention or even the level of support we have given. We did nothing when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014, and we did nothing when they invaded Georgia. The threat to invade Ukraine was originally made at least as early as 2008 and we did nothing in the intervening years to deter it. Taiwan is very different. Xi also knows it is of far created economic importance to the west (and the US in particular) than Ukraine is. The miscalculation was primarilly political rather than military. They expected the Ukrainians to roll over rather than fight. Possibly they believed their own propaganda (and their experience from the 2014 invasion) and expected a lot of Ukrainian support. The invaders were not even prepared to fight and the planning was lead by the FSB, not the military. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ym9TDs6Dg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ym9TDs6Dg
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "Yes and no. Putin could rationally expect no direct western intervention or even the level of support we have given. We did nothing when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014, and we did nothing when they invaded Georgia." This still sounds like a huge gamble with very high stakes. Ukraine received a lot of Western weapons between 2014-2022, and it was those weapons like Javelin that helped stop the original Russian armored onslaught. International politics does not reliably work on the principle "actor X hasn't done Y before, so actor X won't do Y now". There may be thresholds that, once reached, change the entire situation. To look at a historical example, the Allies did nothing when Hitler re-occupied the Ruhr, they did nothing when he annexed Austria, they allowed him to take Sudetenland and later they did nothing when he annexed the rest of Bohemia and Moravia. But with Poland, the threshold was crossed once and for all.
badcppdev 3y ago
TFR = Total Fertility Rates
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  Thank you I googled and got only got Tensor Flow docs and something about aviation.

thriftwy 3y ago

Russia has nothing to do with Nagorno-Karabakh (indeed, in many ways this ethnic conflict has caused the demise of the USSR, not the other way around). Nagorno-Karabakh is not in Central Asia. There are no frozen conflicts in Central Asia, though there are some feuds.

petre 3y ago
Any one of these can be re-ignited. Ukraine or Nagrono-Karabakh are just two more recent examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory_of_the_former_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory...
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Any Muslim country indeed may have an islamist insurgency and/or a Cotton revolution staged by CIA. Not sure China is great against either one threat. But the claims that there are any frozen conflicts there are unfounded (no strong claims of one country on the lands of another country in the region), and about Russian involvement also unfounded (it did help secular Tajik win the civil war in a coalition but that's mostly it).

maxglute 3y ago

>but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up. Why? PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years, and even with shit tier TFR they're producing more bodies than any modern military needs, and will continue to under the most pessimestic demographic projections until end of century. They have decades to try and try again, because they can replicate US expeditionary military model with even less than fraction of their population and industrial output. Ultimately IMO PRC doesn't need to dominate, or take over west/really US tier of hyperdominance, which it can't. But that's also exactly why it's fine and even prudent for PRC to take over TW and bring pyrrhic disaster for everyone. In terms of cold interest calculus, the west, being at the top has more to lose, and historically, you displace regional hegemon with force. Meanwhile PRC got plenty of excess/surplus workforce past 2050s for reconstruction. The TLDR is PRC comprehensive power by herself is going to increase / close gap with west. And even if she doesn't want war, structure forces / trends won't dissuade her, and if anything incentivizes escalation.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
Its weird to see a country refered to as "her".
berserk1010 3y ago
> PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years China is not. There is a trend in China for companies to not hire people over the age of 35. Also, their unofficial youth unemployment rate is something like 45%. In addition, 1 billion people live in poverty in China https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-people-monthly-income-2000-yuan-poverty-1856031 https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-.... That means those people don't have the knowledge/connection/skillset to contribute. Lastly, Chinese population is expected to shrink to 600B even faster than 2050
- maxglute 3y ago
  China is. At current PRC STEM / skilled labour production rate, they're on trend to generate 50-100M new skilled workers in the next 20 years. Those are growing bodies already born and accounted for. That's multiple times more than US is set to gain in people via all methods birth/immigration. In the next few years, PRC will have more skilled talent IN WORKFORCE than US in absolute numbers. It's exactly beause relative skill across workforce is still low, currently 20% vs developed countries for 60-80% that PRC has incredible skilled demographic divident to squeeze. It's how JP/SKR GDP doubled/tripled after TFR crash 20 years ago, by training up new generations into more skilled/productive work. Hence PRC similarly marching to advanced economy workforce composition is - objectively the greatest concentration in high skilled talent within one coordinated system in human history. Even at lower relative % of skilled workforce, due to PRC population denominator, that means PRC will have significantly more aggregate knowledge/skill/connection than any other competitor. PRC broad unemployment rate is 5%, youth find jobs within a few years. Right now you have massive cohorts of new graduates post academic expansion who don't want to settle for jobs they think are beneath them, but eventually, like all humans, they will. It's going to take a few years because PRC kids have no crippling student debt, can mooch off parents living at home, and don't need to work 2 part time jobs to make ends meet. Even if 40% of youth unemployemnt was durable, implying 40% of PRC skilled workforce end up not working, which is an idiotic hopium position to draw analysis from, the remaining 60% is still MORE aggregate skill pool than again, any other competitor, at any time in past or projected future in next 30-50 years. Which if you care about geopolitical balance/stragetic competition, is the cohort and period worth considering. There's no credible model where PRC population will dip to 600M in 2050. On poverty: there's 600M, on 1000rmb disposable household income, 900m on 2000rmb. That again, that's precisely why they don't matter for growth. That 60% of population constitutes merely 10% of GDP. Most of GDP/productivity in advanced/modern economy driven by the minority of skilled workforce. In PRC case, the minority in developed tier1/2 regions. The same cohort responsible for 90% of the GDP is set to increase by order of magnitude within the next 20 years. They're the real growth drivers. That growth will trickle down so the bottom 60% can eventually charge 10rmb for a haircut instead of 5rmb and live on 2000/4000rmb instead of 1000/2000, but ultimately their contribution to development is/was always going to be marginal. You don't need everyone to be high skilled, and with PRC population, modernization timeframe, they couldn't. But going forward they can certainly have more absolute/aggregate skilled labour than US+partners, and still have a few 100 million stuck in informal economy doing shit all. And right now that's where impactful demographic trend is heading.