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RIP republicans in 2026. Trump truly doesn’t care how far prices rise for basically everything. But if there’s one thing voters don’t forgive, it’s fucking up the economy.
I wonder if this is what it will take for the China bubble to finally burst? They’re so insanely drowning in debt and their economy seems to be extremely shaky in its fundamentals. Yet there’s a bad record on people saying “China is DOOMED” so I hesitate to say this will be the nail in the coffin
What do you mean by shaky in fundamentals?
They have a huge amount of industry and infrastructure that pumps out much of the world's goods. Putting finance to one side, isn't that a sound basis for an economy?
China has high corporate debt, that much is known. But debt is just paper. As long as enterprises are productive and efficient, debt doesn't matter. Regardless of what happens in the realm of paper the real productive wealth remains. All those phones, cars, ships will still be produced in increasingly automated factories. All that housing stock is still there. I remember hearing so much about Evergrande collapsing but there don't seem to be many material consequences from that. On the flipside, a home ownership rate of 96% is pretty good in my view, something is going very right there.
And they have plenty of human capital, the cohorts that will be relevant for the next 20 years have already been born, shrinking birthrates will take decades to really cause any major effect.
I think our media has emphasized China's flaws (debt, pollution, totalitarian political system) excessively and refused to cover their successes (logistics, cost-efficient industrial output, innovation) and so people fall into a state of confusion when Deepseek or Tiktok come out, when BYD starts outhustling Tesla or when the Chinese flew their next-gen fighter IRL, as opposed to in CGI like NGAD.
How about looming population collapse?
Looming? What do you mean concretely?
There's reportedly been 9.5 million babies born in China last year. Something like 3.6 million in the US; of those, 1.8 million white babies. Accordingly, in 18 years there will be 5 times as many Chinese 18 year olds as there will be their White American counterparts. Yes, they have lower TFR, but at current trends they'll have a vastly larger workforce for many decades.
Yeah I guess if you don’t count a little thing called “immigration” (leaving aside those birth numbers out of China are likely cooked)
It seems you've collected every possible cope and trope, congrats.
Yes, Venezuelans will surely bail you out in the arms race with China, if you don't deport them to El Salvadoran prisons first.
Sure, it’s only Venezuelans migrating. Except all the best and brightest that America brain drains from every other country. Where did Xis daughter go to school again?
Meanwhile, all of chinas rich flee to America, displaying their utmost confidence in how China is going to lose and lose hard in the near future.
I have nothing against Xi's daughter but I don't think she's very smart. Neither is Xi, for that matter. Rich and powerful Chinese sending their kids to the US is a common pattern when they are incapable of scoring enough on Gaokao to get into a serious Chinese school like Tsinghua.
Brain drain is drastically slowing down. I see accomplished Chinese American scientists actually returning home. The US isn't that attractive any more, and it doesn't want to be attractive. Nature is healing.
Chinese scientists are returning because China is basically bribing them to do so. But it presents a problem for China - how will they keep stealing tech from America if their scientists return home?
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