[chaostheory]

Countries like the US have not seen as large of a drop in birth rates like China. Many countries in the West have also successfully used immigration to blunt the impact of falling birth rates.

Countries like China are unable to take advantage of immigration. If increasing birth rates were easy for authoritarian countries like China, they wouldn’t be in this mess in the 1st place. This is a terrible argument. This situation is made worse with many mainlanders are trying to leave China.

The US and its allies like Japan and Australia have already implemented containment of China in the island chains. Pretty sure that thr Philippines and Vietnam are on board as well. This wouldn’t have happened if Wolf Warrior diplomacy weren’t a thing. All anyone has to do is cut off imports from the Middle East to cripple China. (No, Russian imports aren't enough. Most of their pipelines were destined for the EU. )Even India can cut off Middle East energy exports on its own because China doesn’t have a long range navy.

The BRICS coalition has also largely been a failure because no one can agree on what currency to use.

If either the Hu or Jiang faction were still in power, none of this would have happened because unlike Xi neither faction was delusional.

[gggmaster]

Then why not cut imports now. Time will only make them more resistant.

[chaostheory]

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not formally at war yet. The US historically doesn’t make the first move since we’re a democratic republic and most constituents do not like war; it would also alienate most of our nominal allies. The best the US can do right now is containment and being ready to cut the supply lines from the Middle East.