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RE: A Post China World

in LeoFinance2 years ago (edited)

The demographics or China are a showstopper. There is no going around that. I hope Xi won't be as stupid as to try and conquer Taiwan. The West has an off-switch when it comes to the Chinese economy. China imports most of its energy and raw materials from far a way. Its markets are in the West. China is able to project military power only about a thousand miles from its coast. The West is capable of destroying the Chinese economy much faster and much more thoroughly than the economy of Russia.

China's rapid development in the last 45 years is a consequence of a deal between Nixon and Mao that opened up China to the global economy. The motive for the deal was to break up the communist bloc, that is, security policy. China's growth has been sponsored by US tax payers. The US does not have to do anything except stop policing the world's oceans to keep trade routes open to make life difficult for China. If the US did that, which it has already begun doing, that will usher a new era of regional powers and small-time imperialism in Eurasia. Suddenly, China will find itself having its foreign trade at the tender mercies of its traditional enemies including Japan and Vietnam and rivals such as India.

The geography of China is not conducive for China to become a world power. While it did have an ambitious program of explorations started about ten years before the Portuguese in the early 15th century, that did not last very long (Admiral Zheng's voyages). China was forced to redirect the resources reserved for that to guard its northern border.

With security concerns at the forefront again, China's prospects for further economic expansion while sponsored by the US are nonexistent.