[learc83]

>if they pull sufficiently ahead in China, which is a fair possibility, looking at the current state of the US and Europe

Be careful with extrapolation. People said the same thing about the USSR, Japan, and the EU.

Sure the US won't be as dominant as they are now forever, but extrapolating China's growth from a very poor developing country to their current level and assuming that means that they might make some kind of leap that allows them to take over the world is going too far.

[zaru27]

I don't think it's going far enough. There are several hundreds variables completely separating China and the USSR and Japan from a blanket comparison.

I would like to hope that they hit the breaks in the same way that Japan did, and there's certainly plenty of evidence that it's possible. However, if their model remains viable and they continue growing at the same rate, they'll certainly eclipse us in political and economic influence in 10-20 years at most - potentially technologically as well. I'm not sure that's even a disputable claim - it should be self evident. The question is if we'll suddenly outperform or if they'll hit a stumbling block, which remains to be seen.

[learc83]

>and they continue growing at the same rate,

That's what I mean by the problem with extrapolation. There is absolutely no reason to think that they will continue growing at the same rate. The likely scenario based on all the historical evidence we have is that they won't.

Their GDP growth rate has been declining since 2010, there's no reason to assume that they'll be able to stop it. The most likely scenario is that it flattens out to a more reasonable rate.

Also this is the state reported GDP, which no one believes is accurate. And this is without taking into account China's demographic problems and potential hidden debt issues.

And even if China's economy does overtake the US, it took decades and a World War for the US to eclipse the rest of the world politically and militarily after it's economy became the largest.

[zaru27]

By the same token, there's no reason to think they'll fall anywhere near or under 5% in the near future. They have 1.5 billion people with a higher average IQ than the US with a strong educational culture, increasing economic opportunity with a lot of i's to dot in various industries, their per capita is still a fraction of that of a developed company, and there are another 1000 reasons to paint a fuller picture beyond my small sampling. In contrast, for example, Japan had less than half our population, didn't manage to steal all of our trade secrets, reached a high stage of development, and really didn't have anything revolutionary to offer.

I'm aware of what you're saying about the potential issues they're facing, but we really don't know how that will play out - it strikes me as western optimism.

That is true, but China is already setting the stage to assert itself as an imperial power.

I don't mean to come across as a sinophile - I don't want a hologram of Xi Jinping standing over me in 10 years, but, there is plenty of reason to worry and to not draw conclusions on whether or not they'll pull ahead or how quickly - that remains to be seen.

[learc83]

>By the same token, there's no reason to think they'll fall anywhere near or under 5% in the near future.

Why? It's fallen 6 points since 2010. The OECD long term forecast puts it at 5% in just 2 years, and predicts it will drop down to around 3% within 10 years. This is without any serious problems.

These numbers are also based on official GDP estimates, and there are studies that estimate that China's GDP is 30% lower than reported due to padding at the local and national level.

>They have 1.5 billion people

Their official population count is 1.386 billion, rounding up to 1.5 seems a bit much. And we don't even know if that is true. There are reports that they've overestimated their population by around 100 million people.

>with a higher average IQ than the US

We can't even remove all of the cultural biases to make accurate comparisons between native English speakers within the US. There's no way we are going to be able to accurately compare countries as different as the US and China. Not to mention sample differences, suppressed scores from the children of migrant workers etc...

>strong educational culture

And many parts of that educational culture have been criticized. Regardless this is a completely subjective metric that isn't worth comparing.

>really didn't have anything revolutionary to offer

I'm not sure I know what to make of this one.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-study-shin...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp-econom...

https://qz.com/887709/chinas-liaoning-province-admitted-that...

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/20...

[zaru27]

Last one regarding, for example, US developing a massive competitive advantage with the internet right after their housing market crash.

I won't debate any further because clearly I'm going to get downvoted for doing anything other than linking a business insider article on why chinese local debt is going to collapse tomorrow in the HN echo chamber. If you want to believe it's inevitable China is going to plateau in rapidly, by all means.

[learc83]

Don't know why you're getting downvoted, but I linked to a lot more than articles about local debt. Perhaps you could refute the OECD long term forecast that predicts a plateau rather than setting up a straw man about business insider articles.

By the way, I'm not even saying that China won't overtake the US economy sometime this century, I'm saying that naive extrapolation based on current growth rates is a terrible way to predict the future.