
A New Cold War Has Begun (2019) - ALee
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/07/a-new-cold-war-has-begun/
======
shasheene
Due to decades of Deng Xiaoping's One Child Policy, China is a slow motion
demographic car crash that's impossible to stop. China will "get old before it
gets rich", and the days of 6% growth aren't coming back.

I recommend anyone interested in geopolitics and the world over the next 30
years to watch this lecture:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0)

It's the best overview of the future wealth and strength of brutal Chinese
dictatorship that I've come across.

~~~
jackcosgrove
Chinese birthrates would have fallen anyways due to increasing education and
prosperity.

The one child policy only accelerated the decline. When it was lifted,
birthrates hardly budged.

Every developed country is a slow motion demographic car crash. China is in a
bad position, I'll grant, because the CCP's legitimacy depends upon
demographic dividend-scale growth rates when the dividend has already peaked.
Democratic countries have pressure release valves built into their political
systems that China lacks.

~~~
loufe
I think it's easy to say their "legitimacy" or "stability" depends on high
growth rates, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. I would love to
hear even one genuine expert on the subject make the case for a revolution in
even the 30 years following a drop from insane growth back to earth.

~~~
Retric
China growth rate during recovery was actually depressed compared to several
developing nations. So even the basic premise doesn’t fit the actual data.

Long term compare the People's Republic of China (China) and the Republic of
China (Taiwan) after the war based on per capita GDP and the mainland is still
catching up. The CPP maintained power after completely wrecking the countries
economy, so a period of stagnation seems unlikely to be a major issue. More
recently you can see how the CPP is placing Hong Kong’s economy as a lower
priority than increased control.

While dictatorships like China can fall surprisingly quickly, I doubt slower
growth is that critical of an issue.

------
riffraff
>Because, in a very different way than the old Soviet system, the Chinese
system—the more authoritarian it gets—is over time more prone to crack up than
America’s.

I don't understand: what does the author think the difference is? I may have
read the article without enough attention but I didn't get it.

If anything, I got the idea it's less likely to crack.

~~~
caseysoftware
I don't think China is going anywhere for at least a generation.

If you dig into the collapse of most countries/empires/super powers, they
collapse from either:

\- External pressures - foreign influence through military/conquering,
investment, or mass immigration. With the exception of Taiwan, China has been
effective in reducing or at least controlling all of those. And even that may
be cracking where you see groups like WHO refusing to even say the word
"Taiwan." With the US and Russia tied up with other things, military is less
likely an issue to.

\- Internal pressures - social strife due to mass deprivation (starvation,
poverty in general) or mass immigration/tribalism. Once again, China has been
effective here. They've raised the standard of living and disappeared most of
the major dissenters. They've even reduced tribalism by isolating and
disappearing huge minorities. Good? Absolutely not. Effective? Unfortunately.

Even the "One Child" policy seems to have led to less strife than predicted.
While there are some places that have 140 men for every 100 women, those are
the official numbers. It appears that under the policy, huge swathes of people
just didn't report daughters being born. There's a generation of women who
simply don't exist.

Based on the investment strategy (both nationally and corporately), China has
gone all in on Africa for years. If I had to place a bet, they may effectively
run/own Africa in a decade or two. If not in person, on paper.

~~~
walterbell
_> It appears that under the policy, huge swathes of people just didn't report
daughters being born. There's a generation of women who simply don't exist._

How do they work/travel/pay without ID?

~~~
asjw
US and UK have no official national id system...

So I guess, in the same way people in US and UK do.

Also remember that illegal work is not uncommon in every western country as
well

If you're paid cash, you pay in cash

If you live and work in a small rural village in continental China, where
girls have been hidden and everybody knows it, who's coming to check if you
have an id or not?

------
ipnon
The low-tech economies of China and America are integrated, but what about the
high-tech ones? Can American companies create sub-apps on WeChat like Chinese
ones can?

As far as I know, US-Soviet trade was not comparable in scale to US-China
trade. Did a lack of trade prolong the Cold War of the 20th century?

~~~
oldsklgdfth
Trade with the USSR was very difficult. There was no use for it outside the
USSR and it was forbidden to leave the country. So you couldn't just buy
things from other countries.

When pepsi started selling in the USSR they traded pepsi for Stolichnaya
vodka. Enentually they traded old military equipment. [0]

[0] [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-union-pepsi-
shi...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-union-pepsi-ships)

------
sametmax
Why does everything has to be a war with the US?

~~~
0x8BADF00D
It so happens that whenever a country amasses more wealth than the US, they
are maligned and considered evil. It happened in the 80s with Japan, and it is
now happening with China. Except this time, the United States is broke. The US
will Balkanize before anything happens to China.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
It's probably the concentration camps, organ harvesting, and various other
human rights violations, rather than the accumulation of wealth.

[https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/asia/xinjiang-china-
reeducati...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/asia/xinjiang-china-reeducation-
camps-intl/index.html)

[https://nypost.com/2019/06/01/chinese-dissidents-are-
being-e...](https://nypost.com/2019/06/01/chinese-dissidents-are-being-
executed-for-their-organs-former-hospital-worker-says/)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2019/09/04/7570898...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2019/09/04/757089868/fentanyl-as-a-dark-web-profit-center-from-chinese-
labs-to-u-s-streets)

~~~
sametmax
There are many countries that do such things, but the US selectively chose who
are the ennemy du jour, and most are not tagged as such. In fact, some of them
are friends with the US.

What's more, I recall the US in the last 2 decades:

\- went to a war by lying about WMD and against the entire world (at least the
world represented by the UN) will, killing thousands

\- deployed mass surveillance of its own people, introduced bypasses to Habeas
corpus and legalized torture using the Patriot Act

\- elected a man that is at the center of so many Clinton-size scandals in a
row it became the new normal

Now, I don't even begin to claim I have a superior country, mine has done many
terrible things.

But let's not pretend the US (or any other superpower's) behavior has anything
to do with morality. It's either naive or dishonest.

However, labelling everything with "war" is, indeed, a very American thing to
do.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
Whataboutism, I simply stated ongoing actions by the CCP that probably
influence people to view them as evil.

It's up for people to decide what they view as acceptable, the history of
every country is for the most part transparent these days.

Laundry listing things other countries do (I disagree they come close to the
atrocities committed by the CCP) is not a great defense.

I listed CURRENT atrocities being committed by the CCP right now, you picked
from our entire history that we as Americans have already expressed outrage
(WMD's, etc)

I even left out surveillance because all countries seem to be spying on their
citizens, though the CCP goes a lot further with no accountability because
it's a dictatorship.

------
gohai
Note: this article is from 2019. Perhaps the title could be updated to reflect
this.

~~~
rhodium
I was wondering why we're resurfacing such an outdated article aside from its
headline-grabbing title. The US-China relationship has evolved a lot, and it
doesn't cover major developments like the Hong Kong protests, national
security bill, and coronavirus response.

------
scottlocklin
>For several decades, China’s breakneck development was seen positively in the
United States, and the relatively enlightened authoritarianism of Deng
Xiaoping and his successors was easily tolerated

It was seen positively because our ruling caste of self-regarding morons
thought China was more likely to become a liberal democracy as they became
more prosperous and integrated with the world economy. An obvious delusion,
even at the time. By contrast, the Chinese looked at what happened to Russia
and decided to stick with totalitarianism in their economic development.

~~~
gumby
I think things are far from obvious, at the time, retrospectively, or even
now. It’s still early times for the Chinese revolution and I think there’s
still a good chance of China becoming more democratic in the next half a
century. Xi is literally a child of the revolution and when that generation is
gone, the middle classes will have no connection to the old guard.

~~~
scottlocklin
I think the best you can hope for from China is Singapore -a business oriented
Mosleyan fascism. Considering the lack of British influence there: this seems
ridiculously optimistic to me. China will be Chinese.

Western "Democracy" doesn't appear to be some universal desire of peoples;
it's as far as can be told from observation a particularist ideology of Anglo
and Franco Europeans. Russia's flirtation with "Democracy" (basically, being a
US satellite) ended up being chaotic gansterism accompanied by mass death, and
they reverted to their historical mean of being run by a strong man and seem
to be happier and better off for it.

~~~
gumby
Korea, Taiwan and Japan seem pretty happy with it. India, mostly, too. Then of
course many smaller countries like Mauritius, Botswana...

~~~
scottlocklin
South Korea with its long history of democracy dating from the early 90s...
Had a little help from giant US embassies and military bases in the middle of
it for the last 70 years. Imagine if it weren't a US "ally" what it would look
like. The idea that things are the way they are today because of some
inevitable movement of history rather than submission to pressures from the
world hegemon; pretty sure that idea won't survive historical scrutiny.

I suppose I could be wrong though! Our state department informs me that I am
wrong!

------
mleonhard
> With the waning of the liberal world order, a more normal historical era of
> geopolitical rivalry has commenced, and trade tensions are merely
> accompaniments to such rivalry.

Background on "liberal world (economic) order":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_economic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_economic_order)

------
troughway
Begun? You have to be tonedeaf or willfully ignoring the amount of IP that
Chinese corporate spies have outright stolen from North America over the last
few decades.

Let’s be honest - we have strong cyber security considerations because of very
few, but very known bad actors. China is near the top of that list and has
been for awhile.

Nevermind all the other security considerations.

