> I do worry a lot about Western domination declining, and China taking its place.
What gives me hope is that we’re not driving in North Korean or Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes. The Soviet Union tried to be a leader in all these fields. I know China is not Russia, but in many things it is. How many Western companies, for example, have the government sit on their board? Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don’t see why it would be different now.
The CCP is using its authority to make its citizens the slaves of the world. They do this by manipulating the currency and internal environment to stop living standards and wages from rising to Western levels, while trying to avoid interference with economic activity that does not threaten the government. Key nationalized sectors under-perform (like their oil industry) while others work much like they do in America. That doesn't make them a centrally planned economy, any more than FED's currency planning makes the US economy centrally planned in nature. They have a "central plan," which is to drive all of their money towards reinvestment, but it's not a planned economy.
Going beyond a statement of facts, I assume the reinvestment is supposed to eventually lead to owning the world, but that isn't working out in Africa and all of the western infrastructure they finance has turned into yet another way for depressed Chinese living standards to transfer wealth to the countries the government is trying to get on top of. (It might feel intrusive to find out that a Chinese company owns a toll road you frequently use, but what actually happened is they froze their capital in a fixed asset, freeing an American firm to start a new project.)
It reminds me of how the US's own foibles, mainly of a neocolonialist/military interventionist type, have done nothing to benefit us but have weakened domestic security and the security of our interests abroad.
Being a hybrid planned/market economy, CCP still has much of a say in what businesses prosper & which do not. China has very little in the way of a consumer sector, quite the opposite of the US consumerism. This means there's very little for consumers to spend their money on versus a US consumer.
China's savings rate as a result of these pressures hovers around 50%, compared to the low 4% in US / 10% in UK / 20% in Germany & Northern EU countries.
Saving such a high % of income means more money is available in the banking system to be lent out to businesses for investment. So China has an export driven market in which they sell goods to the world, and then re-invest it to build more capacity to build more exports to..
> China has very little in the way of a consumer sector, quite the opposite of the US consumerism. This means there's very little for consumers to spend their money on versus a US consumer.
FWIW Chinese middle class tend to gobble up ridiculous amount of foreign overpriced luxury crap instead, starting from designer clothes and ending up with several thousands of dollars worth bottles of whisky (that I bet absolute majority of the buyers couldn't distinguish from random Johnnie Walker in blind testing). High saving rates must be cultural and not just a result of not having the ability to spend the money.
> High saving rates must be cultural and not just a result of not having the ability to spend the money.
You can see this too in the generation that lived through the Great Depression, and some carry-over into the next one.
OTOH those who grew up in boom times tend to take on unhealthy amounts of debt (esp credit card, for weddings and vacations, and fancy cars) and have to struggle to learn to live within their means.
China has had a lot of rough times to until relatively very recently, and much of the country hasn't shared in a lot of the economic growth.
The Chinese savings rate is a bit of a mirage, since there are a couple of things happening
* Chinese banks are swallowing many Chinese citizens' deposits in the bank, without recourse and explanation. There are protests of course, and of course those are squashed. There's even a story of a public listed company's assets in the bank being swallowed without recourse, and the company had to shut down
* The banking system aren't able to lend the deposits out, because the Chinese government has asked them to take over real estate companies and local government debts. Also, there is very little consumer spending, and the state enterprises don't like competitions, so very little investment is given to private enterprises these days
> This means there's very little for consumers to spend their money on versus a US consumer.
How does this line up American consumers spending a large percentage of their money on products built in... China? Surely the Chinese products available to Americans are also available to the Chinese? I have to imagine they are orders of magnitude cheaper in China too given the drastically lower cost of shipping and warehousing.
Shipping and warehousing only accounts for a tiny fraction of the cost of most consumer products. It's hardly an order of magnitude difference.
Chinese consumers can buy pretty much the same products as Americans (with a few limited exceptions such as weapons and narcotics). But they tend to save more on a percentage basis. Some of this is cultural. But mostly it's a practical reaction to a lack of a social safety net. Even though China is nominally communist, as a practical matter most consumers have to pay out of pocket for healthcare and retirement hence they save for those things. They also save to purchase residential real estate since it is seen as the only safe store of value and owning a home is somewhat necessary for marriage (at least for men).
Isn't this a false dichotomy? The inverse -- high spending and low savings -- still leads to reinvestment. From business POV whether they get funds via loans or via revenue the money they have to invest in growth is the same.
In China you have a lot of SOA (State Owned Enterprises) and entire sectors loosely under the CCP thumb.
So 50% of income going back into banks which then direct capital as the CCP sees fit.. more export oriented growth.
This is very different than the US model.
In the US ~95% of income goes into spending which flows into private enterprises which make operational cost, capital cost, and saving decisions on their own.
The US model is more decentralized. We have to create incentives and schemes like IRA and Opportunity Zones to get private individuals and companies to deploy capital where the government prefers, and even then it only works on the margins.
I think there are different levels to "things working" though. A country can be using an economic and governing system that ultimately doesn't work, but still have enough weight to throw around for a while, enough to do plenty of damage to others. Russia is clearly showing that right now in Ukraine. Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country may never be the same. China may pull something similar (and be more successful at it) in Taiwan in the near future.
I do worry about Chinese products in the classes you mention. OP notes that China became the world's largest automobile exporter in 2023 (by units sold, not by revenue). China still can't rival Intel or AMD in chips, but they're gaining ground all the time, and have some decent (though not superb) competitors in the ARM market, with inroads into RISC-V, I believe. The Comac C919 airliner isn't exactly all over yet, and I don't know how safe, relable, and airworthy it is (not that Boeing has done well in that regard lately), but it exists, regardless of whether or not the allegations that they stole IP from US manufacturers is true.
> Even if Ukraine prevails (far from certain), the country may never be the same.
You can also say: Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is today.
I agree completely with you that China has enough weight to do plenty of damage in the short term. In the long term, I paraphrase something Stephen Kotkin said: The West has gained more and more friends over time. After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have become friends.
Maybe the relationships are not perfect, but they are pretty good if you ask me. Some healthy back and forth and discussing without major drama. Finland has joined NATO and Sweden will soon also. Maybe one day even Ukraine. And maybe India one day?
If anything UKR (and Gaza) war has shown, global south, the dominant reservoirs for future growth, which PRC is courting (and now constitute plurarity of trade) is decidely not pro west. What west is doing is consolidating the elite clique amoung a powerful but increasingly stagnant friends. Which is fine, but it's also matter of relative size of the group. The Chinese "family" i.e just PRC itself, is pumping out comparable human capita and industrial potential than all of the west, their family and her friends. Don't be surprised a well run family business + some acquaintances eventually outcompete tight friend groups that are still connected based on artificial affiliations.
Also most of global android users would be on Chinese phones if US sanctions didn't ban access to Huawei and reduce appetite for PRC firms to continue expansion into western markets. Sanctions / tech control are every bit as top-down economic planning. Once PRC indigenizes their own tech stack, there's a good chance rest of world will drive PRC cars, and fly on PRC planes, and use PRC chips. I think only long durable term competitive advantage of west, and really we're talking about anglo countries like US/CA/AU is being net food/mineral exporters due to resource abundance.
These positive relationships are not artficial. Japanese and Taiwanese people really genuinely like the USA in a way that runs deep in the culture. Im from texas, and live in japan. I was surprised to find this out.
The relationships aren't artificial in feeling but artificial in construction - took generations/decades of postwar political purging in US influenced countries to cultivate local compradors to develop good people to people relations over time. But alliances between countries are still political arrangement are ultimate subject to domestic geopolitical interests and whims. Peoples in democracies still have very little control of their foreign policy. The other consideration we don't speak is you can absolutely massacre a people and still have their kids love you with enough elite capture and control over culture. That's also the story of modern PRC, you can slap the shit out one generation and mold their grandkids into patriotism. Or the story with US/JP, except with atom bombs. Regardless alliances will last, until they're tested. Then they can break or get stronger. I would not be surprised if they break if tested violently enough. That's usually how these things go. Remember Canada was originally a British possession designed to contain America. Then US got kicked out of North America and Canada, a fundmentally anti American project, are very friendly with US, and even the most antiAmerican politician in Canada won't seriously consider moves that would undermine US interests.
I think you have convinced yourself of something and wouldnt see it any other way.
Youre talking about a world when it took months for a message to cross a country, with totally different dynamics. I dont think the US is going to tax japan, or attack them. What are you even saying.
Geopolitical relationships and people to people sentiments between countries are artificially constructed over time. Tying back to the original comment, Japan, Germany, South Korea didn't "naturally" become friendly over time, it was a carefully cultivated process. The process doesn't work on speed of infomration transmission, but speed of demographic transition. Anti-American forces in those countries didn't get "converted" they were sidelined and repressed so their influence does not transmit to next generation. I'm saying friends western system/hegemony has build are one good fight from flipping.
> Yes it has never before been as pro-West as it is today.
On the other hand Russia has never been more in China's camp than it is now, and I think that loss is far greater than the possible gain of Ukraine and the NATO expansion.
> After the second world war, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have become friends.
Yes, over that period, but that is no longer happening. Power is shifting to other countries - China, India, etc. and they are not "friends". Quotes because I think the idea of friendship in international relations is mistaken.
> and maybe India one day?
India has very different values and interests to the west, and while it is likely to ally with the west against China, I cannot see it in anything else. It is not backing the west over Ukraine, for example.
The Western camp has never invented any framework that would let Russia be in it.
What it could offer was: you sit here and sell us cheap oil and gas, while we court all your neighbours to stop associating with you and associate with us instead. But it did not have any meaningful participation format for Russia, only that it should be increasingly lonely. Not to mention stuff like visa waiver or student exchange programmes. In the end even at the best of relations the integration was actually tiny.
When confronted with this, the West will usually deflect and blame it all on Putin, which is also not constructive: This does not offer any plan to a regular Russian, especially seeing how close EU politicians were to Putin at that time and how they did not care if he stays for as many terms as he wanted to.
And yet all of Russias neighbours are now courting China, Kazakhstan especially. And also Russia is content with becoming a vassal gas station for China as long as it gets to play as a faux empire and slaughter both its citizens and its brother nation's citizens in an industrial meat grinder. 5D chess as the youngsters say these days
China is not so dangerous in this regard because it is not appealing.
It has great amount of economic power, but culturally it is very insular, plus the story of Chinese Uighurs, making people (in Central Asia especially) wary of fully embracing the Chinese Way.
Not so with Europe, which is culturally dominant, and many countries around Russia would love to fully embrace the EU, if EU is willing to take effort. But this is shitty deal for Russia since it was never invited to any such schemes and will lose cultural and economic influence. It's also not all rosy for target countries' population, but it's acceptable and Europe can make it look great.
For Russians it will always look that they cut family bonds for sugar daddy, though. That has sufficient stigma that would explain why Russian population still does not mind the war.
Russia has the Snow White's Evil Queen role assigned here, who is uninvited to the party but crashes it. And boy does Russia embraces this role, unfortunately. "5D checkers" is the term.
Tell me. Had russia treated its neighbors well, not genocided them for centuries on end, enslaved and taken liberties from them. Would they then maybe feel different about russia?
Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Baltics, all the Stans. Everyone has been been attacked by russia over the centuries. Centuries before putin was born.
The biggest problem of course is that russia is STILL doing that. Attacked Georgia, attacked Ukraine, is threatening to attack Baltics again.
There is no sign that russia can be trusted to treat it's neighbors well or be a responsible member of a world where human rights are being valued.
This is completely on russia itself, trying to play the victim is not going to work as everyone has tried to accomodate russia. Germans thought that wandel-durch-handel tried to make russia to understand that trade is more profitable than war, but this was proven to be hopelessly naive.
The West should not pretend they wanted Russia in their camp then. Not talking about faults. "Your fault is that I want to eat", as Krylov's wolf said to a lamb.
Russia just wasted at least 15 years on that bullshit that it could productively spend, as you have framed it, genociding and enslaving people. Now have stuff to catch up.
From Russian perspective, everybody is trespassing on our lands. We tried voluntary giving independence to these regions, which belonged to Russia by right, on assumption they respond with gratitude and uphold the rights of Russians and living there and Russian culture. Here they are now, telling tales about how they were genocided and enslaved. Now the prevailing idea is that we should take that independence back whether possible.
One teeny tiny examples, Russian Empire has secured the lands which are now contested Southern Ukraine, from Donetsk to Odessa. These were nomad-raided steppes with barely any population. Russian Empire secured them and let Ukrainians settle these new lands alongside other ethnicities (Greeks, Jews and of course Russians), and just two centuries later, Ukrainians refuse to acknowledge that and seek to forcibly assimilate all other ethnicities there. Now it is obvious that Ukrainian autonomy during the USSR was a costly mistake. They were gifted these lands for settlement and now they tell fairy tales about centuries of genocide. They were permitted to settle there among others and now they have driven everybody else away.
But the situation with Baltic states is in fact even worse. What happened to Baltic Jews? Baltic Germans? Baltic Russians? :))
Russians exterminated them. When Russians invaded in 1939-1940, they abolished Jewish cultural autonomy, closed all Jewish institutions (schools, associations, etc), rounded up Jews into cattle cars and sent them in entire families to die in Siberian wilderness, because they saw wealthy Jews as kulaks and oppressors of the working man. Russians targeted the entire professional class that was capable of running a country (public administrators, lawyers, engineers, doctors, merchants, etc), but because Jews were overrepresented in middle-upper classes, they got hit the hardest. They were about ten times more likely to get victimized by Russians than anyone else.
> Baltic Germans?
Resettled to newly-occupied Poland between late 1939 and early 1940 under agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union. They were allies at the time and had divided Europe in the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Russians gave Germans free hands to do what they want with Poland and in return, Germany picked up Baltic Germans from the region (in an action called Umsiedlung) and left the rest for Russians to maul.
> Baltic Russians?
Exterminated during WWII by Russians. For example, one third of the pre-war population of Narva was Russian. Russians systematically destroyed Narva in WWII using the same methods we now see in Ukraine. Not a single habitable building was left. After the war, they banned the few surviving former inhabitants of Narva from returning. Instead, they resettled the area with ethnic Russians. This has caused incredible cultural discontinuity. I just finished reading memoirs of a Russian who grew up there in the 1960s. From his youth, he remembers no old men telling stories to kids "how things used to be". In fact, he knows no-one who had lived there before the war. The entire human (people, traditions, culture) and physical (buildings) history of the place got wiped away and replaced with depressing commie blocks and chauvinistic Russian settlers who are bitter that no-one treats them as liberators.
This is particularly striking considering that as a Hanseatic trading city, Narva had vibrant multiethnic population and immaculately preserved baroque architecture. It was a remarkably beautiful place that Swedes had once considered moving their capital to from Stockholm. Now it's a run-down shithole full of angry and miserable rootless Russians who don't understand where they are and why everyone dislikes them so much.
It's also notable how Baltic Russians came into existence. They were historic minority compromised of refugees who had fled religious persecution in the 17th century Russia. Some things never change.
Some of this is true - but by Soviets, not Russians. I'm not sure why you would conflate the two. Was Stalin Russian? Perhaps Beria? Trotsky? Dzerzhinsky? Lenin? :)
The stupidity of "Russians has occupied Baltics and killed all Russians" will vanish once you call the former the Soviet.
But mostly, it is baltic people themselves who got rid of Jews and helped get rid of Germans, and then after 1990 tried to get rid of Russians too.
> This has caused incredible cultural discontinuity. I just finished reading memoirs of a Russian who grew up there in the 1960s. From his youth, he remembers no old men telling stories to kids "how things used to be". In fact, he knows no-one who had lived there before the war
That's the story of many places past WWII. There was an unprecedented cultural discontinuity. For starters, St. Petersburg is resettled practically anew because almost all of its population either perished in the blockade or was evacuated and was not encouraged to return. Don't get me started on Polish and German resettlements. Why blame Russians for anything here? Russians are the same victims of the war as Baltic people and Jews and Poles and Germans themselves.
> run-down shithole full of angry and miserable rootless Russians who don't understand where they are and why everyone dislikes them so much
Can you perhaps stop disliking your compatriots for who they are, and maybe they will stop treating you as a Nazi who you currently objectively are.
> Some of this is true - but by Soviets, not Russians. I'm not sure why you would conflate the two. Was Stalin Russian? Perhaps Beria? Trotsky? Dzerzhinsky? Lenin?
Whatever possible claims there were along the lines of "Hitler was ackchyually an Austrian", present-day Russians have willingly adopted that legacy instead of denouncing it like Germans, justify it and continue to pursue it further.
> present-day Russians have willingly adopted that legacy
Present-day Woke LGBT socialists from California has adopted that legacy. Russians have no predisposition towards socialism, utopian cults or dictature of minorities. Soviet regime is a branchild of European Social Democracy and it's pathetic how they are trying to frame the victims of this crime for it.
Just ask all these young people from Italy, Spain or Seattle why so many hammer-and-sickles.
I didn't know that "LGBT socialist from California" were the people giving ~70% approval ratings to mass murderers like Stalin in Russian domestic polls and erecting monuments to Lenin in occupied parts of Ukraine.
As Stalin himself has said, "never ask who is doing the voting, ask who is doing the counting".
Most Russian people do not care that much about Stalin since it's all too old and they care much more about Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who are much more recent butchers of Russia.
Some people do, but then again, some Italians, French and US campuses also give a lot of shits about people like Trotsky. An absolute majority of humanity are politically clueless, and the worst of them are also opinionated.
Spaniards and Italians, not to mention teenagers in Seattle, have no personal connection with Russian crimes and their ignorance is understandable. They have never lived under Russian control and have no real concept of what it means in practical terms. Russians have not extinguished entire branches of their family trees.
But why should any Russian approve Stalin, spew the same toxic imperialistic view of the world in many different forms like supporting the genocidal war against Ukraine remains a mystery. Germans are not holding military parades under swastikas, erecting monuments to their Führer, telling Jews that Germans suffered the most, harassing and shutting down Holocaust researchers and threatening rest of Europe that if they don't do as told, "we'll repeat it".
In the end, by not taking responsibility for your past and present actions like Germans have done, you will simply live shorter and poorer lives than other peoples of Europe, making endless excuses for your own suffering and the suffering inflicted upon others, while leaders are robbing you blind and partying on megayachts. My hope is that this degenerate russki mir will never reach me.
> Spaniards and Italians, not to mention teenagers in Seattle, have no personal connection with Soviet crimes and their ignorance is understandable. They have never lived under Soviet control and have no real concept of what it means in practical terms. Soviets have not extinguished entire branches of their family trees.
There, I've fixed it for you. But even then, it's not the only game in town. "Democrats" (Yeltsin's band of US loving nomenclature and friends) practically killed or dispersed just as many people as Stalin & company did.
There's a very significant number of monuments devoted to tragedies of Soviet period, in Russia. I'm not even sure Germany would match that. I believe their general approach was to pretend that nothing happened between 1933 and 1945. In short, stop trying to confront other people on their history and first confront yourself on your own history. Which would be?..
There is zero chance of India joining NATO in our lifetimes. They have an entirely different set of priorities. At most we might see some limited defense cooperation agreements between India and other maritime powers to secure their sea lines of communication and contain Chinese expansionism.
Top down government planning is the only thing that has consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially things like semiconductors or spaceflight.
Watch some Asianometry. The guy explains how Japan's semiconductor industry was built on high-level planning and industry/academia collaboration with long-term planning and workshare division rather than competition between companies, to develop the necessary technologies for semiconductor manufacture. Same thing happened in the US.
R&D heavy industries cannot be bootstrapped without deep government pockets and expert oversight, and a risk tolerance that cannot be justified on balance sheets.
Government planning and investment can certainly bootstrap and protect a nascent industry in its infancy, but once the industry becomes competitive it is to the Democracy's own advantage to remove the training wheels and back off.
This book review of How Asia Works[0] gives excellent examples of how South Korea applied this strategy to break out of from economic despair to become a leading economic power, and how other Asian countries failed to apply this formula when their governments were too heavy handed in their approach.
> Top down government planning is the only thing that has consistently worked in high technology sectors, especially things like semiconductors or spaceflight.
That's what gave us Intel processors? SpaceX? Google? ChatGPT?
I strongly disagree with your reading of events. (Yes, there was government involvement in the origins of the semiconductor industry, and in the origins of US spaceflight. No, top down government planning is not the only thing that has consistently worked. Having the government seed things and let private businesses run with it has worked pretty well.)
Intel (Fairchild) has the following in their biography:
> By the end of the 1970s they had few new products in the pipeline, and increasingly turned to niche markets with their existing product line, notably "hardened" integrated circuits for military
Yes, the megabucks put in by the government for Apollo and Military Programs were important, they created static demand - but the government neither planned nor built the technologies needed. It largely happened organically.
I think that just came down to capital requirement thresholds. Some circumstances required the collective funding because the payoff window was so long.
But a lot of that is due to protectionism and sanctions/restrictions.
I used to have a Huawei phone, now I don't because it can't use the Google App Store.
Here in Europe, there was a lot of controversy over the electric car tariffs too - as China produce high quality, cheap electric cars that could help us with the Green transition, yet we slap sky-high tariffs on them to protect Volkswagen shareholders.
How is it that some europeans like yourself don't realize that China is actively supplying military goods and funding to Russia, to help Russia attack Europe??
Why would you want to pay for cars that help to grow your enemy to cause your countries to fall?
>Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don’t see why it would be different now.
Countries have national currencies and central banks. Countries have borders where imports / exports are taxed and inspected for safety, illegal smuggling, etc. The US made Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to maintain liquidity in the mortgage market. All these things are not perfect, but what's the alternative? Where do you draw the line?
China is already number one on the EVs industry, so if we continue going down that route of forced electrification of our cars there's a big chance many of us will be indeed driving Chinese cars going forward. Granted, neither North Korea nor Russia are big in that industry.
What gives me hope is that we’re not driving in North Korean or Russian cars, nor use their chips, or airplanes. The Soviet Union tried to be a leader in all these fields. I know China is not Russia, but in many things it is. How many Western companies, for example, have the government sit on their board? Top-down economic planning has never worked and I don’t see why it would be different now.