| Zeihan stans regurgitating 101 Zeihan US strong PRC weak argument, and forget that in geoPOLITICS, the political component is as important as geography. Natural advantages can only do so much if they are squandered. Even Zeihan concedes this. Also some basic media literacy when evaluating his claims designed to sell expensive dinners to wealthy American exceptionalists. Rudimentary critical analysis like: >US has more navigable river Go do a search of country with most internal navigable water ways, it's PRC with more than 2x of US. This is basic tier fact check. US technically has a lot of exploitable waterways, but PRC has much more significant urban/manufacturing clusters linked via the waterways. Vs US waterways are primarily used for transport of bulky primary Ag goods... barge freight in US is massively underutilized because US is systemically bad at infra upkeep (drediging / maintenance etc). Politics > geography. >has great ports on both oceans. Has great port potential but poor quality ports due to inability to build infra and reliance on human labour. Go look at list of port rankings, PRC has 8 out of top 10. Like does it really matter US has deep water coasts to accomodate 10,000 world class ports when economics preferences consolidating large scale ports. Or that PRC infra capability can simply dredge out huge port projects at still fraction cost/time of US building on the most ideal site. Politics > geography. >is self-sufficient in energy Only on the most surface analysis. US is self-reliant in the sense it has resources in the ground that are economically exploitable. Versus PRC with massive imports to maintain production, implication being US can trivially choke PRC inputs via blockade/embargo (act of war)... by targetting shipping. Here is the reality, US is only as self sufficient as 130 vunerable refineries can process petro products which sustains everything including ag inputs. In event of war, which those musing US blockading PRC shipping forget actually will be, PRC can retaliate by compromising these refineries with cyber warfare, or in event of full escalation conventional hypersonics. There's a reason Biden told Putin/Xi that he considers cyber attacks on US infra comparable to initiating physical war. In age of vunerable networked infra nodes, during an actual shooting war, US is more vunerable and less self sufficient than EVER simply because adversaries like PRC has the capabilities to compromise critical CONUS infra. Like gunpower ended actual fortresses, network and conventional global strike capabilities ended Zeihan's fortress america. Politics (PRC indigenous defense drive) > geography. >has horrible demographics China actually significantly better off demographically TO COMPETE with US vs just about everyone else. Yes there's broad demographic decline, but S&T investements and academic reforms has massively grown the segment of educated / skilled talent. Huge population base effect = PRC generating something like 4.5M STEM talent with exploding pHDs, about all OECD combined. This is multitude more than US can generate domestically + immigration. PRC is only getting better demographically equipped to challenge US primarcy. Think of how JP/SKR/TW consistently moved up value chain, destroyed US lead in semi, even though most they had shit tier demographics but moved up value chain by converting new gen disproportionately into STEM. PRC is doing that with 20x more talent and will be going after every sector. What else does declining population imply? Less import dependancy and more strategic options. Politics (PRC investment in human capita) > demography. Granted does not negate, but there's demographic divident political hacks at PRC scale. >large navy but only 10%
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>US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day This is whoefully out of date, PRC has been building mid-tier sized European navy every year, hulls of surface combatants are all blue water capable. But ultimately PRC simply choose not to take on global commitments and freeloads off the US... because why would they not. Apart from courtesy anti piracy, and foreign port visits, PRC likes to stay within IndoPac and turn SCS into Chinese lake. With PRC ship building capacity, it would be trivial for PRC to build a replenishment fleet comparable to USN and replace US policing duties, which would open up global basing options for others who want to freeload off PRC. Ergo US has to fulfill commitments or else they lose hegemonic competition/perks to others who are willing. Now go look at USN readiness / retention decline and the sad state of the fleet due to massive over commitment / tasking and ask yourself why PRC would stop an adversary while making mistake. Or circle back the PRC global hypersonic developments and translate that to port strikes, the TLDR is USN naval assets are single deployment assets, less if replenishment fleet gets scrapped. >fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles Zeihan was wanking about surrounding PRC with AShMs at a time when US policy / wonk writings thought this was a great idea (it is), but when US foreign policy tried implement said 1st island chain plan last couple admins, they found very few takers. TLDR is majority of ASEAN/region is neutral and no one is really suicidal enough to be PRC missile sinks in a Sino-US war. Right now the only takers is Japan, TW, and maybe SKR. And bluntly, if you look at current/trending force balance differential in region and future PRC military aquistions, PRC doesn't even need a navy to completely destroy major US ally in the region, who are all islands and existentially vunerable to import disruptions. Not to mention these allies are more liability in actual war... because PRC attacking them will trigger security commitment in 1st Island Chain where US does not want to fight. >China has become a great economic power This is peak US exceptionalism wank, China has become a great economic power because it exploited US failures in domestic and foreign policy. People want to think it's US benevolence when it's actually US incompetence that built modern PRC. There's a reason why US vs PRC competition is about systems and not just geographic blessings. It's not geography that's massively failing US, it's the politics. Whatever you think of PRC/CCP politics, so far it's closing the gap faster than US can contain. |
>US has more navigable river
You may be right. You quoted the poster, who said they quoted Zeihan. Are both countries blessed in this regard? I guess this affects transport, like you mentioned, and farming. I don't remember these particular details from the book, I'm sure he's written hundreds of words on the rivers in these two countries. Does China have enough fresh water, and farmland they can irrigate? If so, then this might not be as big a deal as other factors for these two countries.
>has great ports on both oceans.
You mentioned how many large ports China has. I assume that is because they have been exporting so many manufactured products to so much of the world over the last couple decades. Zeihan seems to make a case that this might not be true for long, due to demographics (there will be more Indian labor, Mexican labor local to the U.S., Columbians and Vietnamese working even cheaper, better Japanese robots, etc) and also due to changing circumstances of international shipping (if the U.S. stops securing shipping around Eurasia where does that leave China? Can they reach their trade partners? Import resources? Do they have capable enemies that they will have to deal with?)
>is self-sufficient in energy
Zeihan made a big deal out of the U.S. fracking developments over the last ten years. He didn't mention this is the context of war with China. He said that because of the end of the cold war and recent advances in fracking it is not longer in the interest of the U.S. to police the worlds oceans, secure the Middle East, etc. He said that would leave other countries, like China, India, Japan, countries in Europe, etc. in a position where they need to secure their own oil supplies, oil still being a very important energy source, and trade routes. All these other countries have enemies and friends. He's saying that the U.S. can withdraw as much as it wants, for the most part.
>has horrible demographics
Zeihan has talked about demographics a lot. Not just China but many other countries will be dealing with the consequences of lower birthrates - an aging and shrinking population. As countries become richer their birth rates go down, eventually below replacement rates. There won't be as much young labor, nor middle aged investors, and there will be more elderly people to take care of. How dependent are our systems on growth? What happens in various places when population and gdp are shrinking? He says that China will have it's hands full over the next ten years dealing with this, but that the U.S. has a large generation of 30-somethings that postpones our "decade of reckoning". Different countries are in different demographic situations. Japan is a rich country that is currently dealing with this situation. Russia is dealing with this also, but not doing so well.
>US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day
You mention that China now has a deep water navy. Based on my reading of Zeihan, I assume they will have a chance to put it to use eventually. Depending on how things go they may need to secure oil shipments from the Middle East, and they could be in competition with Japan and India for that and other resources.
>fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles
I just don't recall Zeihan talking much about the U.S. going to war with China, certainly not for world domination, like the cold war with Russia. He seems to be saying that there's no reason for the U.S. to start a confrontation with China, that long term it makes sense for the U.S. to continue the trend of withdrawing. I assume he's talked about a possible conflict around Taiwan, but it wasn't central to the trends he focuses on. I know that shortly after sanctions were imposed on Russia, after the Ukraine invasion, he talked about how similar sanctions might affect China, and how that may affect China's thinking on Taiwan in the near future.
He said the U.S. was most likely to approach future conflicts like the recent conflict in Ukraine, using sanctions, weapons, and intel to support allies when it is in our interest, but not sending troops.
>China has become a great economic power
I don't think anyone would deny that. The last few decades in China have been amazing! Unprecedented in history.
I agree with you that politics can be relevant. This is something Zeihan has talked a bit about. He's mentioned Argentina as being a country with a lot of potential, if they could get their politics together. He's talked a bit about internal China and U.S. politics. But he talked much more about the upcoming challenges, different for different countries, due to a changing world order, demographics, and geography. He said there were going to be a lot of failing countries in the next decade or two, more places like Sri Lanka. The world will not be as stable as it has been.
I wasn't sure why you talked so much about a direct confrontation between China and the U.S. If anything Zeihan seems to be predicting that China has demographically and economically peaked, and that they are likely to implode in the next ten years.
I consider Zeihan to have an interesting perspective on all this. I take him as pessimistic food for thought.