I don't know, I've been hearing the story that China is about to upend the US as the leading global superpower ever since I was a kid. There's always a new vogue and novel twist put on the rationale and how it's gonna happen, but so far it's like fusion, always a few years away.
It's literally happening lol. When you were a kid China was making shoes and their GDP is 10% of the US. Now they're making drones / evs / high end electornics and it's 80%. This is why people's perception is so unreliable because it's impossible to notice things when they happen over a lifetime
And now they're at the point where the population pyramid is collapsing. It's hard to make any predictions about the future when they got here riding a baby boom and now their ratio of elderly to working age is about to go through the roof.
Japan, Germany, Italy, and numerous other countries are all much worse off. Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today.
Germany and Italy, to take but two examples of large Western economies, haven't had native above-replacement TFR since ~1970.
Even in the US, TFR is well below replacement right now, and in fact is basically comparable to China's TFR from 2010-2017.
> Assuming things don't change, China in 2050 will be in approximately the same position as Japan today.
What metric do you have in mind here? It looks like Japan’s population has dropped ~2% from peak in the last 25 years. China is projected to lose ~8% in the next 25.
Or if we look at percent of population over 65, Japan is at ~30% today. China is projected to jump from <20% to 40% by 2050.
Unalloyed good or not, it's way better than where China is at. And I'm not sure why "other countries are going to be even worse off soon" is an argument in favor of China being on the verge of surpassing as a superpower the one country on your list that is actually growing in population.
> Unalloyed good or not, it's way better than where China is at
I'm not convinced. I don't think that population decline is necessarily worse than changing the cultural and ethnic makeup of your country. If anything, I think that a much stronger case can be made for the other perspective.
Anyway, fact is, things aren't that bad in China. We can see what China's demographic future looks like, because nations like Germany and Japan are forerunners in that regard.
You’re conveniently leaving out that that China is still a middle-income country.
It can bear the burden of developing and producing things like solar panels or batteries or AI because of the sheer size of the population, but that doesn’t work if the population itself is the problem.
Conveniently? "The population itself" won't be a serious problem for a long time, which was my point.
Besides, with ~1.4B people, China has a very deep population reservoir. Even with a catastrophically low birthrate in 2023, there were more than 9M births. That's about as much, in that year, as the US, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, England, Mexico, Canada, and Spain combined.
(3.5M+.8M+.23M+.7M+.7M+.56M+1.8M+.35M+.32M)
The Economist crowd loves to prophesy doom, but really the facts are not unambiguous and China's position is not uniquely bad in any respect. If anything, it still has a lot going for it.
> Conveniently? "The population itself" won't be a serious problem for a long time, which was my point.
You are deeply, deeply misunderstanding the problem.
Maybe when Western-oriented, China would have been able to escape the middle-income tier despite their demographic trends. But with the dual gut punch of being excised from Western technology and an economy that will be in a tar pit due to growth crashes (real estate bubble for example), no chance in hell.
Don't get me wrong. It's amazing how many people China has lifted out of poverty. And yes, they do take "100 steps forward" for every "2 steps forward, 1 step back" that the West does. But this is because they came from very low, where there is no ossified infrastructure and plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick.
For example, being in Shanghai and having nothing but quiet streets because virtually every motor vehicle is electrified feels like being in the future. The same goes for massive amounts of high-speed rail being built per year. But this is possible because A) there is no legacy infrastructure and B) the state can just crush you without any recourse.
It is quite well-known that the more free a nation is, the more it prospers. Make of that what you will.
It’s the fourth largest economy in Europe (3rd in the EU), with strong rule of law, and half a million immigrants in 2022. It’s got the 2nd highest industrial base after Germany. Northern Italy is an absolute beast in most metrics, and Southern Italy is… something else.
When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations.
If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.
> When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations.
Maybe in western media depictions it would seem so, but eg china invests more and more in europe over the years. Moreover, BRICS are roughly half of world's population. Perceptions of what "the world" or "international relationships" mean are sometimes distorted in the west.
If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal. In the 1990s everyone thought Japan was going to be the next superpower and that was just fine.
are you kidding? the US forced Japan to sign the plaza accord effectively ending Japan's rise. that was followed by 30 years close to zero economic growth.
you are not mature enough to discuss such topic if you believe the US will be happy to be taken over by some democratic friends.
I am intrigued by the notion that the Plaza Accord was a lynchpin that stopped Japan, and I'm sure better minds have debated it than me, but I don't quite see how a currency accord that didn't shift the trade flows or even the dollar that much, and which was reversed a couple years later in the Louvre Accord, really killed Japan's rise.
My perception is that Japan, after some great success, went through a normal semi-inevitable asset bubble, but their response was uniquely Japanese. Rather than letting firms and the social contract of lifetime employment (particularly for older workers) go bankrupt, their firms and country decided to absorb the losses for a generation and stagnate.
Economically it was a very suboptimal approach but socially/morally I'm less confident it was the wrong call.
Arguing about the Plaza Accord is really a moot point. The real argument is that in the 80s, Japan-bashing was a real thing, just like the China-bashing today.
No it was not. The US had taken whole bunch of steps to prevent this from happening and those steps were anything but "let's free market decide" and "compete on merits".
It is a real problem for any country or block. As soon as it looks like it threatens leading position of the US all the gloves come of. Obviously not specific to the US. Any other country would do the same given a chance.
What does "succumb to US financial policies" even mean?
The situation has waxed and waned but in general West Germany and Japan at the government level have been pretty happy to have US troops stationed there while facing off against the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China. The Ukrainians and the Baltics would love to have some US troops stationed there right now.
The question in a rational mind is, why would it even bother? US/China partnership is the most economically successful in world history, even more so than US/UK or AUKUS. But the downside of CCP government structure is that paranoia at the top ranks has a good probability of overruling rationality.
Albeit US cannot speak as US-centric paranoia/"exceptionalism" may do the same thing...and the electorate voted to self destruct the government despite US economy being the strongest in decades.
The vast majority of its people do not share in that success and have seen a declining standard of life relative to prior generations whereas in China, the opposite is quite demonstrably true, despite increasingly similar concentrations of wealth and political power.
On the contrary, real wages in the USA are the highest they've ever been. Social media and fentanyl are making people unhappy but for most people it's not an economic problem.
Here in NL we first went from non profits owned by the members to gov housing. They just took everything without payment. Then they privatized everything and the corporation got the houses for free. All was fine for a few years then profit became the only agenda point while they were already swimming in free money and didn't want to build. Building was not attractive compared to getting houses for free. All rents are now maximized to the legal limit of course. They also run various inspection teams to force people to make their neighborhood look more expensive so the value goes up so that the rent can be increased further. For maintenance one can call 1 hour per week. They pretty much have lavish offices full of overpaid paperclip maximizers who don't do anything anyone needs, on the contrary, things would be better if they did nothing.
To add to the irony there are also self-made landlords who do similar work on similar scale on their own! They are usually available for defects and damages day and night.
Back when the people owned the non profits they build and fixed everything asap on the cheap. It might even be better than owning the home directly.
There's maybe an analogous situation in New York's Chinatown in Manhattan but it is running into problems - a lot of buildings owned by community "neighborhood organizations" but my understanding is they are somehow running out of funds and might need to sell
if you want to be a free person and own your place you may have to move out of the USA as in the USA you are not allowed to own your place. each year you have to pay (via “property tax”) for the right to occupy the property which you are not legally allowed to own. 23 states even prohibit people from owning cars… so not really all that free :)
I live in Canada, own house and pay property taxes. Cut the BS. You know what I mean under own. Yes ownership is limited but even limited it is much better than throwing away extra dosh to some middleman I do not give a flying fuck about.
>"In 21 U.S. metros, the monthly cost of owning is at least 50% more expensive"
I am not in the US. 21 metros do not constitute country. When I bought house in major metro (Toronto) it was $200,000. So please do not feed me this pathetic propaganda.
For better or worse, home ownership in the USA has been incentivized. Younger generations are now frozen out of the primary means to accumulate wealth.
Ways forward are a) continued denial (status quo), b) YIMBYs defeat NIMBYs, c) change policy (incentivize renting) or d) <insert radical policy proposal here>.
The bad economy is the biggest (arguably only) reason Trump won against Harris, and by a landslide at that.
You may think that expensive gasoline and cartons of eggs are a meme, but the reality is that the economy has become pretty damn Shite(tm) for the commons. Costs of living are objectively higher than they were just a couple years ago and incomes haven't kept pace either.
The stock market is having the time of its life (and as a small time investor I find that nice) but it's completely detached from the economy.
Trump won both the electoral and popular votes and won all the swing states. The Republicans took both Houses of Congress and held all governorships up for election.
Yes, he won by a landslide and the biggest factor was the bad economy.
The factor was calling the economy a bad economy, they are already backtracking on promises since the economy is doing pretty well already and they won’t be able to juice it much more.
Anyone who thinks 49.9% of the vote (vs 48.4%) is a landslide will quickly find them in negative approval ratings if they think that gives them much political capital (if trump focuses and spending rather than earning capital, that is, which he definitely will).
I think the problems with the economy (consolidation, corporate/private equity power, general inequality) are too big for any administration to fix even assuming they would want to. But yeah GDP and unemployment rate are fairly misleading metrics.
The biggest problem is inequality, but Trump is the last person in the world who would address that, so the metrics he has focused: pricing, stock markets, unemployment, are going to be very hard to move up (and retire easy to move down). It’s going to be hard next four years unless he somehow doesn’t do what he says he is going to do.
2020 election: Biden 51.3% 81.2 million (302 electoral), Trump 46.8% 74.2 million (232 electoral). Democrats control of House (but lost 13 seats) and quasi-control of Senate (gained 3 seats).
2024 election: Trump 49.7% 77.3 million (312 electoral), Harris 48.4% 75 million (226 electoral). Republicans control of House (but lost 1 seat) and control of Senate (gained 4 seats).
1972 election: Nixon 60.7% 47.2 million (520 electoral), McGovern 37.5% 29.2 million (17 electoral). Democrats control of House (but lost 13 seats) and control of Senate (gained 2 seats).
1984 election: Reagan 58.8% 54.5 million (525 electoral), Mondale 40.6% 37.6 million (13 electoral). Democrats control of House (but lost 16 seats). Republicans control of Senate (but lost 2 seats).
Trump won both the electoral and popular votes and won all the swing states.
That's not what "landslide victory" means.
In fact Trump's electoral total was scarcely different from Biden's in 2016, and his popular vote margin was far narrower. Historically speaking, both of these are much closer to dead heats than they are to what are generally considered to be landslide victories (like Clinton's wins in 92-96, and Reagan's in 84-88).
You're only saying it's a "landslide" because Trump keeps saying that in his speeches.
But as usual he's either simply lying, or has no idea what he's talking about.
>"If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China."
The "rest of the world" is not limited by NATO. And China is not fighting "the rest of the world". It trades with it, invests and does all kinds of other things. But sure keeping one's head in a sand is a nice position.
China does have a current advantage on lithium battery and rare earth materials - dumb technologies that US and allies can replicate fairly quickly, less than a year. EUV and 3nm and below on the other hand, will take decades, since it involves a number of different and deep technologies controlled by dozens of companies. China has thrown $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines.
> 80% GDP
China's demographics will more than HALF to 500M by 2100, if not earlier, while US grows to close to 400M by then. Someone actually theorizes that China's population is already only 800M right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw
Also, a lot of that GDP is debatable in 2024, when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.
> when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.
Can other economies copy that part? I know a bunch of people who'd like to be able to afford more houses & more groceries at the same time. I'd like that, I can't realistically afford a house in the city I live in without a 50% price drop.
I'm sure China has a lot of problems, but key goods getting cheaper is not one of them. What I'm guessing you meant to say is that retirees were led to put too much of their savings into the housing market and are discovering there is a glut. Which is tragic for them. But prices dropping is a good thing; the unachievable ideal is a utopia where everything is free, ie, 100% deflation.
China's real estate prices having dropped 50% or more has been accompanied by/caused by wages being slashed 50% or more, and increasing unemployment rate, such as 30%+ for youth.
Here are some good posts on why nobody wants deflation:
So some might suggest that the problem is wages being slashed by >50%? Falling real wages are actually a problem. And, AFAIK by definition, are not influenced by inflation or deflation. But if wages had fallen by <40% and prices by >50% then the overall situation was probably improving. A bit chaotic to be comfortable, but not fundamentally worse.
And there is an unemployment problem too, obviously.
'CCP is a secret and authoritarian regime that wields immense power'
vs 'Some random reporter with English firstname and Chinese lastname know what Xi said before he go to bed'
Have you ever wondered if there's a tiny possibility that the media and the reporter *might* be lying?
It's commonly referred to as a deflationary spiral because the falling prices lead to people (perhaps counterintuitively) holding off from large purchases, anticipating a continued drop in prices. Sort of a "buy the bottom" mentality.
The lack of spending then further contributes to falling prices, job cuts, businesses closing, etc. It's really not a situation any economy _wants_.
That is obviously wrong to the point where I am confused why someone always makes the claim. I'm looking forward to running in to someone who can actually follow up with some sort of defence of the position. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence style.
Consider the computer industry. Prices have been falling pretty much across my entire life. Supply-demand suggests that people will keep buying new computers as the price drops and that is exactly what is happening. Demand for compute has never been higher. There is no waiting for improvements, if anything there is a mad rush to buy hardware that everyone knows is about to be obsoleted. It isn't even an irrational rush, the people buying that obsolete hardware often make good money (eg, bitcoin miners in the heyday).
Basic supply demand says as price drops demand increases. Basic life experience says as prices drop I can afford more and better stuff. Observation of real industries suggests - as we would intuit - that industries with regular price drops are actually healthy and great to be in for consumers in the small and the large. Theory suggests that everyone ignores nominal price fluctuations and focuses on real changes so systemic deflation is irrelevant. None of this supports the idea that deflation is bad.
Pretty sure the anti-deflation crowd are just wrong. They have no evidence or argument [0] as far as I can tell, and all the theory is stacked against them. China surely has problems. Deflation is not a problem. It is just a metric.
[0] EDIT Well I suppose they do have an argument, but it involves people randomly going crazy and choosing to live in poverty and discomfort because it gets easier to buy goods. Which is not an argument I really take seriously.
Deflation is a problem, but not for the reason mentioned there. The reason deflation is an issue is because it makes holding cash into an investment strategy. If the price of goods is dropping, the value of money is rising, so the more cash I hold the richer I get. This obviously dissuades people with cash from investing their cash into actual productive work, which means fewer jobs. There was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.
Like interest on a bank account? Holding cash is already an investment strategy. Bonds are a thing. People have options to hold cash and not lose purchasing power. One of the traditional ways people tackle inflation is they demand interest from the banks sufficient to cover it plus a little more to account for time value of money.
It is rather unlikely that giving people an option that they already have is going to cause a problem. One major benefit of money is that people can hoard it and there is no cost in the real economy because all the resources are still there and prices can just adjust to the amount of cash in circulation.
> here was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.
The US came out of the 1930s with an economy that was capable of overcoming almost literally the entire world. Again, the evidence that deflation was some sort of major problem is questionable, it seems to have been associated with the creation of one of the most dynamic economies in the history of history.
And the idea that we have this one clear lesson from one instance back in the 30s is just weird and unbelievable. That isn't how history or complex systems work.
I have never understood the concept of the deflationary spiral: no matter how much people want to save their cash for later, there are simply things they can't do without.
Food, energy, transportation, education, etc.
How long are you going to delay getting a new car simply because cars are getting cheaper and better? Once you probe the theory beyond the surface, it collapses. Yes, a deflationary economy will see less cash velocity than a ZIRP economy with cheap cash sloshing around. But, at the end of the day, humans MUST spend resources today to live to see their savings worth more.
You're missing the debt equation. We live in debt based economy. True across the board deflation (not just some things get cheaper cause of tech etc) means debt is harder and harder to service as wages and earnings fall. As the asset backing the debt goes underwater the debt holders have no choice but to walk away. All banks stop lending and ultimately the entire economy grinds to a halt. That's the main cause of the spiral.
One man's debt is another mans income.
The reason we narrowly avoided full blown deflation in 2008 is because they bailed out the banks. If they didn't we would have had 1929 style depression these last 15 years.
Yeah people only spending money when they should be spending it is bad for the economy. Misallocation because of inflation is great. Good thing is that this system is close to collapse.
I think peak propaganda and manipulation was convincing people that inflation is good for the economy and therefore for them. Imagine prices constantly dropping and your money buys more than ever, uhm, like the deflation happening in tech. That would be very bad for the economy. The irony is that the best performing sector has been the one deflating the most.
Northvolt isnt lacking funding (pedantically they are, else they wouldnt be bankrupt) or clients, but know-how for scaling putting aside some conspiracy theories about Chinese equipments. Turns out scaling isnt easy.
vanadium redox flow isnt very big yet even for Energy Storage System
Side note: The tendency US and Westernin general to depend on Wunderwaffe tech (Vanadium Redox! Solid State Battery!) is quite amusing.
> China’s startup scene is dead as investors pull out
Turns out Emperor Pooh dislike get-rich-quick startup mentality and yet another useless apps. He wouldnt mind hard tech bro like Ren Zhengfei or Wang Chuanfu though.
P.S. Watch the robotic space, things might get interesting in a year or two.
So why aren't US and allies demonstrably replicating EVs (and other kinds of green technology) quickly? Tesla is still pretty much the only serious player. Why are CEOs of major western carmakers painting a very different picture than what you describe here? Where are the serious EU/US battery makers that are globally competitive? It looks to me like the EU has chosen the worst of all options: put up tarriff barriers while also not having serious domestic EV makers, and also not stimulating domestic EV development.
Yeah I mean, with the sad state of the Dutch electric grid, the poor coverage of chargers, and the disappearing consumer subsidies, I wouldn't want either. So why aren't governments also building the infrastructure they need to help stimulate demand for EVs? Not taking global climate disaster serious enough?
Building EVs and supporting infrastructure is a lot more complicated than just having a bunch of blueprints.
Because the agenda is not transitioning the current fleet to EV, it is making private transport a privilege of the top percent in the process.
Personally, I am not sure yet whether I like this or not. I can see good arguments for and against.
I wish it would be an honest open policy instead of the current vice grip of on the one hand passing aggressive phase out timelines of ICE through regulation, and on the other doing nothing to prepare a grid for mass EV adoption.
I can see why it wouldn't pass a democratic vote, but I also think chances of this passing under the covers are fairly slim as any time one of their roadmapped phases comes near they usually have to postpone them to appease the public.
While the share of services in the US GDP is more than 3/4. What will you do with all these expensive NY lawyers when push comes to shove? Sue China's drones?
If you want to look at an objective numeric metric for this, why not foreign military bases? US has 128+, China had ~2. To project global military power China will need similar order of magnitude presence. I use that number as a check against sometimes breathless and sensational journalism about the topic.
It’s harder for me to come up with a simpler metric for “Belt and Road” / IMF style control-through-capital.
But, I think it will happen. After visiting China and seeing how much consistent progress both in infrastructure from the government and in daily life from the economy, my impression is US government makes 2 steps forward 1 step back in the same time it takes China to take 100 steps forward.
I was of the same viewpoint as you - just look at the militaries!
Except in today's world, being a military power is increasingly less relevant after a certain point, while economic supremacy is increasingly gaining prominence. While the West is content with self-platitudes for their "democracy", China has been building strong relationships with a number of countries looking to implement the "China-model", a capitalist but largely regressive nation that relies on surveillance and stringent media control. China is already licensing out their technology to a number of interested countries, some of which include Western countries looking to emulate Chinese autocracy themselves. On the other hand, countries are looking at the incoming US govt with pretty much strong uncertainty as to what their relationship with America will be like.
Not to mention, as automated warfare becomes increasingly more relevant, guess where these countries are buying their drones from? Hint hint, it's not the US with their overpriced toys.
> China has been building strong relationships with a number of countries
Number of irrelevant countries. US's allies are Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, etc. 80% of the world's wealth. and 95% of the world's top technologies.
> guess where these countries are buying their drones from
Soon, not China. China Is Cutting Off Drone Supplies Critical to Ukraine War Effort [1]. China is reportedly making drones for Russia instead, according to multiple intelligence officials.
According to the World Economic Forum[1], the USA plus the whole EU make up 29% of the world's GDP-PPP, while the BRICS countries come up at 37.3%.
You also included Japan, Australia, South Korea, Canada and Taiwan, but I find it hard to believe they would make up a very significant part of the difference.
On the former point, all the wealthy countries are in team USA, although team USA seems intent on shooting itself on the foot multiple times.
Team China is not as tight as team USA, but has a number of strings it can pull with its members. These are countries that, while not prosperous themselves, provide the raw material for most of the West's industries. A lot of critical resources are often only found in these countries. Not to mention, they have often aligned against USA gang in most cases, at the UN, while also aligning with China. Look at how many countries have signed public declarations stating that the Uighur camps in China don't exist/don't repress Uighurs.
On the second point, the article only states that China is cutting Ukrainian drone supplies to supply Russia instead - that's exactly the danger the West should be worried about. China also supplies an increasing number of armaments to partner countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria and Egypt. Needless to say, China is currently the world's largest exporter of military UAVs.
The US does not have 128 foreign military bases. It has ~50 nominal bases [1]. Most of them are just the US sharing an airfield with a friendly country; it's a refueling stop that would not be hard for China to replicate.
The US does have several large overseas bases but 90% of this list is are indefensible logistics hubs and not a meaningful projection of force.
Most of these bases are co-located with NATO or other allies for good reason, the US doesn't have to do everything itself wrt air defense, locating an airlift wing with a fighter wing.
But then it's a lower bar than people imagine, for China to buy similar friendship.
You literally called the logistics hubs of the US military -- the bases that move more of the most powerful weapons and military personnel in the world -- indefensible. So you either don't know what indefensible means, or you are a piss poor propagandist.
Yes, it is very easy for a logistic hub that only has an airlift wing to be indefensible in a war against a peer adversary if for example there are no THAAD or Patriot batteries there. It's hub, not a hardened facility.
Many of the US military bases are communication centers or barracks on training bases. They serve important roles but are not "defensible" in many contexts.
Yes or No: Can the US singlehandedly defend all those bases without the help of host country? If the answer is "Yes", then China has a long way to go to achieve that capability. If answer is "No", then the bar is much lower, and gp's point is that China can "buy" similar arrangements without too much effort. More directly, is the bottleneck on funding, personnel/matiriel, or diplomacy?
China is building up a lot of soft power with infrastructure projects all over the world - most of them are aimed at improving trade - ports, rail lines and the like. In the next decade or 2, they can reasonably make requests to place a few PLA/PLAA personnel and equipment on bases in strategic places, bases they may have been built using Chinese money.
Fair enough. But could any country attack all of those bases at once? As long as the US doesn't do anything as colossally stupid as leaving NATO it shouldn't be a problem with support. Ultimately NATO participation resides with Congress which is beholden to the people. NATO is overwhelmingly approved of by the US people -- it is a defense pact.
If a country or coalition decided to attack all of those bases at once it would give the US the high ground to respond. Nazis tried a blitzkrieg and that didn't turn out well. As someone squarely against the bullshit of Trump, I would not be happy if he was in power at the time. But I do not doubt for a second that the US population in general would respond as readily as they did after 9/11 (but hopefully not as readily as in Iraq).
We just saw how the "dipshit in power" aspect works with Netanyahu in Gaza -- a disproportionate and tragic response. The only caveat is Trump is an extremely stupid dipshit, so I genuinely hope it doesn't turn out that way and everyone keeps their powder dry until Trump is out of office.
China's buildup of soft power is good for them, and I commend them for it. Fortunately, I believe soft power is a defensive power at its core, and I don't think it translates to offensive power. To confuse the two would be a mistake.
Thank you for the opportunity to get a lot off my chest this New Year's Eve. I hope it wasn't too offensive, because I believe you responded intelligently and in good faith, and thank you for that.
I think you have the right idea. China has yet to truly flex its muscle. They prefer to quietly grow stronger. Their response to Covid with the largely successful zero covid strategy gives a clue about the power of its government. Silly, you can’t become the champion without stepping into the ring.
A country targeted in an ongoing hybrid war by the world's #1 superpower would have a (relatively) extreme response to a pandemic that originated in an epidemiologically interesting location deep in their inland territory, and that extreme response having any substantial national security impetuous is "batshit insane". Insightful contribution!
A big country would never overreact to national security threats. We have the TSA to protect us from that :)
China creates a superbug via GOF research. Accidently releases it from the lab. Shuts down its own economy. Puts the majority of it's citizens on house arrest, and that is "largely successful"? Please send me the AliExpress link to whatever it is you are smoking, it must be some good shit.
I think the real lesson here is that if you enough government power, there is no need to be competent. The feedback loop is destroyed so you can just do whatever random stupid thing you want until your country collapses like the USSR.
The WHO report was inconclusive because the lab withheld data.
This creates a bit of a catch-22, no? There's no basis to claim it was a lab leak because the lab in question won't cooperate with establishing whether there's a basis for the idea.
It'd be one thing if the proper amount of research was done and made public and we could see that there was no conspiracy. As is, there's a lab located in Wuhan studying coronaviruses that pinky promises that they didn't start COVID-19, while the WHO director is on record saying that the lab blocked the WHO investigation that might have exonerated them.
I think it's prudent to forgive people for whom "this is a baseless conspiracy theory" isn't a sufficient explanation.
The bar for 'they withheld data' can always be moved. Some data will always be considered withheld.
There was no shortage of data that was consistent with the bush meat market outbreak.
It would be one thing if the outbreak started in a theatre or a mall, or some other place which did not regularly traffic in exotic diseases. It's another thing when it started at the only non-lab active reservoir in the city.
Given the preponderance of evidence and probability, the lab leak theory is a baseless conspiracy at this point. It stretches credulity to think that of all the places the lab leaked, it leaked to the one place in town which was itself a dangerous source of cross-species disease transmission.
If there was no such wet market in town, and if the outbreak didn't center in it, the lab leak would have been a far more probable hypothesis. But that's not the world we live in.
The director of the WHO— who is Ethiopian, not a US puppet—is on record saying that the lab withheld data and China has rebuffed multiple attempts to collect the data that the WHO feels was withheld. How is that not a basis for the conspiracy theory?
I'm not even saying that it's right, it just confuses me to hear you so fervently insist that there's no basis for the idea when the WHO director himself says that there is and that the investigation was inconclusive.
We on this forum of all people should know that you can present partial data that shows completely different conclusions what the full data would show.
Why is a wet market a more convincing explanation than a lab whose explicit mission is studying coronaviruses, one which has been publicly called out for being uncooperative with the ensuing investigation?
The jump between 'data was withheld' and 'there was a coverup of an incredibly improbable thing happening' compared to 'very probable thing that was also supported by data happening' is colossal.
Absence of data isn't a free pass that lets you fill in whatever blanks you want, to fit whatever improbable theory you want. Especially when a plausible, probable, data supported alternative exists.
At the moment, given what we know and don't know, it is dramatically more likely that it was a bush meat outbreak, and confidently and without quantification, asserting the contrary (as the ancestor post did) is nonsense.
Its correct to say that it might have been a lab leak. It's not in good faith to say that it was, or was probably a lab leak. Because that's not where the preponderance of evidence currently rests.
Sorry, I edited my comment to ask this as the conclusion:
> Why is a wet market a more convincing explanation than a lab whose explicit mission is studying coronaviruses, one which has been publicly called out for being uncooperative with the ensuing investigation?
It's possible that the widespread belief in this explanation is a failure in science communication and there's a good reason for this, but it's not a failure in critical thinking on the part of those who are skeptical of the official story. The official story has an enormous unexplained hole. I've yet to see anyone effectively communicate why the intuitively more probable answer is the less probable one.
I don't think the desire to see the conspiracy and not the boring, mundane explanation is a failure of communication, scientific thinking, or critical reasoning skills.
I think it's simply the consequences of politically motivated reasoning. (At least, for people who have spent much time thinking about it.)
> I've yet to see anyone effectively communicate why the intuitively more probable answer is the less probable one.
I just communicated why the market leak theory is both more intuitive, and more probable.
There were two possible sources for the virus in the city, and hundreds of thousands of non-sources for it. The first detected source of it was the market.
If the first outbreak of it were in the lab, (but was hidden), probability and intuition indicates that the next place it would have shown up at would have been some randomly selected place of the city, which has nothing to do with viruses. A mall. A theatre. A ball game.
The fact that of all the possibilities, it showed up in the one particular place that is also a prime suspect for it's own viral outbreak means that the most obvious explanation (market leak) is likely the correct one.
When a swine flu outbreak is traced to a particular stall in a factory farm, we don't conclude (without further evidence) that actually it was caused by a university miles away.
Another explanation could be detection bias: it was tracked to the market not because it originated there, but because vastly more resources have been expended on investigating the market compared to any other place in the city.
You’re assuming “it was tracked to there” = “it originated there” but that’s a big leap.
> You’re assuming “it was tracked to there” = “it originated there” but that’s a big leap.
If the market were one of multiple second-generation infection spreader sites, we'd have had significantly faster growth in the rate of infections.
With the power of hindsight, the rate of spread of COVID is well-understood, and the timelines of people getting sick is consistent with one initial outbreak site. There just aren't any known cases where someone came down with COVID on day 1 of the outbreak, without also having gone to that market.
All of that is subject to detection bias as well. There’s a lot of uncertainty involved in tracking early cases. It’s not anything close to solid evidence.
It would be a damn weird form of bias when every early case that could be accounted for was somehow tracked to only the market.
The location bias hypothesis would work if they looked at all patrons of the market, and checked if they got sick. That's not what they did, though, because they didn't have a list of all the patrons of the market. It doesn't have a guestbook.
They looked for people who got sick, and asked them where they went before they fell sick. And all of them turned out to have gone to the market - and not on the same day.
The exact methodology of how they found these people is very important, as there are many potential sources of bias, not to mention conflicts of interest.
> A geospatial analysis reports that 155 early COVID-19 cases from Hubei Province, China, in December, 2019, significantly clustered around a food market in Wuhan, China.
However, I couldn't find details on how these 155 cases were selected or what exactly "significantly clustered" means. 155 is a small sample, so the details are important.
Also important is whether the data on these cases was provided by government sources. If so, I would question how reliable or representative that data is.
> I just communicated why the market leak theory is both more intuitive, and more probable.
No, you didn't, you stated that it was.
The rest of your post makes sense as an explanation. Maybe lead with that next time instead of condescendingly telling people that they're politically motivated, stupid, or whatever else you meant to imply by calling it a conspiracy theory.
COVID-19, at least in the US, has been an enormous failure in science communication, and being condescending towards those who already feel alienated by the terrible communication isn't going to help.
More derailing than baseless, whether or not Xi did it on purpose or if the CIA did it or if aliens did it has no relevance to how they handed the event after it happened.
China has 900M people making less than $400/month, and 600M people making less than $100/month. relative GDP is a joke, go to China to see what most of them are eating (hint: it's unsafe food filled with chemicals, or its mostly carbs) and where these people are living (hint: it's shoddy constructed condos or run down farm houses)
Not sure why you have something against the flyover states. I'm sure there's more shoddily constructed condos in Florida/California/New York per capita than there is in the Midwest. Same goes for cheap high calorie food.
Of course, the same can probably be said about the large population centers in China too. More people concentrated in one area tends to mean more poverty in that area and all the things that come with it.
The parallel is that there are rich and poor? It is unscrupulous to argue in imprecise, binary terms while ignoring the difference in scale. People in flyover states are not making only $400/mo or even occupying that same societal equivalent of China in America.
