It's at the very least bold to open your article with an argument that your (I assume) people have historically exhibited a certain delusion, but this time feels different. This time, for sure… Even better to cite Huntington anticipating my own rejoinder:
declinist waves come in cycles, there have been no less than five of them since the 1950s, and contrary to popular belief they are actually useful. They play “an indispensable role in preventing what they are predicting.”7 Funny enough, he switched over to the hard declinist camp just a few years later.
– only to proceed in the same direction, inventing a rather dubious narrative about the failure of the new paranoia to take root, because now the decline is already known as true.
As an aside: wasn't Hofstadter himself a yet another Communist sympathizer who sought to pathologize and thus dampen American immune response to a very real infiltration, rather than do unbiased scholarship? (see also: Blacklisted by History, In Denial).
Influenced by his wife, Hofstadter was a member of the Young Communist League in college, and in April 1938 he joined the Communist Party of the USA; he quit in 1939 [45]. Hofstadter had been reluctant to join, knowing the orthodoxy it imposed on intellectuals, telling them what to believe and what to write. He was disillusioned by the spectacle of the Moscow Show Trials, but wrote: "I join without enthusiasm but with a sense of obligation.... [M]y fundamental reason for joining is that I don't like capitalism and want to get rid of it."[46]. He remained anti-capitalist, writing, "I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it," but was similarly disillusioned with Stalinism finding the Soviet Union "essentially undemocratic" and the Communist Party rigid and doctrinaire.
Huh. Communism in 1939. One could scarcely hope to find a purer type of an intellectual who cries only when his little incestuous network is getting Gulag'd, the type Sergei Novikov urges us to not shed any tears for.
Anyway. There certainly exists the dynamic he (and the Substack author) describes – pushed top-down. I'd contend that organic American culture is entirely non-paranoid. It's psyopped; thus the deluge of hare-brained conspiracy theories, at once a manipulated distraction and an outlet for suspicion. As I see them, Americans – at least the type that has built the country and still keeps it running – are trusting, sometimes to the point of gullibility, optimistic, a bit small-minded yet ambitious, mercantile, big believers in win-win and not very big on titanic sacrifice for the common goal decreed by powers that be. They are pretty neoliberal by nature. In short, they can only be hegemonic power material in this paranoid mode imposed on them by misinformation. This stuff is common for all nationalisms, of course, but American case is different on account of how well it works. Maybe it's just the matter of human capital and geography – maybe they just can afford this bullshit, secure in the knowledge that everyone important understands the kayfabe and won't really switch sides out of self-interest.
Exactly like Huntington argues, these spells of declinism and exaggerations of some geopolitical threat are adaptive. @Dean has once stated that American military is one of the few militaries in the world that is willing to test itself to failure; thus, losing to Iraq in wargames, under the condition of an implausible handicap, only to wipe the floor with Iraq in live combat. I'd extend the principle to the whole stack of society: Americans, under the management of their elites, are among the very few who are capable of gaslighting themselves into taking seriously, fearing viscerally, risks that are merely conceivable and far in the future – and acting accordingly. (It's different from e.g. Russian paranoia about NATO-Ukraine, because taking the threat of NATO seriously… would not result in this). On the level of eggheaded analysis, «our models go not yield more than 90% probability that the Chinese regime will collapse on its own before 2050» might be enough of a call for action – expressed as some cheesy Asia'2049 strategy or whatever, but also diplomacy, sanctions, military procurement, using a talking head like Zeihan to tacitly announce your intentions for investors, accelerating the capital flight, and so on. For normies, all this looks like pointless expense. So you've gotta dumb it down: «we are already in decline! THEIR power is growing! They are united and strong, ruthless, rational, ready to do anything to hurt you and your family! It's a matter of time, to arms, to arms! There is a GAP! might attack our allies! Their fleet is oooh, their AI research is aaah, muh IQ, Chinese eugenic superbabies, Chinese hypersonics, we're underdogs here, but we must give our last desperate fight for all that is good and proper! Know, Gook Chink, that you will find a gun behind every blade of grass when you come!»
Of course it's the same now as it was in the 20's century. I hear something something GDP, mumble mumble growing navy, sometimes muh IQ and AI. What's the concrete threat model? China becomes able to chase CSGs out of South China Sea? Attacks Taiwan, threatens Japan, Korea, Australia (lol)? I suppose that could be technically possible, but on every level of looking into the specifics, you see less and less of a realistic possibility. GDP is empty residential high-rises, debt manipulation, and trade with countries which have demonstrated willingness to forgo profits in the name of a better political deal with the US, or are itching to drop China for their own reasons, or are near-failed states. Navy is obsolete before launch – this is a glimpse of the navy of the future, and by the time China approaches the US (forget the entire alliance) in conventional vessels, more advanced versions of such things will have become mainstream. IQ? Chinese IQ writes American papers. Tech? Well, where's their tech? They've been successfully cut off from strategically relevant semiconductors, and that's all she wrote. And, most importantly, that's ignoring their severe internal failings, both cultural and structural, failings which could perhaps be non-fatal – but only on a less competitive planet.
If feels different because it always has to feel real. It's the Sputnik Moment and the Missile Gap all over again. But Americans will only discover this after the fact, having tried hard to prevent an already contrived future. Same as with Japan, and with the Soviet union. No point to discussion.
A nation whose aviation shoots down a «hobbyist radio ballon», where idle commoners cobble together devices which can be mistaken for a superpower's spycraft, is not in decline. It is, perhaps, a slightly unwell nation. In Russian, this mentality is called бесится с жиру – essentially, «going rabid from fat». Very apt, in my opinion.
A nation whose aviation shoots down a «hobbyist radio ballon», where idle commoners cobble together devices which can be mistaken for a superpower's spycraft, is not in decline.
...
Any random piece of aerostatic junk gives a radar return, and the only reason it was shot down was the US was incompetent or uninterested at actually taking a close look at what was floating up there.
The one thing I agree with there is that everything is psyop.
However the propaganda I read the most about China is that it is doomed, not that it is going to win. Plenty of ink spilt on China being in existential crisis, because of house debt, Hong Kong unrest, lockdowns, ending lockdowns, demographics. Why?
Not sure - but the idea seems to be that China will have to attack Taiwan soon enough. Which probably allows a buildup of US resources in the area. The Thucydides Trap Applies to the US more than China.
My own belief is that China just has to wait. I don’t buy that its IQ doesn’t matter, or that China’s demographics will lead to destruction any sooner than the Europeans( who have worse demographics) or the US which is trending as bad as either.
Nor do I believe that they have no technology, or industry. Quite the reverse. They are heading to dominance in both.
What do you mean by saying “ trade with countries which have demonstrated willingness to forgo profits in the name of a better political deal with the US, or are itching to drop China for their own reasons, or are near-failed states.” That’s really not who China trades with, or who trades with China. Who trades with China is everybody. Including, and especially, the US.
The rest is just math - a country with a larger population and greater economic growth will catch up with a country with a smaller population and a smaller rate of economic growth Ceteris paribus, and then surpass it.
The "why" is ideology, put simply. In a cold-blooded world where line-go-up is all that matters, all China would have to do, indeed, is just stay put, stay the course, and hope the GDP grows in line with predictions.
But this is not a cold-blooded world of rationality and pure numerics. This is a world where Europe gets into wars every so often because of desires to control parts of it for various reasons; some of which can be charitably described as "ineffable" and uncharitably described as "stupid and irrational." China is little different, having been wedded to a zealous Communist ideology for decades now. While it is not an immutable set of first principles, the desire to see a "One China" united under a red flag has never gone away even when their economy opened up.
It may well be that China will never let go of any revanchism over Taiwan, and that it may well be their undoing if they decide to ever make a move.
As for the "math," yes, I'll concede that, in theory, a massive amount of resources and manpower can be directed as needed to whatever projects are deemed important--by gunpoint, if necessary. But as Dase's last link there shows, there are inefficiencies that even China's size can't overcome.
I mean, yeh, there’s a war on in Europe now but it’s hardly a common occurance post world war II. The US is nearly always involved in some conflict.
China is little different
This is a non sequitur. Europe isn’t that war-like these days and, even if it were, why is is clear that China is “little different”. China also actually is not all that war-like in the modern era.
Anyway i am not saying that China won’t someday try take over Taiwan, I’m saying there’s no rush.
But as Dase's last link there shows, there are inefficiencies that even China's size can't overcome.
Well he didn’t show anything, he said something. And the link didn’t work.
Well, you didn’t use the word “seems” in the title, but I feel like the usual objections apply. As @Dean observes, subjective impressions are tricky, especially on a flavor-of-the-month subject for social media. In particular, is it really so surprising that outlets are pointing out the balloon to say exactly what they would have anyway? What’s so different about that?
I work in defense. My coworkers all find this hilarious. It might even be better than that time someone lost a football-field-sized aerostat over Pennsylvania.
Historian Daniel Larison unpacks this in his recent piece on his substack Eunomia, about how we are living through a time of persistent “threat inflation.”
In military metrics, US is plummeting next to China. It's always on the verge of default, with a yearly debt ceiling dance, its military can't found enough people willing to serve.
American yearly drug overdose deaths each outstrip the best efforts of Russian army in Ukraine by a factor of 4 if you believe Ukrainian government numbers.
It's a high speed national decline, masked only by the enormous amount of ruin that needs to be accomplished.
In addition to actual spy balloons (of which there are some) it does look like NORAD also shot down at least one hobbyist radio balloon that cost <$300 to send out, which were registered with the FAA and whose owners tried in vain to contact the proper authorities.
If that's not decline - a nation's air force not being able to check what has been reported to them by civilian authorities, and not being able to verify what it's shooting at despite the existence of optic pods (telescopes,. basically).. then what is 'decline' ?
In military metrics, US is plummeting next to China. It's always on the verge of default, with a yearly debt ceiling dance, its military can't found enough people willing to serve.
This conflates multiple different issues, none of which are applicable to a military metric comparison. The American 'default' is based around political willingness to raise debt ceilings and assume new debt, not a financial ability to afford new debt (or, on established history, willingness to asssum more). Nor is the US military recruitment issue a particularly relevant comparison when (a) China is a conscription model, and (b) the result of American military retention issues will be... the downscaling over expeditionary commitments, which China doesn't have equivalent to.
This is an apples to oranges comparison on multiple levels, without even addressing what amount of strategic orientation of the US 'should' be. If the argument is that the US is in decline because it will have to pare back overseas efforts, that does not even imply a relative decline if it's still orders of magnitude more than what China engages in.
American yearly drug overdose deaths each outstrip the best efforts of Russian army in Ukraine by a factor of 4 if you believe Ukrainian government numbers.
Factual accuracy aside, is this supposed to surprise or alarm to anyone who's familiar with the scale of the US population compared to the Russian military in Ukraine?
In 2020, for example, the number of estimated US drug deaths rounds up at two significant figures to 69,000*, out of a population rounding to 330,000,000. This is compared to an estimated 40,000 killed across all Russian forces in the 2022 (including the annexed territories and Wagner), of a military whose size size estimate in 2020 of 1,150,000 active service members.
This is over two magnitudes more intense for the Russian casualties compared to their 'normal' army compared to the US. This is also unsurprising- the US population is demographically large- the Russian military is only large in comparison to other national militaries. A population pool over three hundred times the size is going to have a number of much higher statistics in absolute terms that are still much lower in relative terms. Conflating absolute numbers without respect to context is statistical illiteracy.
Moreover, this is again an apples or oranges comparison, since a more relevant metric in trying to do a social comparison would of course be Russian drug deaths. This does admittedly come with its own difficulties of comparing like to like metrics- what is factored into drug deaths has a number of counfounders (such as the drugs of choice) and category differences across countries as well as the integrity of statistics. But if you want to pick one category- say alcohol- then you might have a like-to-like comparison, in which Russia had over 50,000 alcohol-related deaths in 2020 compared to the US which reported 52,000... despite Russia having less than half the total population.
In addition to actual spy balloons (of which there are some) it does look like NORAD also shot down at least one hobbyist radio balloon that cost <$300 to send out, which were registered with the FAA and whose owners tried in vain to contact the proper authorities.
If that's not decline - a nation's air force not being able to check what has been reported to them by civilian authorities, and not being able to verify what it's shooting at despite the existence of optic pods (telescopes,. basically).. then what is 'decline' ?
Not much, apparently, or else far more significant issues than you raise.
not a financial ability to afford new debt (or, on established history, willingness to asssum more).
US has been monetising its debt heavily during the covid era, with now about a fifth of US debt having been purchased with nonexisting money, that is, the federal reserve created the money for that purpose. US spends about double its GDP % of defense, yet the Navy is still worried Chinese military shipbuilding is outpacing the US. The only consolation is China doesn't have that many carriers or nuclear submarines, but why would they need them ? They most likely have a weapon that denies the US use of its carriers within ~3000 km of China.
If the argument is that the US is in decline because it will have to pare back overseas efforts, that does not even imply a relative decline if it's still orders of magnitude more than what China engages in.
Chinese will likely never be stupid enough to repeat American mistakes in belligerence, or crap up 3/4 of the world with their bases. They seem strictly strategically minded and their bases are almost exclusively found around important east hemisphere naval trade routes.
Nor is the US military recruitment issue a particularly relevant comparison when (a) China is a conscription model,
Only technically. It's a volunteer force in practice, so no different from the US.
But if you want to pick one category- say alcohol- then you might have a like-to-like comparison, in which Russia had over 50,000 alcohol-related deaths in 2020 compared to the US which reported 52,000... despite Russia having less than half the total population.
I doubt by this time Russia has a higher per capita mortality from drugs legal and illegal than the US on these metrics, even allowing for difference in what counts.
US is completely anomalous, with its overdose deaths being 20-25x higher per capita than in the EU thanks mostly to the fentanyl.
US has been monetising its debt heavily during the covid era, with now about a fifth of US debt having been purchased with nonexisting money, that is, the federal reserve created the money for that purpose. US spends about double its GDP % of defense, yet the Navy is still worried Chinese military shipbuilding is outpacing the US. The only consolation is China doesn't have that many carriers or nuclear submarines, but why would they need them ? They most likely have a weapon that denies the US use of its carriers within ~3000 km of China.
This is indeed a new argument, but it is also still not the argument you started with. The American debates about default remain congressional politics, not the ability to service.
Chinese will likely never be stupid enough to repeat American mistakes in belligerence, or crap up 3/4 of the world with their bases. They seem strictly strategically minded and their bases are almost exclusively found around important east hemisphere naval trade routes.
Then congratulations- the US recruitment issues, by forcing an abandonment of unproductive bases, will improve their effeciency and effectiveness rather than expending manpower and resources on 'crap' bases.
This is an improvement of the US position, not a weakneing.
Nor is the US military recruitment issue a particularly relevant comparison when (a) China is a conscription model,
Only technically. It's a volunteer force in practice, so no different from the US.
Not quite.
The US had at least 100,000 death due to non-alcohol drug overdoses in 2021, up 29% from the year before.
I doubt by this time Russia has a higher per capita mortality from drugs legal and illegal than the US on these metrics, even allowing for difference in what counts.
US is completely anomalous, with its overdose deaths being 20-25x higher per capita than in the EU thanks mostly to the fentanyl.
And yet your argument wasn't a comparison to the EU, or even relative drug dose deaths compared to Russia which you have not explored in like-to-like- it was a comparison to the Russian war in Ukraine, which remains magnitudes off.
Then congratulations- the US recruitment issues, by forcing an abandonment of unproductive bases, will improve their effeciency and effectiveness rather than expending manpower and resources on 'crap' bases.
Not going to happen unless US is defeated in a major war and loses influence.
According to the Ukraine government, they've only lost cca 000 dead last year or so. That means per capita, casualties of the Russian war against Ukraine are lower
Ukraine, which remains magnitudes off.
Not really. According to UA government, their dead last year were only cca 35000 or so. US is about 8x larger, so per capita losses to illegal drugs in the US are only 2x lower or so..
Bernd
Fighting algorithmic racism like John Henry
Dean 1yr ago
It's hard to keep track when figures are changing that fast. 69k passes any pre-2020 sanity check.
Thanks for promoting me to look it up: I'd had no idea heroin deaths were actually down and crack is coming back, since we only hear about opioids now.
A valuable rubric for prediction is "people overestimate the change the will happen in a year, but underestimate the change in a decade".
People see that China isn't overtaking the U.S. right now and assume all is well. It is not. China's economy is growing much faster than the U.S. and its natural growth will soon make it at least twice as large as the United States even if they do not escape the middle income trap. China also likely has on the order of 10 times as many people with an IQ over 130 as the U.S.
Nothing needs to change. Natural trajectory already has China far eclipsing the United States within a decade or two. Only a deus ex machina, such as AI or another Mao in China can prevent this.
China's economy is growing faster than the economy of the US, but the difference between the two has been decreasing as China's growth slows. I'd expect that slowing growth to continue for a number of reasons.
1 - The middle income trap and more generally the fact that catch-up growth is easier than innovative growth.
2 - Increasing centralized statist control in China, as opposed to the relaxation of such control in the past which allowed for tremendous growth (it is very unlikely to get anywhere near as bad as Mao, but it still been getting worse to a much lesser extent than that disaster).
3 - Demographics.
4 - The US and to a lesser extent a number of other rich countries becoming more hostile and less open to the US, while China itself is doing a bit of the same from the other side. Many countries are seeking to source outside of China. For things that don't need very low wages to be successful there is some attempt to bring the production home. For things that do, purchases will be more from places like Vietnam (and many other countries, I"m not saying Vietnam is going to grab everything from China). Not just from more hostility and less open trade to/from China but also as China's economy grows it will be less and less a low wage place.
5 - The extent of wealth and income in China that's related to a large real-estate bubble.
I still think that China's economy will pass the US's as the world's largest. But I don't see "at least twice as large" soon. Also China has a lot more people. That is the main reason it will become the largest economy. But OTOH that economy is spread among more people. As Chinese living standards improve (and if they don't that we'll create its own problems, but its very likely they will) a huge amount of national income will be needed to cover those living standards. 50% greater economy with over 4 times the people, doesn't give you 50% greater surplus to spend on military adventures or whatever.
Or, alternatively, 'Mao' already prevented this, and the global evaluation has been erroneously calculating compounding Chinese economic and demographic claims for decades now despite known systemic data integrity issues.
It's not exactly new news that Chinese data is unreliably optimistic. China has admitted as much internally and internationally for over a decade now. What's less common knowledge is that this isn't just economic growth claims, which allow for compounding growth estimates, but the demographic data as well. Chinese demographic data is suspect for many of the same reasons as the economic data- because regional administrators have incentives to over-estimate their numbers in exchange for resources from the central government, and repeated because it serves the national governments geopolitical / national pride purposes to maintain it's claim. Being the largest country in the world (especially vis-a-vis India) assumed its own national prestige purpose just as the 4% growth figure became like a talisman for showing that the party was maintaining real growth.
Estimates on when China is going to overtake the US are inevitably going to depend on when you believe China started over-reporting its numbers, and by how much. I've seen little to indicate that China hasn't been overestimating for decades, and even fewer attempts to recreate estimate comparisons retroactively factoring such in. That was bad enough when it was just economic growth numbers- demographics just compounds the compounding discrepancy of future economic potential. The UN, which is far from the most bear-ish observer of China, moved it's estimate of China's demographic peak forward by almost a decade to last year between 2019 and 2022, and that's not even the most bearish estimate on demographic over-counting. Yi Fuxian, as the most easily searchable, has estimated that China demographically peaked almost half a decade ago, in 2018.
It's not merely that the economic size is based on over-estimated growth resulting from over-estimating growth, but that it's been projected on the basis of over-estimated fertility rates based on people who never existed. It doesn't take much until you're losing an entire United State's worth of population over the next 80 years.
The demographic over-estimation is part of why the middle income trap is as significant as it is for China in modern analysis. It's not simply that China's economic growth will slow down more sharply than predicted, but also earlier, and also with greater burdens than expected. We've vaguely known for some time the sort of population size China will need to take care of as the population ages out of the work force- we haven't been thinking in terms of the population to not only replace them, but support them. This would already be a substantial headwind, and it doesn't factor in real looming threats to the Chinese economic system, such as the still-unresolved debt issues that have been a significant part of the government fueling bubbles that help support those prior GDP figures.
Yi Fuxian is one guy. The demographic collapse is an over played anyway.
Without much evidence we are told that China’s demographics will slow down their growth to levels lower or equal to the US. However the US also has a demographic crisis, and China can still play catch-up on a GDP per capita basis.
We’ve already seen that China has in fact slowed down from its extraordinary 10% a year to the 2010s.
Last year growth was 3% growth, the worst non covid year, but it faced the headwinds of the zero Covid policy and some American actions. Nevertheless the last Q had a rebound. They also have a persistent over valued housing market which is correcting. So I expect that the next few years will be slow but China will probably hit 4-6% again mid 20s.
Agree that a demographic crisis is looming, but we don't have to extrapolate growth very far, only the next 20 years or so during which China's working age population will be higher than the U.S. as a percentage.
As for the idea that China's numbers are all fake - I suppose many of them are but they are succeeding at many impossible to fake things. China is the #1 trade partner of most countries in the world. This cannot be faked. And its no secret that they are by far the world's #1 manufacturer. We import (going by memory) 4 times as much from China as we export to them. Maybe the numbers are faked a little. This is cold comfort to me. China's capacity to produce physical goods dwarfs the U.S. by so much that it doesn't change the story much.
As for the idea that China's numbers are all fake - I suppose many of them are but they are succeeding at many impossible to fake things. China is the #1 trade partner of most countries in the world. This cannot be faked. And its no secret that they are by far the world's #1 manufacturer. We import (going by memory) 4 times as much from China as we export to them. Maybe the numbers are faked a little. This is cold comfort to me. China's capacity to produce physical goods dwarfs the U.S. by so much that it doesn't change the story much.
But of course. You're buying into the argument that not only the numbers mostly correct rather than compounding differences over decades, but the numbers you're choosing are even relevant.
Numbers can be both really big for real, and still not surpass the US in relevant metrics, because as the expression goes the US is really, really, really stupid-big in relevant numbers... and so when you want to make your own country look good, choose a different number. Trade export partner numbers is one of them. This is not really a relevant metric of how the US and China compare, because the US is not configured as an external export economy, and China is not configured as an internal continental economy. Then there's dynamics such as the value-added chain, or the export/import dependence levels, and so on. Some of these exact basis of comparison have been memes of the American electorate for years- like the idea that as manufacturing declined as a share of employment that the US manufacturing base was declining.
There certainly are arguments that China is beating the US in critical areas- I'd argue that east china sea anti-ship cruise missiles is relevant- but these aren't the macroeconomic arguments being pointed at for growth.
Another thing that people don't realize is that Chinese military expenditure is practically much greater than the United States. The U.S. headline budget of $800 billion or whatever says more about bloated salaries than it does about how much war materiel can be produced. China greater productive capacity is quickly eroding the advantage of materiel which the U.S. has accumulated over decades. At some point, they will have significant advantages in missiles, armaments, planes, ships, drones, etc... They are wanting only in supplies of raw resources - a situation which they are rapidly improving.
Its greater then their headline spending numbers. If you adjust for purchasing power there is even a bigger difference then their official numbers. But its still less than the US's spending (although something like 85 or 90 percent instead of a much smaller fraction. Perhaps the numbers should be adjusted by a bit less than purchasing power parity (the difference between costs for high tech, or even more mundane military items isn't likely to be the same as it is for civilian production, and at least for the more advanced items is likely to be less), but even then you still get well over half, and China's spending is growing faster, and at least at the moment (and probably at least for the next couple of decades) any conflict would likely happen nearer to China, where China has almost all its forces while American forces are spread across the world with the largest portion in the relatively distant North America.
The main counterbalancing advantages for the US are
1 - The US has more built up capability from previous spending. (But military equipment is a depreciating asset, not a productive investment so the importance of this declines over time).
2 - The US is more likely to have allies on its side.
3 - The US has some geographical advantages. China has to get past potentially hostile countries in the first (and depending on the scenario 2nd) island chains. Also its easier to interdict shipping to China (at least with a distant blockade, a close blockade would be too costly) than it is to the US.
4 - (This one is weaker and less certain) China would probably be seen as the aggressor and get a more hostile world reaction then the US would. The US isn't going to invade China, or just start lobbing missiles at if for the lols. A war with China would most likely start over a Chinese attack of Taiwan, and the other scenarios mostly involve China grabbing disputed territory as well. If China doesn't make such an attack there won't be any war.
To put on the tinfoil hat, what makes you think that the people in Washington are unaware of China's current trajectory? Beijing protested that the balloon shot down over SC was not a spy balloon but a weather balloon. I am surprised that seemingly nobody has put forth any conspiracy theories about the incident being used to drum up support for a war with China/action over Taiwan. The most I've seen is "the balloon is to distract everyone from the chemical disaster in Ohio."
I suppose nobody's thinking the above because, ironically, China's pseudo-revanchism and the predictable reactions it has to being challenged, combined with its current rise, make it easier to believe that they really did send a spy balloon and that they're trying something, as usual. Never mind that Xi should know that poking the American bear, even with the background noise of Ukraine to supposedly distract it, will probably end the Chinese Century before it even really begins.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1yr ago
Cheap money and energy, which fuels the US economy, depends on the ability to project power. Understandably, the fear of losing this power means having to compromise on those other things too.
But also lacking a basis of comparison. Subjective impression comparisons to things the observer wasn't around to experience kind of lacks a basis for contrast. You can't compare your own impression of the current media environment to previous responses when not only were you not there for the earlier ones, but the entire (social)media ecosystem that shapes your perception wasn't present.
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Notes -
It's at the very least bold to open your article with an argument that your (I assume) people have historically exhibited a certain delusion, but this time feels different. This time, for sure… Even better to cite Huntington anticipating my own rejoinder:
– only to proceed in the same direction, inventing a rather dubious narrative about the failure of the new paranoia to take root, because now the decline is already known as true.
As an aside: wasn't Hofstadter himself a yet another Communist sympathizer who sought to pathologize and thus dampen American immune response to a very real infiltration, rather than do unbiased scholarship? (see also: Blacklisted by History, In Denial).
Huh. Communism in 1939. One could scarcely hope to find a purer type of an intellectual who cries only when his little incestuous network is getting Gulag'd, the type Sergei Novikov urges us to not shed any tears for.
Anyway. There certainly exists the dynamic he (and the Substack author) describes – pushed top-down. I'd contend that organic American culture is entirely non-paranoid. It's psyopped; thus the deluge of hare-brained conspiracy theories, at once a manipulated distraction and an outlet for suspicion. As I see them, Americans – at least the type that has built the country and still keeps it running – are trusting, sometimes to the point of gullibility, optimistic, a bit small-minded yet ambitious, mercantile, big believers in win-win and not very big on titanic sacrifice for the common goal decreed by powers that be. They are pretty neoliberal by nature. In short, they can only be hegemonic power material in this paranoid mode imposed on them by misinformation. This stuff is common for all nationalisms, of course, but American case is different on account of how well it works. Maybe it's just the matter of human capital and geography – maybe they just can afford this bullshit, secure in the knowledge that everyone important understands the kayfabe and won't really switch sides out of self-interest.
Exactly like Huntington argues, these spells of declinism and exaggerations of some geopolitical threat are adaptive. @Dean has once stated that American military is one of the few militaries in the world that is willing to test itself to failure; thus, losing to Iraq in wargames, under the condition of an implausible handicap, only to wipe the floor with Iraq in live combat. I'd extend the principle to the whole stack of society: Americans, under the management of their elites, are among the very few who are capable of gaslighting themselves into taking seriously, fearing viscerally, risks that are merely conceivable and far in the future – and acting accordingly. (It's different from e.g. Russian paranoia about NATO-Ukraine, because taking the threat of NATO seriously… would not result in this). On the level of eggheaded analysis, «our models go not yield more than 90% probability that the Chinese regime will collapse on its own before 2050» might be enough of a call for action – expressed as some cheesy Asia'2049 strategy or whatever, but also diplomacy, sanctions, military procurement, using a talking head like Zeihan to tacitly announce your intentions for investors, accelerating the capital flight, and so on. For normies, all this looks like pointless expense. So you've gotta dumb it down: «we are already in decline! THEIR power is growing! They are united and strong, ruthless, rational, ready to do anything to hurt you and your family! It's a matter of time, to arms, to arms! There is a GAP! might attack our allies! Their fleet is oooh, their AI research is aaah, muh IQ, Chinese eugenic superbabies, Chinese hypersonics, we're underdogs here, but we must give our last desperate fight for all that is good and proper! Know,
GookChink, that you will find a gun behind every blade of grass when you come!»Of course it's the same now as it was in the 20's century. I hear something something GDP, mumble mumble growing navy, sometimes muh IQ and AI. What's the concrete threat model? China becomes able to chase CSGs out of South China Sea? Attacks Taiwan, threatens Japan, Korea, Australia (lol)? I suppose that could be technically possible, but on every level of looking into the specifics, you see less and less of a realistic possibility. GDP is empty residential high-rises, debt manipulation, and trade with countries which have demonstrated willingness to forgo profits in the name of a better political deal with the US, or are itching to drop China for their own reasons, or are near-failed states. Navy is obsolete before launch – this is a glimpse of the navy of the future, and by the time China approaches the US (forget the entire alliance) in conventional vessels, more advanced versions of such things will have become mainstream. IQ? Chinese IQ writes American papers. Tech? Well, where's their tech? They've been successfully cut off from strategically relevant semiconductors, and that's all she wrote. And, most importantly, that's ignoring their severe internal failings, both cultural and structural, failings which could perhaps be non-fatal – but only on a less competitive planet.
If feels different because it always has to feel real. It's the Sputnik Moment and the Missile Gap all over again. But Americans will only discover this after the fact, having tried hard to prevent an already contrived future. Same as with Japan, and with the Soviet union. No point to discussion.
A nation whose aviation shoots down a «hobbyist radio ballon», where idle commoners cobble together devices which can be mistaken for a superpower's spycraft, is not in decline. It is, perhaps, a slightly unwell nation. In Russian, this mentality is called бесится с жиру – essentially, «going rabid from fat». Very apt, in my opinion.
...
Any random piece of aerostatic junk gives a radar return, and the only reason it was shot down was the US was incompetent or uninterested at actually taking a close look at what was floating up there.
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The one thing I agree with there is that everything is psyop.
However the propaganda I read the most about China is that it is doomed, not that it is going to win. Plenty of ink spilt on China being in existential crisis, because of house debt, Hong Kong unrest, lockdowns, ending lockdowns, demographics. Why?
Not sure - but the idea seems to be that China will have to attack Taiwan soon enough. Which probably allows a buildup of US resources in the area. The Thucydides Trap Applies to the US more than China.
My own belief is that China just has to wait. I don’t buy that its IQ doesn’t matter, or that China’s demographics will lead to destruction any sooner than the Europeans( who have worse demographics) or the US which is trending as bad as either.
Nor do I believe that they have no technology, or industry. Quite the reverse. They are heading to dominance in both.
What do you mean by saying “ trade with countries which have demonstrated willingness to forgo profits in the name of a better political deal with the US, or are itching to drop China for their own reasons, or are near-failed states.” That’s really not who China trades with, or who trades with China. Who trades with China is everybody. Including, and especially, the US.
The rest is just math - a country with a larger population and greater economic growth will catch up with a country with a smaller population and a smaller rate of economic growth Ceteris paribus, and then surpass it.
The "why" is ideology, put simply. In a cold-blooded world where line-go-up is all that matters, all China would have to do, indeed, is just stay put, stay the course, and hope the GDP grows in line with predictions.
But this is not a cold-blooded world of rationality and pure numerics. This is a world where Europe gets into wars every so often because of desires to control parts of it for various reasons; some of which can be charitably described as "ineffable" and uncharitably described as "stupid and irrational." China is little different, having been wedded to a zealous Communist ideology for decades now. While it is not an immutable set of first principles, the desire to see a "One China" united under a red flag has never gone away even when their economy opened up.
It may well be that China will never let go of any revanchism over Taiwan, and that it may well be their undoing if they decide to ever make a move.
As for the "math," yes, I'll concede that, in theory, a massive amount of resources and manpower can be directed as needed to whatever projects are deemed important--by gunpoint, if necessary. But as Dase's last link there shows, there are inefficiencies that even China's size can't overcome.
I mean, yeh, there’s a war on in Europe now but it’s hardly a common occurance post world war II. The US is nearly always involved in some conflict.
This is a non sequitur. Europe isn’t that war-like these days and, even if it were, why is is clear that China is “little different”. China also actually is not all that war-like in the modern era.
Anyway i am not saying that China won’t someday try take over Taiwan, I’m saying there’s no rush.
Well he didn’t show anything, he said something. And the link didn’t work.
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Well, you didn’t use the word “seems” in the title, but I feel like the usual objections apply. As @Dean observes, subjective impressions are tricky, especially on a flavor-of-the-month subject for social media. In particular, is it really so surprising that outlets are pointing out the balloon to say exactly what they would have anyway? What’s so different about that?
I work in defense. My coworkers all find this hilarious. It might even be better than that time someone lost a football-field-sized aerostat over Pennsylvania.
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In military metrics, US is plummeting next to China. It's always on the verge of default, with a yearly debt ceiling dance, its military can't found enough people willing to serve.
American yearly drug overdose deaths each outstrip the best efforts of Russian army in Ukraine by a factor of 4 if you believe Ukrainian government numbers.
It's a high speed national decline, masked only by the enormous amount of ruin that needs to be accomplished.
In addition to actual spy balloons (of which there are some) it does look like NORAD also shot down at least one hobbyist radio balloon that cost <$300 to send out, which were registered with the FAA and whose owners tried in vain to contact the proper authorities.
If that's not decline - a nation's air force not being able to check what has been reported to them by civilian authorities, and not being able to verify what it's shooting at despite the existence of optic pods (telescopes,. basically).. then what is 'decline' ?
This conflates multiple different issues, none of which are applicable to a military metric comparison. The American 'default' is based around political willingness to raise debt ceilings and assume new debt, not a financial ability to afford new debt (or, on established history, willingness to asssum more). Nor is the US military recruitment issue a particularly relevant comparison when (a) China is a conscription model, and (b) the result of American military retention issues will be... the downscaling over expeditionary commitments, which China doesn't have equivalent to.
This is an apples to oranges comparison on multiple levels, without even addressing what amount of strategic orientation of the US 'should' be. If the argument is that the US is in decline because it will have to pare back overseas efforts, that does not even imply a relative decline if it's still orders of magnitude more than what China engages in.
Factual accuracy aside, is this supposed to surprise or alarm to anyone who's familiar with the scale of the US population compared to the Russian military in Ukraine?
In 2020, for example, the number of estimated US drug deaths rounds up at two significant figures to 69,000*, out of a population rounding to 330,000,000. This is compared to an estimated 40,000 killed across all Russian forces in the 2022 (including the annexed territories and Wagner), of a military whose size size estimate in 2020 of 1,150,000 active service members.
**Edit- picked the wrong numbers of drug deaths. Error doesn't change the magnitudes. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
This is over two magnitudes more intense for the Russian casualties compared to their 'normal' army compared to the US. This is also unsurprising- the US population is demographically large- the Russian military is only large in comparison to other national militaries. A population pool over three hundred times the size is going to have a number of much higher statistics in absolute terms that are still much lower in relative terms. Conflating absolute numbers without respect to context is statistical illiteracy.
Moreover, this is again an apples or oranges comparison, since a more relevant metric in trying to do a social comparison would of course be Russian drug deaths. This does admittedly come with its own difficulties of comparing like to like metrics- what is factored into drug deaths has a number of counfounders (such as the drugs of choice) and category differences across countries as well as the integrity of statistics. But if you want to pick one category- say alcohol- then you might have a like-to-like comparison, in which Russia had over 50,000 alcohol-related deaths in 2020 compared to the US which reported 52,000... despite Russia having less than half the total population.
Not much, apparently, or else far more significant issues than you raise.
US has been monetising its debt heavily during the covid era, with now about a fifth of US debt having been purchased with nonexisting money, that is, the federal reserve created the money for that purpose. US spends about double its GDP % of defense, yet the Navy is still worried Chinese military shipbuilding is outpacing the US. The only consolation is China doesn't have that many carriers or nuclear submarines, but why would they need them ? They most likely have a weapon that denies the US use of its carriers within ~3000 km of China.
Chinese will likely never be stupid enough to repeat American mistakes in belligerence, or crap up 3/4 of the world with their bases. They seem strictly strategically minded and their bases are almost exclusively found around important east hemisphere naval trade routes.
Only technically. It's a volunteer force in practice, so no different from the US.
The US had at least 100,000 death due to non-alcohol drug overdoses in 2021, up 29% from the year before.
According to CDC there were 140k alcohol related deaths..
I doubt by this time Russia has a higher per capita mortality from drugs legal and illegal than the US on these metrics, even allowing for difference in what counts.
US is completely anomalous, with its overdose deaths being 20-25x higher per capita than in the EU thanks mostly to the fentanyl.
This is indeed a new argument, but it is also still not the argument you started with. The American debates about default remain congressional politics, not the ability to service.
Then congratulations- the US recruitment issues, by forcing an abandonment of unproductive bases, will improve their effeciency and effectiveness rather than expending manpower and resources on 'crap' bases.
This is an improvement of the US position, not a weakneing.
Not quite.
And yet your argument wasn't a comparison to the EU, or even relative drug dose deaths compared to Russia which you have not explored in like-to-like- it was a comparison to the Russian war in Ukraine, which remains magnitudes off.
Not going to happen unless US is defeated in a major war and loses influence.
According to the Ukraine government, they've only lost cca 000 dead last year or so. That means per capita, casualties of the Russian war against Ukraine are lower
Not really. According to UA government, their dead last year were only cca 35000 or so. US is about 8x larger, so per capita losses to illegal drugs in the US are only 2x lower or so..
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In 2021 there were 107,000 drug overdose deaths in the united states https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
In 2020 it was 92,000. Your number of 69,000 is only a thousandish off of 2018's total of 70,630, so maybe it was an early estimate from then?
That's a 55% increase over your figure, and also a 52% increase in drug overdose deaths in only 5 years.
Edit: ah, maybe you were looking at just the fentanyl deaths, which by themselves were about 69,000 in 2020. They were up to 80,000 the next year.
I do indeed appear to have mis-read the context and caveat. Thank you for the correction.
It's hard to keep track when figures are changing that fast. 69k passes any pre-2020 sanity check.
Thanks for promoting me to look it up: I'd had no idea heroin deaths were actually down and crack is coming back, since we only hear about opioids now.
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A valuable rubric for prediction is "people overestimate the change the will happen in a year, but underestimate the change in a decade".
People see that China isn't overtaking the U.S. right now and assume all is well. It is not. China's economy is growing much faster than the U.S. and its natural growth will soon make it at least twice as large as the United States even if they do not escape the middle income trap. China also likely has on the order of 10 times as many people with an IQ over 130 as the U.S.
Nothing needs to change. Natural trajectory already has China far eclipsing the United States within a decade or two. Only a deus ex machina, such as AI or another Mao in China can prevent this.
China's economy is growing faster than the economy of the US, but the difference between the two has been decreasing as China's growth slows. I'd expect that slowing growth to continue for a number of reasons.
1 - The middle income trap and more generally the fact that catch-up growth is easier than innovative growth.
2 - Increasing centralized statist control in China, as opposed to the relaxation of such control in the past which allowed for tremendous growth (it is very unlikely to get anywhere near as bad as Mao, but it still been getting worse to a much lesser extent than that disaster).
3 - Demographics.
4 - The US and to a lesser extent a number of other rich countries becoming more hostile and less open to the US, while China itself is doing a bit of the same from the other side. Many countries are seeking to source outside of China. For things that don't need very low wages to be successful there is some attempt to bring the production home. For things that do, purchases will be more from places like Vietnam (and many other countries, I"m not saying Vietnam is going to grab everything from China). Not just from more hostility and less open trade to/from China but also as China's economy grows it will be less and less a low wage place.
5 - The extent of wealth and income in China that's related to a large real-estate bubble.
I still think that China's economy will pass the US's as the world's largest. But I don't see "at least twice as large" soon. Also China has a lot more people. That is the main reason it will become the largest economy. But OTOH that economy is spread among more people. As Chinese living standards improve (and if they don't that we'll create its own problems, but its very likely they will) a huge amount of national income will be needed to cover those living standards. 50% greater economy with over 4 times the people, doesn't give you 50% greater surplus to spend on military adventures or whatever.
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Or, alternatively, 'Mao' already prevented this, and the global evaluation has been erroneously calculating compounding Chinese economic and demographic claims for decades now despite known systemic data integrity issues.
It's not exactly new news that Chinese data is unreliably optimistic. China has admitted as much internally and internationally for over a decade now. What's less common knowledge is that this isn't just economic growth claims, which allow for compounding growth estimates, but the demographic data as well. Chinese demographic data is suspect for many of the same reasons as the economic data- because regional administrators have incentives to over-estimate their numbers in exchange for resources from the central government, and repeated because it serves the national governments geopolitical / national pride purposes to maintain it's claim. Being the largest country in the world (especially vis-a-vis India) assumed its own national prestige purpose just as the 4% growth figure became like a talisman for showing that the party was maintaining real growth.
Estimates on when China is going to overtake the US are inevitably going to depend on when you believe China started over-reporting its numbers, and by how much. I've seen little to indicate that China hasn't been overestimating for decades, and even fewer attempts to recreate estimate comparisons retroactively factoring such in. That was bad enough when it was just economic growth numbers- demographics just compounds the compounding discrepancy of future economic potential. The UN, which is far from the most bear-ish observer of China, moved it's estimate of China's demographic peak forward by almost a decade to last year between 2019 and 2022, and that's not even the most bearish estimate on demographic over-counting. Yi Fuxian, as the most easily searchable, has estimated that China demographically peaked almost half a decade ago, in 2018.
It's not merely that the economic size is based on over-estimated growth resulting from over-estimating growth, but that it's been projected on the basis of over-estimated fertility rates based on people who never existed. It doesn't take much until you're losing an entire United State's worth of population over the next 80 years.
The demographic over-estimation is part of why the middle income trap is as significant as it is for China in modern analysis. It's not simply that China's economic growth will slow down more sharply than predicted, but also earlier, and also with greater burdens than expected. We've vaguely known for some time the sort of population size China will need to take care of as the population ages out of the work force- we haven't been thinking in terms of the population to not only replace them, but support them. This would already be a substantial headwind, and it doesn't factor in real looming threats to the Chinese economic system, such as the still-unresolved debt issues that have been a significant part of the government fueling bubbles that help support those prior GDP figures.
Yi Fuxian is one guy. The demographic collapse is an over played anyway.
Without much evidence we are told that China’s demographics will slow down their growth to levels lower or equal to the US. However the US also has a demographic crisis, and China can still play catch-up on a GDP per capita basis.
We’ve already seen that China has in fact slowed down from its extraordinary 10% a year to the 2010s.
Last year growth was 3% growth, the worst non covid year, but it faced the headwinds of the zero Covid policy and some American actions. Nevertheless the last Q had a rebound. They also have a persistent over valued housing market which is correcting. So I expect that the next few years will be slow but China will probably hit 4-6% again mid 20s.
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Agree that a demographic crisis is looming, but we don't have to extrapolate growth very far, only the next 20 years or so during which China's working age population will be higher than the U.S. as a percentage.
As for the idea that China's numbers are all fake - I suppose many of them are but they are succeeding at many impossible to fake things. China is the #1 trade partner of most countries in the world. This cannot be faked. And its no secret that they are by far the world's #1 manufacturer. We import (going by memory) 4 times as much from China as we export to them. Maybe the numbers are faked a little. This is cold comfort to me. China's capacity to produce physical goods dwarfs the U.S. by so much that it doesn't change the story much.
But of course. You're buying into the argument that not only the numbers mostly correct rather than compounding differences over decades, but the numbers you're choosing are even relevant.
Numbers can be both really big for real, and still not surpass the US in relevant metrics, because as the expression goes the US is really, really, really stupid-big in relevant numbers... and so when you want to make your own country look good, choose a different number. Trade export partner numbers is one of them. This is not really a relevant metric of how the US and China compare, because the US is not configured as an external export economy, and China is not configured as an internal continental economy. Then there's dynamics such as the value-added chain, or the export/import dependence levels, and so on. Some of these exact basis of comparison have been memes of the American electorate for years- like the idea that as manufacturing declined as a share of employment that the US manufacturing base was declining.
There certainly are arguments that China is beating the US in critical areas- I'd argue that east china sea anti-ship cruise missiles is relevant- but these aren't the macroeconomic arguments being pointed at for growth.
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Another thing that people don't realize is that Chinese military expenditure is practically much greater than the United States. The U.S. headline budget of $800 billion or whatever says more about bloated salaries than it does about how much war materiel can be produced. China greater productive capacity is quickly eroding the advantage of materiel which the U.S. has accumulated over decades. At some point, they will have significant advantages in missiles, armaments, planes, ships, drones, etc... They are wanting only in supplies of raw resources - a situation which they are rapidly improving.
Its greater then their headline spending numbers. If you adjust for purchasing power there is even a bigger difference then their official numbers. But its still less than the US's spending (although something like 85 or 90 percent instead of a much smaller fraction. Perhaps the numbers should be adjusted by a bit less than purchasing power parity (the difference between costs for high tech, or even more mundane military items isn't likely to be the same as it is for civilian production, and at least for the more advanced items is likely to be less), but even then you still get well over half, and China's spending is growing faster, and at least at the moment (and probably at least for the next couple of decades) any conflict would likely happen nearer to China, where China has almost all its forces while American forces are spread across the world with the largest portion in the relatively distant North America.
The main counterbalancing advantages for the US are
1 - The US has more built up capability from previous spending. (But military equipment is a depreciating asset, not a productive investment so the importance of this declines over time).
2 - The US is more likely to have allies on its side.
3 - The US has some geographical advantages. China has to get past potentially hostile countries in the first (and depending on the scenario 2nd) island chains. Also its easier to interdict shipping to China (at least with a distant blockade, a close blockade would be too costly) than it is to the US.
4 - (This one is weaker and less certain) China would probably be seen as the aggressor and get a more hostile world reaction then the US would. The US isn't going to invade China, or just start lobbing missiles at if for the lols. A war with China would most likely start over a Chinese attack of Taiwan, and the other scenarios mostly involve China grabbing disputed territory as well. If China doesn't make such an attack there won't be any war.
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To put on the tinfoil hat, what makes you think that the people in Washington are unaware of China's current trajectory? Beijing protested that the balloon shot down over SC was not a spy balloon but a weather balloon. I am surprised that seemingly nobody has put forth any conspiracy theories about the incident being used to drum up support for a war with China/action over Taiwan. The most I've seen is "the balloon is to distract everyone from the chemical disaster in Ohio."
I suppose nobody's thinking the above because, ironically, China's pseudo-revanchism and the predictable reactions it has to being challenged, combined with its current rise, make it easier to believe that they really did send a spy balloon and that they're trying something, as usual. Never mind that Xi should know that poking the American bear, even with the background noise of Ukraine to supposedly distract it, will probably end the Chinese Century before it even really begins.
Maybe “ending the Chinese century before it even begins” is why the US shot down a weather ballon. 🤷♂️
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Cheap money and energy, which fuels the US economy, depends on the ability to project power. Understandably, the fear of losing this power means having to compromise on those other things too.
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In before "No Submission statement, not reading."
But also lacking a basis of comparison. Subjective impression comparisons to things the observer wasn't around to experience kind of lacks a basis for contrast. You can't compare your own impression of the current media environment to previous responses when not only were you not there for the earlier ones, but the entire (social)media ecosystem that shapes your perception wasn't present.
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