Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
China has over a billion people and an average IQ of 104. While this is a complex topic, when simply considering these two variables it seems almost inevitable that China will by some distance become the dominant global economy within this century.
What are the reasons it's not so simple?
I mean, to start with East Asian countries underperform their IQ numbers. Japan is poorer than Italy, after all. China also has multiple bubbles propping up their economy.
But secondly, China has a population pyramid that makes Europe’s look good and a rigidly inflexible totalitarian government that has not managed to find solutions to historical Chinese weaknesses. Sheer number of people will make China a top global economic power for the foreseeable future, but ‘dominant by a wide margin’ seems unlikely just due to those.
On a per capita basis, sure, but in absolute terms the Japanese economy is substantially larger (approx $4tn vs $2.3tn). China could in theory be a lot poorer than the US per capita and still dominate it as an overall economic unit.
I accept the rest of your points.
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