peter Zeihan 2020

[Lord Sovereign]

Easy; the American people will. They'll just print more money.

Until that money becomes worthless via inflation?

 

[Terthna]

Until that money becomes worthless via inflation?

Yep; and they don't care. Consequences are for the lower classes to deal with.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Yep; and they don't care. Consequences are for the lower classes to deal with.

But their money is their power, and inflation makes much of that power null and void. Not to mention they can't use the equivalent of Weimar Marks to prop China up. Indeed, if they did this, they'd only be prolonging the inevitable and make everything worse for everyone, themselves included.

Then again, as I've said a few times, Globalists are not the brightest of people.

 

[Floridaman]

If Biden becomes president though, the Democrats will likely do everything they can to prop up China for as long as possible.

Not quite, while Biden himself has corrupt dealings with China, the MIC is clear that they aren’t fond of them. Biden would be ignored, like they ignored trump when he wanted out of Syria. Take a look at how while the bureaucrats ignore trump normally but actions against China have been carried out. And even Congress has been pretty unified there,

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Not quite, while Biden himself has corrupt dealings with China, the MIC is clear that they aren’t fond of them. Biden would be ignored, like they ignored trump when he wanted out of Syria. Take a look at how while the bureaucrats ignore trump normally but actions against China have been carried out. And even Congress has been pretty unified there,

Do you think they might be angry about Covid? Because it has fucked their precious global market pretty badly, and given that it's practically all China's fault, that surely must antagonise any preexisting hostilities.

 

[Floridaman]

Do you think they might be angry about Covid? Because it has fucked their precious global market pretty badly, and given that it's practically all China's fault, that surely must antagonise any preexisting hostilities.

Nah, they don’t really care about that. If anything this has been great since it removed tons of opposition to the security state. There are two factors I think. 1. The Cold War was great for them, more and more power and prestige, they want that back, Russia is a joke, but China works for a threat. 2. They don’t want to share power.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

2. They don’t want to share power.

Took them fucking long enough to figure out what the true nature of the Chinese beast is. China was never going to be a part of their order in the long run, and would inevitably seek to dominate them.

 

[Arch Dornan]

Took them fucking long enough to figure out what the true nature of the Chinese beast is. China was never going to be a part of their order in the long run, and would inevitably seek to dominate them.

They should know from the belt and road idea.

 

[Floridaman]

Took them fucking long enough to figure out what the true nature of the Chinese beast is. China was never going to be a part of their order in the long run, and would inevitably seek to dominate them.

Again they wanted an enemy. You can’t convince people to give up freedom without a threat, there is a reason the CIA were the last people to accept the Soviet Union was collapsing.

 

[Bear Ribs]

But their money is their power, and inflation makes much of that power null and void. Not to mention they can't use the equivalent of Weimar Marks to prop China up. Indeed, if they did this, they'd only be prolonging the inevitable and make everything worse for everyone, themselves included.

Then again, as I've said a few times, Globalists are not the brightest of people.

No, the super-wealthy do not have giant money bins of cash to swim in. They keep a majority their assets in things that are immune to inflation, like stocks and real estate holdings. Poor people tend to actually have a much larger percentage of their total wealth tied up in cash than rich people do and are hurt more by inflation.

 

[Isem]

Not quite, while Biden himself has corrupt dealings with China, the MIC is clear that they aren’t fond of them. Biden would be ignored, like they ignored trump when he wanted out of Syria. Take a look at how while the bureaucrats ignore trump normally but actions against China have been carried out. And even Congress has been pretty unified there,

Ehh, it's one thing to lie about how many troops are still in an area when the number is relatively small and the place is far away and can thus be relatively easily hidden and another to manage to hide not taking part in an entire trade war. It's a matter of scale and location. Also different branches of government involved.

 

[Floridaman]

Ehh, it's one thing to lie about how many troops are still in an area when the number is relatively small and the place is far away and can thus be relatively easily hidden and another to manage to hide not taking part in an entire trade war. It's a matter of scale and location. Also different branches of government involved.

Again, it is more a matter of them not caring whether he knows. What is he going to do, claim the army is ignoring him. That wouldn’t end well. And the trade war wasn’t the factor I was referring to, the MIC would be more do things like send ships to the South China Sea, and more straight forward saber rattling. They want an enemy, the trade war could cripple them too quickly so they don’t really care.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

No, the super-wealthy do not have giant money bins of cash to swim in. They keep a majority their assets in things that are immune to inflation, like stocks and real estate holdings. Poor people tend to actually have a much larger percentage of their total wealth tied up in cash than rich people do and are hurt more by inflation.

Oh, undoubtedly the poor would suffer the most but in the end everyone gets fucked by runaway inflation one way or the other.

 

[Lanmandragon]

Until that money becomes worthless via inflation?

That's a feature not a bug prop up China whole simultaneously removing China's only competitor. If the US falls it wont matter if they have issues or even collapse. Because no one besides America can stand against China they're simply to big. This isnt nationalism or pride but reality if the US falls. There isn't a power on Earth who can stand against them it's really that simple.

 

[LordsFire]

That's a feature not a bug prop up China whole simultaneously removing China's only competitor. If the US falls it wont matter if they have issues or even collapse. Because no one besides America can stand against China they're simply to big. This isnt nationalism or pride but reality if the US falls. There isn't a power on Earth who can stand against them it's really that simple.

If Russia, Japan, and the Oceania nations allied against China, they'd be pretty screwed.

India hopping on board to add raw manpower to the anti-China alliance would just be gravy.

 

[Lanmandragon]

If Russia, Japan, and the Oceania nations allied against China, they'd be pretty screwed.

India hopping on board to add raw manpower to the anti-China alliance would just be gravy.

Fair enough

 

[JagerIV]

talk of the immediate collapse of the Chinese threat generally seem awfully optimistic. I'm also not really sure how the democrats can resist being subverted by the Communist Chinese. The USSR trivially corrupted basically every left wing government in the West, to the point where Senator Kennedy was trying to collaborate with the USSR to overthrow Reagan and the labor PM was in active conversation with Moscow seeking their advice on how to overthrow Thatcher and asking for a chest of gold to do it.

China has elements of leftism that can appeal to the whole range of terrible leftism, from Fabian elite socialism of the Clinton variety to the populist communist variety since true communism is still the nominal end goal of the party and can point to all their "good" deeds under Mao who many on the far lest seem to idolize for their own evil reasons.

There's very little about china that isn't appealing to the true leftists that would let them ideologically resist Chinese infiltration and control, same with the USSR, while having something like 10x the economic clout to throw around and bring the non-ideological in line.

This is probably one of the big weaknesses in much of Zeihan's analysis: ideas don't really seem to matter as much in his world view. China being communist matters, because it puts them at the top of leftist ideological pecking order which lets them wield much more power than even their raw material wealth would suggest. It would be something like looking at Bishops and comparing their material wealth to their kings and wondering why medieval kings freaked out so much when a Bishop wrote them a harshly worded letter. A Roman Emperor stopping a siege half way and apologizing to the people in the razed city and paying damages because a Bishop critised his method of responding to a rebellion was unchristian doesn't make sense in a purely materialistic analysis.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

In fairness to Zeihan, China's economy is precarious and "the bubble bursting" would be absolutely catastrophic for Beijing. And as history has proven, no amount of inflated currency or foreign loans can stop such a thing.

 

[JagerIV]

Eh, I don't really see the precariousness as certainly as he seems to. This I guess comes down to the ideas angle. I'm sure the average soviet was suffering more under Stalin in the 1930s than in the 1980s. Literal mass starvation did not break Chinese or Russian communism in the early 20th century. Unfathomable suffering in North Korea has not broken north Korea.

What failed in the USSR was the idea of the USSR, and when the leading idea that replaced the USSR was nationalism, well, the pan-national USSR and broader Soviet Empire was not supported by that nationalist ideal.

China does not have that problem: its not a prison of nations, or at least not a prison of substantial nations who Chinese nationalism would have any critism of. A Russian Nationalist might wonder why Russian wealth was being spent to prop up South American communists. A Chinese nationalists probably wonders why the Communist party isn't pushing harder conquer Taiwan and hasn't had the Dali Lama assasinated yet.

Its not really clear where the fault lines are in China right now. The Chinese Nationalist and Chinese Communist are much more on the same page than the Russian Nationalist and USSR Communist, who many of which were not even Russian per say.

Countries have had credit crunches and not fallen. We have a bubble pop every 10 years basically. There's really nothing I see that would force China as a country to do any sort of painful default.

Plus, well, a big contraction on a rapidly growing economy simply wouldn't be as painful for a country like China who's still going through a big growth than it is for a country in long stagnation.

For example, lets say your a 40 year old established person, the kind of person who would need to actually overthrow the communists. Lets say the GDP shrunk 30%. This takes the Chinese GDP from $14 trillion to about $10 trillion. That puts china back at . . . 2014. So, you lost 6 years of growth, which sucks. But, compared to when this guy started working in the 2000s, 2014 China is still literally 10x richer than 2000 china. And, well, a credit shortage doesn't in and of itself destroy everything you built in the last 6 years anyways. Your radically nicer house than the dirt floor house you grew up in still exists and is still a much nicer house, even if the Bejjing real estate property value (to however much that exists) crashed in paper value.

But, falling to being "only" 10x richer than the house you grew up in from being 14x as rich is a very different experience from the USSR middle manager who in the 1980s who lived in either the exact same level of comfort as he grew up in the 1960s in a country that seems to have been slowly stagnate at best, falling apart at worst for your entire time growing up, and just not doing anything particularly helpful for you as life just got harder, and then the economy strinks more?!

I think some people underestimate the sheer scale of the growth in China over the last 20 years, and just how much Social Capital that has probably built up in the Communist Party.

 

[Typhonis]

The One Child policy is what will bite China in the ass. That or Three Gorges breaking. Depends on how well it was built and if any corners were cut in construction.