I literally read this on a bus to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, taking dystopian cyberpunky photos out the window, and sending them to a friend in another hyper-polluted area: the air is bad at the moment (~150). A huge number people don't leave their apartments or workplaces already: they just order delivery. My startup http://8-food.com/ is making a network of wholly owned and operated vending machines that cook and sell custom food, targeted at mainland China as the initial market. One of the more interesting and pertinent criticisms of the business model I have heard to date is that people are now too lazy to go down the elevator! Just yesterday I read[0] that in Beijing they banned street vendors and closed enough markets that people are now having problems finding food and the government's urban planning department, in their infinite wisdom, are now attempting to stimulate a resurgence of food retail by - get this - subsidising the establishment of convenience stores, as if the number of Quick-e-Mart's per capita is some kind of development index! I have read multiple articles comparing the density of convenience stores in "developed" economies such as Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan with mainland China, suggesting there is more growth to be had. Who knows what the future will hold ... but at least we will give people a choice and the option to take a damn walk.

[0] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/04/WS5a4d8db6a31008cf1...

Hopefully there isn't one of the cyclical collapses that China has also historically experienced any time soon, where that central authority atrophies and splinters into warring regions. Rebellion and warlordism always results in a lot of dead people and massive destruction when the centralized government falls apart in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

That could most certainly happen again. Usually the way previous empires have broken up though is by keeping aloof of the rest of the world, resulting in the State not keeping abreast of developments in the rest of the world.

The current regime seems to be acutely aware of this and has been actively spreading Chinese influence (and finances) over the rest of the world.

Is that really the usual case, or just the narrative of the Qing dynasty?

There's a lot of mismanagement and climactic shifts in the pre-modern period. Often those are tied together, with failures of the hydrological infrastructure. But another common thread is high imbalances in male/female populations, leading to lots of disaffected young men, and millenarian religious movements.

This is similar to the world from the nov The World Inside by Silverberg. Very good book, I recommend it!

It reminded me initially of the movie City of Ember

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970411/

Also The giver.