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' ?
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.
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.
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.
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Notes -
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' ?
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.
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.
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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