I am not that sure anymore. The Russo-Ukrainian war shattered a lot of my illusions with regard to rationality of leaders. A country with a very bad demographics started a war by deploying clearly insufficient forces (200 000 soldiers are nothing when compared to the size of Ukraine; Germans deployed 12x as more soldiers in 1941 to conquer Ukrainian SSR) and the result is an enormous fuck-up and unendong slaughter of young population which, with current TFRs, will never be replaced.
If Putin can make such a bad judgment, Xi can as well. It is not as if Xi tolerates more dissent/negative feedback to his rule than his Russian counterpart.
Now it's just butchery on an industrial scale. How nice.
Claiming the opposite is just muddying the waters. Up is down in wartime, I suppose.
Taiwan is very different. Xi also knows it is of far created economic importance to the west (and the US in particular) than Ukraine is.
The miscalculation was primarilly political rather than military. They expected the Ukrainians to roll over rather than fight. Possibly they believed their own propaganda (and their experience from the 2014 invasion) and expected a lot of Ukrainian support. The invaders were not even prepared to fight and the planning was lead by the FSB, not the military. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ym9TDs6Dg
This still sounds like a huge gamble with very high stakes. Ukraine received a lot of Western weapons between 2014-2022, and it was those weapons like Javelin that helped stop the original Russian armored onslaught.
International politics does not reliably work on the principle "actor X hasn't done Y before, so actor X won't do Y now". There may be thresholds that, once reached, change the entire situation.
To look at a historical example, the Allies did nothing when Hitler re-occupied the Ruhr, they did nothing when he annexed Austria, they allowed him to take Sudetenland and later they did nothing when he annexed the rest of Bohemia and Moravia. But with Poland, the threshold was crossed once and for all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory...
But the claims that there are any frozen conflicts there are unfounded (no strong claims of one country on the lands of another country in the region), and about Russian involvement also unfounded (it did help secular Tajik win the civil war in a coalition but that's mostly it).
Why? PRC is currently extracting the greatest high skill demographic divident in human history in the next 30 years, and even with shit tier TFR they're producing more bodies than any modern military needs, and will continue to under the most pessimestic demographic projections until end of century. They have decades to try and try again, because they can replicate US expeditionary military model with even less than fraction of their population and industrial output. Ultimately IMO PRC doesn't need to dominate, or take over west/really US tier of hyperdominance, which it can't. But that's also exactly why it's fine and even prudent for PRC to take over TW and bring pyrrhic disaster for everyone. In terms of cold interest calculus, the west, being at the top has more to lose, and historically, you displace regional hegemon with force. Meanwhile PRC got plenty of excess/surplus workforce past 2050s for reconstruction. The TLDR is PRC comprehensive power by herself is going to increase / close gap with west. And even if she doesn't want war, structure forces / trends won't dissuade her, and if anything incentivizes escalation.
China is not. There is a trend in China for companies to not hire people over the age of 35. Also, their unofficial youth unemployment rate is something like 45%. In addition, 1 billion people live in poverty in China https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-.... That means those people don't have the knowledge/connection/skillset to contribute. Lastly, Chinese population is expected to shrink to 600B even faster than 2050
At current PRC STEM / skilled labour production rate, they're on trend to generate 50-100M new skilled workers in the next 20 years. Those are growing bodies already born and accounted for. That's multiple times more than US is set to gain in people via all methods birth/immigration. In the next few years, PRC will have more skilled talent IN WORKFORCE than US in absolute numbers. It's exactly beause relative skill across workforce is still low, currently 20% vs developed countries for 60-80% that PRC has incredible skilled demographic divident to squeeze. It's how JP/SKR GDP doubled/tripled after TFR crash 20 years ago, by training up new generations into more skilled/productive work. Hence PRC similarly marching to advanced economy workforce composition is - objectively the greatest concentration in high skilled talent within one coordinated system in human history. Even at lower relative % of skilled workforce, due to PRC population denominator, that means PRC will have significantly more aggregate knowledge/skill/connection than any other competitor.
PRC broad unemployment rate is 5%, youth find jobs within a few years. Right now you have massive cohorts of new graduates post academic expansion who don't want to settle for jobs they think are beneath them, but eventually, like all humans, they will. It's going to take a few years because PRC kids have no crippling student debt, can mooch off parents living at home, and don't need to work 2 part time jobs to make ends meet. Even if 40% of youth unemployemnt was durable, implying 40% of PRC skilled workforce end up not working, which is an idiotic hopium position to draw analysis from, the remaining 60% is still MORE aggregate skill pool than again, any other competitor, at any time in past or projected future in next 30-50 years. Which if you care about geopolitical balance/stragetic competition, is the cohort and period worth considering.
There's no credible model where PRC population will dip to 600M in 2050.
On poverty: there's 600M, on 1000rmb disposable household income, 900m on 2000rmb. That again, that's precisely why they don't matter for growth. That 60% of population constitutes merely 10% of GDP. Most of GDP/productivity in advanced/modern economy driven by the minority of skilled workforce. In PRC case, the minority in developed tier1/2 regions. The same cohort responsible for 90% of the GDP is set to increase by order of magnitude within the next 20 years. They're the real growth drivers. That growth will trickle down so the bottom 60% can eventually charge 10rmb for a haircut instead of 5rmb and live on 2000/4000rmb instead of 1000/2000, but ultimately their contribution to development is/was always going to be marginal. You don't need everyone to be high skilled, and with PRC population, modernization timeframe, they couldn't. But going forward they can certainly have more absolute/aggregate skilled labour than US+partners, and still have a few 100 million stuck in informal economy doing shit all. And right now that's where impactful demographic trend is heading.
You're overestimating the impact since
1.) 80% of the top minds will study abroad and stay there, not in China, like they are now. More smart people are realizing if they live in a freedom-less dictatorship, being just a chive to be cut down, they are better to move. When they see their hero Jack Ma was imprisoned and stripped of power. When they hear their hero Ma Huateng of Tencent actively proclaiming one should not attract attention and to lower profile
2.) rote studying + cheating culture + mandatory Xi Jing Ping learning for 3 hours every day for these workers in college make them inferior workers than workers in the West. Chinese colleges are already not as good as Western colleges to start with.
3.) when these skilled workers graduate and can't find jobs, much like now when tsinghua graduates are forced to become didi drivers, they won't be able to learn the actual skills to contribute, since college learnings are just that, college learnings.
4.) US can get skilled immigrations from around the world, and can ramp up whenever they want. They also have skilled partners like Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea to work with
> settle for jobs they think are beneath them, but eventually, like all humans, they will
Yes, these new college grads now are driving for didi and delivering for meituan, which they will continue to do for 20 years. There is no magic bullet to turn an event like Great Depression around
> There's no credible model where PRC population will dip to 600M in 2050
There are many, but first you have to not buy China's word that it has 1.4B to start with. (why would you when they still proclaim 5% GDP growth in 2023) Many guesses are 1.2B, before all the unreported covid related deaths
1) Subtantially less (like single digit %) PRC tier1 talent are leaving now, and more skilled talent are flowing back from west to PRC due to better opportunities. Record number in last few years. What you're seeing is some old wealth, accumulated in PRC at time when you didn't need high skill talent, capital flighting. And a bunch of low skilled migrants trying to enter from south America to flip burgers. This isn't the 2000s where best of best PRC goes abroad, some do, but largely it's the extra mediocre/dumb who can't hack Chinese gaokao. This isn't diasphora from 90s where every Chinese group has friends who were like top10 from their province. The common story now is my kid too dumb/fragile to survive PRC tertiary, lets send them abroad. Which relates back to old wealth fleeing, a lot of rich peasants who guanxied their way into wealth and know their kids aren't smart enough to do well in PRC but maybe can coast in west where talent pool is shallow. Like this
2) Except they're climbing/leading science/innovation indexes in west controlled for quality. As if university in the west don't have retarded waste of time rereqs. No one is learning XJP app for 3 hours a day. They're studying their courses and farming primogems.
3) Yeah they're going to spend years bumming a round while job creation meet talent creation, which is expected artefact of PRC overcapacity. That'll sort itself out in a a few years. Supply/demand etc. The important point being, right now there are host of significant, strategic industries where there's lots of demand and having excess talent is net good, i.e. PRC is basically the only country on trend to not have talent shortage in semiconductors in 5 years. And guess what happens when there's extra demand, companies take and retrain less qualified applicants. It's better to have a pool of STEM taxi drivers who can skill work because you know they were filtered by tertiary system than the west who has excess demand for skill work, and taxi drivers who can't.
4) Now break down the numbers. US has access to global talent, but what US actually has access is 400M english speakers, 600m with some english proficency, from a few countries with skill development. And guess who they have overwhelmingly chose in the last 10-15 years. PRC talent, that they are now making harder to brain drain due to domestic policies. Meanwhile, PRC has 900m mandarin speakers, but realistically like US, the subsect of viable tertiary talent is much lower. But PRC talent bias skill/technical work, vs gender studies and has much bigger pool for high skill work. Meanwhile, they've been retaining significantly more talent due to more opportunities, and frankly produce so much that US/west can't even brain drain enough to make a dent, assuming US/PRC domestic politics allows prior levesl of brain drain. US has access to "more" talent, but realistically can only takein/incorporate so much. Meanwhile PRC has access to MORE talent, more than US can ever take, including top end.
Very few are skilled youths driving did/meituan. Some do, but youth umemployment stats concenrates low skill. Credentialled youth and taking their time job seeking, looking into teaching/government, and eventually will settled into bluecollar work that pays better than delivery work if they can stomach the shame. Broke, medicore skilled youth, the C students are desperate enough to do low end work. If you're an A level talent, you're already working sometime nice. No so different from advanced economies as they deal with academic inflation.
Conspiracy/FLG/and that one professor guess 1.2B. Which doesn't even matter since output of PRC exports and value chain can be measured by proxy. That 1.2B is consuming resources for previous 1.4B, and living 10% better. It's fine. And as if PRC having 200M less mouth to feed and fuel is actually a problem. Meanwhile commodity imports and energy increase trend is clear and can't be systematically fudged over timescale. Dang's not going to be happy if I interrogate every luny claim on PRC. Suffice to say, PRC skilled demographic boom, and ability to to coordinate them is so large, that they have large advantage even if you think they're fudged by double digit percentages.
Chairman Xi made sure that won't happen. Maybe they'll take over Taiwan with disastrous consequences for everyone, but if they don't do it until 2030, they might as well give up. They might also exert their influence in Africa, the Midlle East and Central Asia, at the expense of Russia. I'd argue Chinese influence in Central Asia is somewhat better than Russian influence, which has only created frozen conflicts that Russia can reignite whenever it's convenient for them (see Nagorno-Karabah).
If Chinese trade with the US stays at current rates, there's less risk of war between China and the West.
As usual, Dan Wang's yearly letter is not only beautifully laid out but also an eye opener.