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It's getting a little late on a Sunday to go point by point again but if memory serves correct, I briefly looked for the post can couldn't find it, you've acknowledged China's demographic issues and your solution to it was essentially ai enabled robotics to handle elderly care in order to keep the ratio of dependents to workers manageable correct? The happy case for China multipolar strength seems to rely on a pretty narrow outcome where AI is powerful enough to do a huge amount of menial labor but not powerful enough to where being ahead a couple years differentiates world power standings. And I just don't really see that as very likely. If AI doesn't get all that much better than it is now then I foresee china having another decade, maybe fifteen years of exceptional output before a lot of trouble handling a rapidly shrinking population. If AI does take off in a big way I think the couple years head start on chips will be pivotal and giving that up would be foolish. I can't really think of any reason to expect we'd fall between those two points.
Americans have invented themselves a lot of cope about China, to the extent they're not paying attention to similar domestic issues.
Right now Mainland Chinese are younger by over 4 years than White Americans (40.1 years in 2025 vs 44.5 in 2020 median). By 2040, they'll become about on par I think (46-47). I don't trust fertility projections after that, we've seen nations rapidly fall into the East Asian model, including throughout South America (Central America for now is holding up admittedly). American solution to American demographic issues is importing assorted Hispanics to take care of white boomers and hoping that Hispanics will somehow also become a replacement for the working population. I don't believe this is happening as far as O-ring economy goes (software, finance, deep tech jobs now ride on adding Indians and Chinese to local numbers; Indians don't have that deep a well of talent and they're having a demographic transition too, especially for higher castes; Chinese net flow is reversing), so in my view your productive working populations are shrinking at a similar pace. After seeing stories of elderly abuse by immigrants in the US, I am positive that robotic caretakers will at least reach parity soon for augmenting blue collar work and and caretaking. Americans are trying to add robots to industrial workforce and will likely begin to automate retirement facilities too, they're not that dumb and there are Western robotic projects clearly aimed at home labor. Robotic mobility is now at this level, and this is a blind policy. Progress in manipulation is similar, China reigns supreme in actuators market and casually make dexterous hands now, it's a very nice fit for their industrial model so they'll only increase their lead there. Robots will suffice for menial labor, both in China and in the US (probably marginally more so in China but it's not a crux). Finally I don't believe in the necessity of unproductive population to "provide consumption", rich people with robot slaves can consume as much and grow GDP as much as multiple poor people. On the whole, I am of the mind that demographic trend difference is a dumb and, again, Zeihanite red herring that ignores medium-term predictable AI progress.
So abstractly, it's not a narrow outcome, because as I've just said, the floor is basically established, and China won't have to make up for a large extra deficiency. The whole question is about those huge gains of productivity on the right tail, it's the US that will have to make up for having fewer and lower IQ people, NIMBYism, alienating allies, degraded supply chains and retarded and worsening political culture with geniuses in a datacenter, by gaining a couple years of edge in AI progress and not fumbling the application of gains (and starting at 7:44 here, Molson gives me a reason to suspect that China will also be better at applying what gains they make with AI throughout the period).
Now, I believe AI is going to be really useful. A review commissioned by DeepMind predicts that at a minimum, 2030 level AI will boost productivity for desk-based research by 10-20%.. That's a lot. All things considered, is this enough to "compound" your way to lasting hegemony after 2030? I wouldn't bet on it, but Americans are Winners by nature, so they might. The upside of hegemony is, in theory, near-infinite. The downside is just having a worse place in the eventual bipolar world. Whether to take this bet depends on the odds (and nuances of the value function). I'd say the US has maybe 25% chance of "winning the race" to hegemonic condition.
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