The Death of a Superpower?

[xyxmt]

America will ride India to maintain its dominance for next 50 years.

 

[VCheng]

Great posts by @SvenSvensonov and @LeveragedBuyout on a perennial favorite topic here on PDF. Thank you for those.

I wonder if you gentlemen(?) offer any insights on how the Chinese ratio of workers per retiree changes by 2030 and how that might put on a brake on its presumed uninterrupted economic ascendancy?

 

[gambit]

Most analysts appear to be divided into one of three camps:

Continued American Hegemony
Cold War 2.0
American Decline, and Demotion from Superpower to Great Power

I tend to take the Cold War 2.0 view, not because China and the US are destined for hostile relations, but ironically because China and the US have so much in common, but not quite enough. We are both pragmatic, business-minded, multi-ethnic societies, but there are important differences that lead me to believe that our relationship will continue to feature coopetition, rather than pure cooperation:

Very good, sir.

As highlighted, I am inclined to believe in the Cold War v2 direction the world is heading towards. Regarding your six points as to why/how the US became the power she is today, point one is most attractive to me as the foundation for that progress. Even when the US was a young country and not a continental power, the rest of the land mass was seldom any under any real potential of being under another's control, not even of Mexico's. The US, as a country and as a people bent on exploration and expansion of the new land, had a security from threats the way China never had and never will.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Great posts by @SvenSvensonov and @LeveragedBuyout on a perennial favorite topic here on PDF. Thank you for those.

I wonder if you gentlemen(?) offer any insights on how the Chinese ratio of workers per retiree changes by 2030 and how that might put on a brake on its presumed uninterrupted economic ascendancy?

I can't really offer any more insight than the popular knowledge on the subject. The narrative that "China will get old before it gets rich" seems to encapsulate the thinking behind the dependency ratio fears, but I tend to rank that issue lower on the scale when arguing about superpower status. Projecting 10 years into the future is hard enough, but the multi-decade projections of demographics never seem to be right. That said, China is not an immigrant society, so taking the fact that a child born today won't enter the labor force for about two decades, we can be reasonably certain about China's demography over the next generation, at least. It doesn't look good, but then, among wealthier countries, it doesn't look good anywhere.

A nice backgrounder article about the issue is here (I can post it for you if you don't have access):

Demography: China’s Achilles heel | The Economist

The takeaway:

The differences between the two countries are even more striking if you look at their average ages. In 1980 China's median (the age at which half the population is younger, half older) was 22. That is characteristic of a young developing country. It is now 34.5, more like a rich country and not very different from America's, which is 37. But China is ageing at an unprecedented pace. Because fewer children are being born as larger generations of adults are getting older, its median age will rise to 49 by 2050, nearly nine years more than America at that point. Some cities will be older still. The Shanghai Population and Family Planning Committee says that more than a third of the city's population will be over 60 by 2020.
...
But that is only part of a wider problem. Between 2010 and 2050 China's workforce will shrink as a share of the population by 11 percentage points, from 72% to 61%—a huge contraction, even allowing for the fact that the workforce share is exceptionally large now. That means China's old-age dependency ratio (which compares the number of people over 65 with those aged 15 to 64) will soar. At the moment the ratio is 11—roughly half America's level of 20. But by 2050, China's old-age ratio will have risen fourfold to 42, surpassing America's. Even more strikingly, by 2050, the number of people coming towards the end of their working lives (ie, those in their 50s) will have risen by more than 10%. The number of those just setting out (those in their early 20s, who are usually the best educated and most productive members of society) will have halved.
...
The shift spells the end of China as the world's factory. The apparently endless stream of cheap labour is starting to run dry. Despite pools of underemployed country-dwellers, China already faces shortages of manual workers. As the workforce starts to shrink after 2013, these problems will worsen. Sarah Harper of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing points out that China has mapped out the age structure of its jobs, and knows for each occupation when the skills shortage will hit. It is likely to try to offset the impact by looking for workers abroad. Manpower, a business-recruitment firm, says that by 2030 China will be importing workers from outside, rather than exporting them.

Large-scale immigration poses problems of its own. America is one of the rare examples of a country that has managed to use mass immigration to build a skilled labour force. But America is an open, multi-ethnic society with a long history of immigration and strong legal and political institutions. China has none of these features.

The reason why I don't take this issue that seriously in the context of the "US vs. China" discussion is that the United States has its own similarly titanic issues to deal with, namely the parasitic welfare budget (medicare, medicaid, social security) that is slowly overriding every other budget priority (see how the welfare state has hollowed out Europe, both in defense and economic competitiveness), and combined with the labor force participation rate declines that we've seen in the last decade or so... Houston, we have a problem. What does it matter if we have a younger population with a growing labor pool if they are unemployed and must be taken care of by Big Government? Demographics isn't destiny, it's a useful workforce that's destiny--and a growing population, or growing working-age population to be more specific, doesn't automatically translate into a gainfully employed population. And with the Democrats hell-bent on legalizing millions of more Democratic voters--I mean, "undocumented workers"--the problem will only worsen over time.

We have very different problems, true, but I'm not certain that ours is the easier one to solve.

Very good, sir.

As highlighted, I am inclined to believe in the Cold War v2 direction the world is heading towards. Regarding your six points as to why/how the US became the power she is today, point one is most attractive to me as the foundation for that progress. Even when the US was a young country and not a continental power, the rest of the land mass was seldom any under any real potential of being under another's control, not even of Mexico's. The US, as a country and as a people bent on exploration and expansion of the new land, had a security from threats the way China never had and never will.

Agreed. More than anything else, in my mind, it is our optimistic and risk-taking culture combined with our exceptionally favorable geographical location that will ensure our influence is first-tier well into the 22nd century.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I can't really offer any more insight than the popular knowledge on the subject. The narrative that "China will get old before it gets rich" seems to encapsulate the thinking behind the dependency ratio fears, but I tend to rank that issue lower on the scale when arguing about superpower status. Projecting 10 years into the future is hard enough, but the multi-decade projections of demographics never seem to be right. That said, China is not an immigrant society, so taking the fact that a child born today won't enter the labor force for about two decades, we can be reasonably certain about China's demography over the next generation, at least. It doesn't look good, but then, among wealthier countries, it doesn't look good anywhere.

A nice backgrounder article about the issue is here (I can post it for you if you don't have access):

Demography: China’s Achilles heel | The Economist

Your posts on this thread are amazing as always sir.

One thing I would like to comment on is that the statistics in the above article came from 2012, whereas we have recently made major policy changes, for example getting rid of the One child policy.

So predicting into 2050 would require a re-calculation I would imagine, and I'm not sure if anyone has done that yet.

 

[William Hung]

- To the people that keeps towing the party line here : Yes, China will seek global hegemony. That's normal when you are on the rise, no need to feel shy about it (or assume that people here are too dumb to see it). Seeking global hegemony is what you do when you want to extend your global influence (just like what every superpower have done, including the US).

- The key event that helped the US to successfully transit from being an isolationist to a global power, is WW2, where the US emerged as a victorious and righteous hero. Seeking global influence (hegemony) is much easier when you are regarded as a righteous hero.

- China is also in the process of transitioning from being isolationist to a global super power. During this transitioning period, China has never emerged itself from any global events where she is seen as a righteous hero. To the contrary, China is currently being perceived as a bogeyman, the yellow peril, etc.

- Here is something as bad as the "China will get old before it gets rich" problem: China being perceived as a bogeyman before it successfully extend its global influence (hegemon).

- So the US had 2 advantages: It became rich before it got old. It became a righteous hero before it became a global power (hegemon).

- It doesn't help that the CCP's attitude and method of diplomacy (SCS+ECS disputes, dodgy dealings in Africa, silencing dissenters, immature economic games, etc.) only reinforces this Chinese bogeyman image.

- Cold War 2 is a reality. Being a left wing, I also adhere to the "global elites" narrative. However, I don't foresee any cooperation between the global elites happening soon as the major global elites are fundamentally competing for the same thing.

- Unlike some people who underestimates the "declining" US and the various smaller/weaker countries, I don't see them voluntarily going down without putting up a fight. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe that there will be a collusion between these countries to contain or limit China's global influence (hegemony).

- China will become rich, no doubt about that. But extending its global influence and hegemony will not be that easy a task. Cold War 2.0 will wages on and the death of the US superpower will be a slow and annoying one for China.

Caveat: these are all my personal opinions that came out of thin air, which I can't defend.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

- To the people that keeps towing the party line here : Yes, China will seek global hegemony. That's normal when you are on the rise, no need to feel shy about it (or assume that people here are too dumb to see it). Seeking global hegemony is what you do when you want to extend your global influence (just like what every superpower have done, including the US).

- The key event that helped the US to successfully transit from being an isolationist to a global power, is WW2, where the US emerged as a victorious and righteous hero. Seeking global influence (hegemony) is much easier when you are regarded as a righteous hero.

- China is also in the process of transitioning from being isolationist to a global super power. During this transitioning period, China has never emerged itself from any global events where she is seen as a righteous hero. To the contrary, China is currently being perceived as a bogeyman, the yellow peril, etc.

- Here is something as bad as the "China will get old before it gets rich" problem: China being perceived as a bogeyman before it successfully extend its global influence (hegemon).

- So the US had 2 advantages: It became rich before it got old. It became a righteous hero before it became a global power (hegemon).

- It doesn't help that the CCP's attitude and method of diplomacy (SCS+ECS disputes, dodgy dealings in Africa, silencing dissenters, immature economic games, etc.) only reinforces this Chinese bogeyman image.

- Cold War 2 is a reality. Being a left wing, I also adhere to the "global elites" narrative. However, I don't foresee any cooperation between the global elites happening soon as the major global elites are fundamentally competing for the same thing.

- Unlike some people who underestimates the "declining" US and the various smaller/weaker countries, I don't see them voluntarily going down without putting up a fight. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe that there will be a collusion between these countries to contain or limit China's global influence (hegemony).

- China will become rich, no doubt about that. But extending its global influence and hegemony will not be that easy a task. Cold War 2.0 will wages on and the death of the US superpower will be a slow and annoying one for China.

Caveat: these are all my personal opinions that came out of thin air, which I can't defend.

Why would we fight directly against America?

They haven't been interested in an actual direct war with us, since the 1950 Korean war, in which we pushed the combined forces of the US + 16 of her allies into the longest retreat in US military history.

As you saw, they did not come to defend Scarborough shoal in 2012 either.

The world has changed, nobody is interested in a global nuclear war. There is and will continue to be collusion between the great powers.

 

[William Hung]

Why would we fight directly against America?

They haven't been interested in an actual direct war with us, since the 1950 Korean war, in which we pushed the combined forces of the US + 16 of her allies into the longest retreat in US military history.

As you saw, they did not come to defend Scarborough shoal in 2012 either.

The world has changed, nobody is interested in a global nuclear war. There is and will continue to be collusion between the great powers.

You are assuming that a military confrontation is the only means to limit/contain a competitor. This is a wrong assumption. A military confrontation is one option, but there are also many others. (Hint: TPP)

You would be naive if you think that the Scarborough Shoal skirmish was a Chinese victory. The US-Philippines MDT does not stipulate that the US must militarily intervene in a territorial dispute. To the contrary, the MDT stipulate that territorial disputes should be resolved peacefully.

By not physically intervening in the Scarborough shoal, the US actually has achieved something big (in terms of containing China), I'll let you figure it out for yourself.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Your posts on this thread are amazing as always sir.

One thing I would like to comment on is that the statistics in the above article came from 2012, whereas we have recently made major policy changes, for example getting rid of the One child policy.

So predicting into 2050 would require a re-calculation I would imagine, and I'm not sure if anyone has done that yet.

@Chinese-Dragon

As always, you are too kind. After a few hours, I sometimes re-read my posts and cringe and the errors, typos, and grammatical mistakes, and scramble to correct them. Embarrassing.

And then there's the main issue, which you correctly pointed out: I used old data (admittedly for an issue that I don't take very seriously)--if you have updated total fertility rates in response to the new policy, it would be interesting to compare to the old numbers, and see if that affected the projections enough to alter the "old China" camp. I haven't come across newer numbers, at least not in English, so I must defer to you on this matter.

When you have a chance, I would be curious to hear your views in response to @SvenSvensonov 's article as well. Over the summer, you and I used to debate this issue, but ever since bookmarks were taken away, I can't seem to find those posts anymore.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

By not physically intervening in the Scarborough shoal, the US actually has achieved something big (in terms of containing China), I'll let you figure it out for yourself.

OK, you say the US gained. China also gained, since we controlled the Scarborough shoal after that.

I agree. Both these sides gained from it.

 

[danger007]

India will take over USA as the strongest supa powa in the globe...

Mighty BD invade mars...

 

[William Hung]

India will take over USA as the strongest supa powa in the globe...

Now this thread is officially ruined.

 

[AbidM]

Leveraged buyout, I am absolutely *Speechless* what an utterly great analysis of the past, present and future situation(s) of America, and America being a super power, Bravo. It read well too, though a bit long winded at certain points, it was still a rather entertaining read. Thank you for your perspective.

 

[Sanchez]

- To the people that keeps towing the party line here : Yes, China will seek global hegemony. That's normal when you are on the rise, no need to feel shy about it (or assume that people here are too dumb to see it). Seeking global hegemony is what you do when you want to extend your global influence (just like what every superpower have done, including the US).

- The key event that helped the US to successfully transit from being an isolationist to a global power, is WW2, where the US emerged as a victorious and righteous hero. Seeking global influence (hegemony) is much easier when you are regarded as a righteous hero.

- China is also in the process of transitioning from being isolationist to a global super power. During this transitioning period, China has never emerged itself from any global events where she is seen as a righteous hero. To the contrary, China is currently being perceived as a bogeyman, the yellow peril, etc.

- Here is something as bad as the "China will get old before it gets rich" problem: China being perceived as a bogeyman before it successfully extend its global influence (hegemon).

- So the US had 2 advantages: It became rich before it got old. It became a righteous hero before it became a global power (hegemon).

- It doesn't help that the CCP's attitude and method of diplomacy (SCS+ECS disputes, dodgy dealings in Africa, silencing dissenters, immature economic games, etc.) only reinforces this Chinese bogeyman image.

- Cold War 2 is a reality. Being a left wing, I also adhere to the "global elites" narrative. However, I don't foresee any cooperation between the global elites happening soon as the major global elites are fundamentally competing for the same thing.

- Unlike some people who underestimates the "declining" US and the various smaller/weaker countries, I don't see them voluntarily going down without putting up a fight. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe that there will be a collusion between these countries to contain or limit China's global influence (hegemony).

- China will become rich, no doubt about that. But extending its global influence and hegemony will not be that easy a task. Cold War 2.0 will wages on and the death of the US superpower will be a slow and annoying one for China.

Caveat: these are all my personal opinions that came out of thin air, which I can't defend.

Typical Indian mind power? You should have some knowledge about history and cultures for the least...

 

[Sanchez]

Thanks to Sven and Leveragedbuyout for sharing their thoughts.

I personally appreciated more about the analysis by Leveragedbuyout, as it is beyond the mainstream of American opinions but may have reflected more of a second thought how to maintain the superpower of US in a long run.

A few months ago Obama assured his audience at Westpoint that US will be No 1 and world leader for another 100 years. It reminded me about the scenes that Chinese shouted "long live Chairman Mao" many years ago. We knew Mao was a human who's going to have limited lifetime but still wished that he could live ten thousand years. So the Americans are worried about this "superpower" because you also know that US No 1 can not last forever. The questions are how long US will be recognized as the dominant power and what US gonna do.

IMHO Sven's view may represent more of American mindset in a traditional or conservative way. "Me and friends" plus quick shooting at the bad guys was the spirits of cowboys and sherrifs to bring justice or lawful orders in the wild west of America. These spirits or principles of US strength have worked well for US and allies up to the fall of the Soviet Union. It won't work well anymore.

US military power is unprecedentedly strong, even stronger than that of China and Russia combined. Friends or allies really don't add any weight to the US military strength that was already demonstrated in Korean War 65 years ago. In Asia, US allies are considered as "pawns" or protectorates of US “monster” that are dependent on US interests and politics. These countries are US allies only when they serve to the US interests to cope with the "challenger" or “potential challengers”.

If US wants to maintain its superpower it should never use force to fight any "challengers", be it old Russian challenge or new Chinese challenge. US military power can only be excersized on minor rivals not on big weight country like Russia or China. A big war with either Russia or China would greatly weaken the US and may even pull US down to a second class country.

Maybe US should change this "Me and Friends" way of thinking. The world is not made for the US and allies, and it's for everybody on the planet!!! Instead of thinking the No 1 power Americans could perhaps consider to be the center of powers in the future through cooperations with other different powers.

I really admired the observation and view of Leveragedbuyout on China and US. China is a multi-God and ethnicity tolerant society. The Han Chinese are unified people groups on the basis of culture and written language.