> PRC has the best high skilled demographics in recorded history in the next 30 years

This is a very questionable statement.

"China’s overall education rate is one of the lowest in the middle-income world ... Comparing China’s human capital with that of other countries, it is not only systemically lower than South Korea, Ireland, and other “graduates” out of middle-income status, it is also lower than virtually all other middle-income countries." [0]

This does not mean economic collapse or demise, but there is a very real human capital issue at a macro-level. That said, policymakers in the PRC know this and have been working with SIEPR at Stanford for over a decade on rectifying this at a policymaking level, but there are some very real systemic issues that mean China c. 2023 cannot be compared with countries at a similar levels of development such as Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, etc.

[0] - https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/trackin...

Yes, it's questionable if the context is per capita. But with PRC pop denominator effect, it's fine/prudent to also recognize absolute effects, the trend of PRC talent generation that bias towards skilled individuals means PRC will accumulate historically unprecedented levels of skilled talent over next 20 years since they have pipeline of 10-12m new birth for past 26 years for accessible future tertiary talent. Unless CCP completely cracks down on educating their population, with rate of current tertiary excess capacity and even if bodies get redirected into skilled vocational training, the country is trending towards ~100m new skilled over next few decades. Which assuming PRC has ability to retain and coordinate (and so far they've done reasonable job), that cohort is very much potentially the best potential high skilled demographics divident humanity has ever assembled in a generation period. Like there simply isn't any time period in the past where one country had population to do so, nor is it likely in our life time, unless India with 1.6B manages to not only stop crippling brain drain but also coordinate talent domestically on par with PRC capabilities. So PRC human capita can be per capita lower but also aggregate better than virtually all other countries, including potentially US + immigration. Hence why c 2023 no one seriously thinks Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia are currently or even potential future US competitors, while PRC with poor per capita metrics is still more than enough to be.

> Hence why c 2023 no one seriously thinks Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia are currently or even potential future US competitors

Because all those countries largely aligned with the liberal international order and didn't try to antagonize their neighbors.

A notable exception to your list is Russia, a fellow upper middle income country that in 2010-2014 was on the precipice of becoming a developed country (HDI above 0.800 AND GDP per Capita above $12,000/yr c. 2010-13)

Russia began playing a belligerent role in Georgia/Abkhazia/Ossetia (2008-Present), Ukraine (2014-present), Syria (2015-present), and the CAR (2018-president) and we burnt multiple cycles worrying about them.

When I was on the Hill, we were honestly neutral/indifferent about China until you guys hacked our companies (Google, Lockheed Martin) and our government (OPM Hack in 2015, CIA in 2012-13).

This is just the US. The leadership in post-2011 China has unnecessarily antagonized Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Phillipines, India, Australia, and Vietnam despite all those countries preferring to the neutral in any US-PRC confrontation.

All the hawkish comments on here hoping for the collapse of the PRC are disgusting and do not reflect what those of us in a decisionmaking capacity or adjacent to those think.

Yet unbridled nationalism and hubris by commentators on both sides is impacting the ability to get shit done.

> Like there simply isn't any time period in the past where one country had population or institutions to do so, nor are any countries likely to match including US who would to increase immigration to politically unfeasible levels, or (IMO) India even with 1.6B pop unless they manage to not only stop crippling brain drain but also coordinate talent domestically on par with PRC capabilities

India in 2023 is a country with developmental indicators, institutions, and infrastructure largely on par with the PRC in the 2000-2003 period.

A lot of the same problems you mentioned about India are the exact same problems China faced and overcame, and the same playbook is being applied there.

In fact, the same kind of commentary you are bristling too is the exact same commentary people used to give China during the exact same time period, and it's kind of funny seeing Chinese commentators reusing the same comments we Americans made about China in the 2000-2015 period on India.

> A country can simulatenously improve/lead at top while bottom languish/decline

This is a still an open question. No country has ever transitioned from a developing country to an advanced economy with as crippling a Human Capital Handicap as the PRC today. The last large upper middle income countries that had a similar handicap were Mexico, Brazil, Türkiye, and Malaysia.

None of these countries are shitholes, but when they reached a similar pivot as China did today in the late 90s/early 2000s, they had the need to resort to extensive social and economic reforms. While Malaysia has succeeded at that, this hasn't been as successful in Brazil, Türkiye, and Mexico.

If I was a gambling man, I'd lean towards assuming this transition will be a protracted affair. Not "institutions collapse" bad but 7-10 years of malaise, because building human capital takes time and effort.

Or because those countries baseline size means their natural growth trajectory will not threaten western incumbents the same way PRC growth would, including modest 2% military budget which is enough to make everyone shit bricks. Nor would I characterize those countries as "largely" aligned with LIO seeing current headlines and it's not like Indian doesn't antagonize neighbours when PRC started spread influence in south Asia.

Difference between RU and PRC is RU actually mired in kinetic war with neighbours vs PRC grey zone that pushes region to some security hedging but not at expense of PRC trade. IMO that's natural/forgone, and let's not forget PRC antagonism was rarely PRC initiated. SKR over THAAD, Japan was always weary. PRC also last to reclaim/militarized SCS started by Vietnam (barring Brunei) but doing so at PRC scale revealed gap in capability causing others to hedge and they still do. Current US posture in region under Trump and Biden admins still pale in comparison to initial deterrence proposals of ringing PRC with missiles and agile basing. AU is AU they couldn't stay neutral if US pushed. But overall current US posture is still shadow of what they thought they could get despite going HAM on diplomatic efforts.

On India, note elsewhere I said I'm optimistic they'll get shit together eventually but unlikely to replicate PRC because they lack same levers for state capacity. It's not unreasonable to observe India does not have the same favourable headwinds as PRC in 2000s, i.e. PRC+1 is mostly shifting to where PRC willing to shift and that's ASEAN not India who is unlikely to capture PRC levels of manufacturing base and ability to snowball development for the simple reason that PRC is not willing to relinquish manufacturing advantage and west can only shift so much. The fact that India is at PRC early 2000s indicators despite starting with comparable if not favourable conditions and still not addressing some of the major social hurdles PRC has mostly addressed at the time (i.e. single language to faciliate migrant / labour transfers), reflect inherent inefficiencies that is relatively more difficult to coordinate around. India on par with PRC in 2000 is still India 20 years behind due to systemic differences that extrapolated will unlikely see India catch up at 1:1 time scale.

And yes consensus in washington was OPM fair game but PRC industrial espionage that pushed up PRC industry to compete with west was the real concern. And circling back to India this is exactly why they're not squeezing the level same tech transfers PRC was able to because everyone wised up. The playbook doesn't work as well anymore. Nevermind studies showing export oriented models working increasingly less well - countries milk industrialization opportunities faster and lower levers of income due to labour saving technologies that remove a lot of human potential from being realized. Will India make it? Again IMO, yes, but it will take longer and the race agasint Indian demographics much more difficult. PRC "only" saddled with 600m farmers and informal eocnomy halfwits, India will likely have 1B+, that's another tier of drag to govern around.

>No country has ever transitioned from a developing country to an advanced economy with as crippling a Human Capital Handicap as the PRC today.

Sure but PRC doesn't need to be advanced across the board it needs regions to be sufficiently advanced to compete with advanced economies and by and large it already has at the scale of tier 1/2 efforts. PRC isn't a large country - it's a massive country the scale dynamics operates differently than turkey mexico of malaysia. At PRC scale, 5M STEM per year is enough to saturate strategic industries with talent and directly challenge advanced economies across the board vs 100,000s of from "large" countries that still has to pick and chose. I'm one of the first to note PRC isn't going to uplift everyone to advanced indicators but it will uplift enough to be extremely competitive and resulting in advanced economies also suffering malaise (which many are) by spreading out the pie. Convergence is as much about PRC doing better but also incumbents doing worse.