Joe is doing his best to make it so ...
I think China is already a Superpower. Who writes this stuff?
China is better off with a lower population with fewer mouths to feed. Their issue is that all of the hill people who were living in the stone age have come to the cities to work in factories, and are now part of a growing middle class that China cannot sustain.
Maybe a nice little war over Taiwan to thin out the heard a bit is what they want...
We've been wondering how some of our liberal monsters can live so long.
Please respond to this post to prove you’re not a blogpimp bot, or ‘Onthebrink’ retread. 8~)
Anyone, who doesn’t fully *grok* that China is, BY FAR, the most powerful nation on the planet is deluding themselves, IMO.
They have nukes. They want Taiwan, where the microchips come from, and where sailors on liberty go to get their ashes hauled. Brandon is selling them the strategic petrol reserve bit by bit.
I think it’s true. The emergence of a strongman like Xi is evidence of weakness, not strength.
China is a major military power but it will never be a superpower.
Because of it cultural nature it lacks the moral authority to back up its military, it can only exert influence through brute force. And that never lasts.
Except that Japan made the HUGE mistake of allowing liberalism into their country. China has not made that mistake.
The American people need a boogeyman. It’s China’s turn.
They are a economic power. They are a local military power.
We need to take them seriously. But they have a ton of internal issues that are not going away.
Superpower: A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological, political and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence.
Economically China is a superpower. It is influencing and projecing power on a global scale. Note the belt and road initiative. Note the worldwide influencing organizations. Note their virtual control of the WHO and influence at the UN. Note their influence on Hollywood and the ability to censure criticism of China. Note their ability to place spies in sensitive areas.
The good news, is that as the largest importer from China, the US has tremendous power to limit their growth by raising protective tariffs and returning key manufacturing to our shores.
China can revive if its leaders junk Communism and encourage Christian evangelism.
Japan in the ‘80s and China now are completely different.
Japan militarily was a protectorate of the US and had no nukes or offensive military. China is independent, has nukes, and its air force and navy, while still mostly defensive are only a decade behind the US.
Japan is the size of Montana and has few natural resources. China is larger than the US and has substantial natural resources.
Japan had a population of about 120 million. China has a population of 1420 million, over 10 times as great.
Will China become a global military hegemon the way that we think we are? Probably not. They are likely to play the cards they have more carefully. They won't make the mistake of trying to remake other countries against their will, but will use their economic power to get what they want from them.
As the earnings from exports piled up though, they had to go somewhere. At first, they were parked in US Treasuries, but then directed to lending for domestic real estate, public infrastructure projects, and foreign lending and asset purchases of all sorts.
In Japan, the most notable result was an absurd run up in real estate prices and an extraordinary binge of marginal infrastructure projects that fed the country's politically influential building industry. For China, real estate lending and development was also especially attractive because it generated millions of jobs and, channeled through local government entities, provided lots of cash for party leaders and cadres.
Inevitably, export growth though wanes as it comes up against economic and political limits and competition from new low cost producers. Here the paths of Japan and China diverge.
After the inevitable crunch when imprudent real estate loans went bad, Japan dithered for a decade and then finally wrote off and digested the mass of bad loans and recapitalized its banks so they could begin lending again. Japan's reasonably honest bureaucracy and courts more or less fairly apportioned wins and losses, while the Japanese Diet loosened up the country's internal economic regulations so as to regain employment and economic momentum.
China will not do that because the regime is irremediably corrupt, autocratic, and anarchic in ways that Japan is not. There is no rule of law in China, only the will of the party and its determination to remain in power -- and the determination of the leadership to remain in control of the party. That is not a recipe for good public policy.
The net result of a great mass of bad real estate lending and projects is that China is having to bulldoze many thousands of badly constructed or economically useless buildings, entire suburbs and cities worth of them. A lot of public infrastructure is also little used or in poor shape and will have to be abandoned, repaired, or rebuilt.
Meanwhile, the government's often profligate lending and building will continue, even if diminished. China has trapped itself in such a system as a way to provide employment and economic growth, even if much of that growth is in make work projects that are not viable or useful in the long term.
Even worse, China is now in what economists call the middle income trap in which broad economic gains are harder to come by because the needed technology cannot be copied but must first be invented and perfected. And with demographic decline and a major gender imbalance, China will struggle even to service its existing needs.
Yes, China is a military menace to the US, but in the long term, the Chinese military will often struggle to find sufficient qualified people to man and service the weapons and platforms that they have already built. Moreover, China's often thuggish diplomacy tends to make enemies and leaves it unable to assemble a broad coalition of allies.
In a full on war with the US over Taiwan, China would soon find its military power confined to its home region, most of their foreign assets stropped away, and its domestic economy wrecked by sanctions and a blockade.
