Cold War, The Reimagined Series

[futon]

While the PRC getting Taiwan places it on better strategic position in geopolitical the other risk is the low fertility rate. It's something to not want in so much control of the government. So speaking of it in terms of not as policy but as health of the country. A 2.0 fertility rate is a healthy rate so long as population hasn't grown to an unhealthy size. Economy size, potential capacity for share in wide range of industries, size of consumer markets is determined by population size. And so it's all relative to China's. Even if the PRC doesn't have Taiwan, if the economy ratio is like 8 to 1, it's still way too overmatching in geopolitical sphere. Inversely, if the PRC is going to drop from 1.4 billion tp 1.0 billion in the coming decades, but if Japan remains at roughly 120 million, then the GDP ratio can avoid falling towards something like 8 to 1 and be something like 4 to 1. So in all geopolitical fields, which includes Taiwan related matters, much more manageable. A healthy fertility rate brings many benefits. Maybe not thought of before, but life is generation to generation and births is part of that that continueum. So it's natural for the population being healthy in life is having the situation of the generation to generation process in a healthy status. But instead, it looks like an unhealthy rate will continue, and with 120 million, 110 million, 100, 90, 80, while trying to build defense at higher defense budget %. And GDP falls down the ranks. 5 to 6, 8, 10. Leave the global ever so less to Japan's role and entrust more to others. 

Edited June 9, 2024 by futon

[futon]

And a small population Japan was apparantly in the interests of some influential people like in the 1984 book:

Kissinger’s Prospect handbook for the elite corporate class revealed at least one ulterior reason why the Controligarchs seem hellbent on controlling population growth: less population equals fewer potential enemies. “Fortunately… [Japan’s] population increase brought under control,” the report says of the recent Axis enemy. The report spills considerable ink on the threat of growing (communist) populations.

So be it Imperial Japan or post-war Japan, keep Japan small. Of course, it would seem rediculous for people like him to have been a big factor of the dwindling fertility rate, but certainly he can claim its encouragement. 

https://www.tanknet.org/index.php?/topic/48533-henry-kissinger-died-good-riddance/

And so if Japan is able to bounce the fertility rate back up again, surely people like him still exists and so again, the population control people. 

Or make Japan less "Xenophobic" by immigrating more, maybe follow the sourh border example even, and just turn the place into another generic multi-culture role model, with disintegrated national identity.

 

 

Too many checks... just stuck.

 

[Ssnake]

And how exactly did Kissinger manage to reduce the fertility rate in dozens of industrializing countries? Maybe there's some other sociological effect in place that made it happen across the board as countries went through a general industrialization shift, rather than a vast conspiracy acting under dubious logic, and leaving no trace of their shenanigans whatsoever.

[futon]

1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

And how exactly did Kissinger manage to reduce the fertility rate in dozens of industrializing countries? Maybe there's some other sociological effect in place that made it happen across the board as countries went through a general industrialization shift, rather than a vast conspiracy acting under dubious logic, and leaving no trace of their shenanigans whatsoever.

"So be it Imperial Japan or post-war Japan, keep Japan small. Of course, it would seem rediculous for people like him to have been a big factor of the dwindling fertility rate, but certainly he can claim its encouragement. "

 

 

 

 

https://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pcaab500.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj-_tCQ5c2GAxXdk68BHcBAAtMQFnoECCYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3AyrDryJ1nW_7-mnnhD6o5

[Ssnake]

36 minutes ago, futon said:

"...but certainly he can claim its encouragement. "

Wow, what a crime. Of all the terrible things that Kissinger said or did, this wouldn't even make it on the list of petty thought crime.

Basically, he was guilty (like almost any other intellectual of the time) to let himself be influenced by Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, which played right into the Malthusian world view of so many.

[futon]

2 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Wow, what a crime. Of all the terrible things that Kissinger said or did, this wouldn't even make it on the list of petty thought crime.

Basically, he was guilty (like almost any other intellectual of the time) to let himself be influenced by Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, which played right into the Malthusian world view of so many.

Unfortunately, I don't have Kissinger’s Prospect handbook to provide further support.

[futon]

The Italian aircraft carrier Cavour left southern Italy for the Indo-Pacific region on Saturday. The vessel is scheduled to make its first-ever port call in Japan in late August as part of efforts to strengthen security cooperation between the two countries.

Sources close to Italy's navy say the ship set out on the voyage from the port of Taranto.

It is scheduled to visit Australia and some other countries before arriving in Japan.

The carrier was commissioned in 2008. It is 244 meters long and can carry 12 helicopters or 8 attack aircraft.

The vessel can also accommodate wheeled and tracked land vehicles, and has been dispatched for disaster-relief efforts in the past.

In recent years, European countries have made a series of moves to strengthen their involvement in the Indo-Pacific region with China's increasing maritime activities in mind.

Britain and France have sent aircraft carriers and other warships to the region. Germany plans to send its Navy and Air Force to the area this summer.

In 2023, Italy's state-of-the-art patrol vessel made a port call in Japan.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240602_02/

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[Argus]

On 10/17/2020 at 2:25 PM, KV7 said:

In 30-40 years time China's economy will be so large that replacing any obsolete ships in a new construction wave will be a triviality. They likely think they need them quickly too, as the critical period for them is the next few decades. Once the Chinese economy is about double that of the US, they will probably be safe from all but a massive nuclear strike on their cities, and by that time the US would be crippled too (leaving aside the possibility of a US attack triggering Russian launch on warning). Certainly the US would be mad to play a Cold War arms race game against a much larger economy and so one factor limiting US bellicosity is that it could push China into a large strategic buildup, something they have so far shown remarkable restraint in avoiding.

Ahh how quickly things go....

[KV7]

3 hours ago, Argus said:

Ahh how quickly things go....

Yes, we moved into the critical period rather fast, and got some madness, bellicosity, and arms race to go along with it.

Still, Chinese military expenditure is well below what it could be pushed to before economic and political constraints are an issue, so the arms race is very much not as bad as it could be.

[glenn239]

8 hours ago, KV7 said:

Still, Chinese military expenditure is well below what it could be pushed to before economic and political constraints are an issue, so the arms race is very much not as bad as it could be.

The current G7 plan appears to be to spark a trade war they cannot win with China, presumably in order for the Chinese to switch their then-surplus civilian production to military production. 

[Josh]

4 hours ago, glenn239 said:

The current G7 plan appears to be to spark a trade war they cannot win with China, presumably in order for the Chinese to switch their then-surplus civilian production to military production. 

The G7 wants to shield its industries from Chinese export dumping from subsidized industries. That’s hardly inciting a trade war. I also question how much the electric car industry could be converted to military production.

[Argus]

20 hours ago, KV7 said:

Still, Chinese military expenditure is well below what it could be pushed to before economic and political constraints are an issue, so the arms race is very much not as bad as it could be.

That's not what the commercial press is saying about the Chinese economy, rather the reverse actually. In 2020 you were taking about a Chinese economy twice the size of the US.  Today its looking to be more a question of how much of an economy will they have left in a decade. Internal debt crisis, population squeeze, falling competitiveness, falling internal demand, China is losing its edge's and has squandered a lot of its gains. 

[Josh]

It minimally seems unlikely that China has twice the U.S. economy ever. Even if you assume China’s numbers are real, which seems in itself questionable, it seems likely its economy only achieves rough parity in the near to medium term. And unless productivity is almost completely divorced from population, the long term prospects are rather grim.

Edited June 18, 2024 by Josh

[futon]

Westerners be fooled by their own media who work for those that want to make money in China and care not about China's military capability.

If China is going through economic hardship, I'll believe it to be so when their military buildup slows down.

Anyone that says that they are against PRC expansion via military augmenting policies but still blindly believes MSM and choices to not closely track the PRC's military buildup, nor value and take an intetest in the activity of closely tracking PRC military buildup so that be able to discern directly from what is evident as to whether or not the build up is truely slowing down, is not really against PRC expansion via military augmenting policies. A westerner that is fake in being for "western values". There are many of them. 

[Josh]

36 minutes ago, futon said:

Westerners be fooled by their own media who work for those that want to make money in China and care not about China's military capability.

If China is going through economic hardship, I'll believe it to be so when their military buildup slows down.

Anyone that says that they are against PRC expansion via military augmenting policies but still blindly believes MSM and choices to not closely track the PRC's military buildup, nor value and take an intetest in the activity of closely tracking PRC military buildup so that be able to discern directly from what is evident as to whether or not the build up is truely slowing down, is not really against PRC expansion via military augmenting policies. A westerner that is fake in being for "western values". There are many of them. 

A country can have a military buildup without an ever increasing GDP. The Soviet Union comes to mind.

I think the current PRC military buildup is an attempt to establish control before the negative pressure on China’s economy can take effect, which should not comfort anyone.

Edited June 18, 2024 by Josh

[futon]

3 minutes ago, Josh said:

A country can have a military buildup without an ever increasing GDP. The Soviet Union comes to mind.

I think the current PRC military buildup is an attempt to establish control before the negative pressure on China’s economy can take effect, which shot comfort anyone.

There's is no relaxing until the actual military build up does indeed slow. 

The calls about "China will collapse" has been exhausted.. e.i. Gordan Chiang. 

China didn't collpase. They got 2 to 3 times bigger. 

People that think China is going to slow down because of demographics are fooling themselves. 

When the military buildup slows down, and stops, then I'll conclude with yeah  the economic broke.

[Josh]

43 minutes ago, futon said:

There's is no relaxing until the actual military build up does indeed slow. 

The calls about "China will collapse" has been exhausted.. e.i. Gordan Chiang. 

China didn't collpase. They got 2 to 3 times bigger. 

People that think China is going to slow down because of demographics are fooling themselves. 

When the military buildup slows down, and stops, then I'll conclude with yeah  the economic broke.

Sorry, that was supposed to read “should not”.

I think it will take a decade or more for any economic effects to slow military growth, most especially because the military growth seems intended to assure PRC dominance even in the event it is not economically dominant.

I think Chinese demographics will slow their economy: they are not magicians or gods. GDP is productivity per capita multiplied by the size of the labor force, and China’s labor force is dropping by the low millions every year, set to expand to tens of millions with a decade. Unless future technology largely divorces productivity from labor force almost completely, China will face an economic wall (and it is not alone).

Lots of people have predicted the economic downfall of the PRC for a decade or two. That is partially due to the lack of transparency on the part of China. It does not mean they can walk on water and defy all economic headwinds. In fact if anything I would say their current problems are rooted in post 2008 global recession policies compounded by Xi’s crack down on the private sector, with the zero covid policy being the absolute final straw that made the intrinsic problems surface now. They have exhausted their property sector and infrastructure development as measures to increase economic growth, and nothing will change that.

That said, I expect Xi will take some kind of military action well before it becomes apparent to the rest of the world that China’s economy is having systemic difficulties. If / when the PRC enters a downturn that the leadership thinks it cannot avert, I expect it to lash out while it has the chance. This has the effect of diverting attention and scapegoating the west, since any PRC related conflict with US puts the entire world in a depression. It lowers the economic potential of it’s enemies and puts the blame on them as well, in one single action.

Edited June 18, 2024 by Josh

[futon]

22 minutes ago, Josh said:

Sorry, that was supposed to read “should not”.

I think it will take a decade or more for any economic effects to slow military growth, most especially because the military growth seems intended to assure PRC dominance even in the event it is not economically dominant.

I think Chinese demographics will slow their economy: they are not magicians or gods. GDP is productivity per capita multiplied by the size of the labor force, and China’s labor force is dropping by the low millions every year, set to expand to tens of millions with a decade. Unless future technology largely divorces productivity from labor force almost completely, China will face an economic wall (and it is not alone).

Lots of people have predicted the economic downfall of the PRC for a decade or two. That is partially due to the lack of transparency on the part of China. It does not mean they can walk on water and defy all economic headwinds. In fact if anything I would say their current problems are rooted in post 2008 global recession policies compounded by Xi’s crack down on the private sector, with the zero covid policy being the absolute final straw that made the intrinsic problems surface now. They have exhausted their property sector and infrastructure development as measures to increase economic growth, and nothing will change that.

That said, I expect Xi will take some kind of military action well before it becomes apparent to the rest of the world that China’s economy is having systemic difficulties. If / when the PRC enters a downturn that the leadership thinks it cannot avert, I expect it to lash out while it has the chance. This has the effect of diverting attention and scapegoating the west, since any PRC related conflict with US puts the entire world in a depression. It lowers the economic potential of it’s enemies and puts the blame on them as well, in one single action.

China labor force us dropping by millions is not looking directly and instead just uses sounding words to make an illusion.

 

US babies born last year.. 3.5 million.

China babies born last year.. 9 million.

 

In 20 years from now.. China will have 9 million 20 year olds while the US will have 3.5 million 20 year olds. Adding on a million cross border illegals still puts it at just half at 4.5 million to China's 9. 

What labor shortage? Shortage relative to old population perhaps. I doubt the CCP is going to hold back the country due to old people rights for 4 star hotels and shiny cars. 

[urbanoid]

3 hours ago, futon said:

US babies born last year.. 3.5 million.

China babies born last year.. 9 million.

Unless they are still lying, they reportedly added 120-130+ million people on paper in the last 30+ years. Those would be 30somethings or younger.

Quote

Chinese censors deleted an article on Wednesday that reportedly leaked full-year population figures for 2023, revealing a plummeting birth rate despite ongoing efforts by the ruling party to encourage people to have families.

While official figures won't be confirmed until Jan. 17, the Mother and Infant Daily news service said 7.88 million babies were born across China 2023, 1.68 million fewer than in 2022.

Given that 11 million people died this year, China's population has therefore fallen by 3.12 million, the population of a medium-sized Chinese city, the report said, citing the City Data account on Baidu's Tieba forum site.

The City Data post had been deleted by Wednesday evening local time, suggesting that the topic is a highly sensitive one for the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which is keen to sing the praises of the economy in a bid to boost people's confidence in the future.

However, the reported figures were in line with earlier estimates, including one by Peking University School of Medicine scholar Qiao Jie, who told a forum in August that the number of newborns has plummeted by 40% over the past five years.

"The number of births in 2023 is expected to range from 7-8 million," Qiao was quoted as saying by the China Business News.

The journal China Philanthropist predicted in May that new births this year would come in under the 8 million mark, extrapolating figures that were available at the time.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-birth-rates-plunge-12272023160425.html

[ink]

I don't understand this obsession with Chinese birth and death rates. It isn't an overriding factor in anything. They still have hundreds of millions of people living on low wages and willing to work in factories + they're spreading manufacturing to other Asian and African countries + they're investing heavily in automation + their pension system isn't very generous + they can always fall back on easy immigration to bulk up numbers of low wage workers.

We could all die of old age before any of this has a meaningful impact.

[KV7]

7 hours ago, Josh said:

It minimally seems unlikely that China has twice the U.S. economy ever. Even if you assume China’s numbers are real, which seems in itself questionable, it seems likely its economy only achieves rough parity in the near to medium term. And unless productivity is almost completely divorced from population, the long term prospects are rather grim.

Chinese numbers are likely misleading, but they are not overstated, they are more likely to be understated as a legacy of how services were treated in the old national accounts.

There has been a recent revision upwards by the World Bank ICP and China was upset about it, seemingly because they want to understate output and then retain developing nation status for longer.

This covers it well:

https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-the-real-size-of-chinas-economy/

Quote

 

The ICP is a massive undertaking. According to The Economist, World Bank researchers visited 16,000 shops in China alone to collect price data. The latest ICP assessment collected data in 2021, four years after the 2017 survey. And the conclusion is that China’s GDP was undervalued by US$1.4 trillion pushing China’s 2022 PPP GDP from 119% of the US to 125%.

According to the Economist, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was not impressed, downplaying the results stating, “We need to interpret the… results with caution and correctly grasp the global economic landscape and the status of each economy in it” while stressing China remained a “developing economy.” If the NBS did not like such a modest upward adjustment to China’s PPP GDP, it will surely hate the rest of this article.
. . .

It’s not that we think the World Bank has done a bad job. It’s that we believe China’s NBS, contrary to popular opinion, has been lowballing GDP for decades and the World Bank has to work within the confines of the NBS’s reported data. This was politically important decades ago for WTO concessions and it is politically important today to maintain developing economy status as China makes a play for leadership of the Global South.

We believe China’s GDP and PPP GDP are lowballed by an incomplete transition from the Material Product System (MPS) of national accounts, which excludes services by design. The World Bank is likely dutifully doing its sums with goods consumption in China multiples of the US but measuring services consumption as a fraction of the US.

 

 

[KV7]

9 hours ago, Argus said:

That's not what the commercial press is saying about the Chinese economy, rather the reverse actually. In 2020 you were taking about a Chinese economy twice the size of the US.  Today its looking to be more a question of how much of an economy will they have left in a decade. Internal debt crisis, population squeeze, falling competitiveness, falling internal demand, China is losing its edge's and has squandered a lot of its gains. 

Current Chinese difficulties are largely demand side problems, they have an industrial capacity that isn't fully utilised due to (correctly) shifting a large volume of investment from housing construction to high tech manufacturing, but where western trade policy is producing difficulties for exports and domestic demand is muted by a somewhat overdone and a bit clunky attempt to moderate leverage. Hence the focus on increasing exports to the less developed countries, where they have made huge progress.

A sizable increase in military expenditure could then be realised just by increasing utilisation.

The opposite case of a supply side constraint would be more constraining, as attempts to increase expenditure would require cutbacks elsewhere or risk inflation. China has the opposite problem of deflation. The fall in prices in the target industrial sectors has been astonishing.

[Josh]

8 hours ago, futon said:

China labor force us dropping by millions is not looking directly and instead just uses sounding words to make an illusion.

 

US babies born last year.. 3.5 million.

China babies born last year.. 9 million.

 

In 20 years from now.. China will have 9 million 20 year olds while the US will have 3.5 million 20 year olds. Adding on a million cross border illegals still puts it at just half at 4.5 million to China's 9. 

What labor shortage? Shortage relative to old population perhaps. I doubt the CCP is going to hold back the country due to old people rights for 4 star hotels and shiny cars. 

Those numbers assume equal productivity and ignore immigration. The US can and does add directly to its labor source by taking twenty year olds from other countries.

I think China’s labor issue currently is more one of imbalance rather than shortage: too many college grads are competing for two few white collar jobs. But even a country as large as China ultimately will have problems when its labor force is losing ten million or more workers per year. GDP is average productivity x number of workers. If you lose workers, you need to increase productivity per worker to continue to have the same economic growth. Given the relative cliff that the PRC labor force is about to fall off of, only two things will prevent stagnation: massive increases in productivity of existing, especially younger, workers, or a major change to the retirement age to keep more people in the work force. That is just the math of undergoing a 40% population fall by the end of the century.

But I certainly would agree that most likely China will be a military danger for a couple decades.

[futon]

2 minutes ago, Josh said:

Those numbers assume equal productivity and ignore immigration. The US can and does add directly to its labor source by taking twenty year olds from other countries.

I think China’s labor issue currently is more one of imbalance rather than shortage: too many college grads are competing for two few white collar jobs. But even a country as large as China ultimately will have problems when its labor force is losing ten million or more workers per year. GDP is average productivity x number of workers. If you lose workers, you need to increase productivity per worker to continue to have the same economic growth. Given the relative cliff that the PRC labor force is about to fall off of, only two things will prevent stagnation: massive increases in productivity of existing, especially younger, workers, or a major change to the retirement age to keep more people in the work force. That is just the math of undergoing a 40% population fall by the end of the century.

But I certainly would agree that most likely China will be a military danger for a couple decades.

Ok great, for keeping attention for the purpose of deterrance, a couple of decades is longer then the "2028 Taiwan" short sightedness. 

So we just need to stay ahead for two decades, and then their social engineering Chinese style communism takes its toll of them.  

Then that chapter is done.

Then next is India, or Russia again. Or maybe Japan again (´д｀|||)