The cracks are showing. The US empire is in decay. What will the world look like once it’s no longer able to bully everyone? What do we have to look forward to both inside and outside the imperial core?

  • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    12·
    21 days ago

    We are also seeing peak China. Their demographic problems will be a severe drag going forward. It’ll be a multi-power world, not a Chinese hegemony.

      • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        12·
        19 days ago

        The capital you rely on in your argument has a asymptote, and as China approaches this line, growth will happen at a diminishing rate. How much technical progress can they squeeze out of the tube? Is it enough to deal with demographic collapse? Probably not.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
          2·
          19 days ago

          Yup, because it’s absolutely impossible for China to change policies that would encourage higher birth rate or open up immigration. Enjoy masturbating to your China collapse fantasies.

          • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            1·
            17 days ago

            Europe and East Asia have been looking for policies to improve demographics. Nobody has a workable plan.

              • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                11·
                2 days ago

                Your link reads just like every western European country with failing demographics … and it isn’t working. I did hear on NPR News the other day that China is implementing a new tax on contraceptives. That’s a new idea. Something that would be so unpopular, it could only happen in a non-democratic country. Maybe that’ll help, but my prediction is that it’ll just increase (or slow the decrease of) the population of ethnic and religious minorities within China, something the one-party government may not like. I do not see any good solutions within reach for China. Demographic issues are cultural issues and you cannot change a culture quickly. Demographic issues are rarely economic issues (though economics gets the blame). Are there any subcultures within China known for large families? Here in the US, we have Amish, Mennonites, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Traditional Catholics, and Quiverfull Evangelicals who all tend to have large families. Myself, I have 11, and have just learned my wife is pregnant with twelve.

                I have a customer (I own my own business) who is a Chinese immigrant to the US and I was visiting his house here in the US. We were talking and he learned that I had 11 children. He immediately called his daughter, who is a doctor still living in China, and gave her a stern talking to about how this “poor” man here in the US can give his parents 11 grandchildren and she could not even give them just one. It was a little awkward to listen to, as they went back and forth between English and Manderin. What they feel is not unusual among the Chinese. China’s one child policy defined Chinese culture. And now young men and women just do not have the example or the confidence to start a family. They also have witnessed a generation of people praised for work and professional success that comes at the expense of producing and raising many children. The one-party state does not have the tools to dramatically change this trend. If a reverse happens, it’ll happen over the period of a century, not years or decades.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
                  11·
                  2 days ago

                  I mean you can believe whatever you like. I’m obviously not going to convince you of anything here. We’ll just have to wait and see who’s right.

    • subversive_dev@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      21 days ago

      First off, the Chinese don’t seek global hegemony like the Western powers, no matter what the projection and propaganda says. (This is far too big of a topic for short comment but the Chinese have never done Roman-style imperialism in all of their history. Also, according to my research, China hasn’t made a new territorial claim in over 70 years, since the KMT era)

      Second off, I did some comparisons on this website. I honestly wasn’t sure what I was going to see but China’s pyramid is better than all the “developed” countries and it really blows their East Asian neighbors out of the water. Therefore, I don’t buy the argument that China is doomed by its demographics, unless we are saying that all the peer comparison nations are even more doomed.

      I happen to believe that the Chinese are right and we are entering a New Chinese Century, with the Middle Kingdom once again the economic center of a prosperous and powerful Asia. They are on the cusp (speaking in years) of completely defeating “containment”, and have built an industrial ecosystem unlike anything the world has ever seen. Of course that all goes out the window if the nukes start flying.

      • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        19 days ago

        China also has a huge gender imbalance. All those excess men count differently than men in other countries with a balanced gender dynamic. Also, China’s demographics (according to the website) do not compare favorably to the US. That said, it’ll be India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and places like this that production shifts to as China ages.