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On the fence over China

A few days ago I said I was "on the fence" over the issue of China hawkery. A few people suggested I expand a bit on this, and why not?

The nickel answer is that China is an ascendant power that's often a bad actor on the world stage, but it's also a country with a lot of weaknesses that make it less dangerous than it seems at first. So here's a brief rundown of China basics, both the scary and benign. When you add them all up, I'd say there's reason to be concerned about China but no real reason to panic.

Manufacturing

This is the big one, and there's no question that China massively dominates the world manufacturing scene these days:

But there's more to the story. First, manufacturing has become steadily less important to global output, and countries like Vietnam and India are starting to eat into China's labor advantage. In a sense, China has hinged its future on a dying sector. There's also this:

This is a measure of a country's capability to produce goods and services. China has made impressive strides, but the US still ranks highest in the world.

Military

China has spent a lot to upgrade its military in recent decades, but it still doesn't spend as much as us:

China's navy is technically larger than ours, but we lead substantially in cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers. You might reasonably wonder what else there is, and it turns out the answer is that China has lots and lots of frigates, corvettes, and auxiliaries. But those don't add up to much:

Needless to say, there's considerable disagreement about what this really means. Is the huge US lead in capital ships relevant, or is it actually a disadvantage in an era of drones and highly accurate cruise missiles? And what about China's widespread practice of building dual-use civilian ships?

There are lots of ifs here, and it's hard to come to a firm conclusion. China is certainly a peer military competitor with enormous productive capacity, but on most metrics they're still well behind the US—and even further behind if you count US allies.

Military intentions

This is a different subject. China may be expanding its military aggressively, but what do they intend to do with it?

A lot of people scoff at this, but I remain influenced by China's recent history on this score: They really don't seem to be an expansionist power. Aside from Korea in the '50s and Vietnam very briefly in the '70s, they've never shown much interest in military adventurism beyond their own borders.

What they have shown is an extreme dedication toward protecting territory they view as within their borders. This has produced border clashes with India; repression of Tibet; crackdowns in Hong Kong; endless gunboat bullying in the South China Sea; and, most famously, threats against Taiwan.

The hostility here is real, but it's limited. What's more, aside from Taiwan, China has virtually no capacity to project power beyond its immediate borders and has shown no intention of building one.

All of this is of dubious importance in a potential future of drone and AI warfare, but that's a much broader subject than just China. At the moment, China simply doesn't seem to have designs on any territory it doesn't already consider its own.

Taiwan

After Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in 2022, China made its displeasure extremely visible. They increased exercises designed to simulate an invasion; they shot lots of missiles over Taiwan; they began a series of reckless encounters with US and allied forces; and they ramped up intrusions into Taiwanese airspace.

At the same time, there's little evidence that China has made any recent plans to do anything more. They don't appear to be any closer to an invasion or blockade than they've ever been.

One thing that influences my thinking on this subject is Taiwan itself: they just don't seem all that concerned. They continue to spend a modest 2.2% of GDP on military defenses, which is not much for a country supposedly at high risk of attack. Even South Korea spends more, and they've never truly been in much danger from North Korea. Places under serious military threat, like Israel, Russia, Lebanon, Ukraine, and others, spend twice as much or more.

Economy

China's economic growth has been spectacular over the past few decades. There's no questioning that. But it's still way, way behind the US:

China is growing faster than the US on a percentage basis, but over the past decade absolute GDP per capita has increased $30,000 in the US compared to only $15,000 for China. They have a lot of catch-up to do, and despite everything, China is still stuck in the doldrums of other mid-tier countries. They just aren't going to be a rich country anytime soon:

And another thing: Chinese growth has been wildly uneven. GDP per capita may be a respectable $25,000 these days, but only in a few rich coastal provinces. Its vast interior is still desperately poor:

Strategic exports

China really has only two truly strategic exports: minerals and pharmaceuticals. They can hurt us with both, but not in the long run. China's strategic minerals (rare earths and others) have built up world dominance not because only China has them, but because China supplies them cheaply and doesn't much care about environmental safety. The West has already begun to restart mining and refining of strategic minerals and will most likely become self sufficient within the next 5-10 years.

As for pharmaceuticals, China has no special advantages at all. The rest of the world still has huge manufacturing capacity that can be ramped up if necessary, and low-income countries like India and Malaysia are increasing their production. This is a paper tiger at most.

2017

I don't have a better name for this category, but something went suddenly wrong in China around 2017-18. Youth unemployment doubled:

And fertility rates plummeted:

Fertility rates have been dropping worldwide, but China's decline has been truly extraordinary. Taken together, these two trends point to some kind of serious disillusionment among China's young people. I have no idea what's behind it, but it's real.

Xi Jinping

It's easy to make the mistake of confusing Xi Jinping's aggressiveness for strength and smarts. It's neither. Xi is a paranoid nationalist who has sent China down a rabbit hole of bad policies.

The reality: Xi has united practically the entire world against China. He has adopted shortsighted economic policies that protect state power—and his own—at the expense of difficult but essential market reforms. He fights America and the West even though productive cooperation was always on the table. His behavior during the COVID pandemic displayed all the usual feckless Chinese hypersensitivity to perceived criticism. He has wasted endless resources on his dream of panopticon surveillance and the Great Firewall to keep his people under tight control. He has ramped up China's pointless excesses of commercial espionage and cyber warfare. The Chinese property sector remains a massive shitshow that he seems helpless against.

No country can take on the whole world, and building a few ports in Africa and South America don't change that. China hasn't a single friend among its neighbors, and I include both Russia and North Korea in that assessment. Rich countries are increasingly united against China's economic belligerency. And even poor countries that were the supposed beneficiaries of Xi's Belt and Road initiative have turned against him when their loans came due.

China is unquestionably powerful and ascendant, but it's also alone and struggling. Once you account for that, "on the fence" over the Chinese threat is probably about the right place to be.

88 thoughts on “On the fence over China

  1. Brett

    One caveat I'd stick on that Chinese provincial GDP map is that it doesn't show how many people live in the richer coastal areas versus the poorer inland areas. The official figures are likely under-estimating the number of people in the coastal cities and over-estimating those in the inland provinces, since it can be hard for Chinese workers to get the proper permits to work in the cities (they do so anyways, but it leaves them ineligible for a lot of stuff and they don't get counted in polls).

    In any case, China is big enough that you could potentially have a group of middle- or even relatively high-income workers in the hundreds of millions even with far deeper poverty elsewhere.

    Fertility rates have been dropping worldwide, but China's decline has been truly extraordinary. Taken together, these two trends point to some kind of serious disillusionment among China's young people. I have no idea what's behind it, but it's real.

    To varying degrees, we're seeing the same issue in all the East Asian countries - South Korea has the lowest rate, followed by China (if you can trust it), Taiwan, and then Japan.

    There's some factors they share with other countries getting rich and having reduced fertility rates, but I think the ultra-low rates there have to do with ultra-competitive parenting/education - this really pushes Chinese parents to go for just 1 child (rarely 2) and put all their resources and time into him or her to succeed, or delay parenting until they're on a secure foundation to do that. There's also a stronger stigma against single motherhood, so you don't really get a lot of women deciding to just have kids with a donor/etc or a boyfriend and then raise them with or without his parental support with their parents' help.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      The official figures are likely under-estimating the number of people in the coastal cities and over-estimating those in the inland provinces

      Probably not by much. Official PRC population figures reflect all residents—not merely those who possess household registration (hukou) status. Guangdong (to take the most famous example) is home to 125 million people, but about half of those persons do not possess local hukous. But they're still counted. Moreover, China is now seeing a significant exodus back to the provinces, as many migrants to the big cities tire of relentless pressure, poor living conditions, and the high cost of living.

      https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099602108162412425/pdf/IDU1d58697991d4e1140131b82117feee15cb1e7.pdf

      https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-migration-rural-return-xi-economy-11605632518

    2. Art Eclectic

      Tom Nichols just posted the other day an amazing Vlog on the declining birth rate issue and the crackpots it is attracting. Very, very worth your time - especially as Musk and Vance are big proponents of Pronatalism.

      I think there's a better answer than banning birth control or making women property again, and that answer has to do with higher taxes and reduced economic gain so we can afford to take proper care of the old people.

      https://youtu.be/J4Xhx4BH-qA?si=OyN85TJtejlH3DpS

      1. Anandakos

        But "higher taxes" directly hurt the TechBro Caucus that Musk and JDV lead, while making women property again gives them the greater possibilities for "stress-relief" that owning a harim provides. Not to mention that being a Baby Daddy has a lot of Street Cred these days, though there does not seem to be any responsibilities imputed to the role.

        So it seems clear what the Bros will opt for.

        1. lawnorder

          There are enough women out there who are prepared to do pretty much anything for about the pay of a skilled tradesman that any billionaire who wants a harem can simply hire one. It's not necessary to make women property.

  2. JohnH

    As a follow-up, it'd be great to see Kevin's take on Thomas Friedman's Sunday column, which both is and is not similar.

    He sees two trends in China. With top-down decision making and without an inherited strong past economy that gives political weight and inertia to expiring industries, it has, he argues, invested whole hog in electric vehicles and, more dangerous for others, their supply chain. China can also, he says, order longer work weeks and longer hours, in effect lowering wages. Which Friedman marvels at and cheers on as a model for us all. Looking for a memorable punch line like the distorted metaphor of a flat earth that made him a media star, he names the combined first trend after Elon Musk (as if Tesla and now Space X ever made lots of money).

    His second trend is a drawback: without decent wages and with a small sector to cater to consumers, there's nothing else to the economy. Oh, and youth unemployment. For this, he comes up with the second half of his new catch phrase, Taylor Swift. (Huh?)

    Is he right, and what does it bode for the future? I'd love to hear Kevin say. Or maybe we're all on the fence. (BTW, he mentions Vietnam, but it doesn't show on any of the graphs.)

      1. cld

        He's like a snort of David Broder's corpse dust, a sip of not too strong chamomile tea and some toast with a crazy dab of jam right in the middle no one will complain about.

      2. JohnH

        Just to be clear, I wasn't defending or even recommending Friedman. I tried in fact to make fun of him.

        But I mentioned him for two other reasons. First, his dichotomy does have a bit in common with Kevin's. And second, it's an opportunity, I hoped, for Kevin to criticize him. Together, it has me asking just what is going on. Of course, whether to address him is entirely up to Kevin.

    1. lawnorder

      I don't know about Friedman but the news indicates that China is trying to grow domestic consumption so they can be less dependent on exports as a market. That calls for increasing wages and easy credit.

      1. ey81

        Today's WSJ suggests that Xi considers most western consumption as wasteful extravagance, and doesn't want China to go down that path.

  3. Andrew

    I would be suspicious of any employment numbers direct from the gov't of China. I've read of unofficial numbers above 25% for youth unemployment. There's a term recently coined by young people in China — "lying flat" — about giving up the 996 (9-9, 6 days a week) work lifestyle.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      I had to chuckle when I red that last sentence, about the 996 work lifestyle. In the USA, that characterizes a lot of the top-tier up-and-coming young graduates:

      o Johns Hopkins Med School grads who got their first choice residency,
      o Harvard Law grads who got their first-choice associate position,
      o Wharton MBA's who got their first-choice associate position.

      Try selling them on the idea of "slow down, smell the flowers."

      1. FrankM

        It's not just those groups. They're just the most extreme examples. There is a Calvinist mentality in the US that drives people to work way too hard and to assume that if you're not rich, it's your own fault for being lazy.

        1. Anandakos

          Well if you're talking "rich" sure. Most Richie Rich's started on Third Base.

          But if you're talking "Upper Middle Class" [i.e. "Professionals"], a dedication to working hard is needed from Pre-K onward, regardless whether your folks are professionals or not. UMC parents can buy tutoring, but if the kid is lazy, the kid won't "make it" into the professional elite him or herself.

          Not everything can be purchased, except by the ultra-rich, who produce a small fraction of children. At least, nowadays they do, though Musky takes it as a personal challenge to change the demographic success of the very rich.

      2. Austin

        Is 9-9-6 something to be envied or copied? It sounds like something from the pre-WWI era. Working 12 hours a day 6 days a week sounds absolutely horrible, like "lost an arm in the machinery because I was too tired to pay attention to what I was doing" horrible... and I for one am glad that US law (at least in the blue states) generally prohibits this for most workers.

      3. TheMelancholyDonkey

        People who graduate from Johns Hopkins medical school, Harvard Law School, or Wharton are in an entirely different position Chinese young adults giving up on the 996 lifestyle. Comparing them in any way makes no sense.

        That set of Americans are paid at rates more than an order of magnitude higher than the Chinese you're comparing them to. They are focused on jobs that they have been highly motivated to achieve from a much younger age; this is what they want to do. And we're talking about a much smaller percentage of American young adults than we are about the Chinese.

  4. Jasper_in_Boston

    on most metrics they're still well behind the US—and even further behind if you count US allies.

    We'll be lucky to have a single ally left by the time the Orange Bad Man leaves office. He's an absolute fucking moron when it comes to geopolitics. Like, in any normal tabulation of national strengths, "allies" would traditionally be at or near number one for the US. Outside of Russia, who has Xi got in his corner? But the US, man, is a different story. Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Israel....these are what you call allies.

    Our myriad alliances are the crown jewels of US geopolitical and diplomatic strength. Trump thinks they're burdens. I couldn't possibly hate him more.

    1. iamr4man

      “I couldn't possibly hate him more.”
      Every time I think this he comes up with a new reason to “hate him more”. There is no limit to the depths of his depravity and the lower (and more idiotic) he goes the more people seem to like him.

      1. Jasper_in_Boston

        Nope. My stay is ending. I'm getting out before the inauguration. Not worth the personal risk. Things are too unpredictable.

        1. CAbornandbred

          If you come to the US, stick to the coasts. Our rural areas in the center of the country aren't exactly brimming with good cheer.

          1. rick_jones

            Yes, well if we want the center of the country to start having good cheer we need to reverse the drain to the coasts. So while I am not volunteering (my SWMBO is unwilling to retire to the Jones Ancestral Land in SW Kentucky), at the very least we need to stop discouraging others.

  5. rick_jones

    At the moment, [wherever] simply doesn't seem to have designs on any territory it doesn't already consider its own.

    Isn't that something of a tautology?

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      I mean, there's a difference between (1) low-level disputes with neighbors over a few islands here and there (or the precise demarcation of borders), and (2) a desire or intention to engage in the conquest of subjugation of other nations, Hitler-style. A lot of people (Noah Smith is a good example) interpret Xi as wanting the latter. But I reckon Kevin is more right than Smith on this question, though even the "non conquest" interpretation is dangerously destabilizing, and could spark an incident (or, in the case of Taiwan, a world war). But historically, the Chinese Empire was more involved in exacting tribute than in wholesale conquest.

    2. Batchman

      "What's more, aside from Taiwan, China has virtually no capacity to project power beyond its immediate borders"? Sure. Because it's not trying to go beyond its own boundaries; it's trying to redefine those boundaries (the maritime ones) and stake claims to those maritime regions.

  6. Reverent

    Militarily speaking, the military age population is now mostly comprised of young adults who are solo children due to the One Child policy. Trying to send the only family heirs off to a war of aggression could easily topple the government - people become dangerous when they have nothing else left to lose.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      Xi doesn't ask the public when he wants to do something. He just does it. That's the nice thing about being a dictator. Also, China doesn't conscript its soldiers—it's all volunteer at this point, and that needs to be taken into consideration. Finally, the notion that casualties would prompt the regime to collapse seems like wishful thinking. I mean, Putin doesn't seem to be in any trouble. Why would Xi, especially if he succeeds in conquering Taiwan? It's the latter part that's the real risk for Xi: an invasion of Taiwan might not succeed. I believe a failed invasion would indeed represent an existential threat to CCP rule.

      But if it succeeds? Getting a couple hundred thousands soldiers killed would be drowned out by the ticker tape.

      1. golack

        Putin is getting his soldiers from the hinterlands to send into the meat grinder--promising their families a lot of money (relatively speaking) should the soldier die in combat.

        1. rick_jones

          I wonder how that compares to the $10,000 life insurance available ti GIs during the WWII era? North of $200,000 inflation-adjusted.

        2. lawnorder

          As well as the substantial death benefits, Russian Army recruits also get significant signing bonuses and very good, by Russian standards, pay.

      2. Chondrite23

        What does success in conquering Taiwan look like? If there was an invasion all of the technology and money would disappear in hours. Whatever technology was left would not be supported by the world. China would see severe sanctions, at least for a while, leading to massive unemployment. For what? It is a small amount of territory. Compared to the bloodless conquest of Hong Kong there would be little benefit, except for being able to plant the flag there, and a huge downside in economic disruption. Beside that what happens when missiles start landing in Chinese port cities blowing up that carefully build infrastructure?

        Moreover, China imports a lot of food. When the sanctions include cutting of shipment of grain to China how will the Chinese people react?

        1. Jasper_in_Boston

          When the sanctions include cutting of shipment of grain to China how will the Chinese people react?

          That's one reason Xi so highly prioritizes his relationship with Putin: Russia is a non blockade-able source of calories and hydrocarbons for China, and isn't likely to participate in US-led sanctions. Moreover (and quite scarily in my view), intelligence agencies have for some time now been buzzing about what is apparently an utterly massive project in China to store vast quantities of critical supplies such a wheat, rice, soybeans, oil, iron ore and so on. It certainly looks like the regime is preparing for war:

          https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/why-is-china-stockpiling-key-resources/

          (While I mostly agree with Kevin's take here, if I have one or two quibbles, one of them would be the part about Taiwan. I fear Kevin—and perhaps the Taiwanese—are a bit too blasé about the possibility of a cross-strait war.)

  7. skeptonomist

    Which fence is Kevin on? There are lots of issues with respect to China and different responses may be called for. But globalization and the takeover of manufacturing by China is something that rational US politicians and economists should be addressing seriously now. This takeover is ongoing. Up to now the Chinese have left the global automotive market and even the Chinese domestic market alone, and the US domestic car industry has been protected in various ways - quotas, tariffs and bailouts. But now the Chinese are obviously aiming to dominate that market as cars go electric. This is a big opportunity for continuing their overall strategy of relying on exports.

    Insofar as the Trump administration trade policy will be rational at all, it will be aimed at increasing the profits of US corporations. Trump's "populistic" promises are worth nothing. If US corporations and capitalists think they can get more profits by investing in Chinese car manufacturing, that's what the US will do. Trump's tariffs may devolve into mostly empty threats.

    If manufacturing is abandoned completely by the US what we will have is a service economy - that is mostly financial services. The profits will go to those who control the capital and the "working class" will be doing low-paid jobs service jobs that can't be outsourced. This is the way things have been trending for a long time.

  8. rick_jones

    China's navy is technically larger than ours, but we lead substantially in cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers. You might reasonably wonder what else there is, and it turns out the answer is that China has lots and lots of frigates, corvettes, and auxiliaries.

    Auxiliaries - are things like logistical ships included in that bucket?

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      More fundamentally, the US Navy patrols the world. The PLA Navy is concentrated in the Western Pacific. China doesn't need to match the US in global naval tonnage (or anything else) to even the playing field—and possibly enjoy an advantage—in a battlefield of its own choosing.

      1. painedumonde

        Even more fundamental is that our Navy was specifically designed to fight a missile war while protecting carriers. PLA Navy has sidestepped that almost entirely. Probably unintentionally, they have also developed a drone fleet. Large, crewed, expensive, and numerous. Basically missile sponges (sorry OHP lovers). While a murderous tactic to your own sailors, it will win an attrition fight and our loathing of the loss of any capital ship.

      2. FrankM

        But the US Navy can divert as much of its resources to any theater it wishes at any time. It might not be instantaneous, but the "even playing field" would certainly be short-lived.

        1. rick_jones

          It would be far from instantaneous.

          The timely deployment of US Navy vessels depends on the viability of a couple canals - Suez and Panama. Certainly from the East Coast to the Pacific. Yet while the rest of the battle group could transit the Panama Canal, the carriers themselves don't seem to be able to. And while it could certainly haul ass alone around Tierra del Fuego, that would be several thousand miles (10 or twelve) more distance. And probably several fast attack subs playing leap-frog with it to make sure no-one is lurking beneath the waves to take a pot-shot or three. Which would likely mean it couldn't haul that much ass.

          Can go around South Africa, but your approach to Taiwan would be through some lovely choke points Indonesia et al way. Even hugging the northwest coast of Australia.

          https://sea-distances.org puts just Darwin Australia 18 days sailing from Norfolk at 30 knots going around the Cape of Good Hope. The carrier could probably sustain that, but I'd wonder about the escorts. (it puts it at 17 days via Suez)

          Even through the Panama Canal it is 16 days from Norfolk to Manilla at 30 knots.

          That is a long time when Taiwan is just a hundred or so miles from the mainland.

          1. TheMelancholyDonkey

            American aircraft carriers cannot transit the Panama Canal, but they can go through the Suez Canal, which doesn't have any locks.

        2. Jasper_in_Boston

          But the US Navy can divert as much of its resources to any theater it wishes at any time.

          I don't think so: our carriers, for starters, are widely acknowledged to be sitting ducks if they're moved too far into the western pacific. A single lucky missile strike and poof—there goes tens of billions of kit and human resources. It just super cheap and super easy (for China, at least) to mass produce utterly gigantic numbers of SSMs/GSMs/ASMs/drones. Again, they only need one lucky strike to obliterate a US capital ship.

          In my view the US should have jettisoned its prioritization of huge surface vessels about twenty years ago. I hope I'm wrong and Pentagon planners are right.

          1. lawnorder

            Short of using nuclear warheads, you can't "obliterate" an aircraft carrier, or any other naval vessel except the very small ones, with a single hit. Naval vessels, even though they no longer carry heavy armor, are designed to tolerate quite a bit of combat damage. They have to be beaten to death with repeated strikes; one missile or torpedo hit is not ordinarily going to even seriously discommode a carrier, much less "obliterate" it.

  9. rick_jones

    This is a measure of a country's capability to produce goods and services. China has made impressive strides, but the US still ranks highest in the world.

    Exactly how is that measured? And how much of the line for the US is from "and services?"

    I would think some of Kevin's (in)famous trend lines would be in order.

  10. Justin

    If Xi really wants Taiwan, he should buy it from trump (or musk). Surely there is a price point at which he looks the other way.

  11. aaall1

    "Aside from Korea in the '50s and Vietnam very briefly in the '70s..."
    "This has produced border clashes with India; repression of Tibet..."

    With Tibet invasion, occupation, and annexation might be a more apt way to describe matters. Besides that we also have incursions into Nepal and Bhutan.

  12. FrankM

    I've been around long enough to recall when everyone was fear-mongering about Japan. Rehash all that, substituting "China" for "Japan" and everything old is new again.

  13. azumbrunn

    I agree with most of the analysis here. But the idea that China only is belligerent about territory that it considers its own is bizarre. The UK does not consider India as its own territory any more, even less the USA. But China considers the South China Sean its "territory" even though there is not even any territory there; they had to construct artificial islands to just make the claim.

    China's rhetoric is certainly quite belligerent when it comes to any piece of land (or sea) that once belonged to China. Same as Putin's by the way.

  14. KenSchulz

    Manufacturing is declining as a fraction of overall economic output, but it is in no sense “dying”. The importance of manufacturing is widely misunderstood — it is not because ‘it pays high wages’; that is important, but is only due to the focus of the early labor movement on organizing factory workers (as well as miners).
    The real importance of manufacturing is that the transformation of physical materials into useful products demands the broadest understanding of the natural world; it drives advances in sciences and engineering. As a now-retired practitioner of engineering psychology and industrial ergonomics, I benefited from the contributions to our understanding of human capabilities and limitations, physiological and cognitive, deriving from the need to improve safety and efficiency in production systems.

    1. lawnorder

      To put it more simply, people want "stuff". The services sector is expanding much faster than the goods producing sector, but the market for goods is NOT shrinking; the demand for manufactured "stuff" continues to rise.

      1. KenSchulz

        Yes. And because productivity improvements have been greater for goods than for services, the economic value of goods grows more slowly than that of services. Hence it declines as a proportion of total output.

  15. Bluto_Blutarski

    "They really don't seem to be an expansionist power."

    They're not the ones threatening to annex Canada, invade Panama, and acquire Greenland. So compared to the current regime in the USA, they're angels.

  16. golack

    I fear that the more troubles China has at home, the more likely Xi will try to invade Taiwan.
    As for the US response--I read an article (alas, not sure where I found it) saying the US would just flood the straight with drones. What utter nonsense. It seems as the US military is stuck in the Desert Storm days where we had Reapers and no one else had anything.

    1. ColBatGuano

      I'm not sure how successful an invasion of Taiwan would be. In this day and age could a huge amphibious fleet actually survive?

      1. TheMelancholyDonkey

        In addition to the question of whether the invasion fleet would survive, there's also the question of whether the Chinese can successfully manage the first amphibious invasion in the thousands of years of Chinese history with no practice. Even more, can the successfully manage the most complex and largest amphibious invasion in anyone's history with no experience.

        That distinction currently goes to the invasion of Normandy, but that had a lot of advantages that an invasion of Taiwan does not. By June, 1944, the Allies had spent a year and a half establishing complete air supremacy and five years establishing complete naval supremacy. The Chinese will, at best, be in the process of doing so, and, at worst, failing to do so.

        Most of the landing beaches in Normandy were over level terrain. The exception was Omaha, which almost became a total disaster because of 150 foot bluffs behind the beach. There aren't many beaches suitable for a landing on Taiwan, and the ones that are there are backed by bluffs 3-5 times as high as those at Omaha.

        At Normandy, there weren't numerous isles off shore of the beaches that the Germans could honeycomb with tunnels and site a lot of artillery commanding the approaches to the beaches. In Taiwan, there are. Any sane Chinese plan would involve capturing those islets one by one, with the ships involved remaining exposed to shore fire the whole time.

        And possibly most importantly, the Chinese won't be invading Tarawa eight months prior, learning many invaluable lessons about how to survive getting from the landing craft and fighting when their strategic depth is measured in feet rather than miles.

        I'm not saying that the Chinese can't succeed at an invasion of Taiwan, but I put their chances of success at well under 50%. Amphibious invasions are hard, even against an outmatched foe.

        1. KenSchulz

          Thanks, a well-stated case. I would add that the fate of the Russian Black Sea Fleet should prompt some serious reservations about an invasion of Taiwan. It calls the military-spending disparity into question — antiship missiles are much less expensive than ships. The greatest asymmetry is however in the risk to personnel — missiles and drone boats can be launched by small, mobile teams; very difficult to target. I also think the chances of failure would be quite high.

        2. lawnorder

          China did try to launch an amphibious invasion once before, some centuries ago. The target was Japan and the Chinese fleet was largely destroyed by a major storm, known in Japan as "the divine wind" or "kamikaze".

  17. cld

    Population decline reflects confidence that the future will be at about the same level of comfort as now. Things may seem iffy, or teetering on the edge, but always in a distant way and underneath it all the future looks ok for most, so ok that they needn't hedge their bets with multiple offspring.

    The people concerned with declining population are really concerned about a future without a permanent state of existential conflict, so they try to find one where they can.

  18. OldFlyer

    Militarily they have a big plus. We'll be fighting in THEIR back yard.

    But probably no fight at all. Unless Tubby is advised we don't have enough chips, he'll give Taiwan away in a heartbeat. Maybe an advisor will grow a pair and tell the king what he NEEDS to hear. Yeah, my thought too- "Yo Taiwan, go find a nice spot under the bus next to Ukraine"

    1. KJK

      Orange Jesus (and his South African puppet master), would trade away Taiwan for a few hotels, golf courses, and Tesla factory or 2 on the Mainland. Perhaps throw in a few more trademark concessions for Ivanka, assume he is still talking to her.

  19. Goosedat

    Americans reveal their complete subjectivity to capitalist authority by accepting the aggression of the US against China as a means to 'defend' American primacy. At least Drum recognizes China has no designs on military adventurism. Unlike the US, which wastes its surpluses on pursuing global supremacy, China is a generation ahead of the US in 5G utilization, deployed solar power, electric vehicle adoption, and rejection of billionator interference with governance. Soon China will be several generations ahead of the US. America should be China's most enthusiastic partner instead of its greatest nemesis.

  20. name99

    "Its vast interior is still desperately poor:"

    Yes and no. It may be unproductive, but it is astonishing how much, and how fast, China is building infrastructure in those poor parts. Visit eg Tibet or Sichuan and you'll see astonishing infrastructure (power lines, highways, high speed rail) everywhere, even across terrifying mountains and valleys.
    Even in the poorest parts of the countryside you see both this heavy duty infrastructure AND on-the ground improvements (eg the nice-ish new house next to the hovel that used to be the house ten years ago and now holds the pigs and the tractor).

    The modern world is simply astonishing in what it can produce, and how fast it can produce it, when it's allowed to do so. We saw a version of this in the Trente Glorieuses across post-war Europe, but China has done far far better.

    Naturally in anything happening so fast, you can find cause to complain, and mistakes. but mostly it's legit. Most western visitors to china only see the top-tier cities, but it's equally impressive below that, second and third tier cites, AND the countryside.

    The one thing I have not seen (maybe one day...) is their deserts. IMHO the real proof that the US is ahead of everyone else is that we have conquered our deserts. Not only do we have grand cities in the middle of nowhere with magnificent highways between them, but this is all so common place that no-one considers it a dangerous expedition to enter our deserts. if two eighteen year olds want to drive to Vegas from LA, it's not big deal. No-one else (except China???) has conquered their deserts that way. (And the US has not achieved total dominion! Alaska is still the enemy, the missing its grand cities and highways, still treating a winter road trip from Alaska to Fairbanks as something serious to prepare for. Well, that's our project for the 21st Century...)

    As for what happened, Xi happened. Not that he became General Secretary, but that he became God Emperor, reminding everyone that the 40 years or so from Mao to his deification had not, in fact, fundamentally changed China, and it was perhaps foolish to be optimistic that they were headed on the US trajectory.

    Even so (and I bow to no-one in my contempt for Xi) don't misunderstand what's happening in China. For example what you call "dream of panopticon surveillance and the Great Firewall to keep his people under tight control" is in some sense true, but has different goals from what you might expect. It's not to achieve Stalin-style rewriting the past, or even keeping current facts out of circulation. There are, for example, plenty of foreigners in China, and it's more or less trivial for a foreigner to avoid all this stuff, and then, if they care, tell some locals about whatever particular fact is of interest.
    The real concern is to prevent society fracturing the way they believe the US has fractured over the past 20 years or so with no generally agreed upon narrative, or even "goal of society". You can lay that at the feet of GWB, or at the feet of Woke, that's uninteresting, what's more important is that the end of the Era of Mainstream Media, replaced by the Era of Social Media has also meant the end of Manufacturing Consent. The higher-ups in China (and this includes plenty of people who disagree with Xi, and plenty of people who have made lots of money and frequently visit the west) consider this a dangerous situation that can play out who knows how?
    Will the US be in permanent civil war for the next century? Will idea clusters evolve, median-voter-theorem style, to entrench two polities equal in size but finding more and more reasons every year to hate each other? Will the US never be able to achieve anything important again because there will be no way to generate an agreement that it IS important?
    China looks at all this and is taking a wary stance, IMHO for good reason.

    1. ColBatGuano

      "but this is all so common place that no-one considers it a dangerous expedition to enter our deserts. if two eighteen year olds want to drive to Vegas from LA, it's not big deal."

      I remember when driving across the Mojave was considered extremely hazardous and you were advised to bring water for consumption and the radiator.

      1. name99

        Right.
        But nowadays the combination of cell phones and the amount of traffic (easy to flag down another car) make this much less true.

        Of course you can still kill yourself if you're determined to do so, but as I said the contrast is with deserts in other countries, or with Alaska, where that "safety" infrastructure, including cell phone towers and amount of traffic doesn't yet exist.

    2. TheMelancholyDonkey

      All of that infrastructure has created at least one, massive, problem. Due to the loans necessary to make it happen, as well as the loans to enormously overbuild housing, the Chinese banking system is probably insolvent.

  21. Cycledoc

    Military spending amounts do not take into account the efficiency of the organization. I would guess that while we outspend the Chinese and others we have more waste and inefficiency than all of the next ten countries combined. Just a guess from our inability to complete an audit of our defense expenditures and the high cost of our personnel and equipment compared to any other country. And so on.

    It's a little like our medical spending. Private corps main concern is their profits not efficiency.

    1. tango

      EXACTLY SO!

      On top of that, we spend a lot more in pay and benefits per soldier than China does. Additionally, our military retirement benefits are pretty generous and expensive. And we tend to tuck in some programs into our defense budget that are not 100% defense related.

      Along the same lines, South Korea can spend less on its troops because of conscription. Basically they are taxing their young men a couple years of their lives. If they had to pay their troops market value, they would be spending a LOT more.

      One military advantage we do have is that we have fought wars more recently than China has. It is rare for militaries who have not fought a war in a while to do things right the first time the missiles and bullets start flying.

      1. lawnorder

        Without actually disputing your last paragraph, I would like to point out a counterexample. Ukraine probably has a few aging Afghanistan veterans, but hasn't, up to 2022, fought a war since the collapse of the USSR. Russia on the other hand, has fought several brushfire wars in Georgia, Chechnaya, etc. Despite the Russian army's much greater recent combat experience, the Ukrainians appear to be substantially more effective fighters, and have been ever since the invasion started.

        1. name99

          It's REALLY hard to tell. Where can you find a discussion of the war from a professional point of view, and without some agenda?

          Everything I see in the media is clearly political (and not even interesting political, more along the lines of "here's why whatever happened today in the war shows that Trump and the Republicans are wrong"). And Twitter seems dominated by the crowd that may or may not understand weapon systems well, but certainly don't seem to have any real knowledge of strategy or anything beyond short term tactics.

          Right now is Russia winning or Ukraine? No idea. I can give you some clues as to how Russia is hurting from the war --- but enough to knock them out? And knock them out in 2025 vs in 2045? No idea.
          And how much is Ukraine suffering from the war? Again no idea; whether it's Ukraine limits on journalists or the MSM not wanting to "embolden the enemy" I've seen absolutely on this question.

          I think we don't even know what will bring a war like this to an end.

          A WW1 or WW2 like war ends when there is no productive capacity left. But as long as the US continues to supply Ukraine, and Ukraine has limited reach into Russia, that seems irrelevant.

          A war like Vietnam ends when propaganda manages to get one side to decide it's not worth it. But for Ukraine this is existential, and for Russia the propaganda can't really get in. This path COULD get the US to quit helping Ukraine, but I don't see that happening. (Again Trump Derangement Syndrome makes it difficult to see much intelligent analysis of how policies will change over the next year.)

          Another way things can end is when you simply run out of people. Grim but true. Not all people of course, but the specialists -- the pilots, the real soldiers, the radar experts and so on.
          Is either side close to that point? Again no idea.

        2. tango

          Fair point, although apparently the Ukrainian Army was fighting a low-level war against militia stiffened with some Russian forces since 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas) that helped some,
          and was receiving considerable US training (https://www.npr.org/2019/12/18/788874844/how-u-s-military-aid-has-helped-ukraine-since-2014). I had only vague knowledge of this and just googled this now.

          Historically, though, the Russian military almost always sucks at the beginning of a war; in peace they build for show and that bites them in the butt frequently at the beginning of the fighting. Oftentimes, eventually, they learn to fight through trial and error.

      2. TheMelancholyDonkey

        On top of that, we spend a lot more in pay and benefits per soldier than China does.

        And, as a consequence, those soldiers are a lot better trained than their Chinese counterparts.

        There is a huge drawback to conscripting large hordes of underpaid troops. They are not just cheap, the generals treat them as having little value and spend them wastefully.

        One military advantage we do have is that we have fought wars more recently than China has. It is rare for militaries who have not fought a war in a while to do things right the first time the missiles and bullets start flying.

        It's not just that the Chinese haven't fought a war recently, it's that any invasion of Taiwan means that the first operation they're going to attempt is the most complex, both operationally and logistically, operation you can attempt, into terrain less suitable than almost any successful amphibious assault in history. About the comparable set of beaches invaded are at Salerno.. Gallipoli is also similar, and we saw how that went.

        It's doubtful that the Normandy invasion would have succeeded without the Tarawa landings in late 1943.

        1. Jasper_in_Boston

          About the comparable set of beaches invaded are at Salerno.. Gallipoli is also similar, and we saw how that went.

          Amphibious/airborne operations are inherently complex, without a doubt. And yet the challenges are well-known, and, consequently and perhaps not surprisingly, they succeed far more often than they fail. The key is simply to bring enough force (redundancy levels) to bear to absorb the inevitable losses. Since the early 20th century, there haven't been a lot of notable failures. Gallipoli (1915, Allies). Norway (1940, UK). Those are accompanied by one major failed airborne assault, Market Garden (Netherlands, 1944). Throw in the Bay of Pigs (1961) if you like. Anyway, these are vastly outnumbered by the myriad successes over the years using seaborne and airborne forces:

          Shanghai (1937, China)
          Low Countries (1940, Germany)
          Crete (1941, Germany)
          Philippines (1941, Japan)
          Malay Peninsula (1941, Japan)
          SW Pacific (1941, Japan)
          Aleutian Islands (1941, Japan)
          Dutch West Indies (1941, Japan)
          Guadalcanal (1942, US)
          North Africa (1942, Allies)
          New Georgia (1943, US)
          Sicily (1943, US, UK)
          Aleutian Islands (1943, US)
          Bougainville (1943, US)
          New Guinea (1942-1945, US, Australia)
          Italy (1943, Allies)
          Tarawa, 1943 (US)
          Anzio (1944, US)
          Gilbert/Marshall Islands (1944, US)
          Crimea (1944, USSR)
          Marianas (1944, US)
          Normandy (1944, Allies)
          Operation Varsity (1945, Allies)
          Philippines (1944-1945, US)
          Peleliu, (1944, US)
          Iwo Jima (1945, US)
          Okinawa (1945, US)
          Hainan Island (1950, China)
          Incheon (1950, US)
          Falkland Islands (1982, UK)
          Grenada (1983, US)
          Panama (1989, US)

          While obviously there are no guarantees—an invasion of Taiwan by China could conceivably fail, sure—it seems a near certainly Xi wouldn't pull the trigger unless he's confident the PLA has achieved what successful invading forces generally need to pull off sea and airborne landings: overwhelming superiority.

          As one Taiwanese friend put it to me: victory means deterring the Chinese from invading. Defeat means failing to deter them.

          1. TheMelancholyDonkey

            And yet the challenges are well-known, and, consequently and perhaps not surprisingly, they succeed far more often than they fail.

            There is a vast difference between having some knowledge of the difficulties involved, and actually having experience working through those difficulties. China may have the former, but they have zero of the latter.

            The key is simply to bring enough force (redundancy levels) to bear to absorb the inevitable losses.

            Absolutely, 100% false. The key is to bring an enormous advantage in force, and knowing how to use that force. Without that knowledge, your huge advantage in force is going to be wasted with the various parts of that force being incapable of operating in sync with each other, or knowing how to succeed.

            A prime example of this failure in a significantly simpler operation was the failure of Ukraine's 2023 summer counteroffensive. NATO countries supplied them with significant quantities of advanced weaponry. But using those platforms effectively requires an ability to utilize combined arms tactics, with the artillery, the tanks, the IFVs, the engineering vehicles, and the dismounted infantry in ways that complement each other.

            What happened was that, despite some training by NATO, the Ukrainians simply couldn't put those tactics into practice. Each component of their force operated independently. The engineers moved out without proper overwatch, and completely bogged down in the minefields due to Russian fire. The tanks moved into minefields that hadn't been cleared yet. Ukrainian counterbattery fire, which had been very effective in defensive battles, wasn't able to coordinate with infantry assaults and didn't suppress Russian artillery in the attack zones. Everything bogged down.

            Military actions are hard. An amphibious invasion of Taiwan would probably be the most complex operation ever attempted. There is no substitute for the experience gained by performing less complex battles and working your way up. A Chinese attack on Taiwan would be jumping into the deep part of the ocean and trying to swim to shore.

            You provide a long list of amphibious assaults without really ascertaining whether or not they are particularly relevant to an invasion of Taiwan.

            At Shanghai in 1937, it wasn't just that the Japanese had superior forces. They came ashore against a force that had no heavy weaponry, little air support, and no navy to speak of. They practiced disastrous tactics, sitting in static positions without significant fortifications while the IJN blasted them into insignificance. The actual landings were almost unopposed.

            The German airborne attack on the Belgian forts is entirely irrelevant to this question. There was no amphibious component whatsoever. The airborne troops were relieved by infantry and armor in under 24 hours.

            Crete was a flaming disaster. The casualties among the airborne troops were so heavy that Hitler ordered that the Wehrmacht should never launch a significant airborne operation again. And, while they captured Crete, the large majority of the British and ANZAC forces successfully evacuated.

            The Japanese landings in the Philippines and Malaya were mostly unopposed. In both, the Allied commanders decided not to implement their previously drawn up plans. The only place there was opposition to the landings themselves was at Kota Bharu, where a single battalion of the 17th Dogras was covering 10 miles of coastline. The other Japanese forces actually landed in Thailand, the entire country of which promptly surrendered and became a Japanese ally.

            The same was largely true in the SW Pacific. Guam had a total garrison of about 400 troops, 3/4 of whom had no training and nothing but Springfield rifles. The US Navy had decided that the island was neither defensible nor of strategic value. The Japanese attacked with about 6,000 naval infantry and resistance collapsed quickly.

            Wake was a different story. The initial Japanese landings were a failure, as they were beaten off by the small force of US Marines. They came back two weeks later with a lot more force and succeeded.

            Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians were undefended.

            Almost all of the beaches assaulted in the Dutch East Indies were, again, undefended. At Miri, the British troops destroyed the oil fields and evacuated. The landings on Brunei were opposed by 650 policemen without military training.

            You then provide a lengthy list of Allied amphibious attacks without recognizing that they actually support my point. The initial landings on Guadalcanal were unopposed, but some useful experience in logistics was gained. The Torch landings in North Africa were a complete and utter clusterfuck, that succeeded only because the French defenders didn't really feel like fighting.

            From there, the Allied invasions became larger and more complex. The attacks in the Solomon Islands were pretty small scale at first, growing until Bougainville. Each was successful because the Americans didn't try to do too much until they had experience. The landings in Sicily were opposed only by scattered Italian units whose hearts weren't in the fight.

            On New Guinea, MacArthur's approach was to find the areas that the Japanese only minimally defended in order to cut off between American forces. Salerno was the first Allied landings that were seriously opposed, and it was a near run thing. Anzio was a total failure; the troops got ashore against limited resistance and then were entirely bottled up.

            By November, 1943, when Tarawa was attacked, the US Marines and Army had extensive experience with amphibious assaults. It was still extremely expensive, due to a failure to properly account for the reef, which left the Marines wading through chest high water for a mile before they reached the sea wall, where they died in huge numbers. Had Alexander Vandergrift not exercised his own initiative prior to the attack and bought every amphibious tractor in New Zealand, it likely would have failed.

            A lot of lessons were learned. One was the importance of planning for how to get troops from the landing craft to the beach. Another was that the assault troops had to be conditioned to remain functional when their units suffered more than 50% casualties in the first minutes, as the initial waves at Tarawa went into shock and cowered behind the sea wall for several hours. (The Marines ended up being very angry with the Army for not taking this seriously, and then the same thing happened at Omaha Beach. The Marines were convinced that, if the Army had actually listened, it wouldn't have been nearly as costly.)

            So, this list of invasions demonstrate the critical importance of gaining experience in smaller, less complex, and less opposed invasions before attempting bigger invasions against more prepared defenses. Which was exactly my point.

            The Chinese have none of that experience, and seemingly want to jump straight into the most complex military operation in history. There's no reason to think that they will be anywhere close to prepared if they launch it.

            it seems a near certainly Xi wouldn't pull the trigger unless he's confident the PLA has achieved what successful invading forces generally need to pull off sea and airborne landings: overwhelming superiority.

            Their is a vast difference between Xi thinking that the PLA has the necessary resources and experience to successfully invade Taiwan, and the PLA actually having the necessary resources and experience. His judgment in all sorts of fields has been, at best, spotty on these sorts of questions. He, himself, has no significant military experience, and he runs a state in which officials have a lot of incentive to tell him what he wants to hear rather than the truth. And he very much wants to hear that the PLA is capable of invading Taiwan.

            As one Taiwanese friend put it to me: victory means deterring the Chinese from invading. Defeat means failing to deter them.

            This is true in the sense that even a failed invasion would be immensely destructive to Taiwan.

    2. TheMelancholyDonkey

      I would guess that while we outspend the Chinese and others we have more waste and inefficiency than all of the next ten countries combined.

      If your claim is that Chinese military spending is more efficient, then you don't understand much about China. The amount of graft built into every major government project is staggering. It dwarfs the graft of American oligarchs.

  22. D_Ohrk_E1

    Ooh. Now do India. Geopolitical friend or foe? Concern or not at all bothered?

    I think countries that are massive in geographical area make for authoritarian-leaning governments in search of monoculturalism as a response to the difficulties of managing people separated by thousands of miles from several distinctly different cultures. In this sense, we'd resemble China if the US were ruled by White Fascists.

    Thank goodness for federalism and the tension of power between national and local.

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