[nebula8804]

There's a lot of nonsense that comes out on both sides of the aisle. I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China and what's really going on behind the scenes in the U.S.

Some talk about how China has some strategic issues, such as do they have a reliable supply of food and energy? (Zeihan etc.)

I guess the energy portion is being solved with renewables. And I guess if they solve the issue of demographic collapse with robots and AI, that's something.

But really, if there's less people and they're getting older, what's the point? What are they really working towards?

This question is also becoming a problem post-Trump immigration ban in the U.S.

Who knows what the U.S.'s demographics are going to look like now?

Trump inherited a U.S. with some of the best demographics of all nations on the planet, especially in the West. And he managed to throw that in the garbage.

[throwup238]

> I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China

What kind of sources are you looking for? The Five Year Plans are the best source of truth for what they are planning on doing nationwide. The annual Statistical Communiqué on National Economic and Social Development and China Statistical Yearbook from the NBS contain statistics on how that implementation is going. Then every year the NDRC delivers the Report on the Implementation of the Plan for National Economic and Social Development and on the Draft Plan to the National People’s Congress which packages up the statistics on how the plan is progressing.

[robocat]

> contain statistics on how that implementation is going

Are those statistics reliable?

In the US there are often good alternative sources for data: the discussions about unemployment numbers have been interesting (e.g. after private ADP numbers released). https://seekingalpha.com/article/4850656-jobs-data-from-alte...

The lies in the Soviet 5 year production stats were relentlessly mocked in 1984.

[throwup238]

They’re the most reliable source we’re going to get without being party insiders. There’s still Soviet-style inflation of figures to meet quotas but China has been cracking down on that for the last few decades because they want accurate data for the five year plans. I think it’s more of a problem with outer provinces, less so for the major manufacturing hubs.

Alternative sources to verify are a bit harder to find without knowing the languages (lots of the NRDC and NBS stats are available in English).

[lossolo]

> Are those statistics reliable?

Yes, people also compare some of these statistics with export/import data and with data from other countries on the other side of these transactions, and the numbers match.

[seanmcdirmid]

You could just go over there and live for a few years, you can be your own source. But yes, they have energy, no they don't have oil, yes they have lots of agriculture land, no they messed up some of their environment and that will take time to heal, yes they are working on it.

> But really, if there's less people and they're getting older, what's the point? What are they really working towards?

China wants to be a rich country even if their population stabilizes at only 900 million people or so. Mostly they want to avoid the middle income trap, which would have been a problem regardless of their demographics falling off a cliff. Automation is the best way to get around it, and they have enough tech, production know how and capacity, and smart people to pull that off.

China is going to continue doing what is best for it, and they haven't gone stupid like the USA has. Embracing AI for productive uses rather than just fixating on the slop produced is one place where they are racing past the west.

[nebula8804]

>You could just go over there and live for a few years, you can be your own source.

No I can't. First of all single anecdotes do not equal national numbers and secondly the truth may be hidden away from westerners and not easy to gleam even if I live there. I experienced this when moving to Europe. I thought WOW this place has every potential to be a strong equal to the US. They got (enough)money, so much bright talent, they can do anything the US can do and then some. But I missed the structural problems at a macro level and it wasn't until I left and many years passed that I finally understood. I just want that insight without having to go through all of that.

[CamperBob2]

There's a lot of nonsense that comes out on both sides of the aisle. I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China and what's really going on behind the scenes in the U.S.

I've always assumed that there is such a source of truth, but that I had never heard of it, wouldn't have access to it, and couldn't afford it if I did.

Reading a few tweets from Musk was all it took to correct that misapprehension. It's increasingly clear that nobody at any level of play knows jack shit about anything.

[nebula8804]

This is not true. I was recently reminded of this during the recent small elections that occured. The parties have "internal polling" that was significantly more accurate such that it caused shifts in actions (see the recent surge in efforts by Trump and his party to maintain control of the TN house seat).

Furthermore we saw Musk's and his buddies confidence in the 2024 election. We now know he had internal applications built to better understand what was really going on and access to better analytics than what was shown in the news.

The regular people (like me) were left to rely on pollsters and our confidence come from the fact that many of these pollsters had decades of experience getting things right. This was then regurgitated among all the news (and political youtubers) about how things were going only to have all their predictions be wrong and these esteemed pollsters deciding to retire.

Looking back it may have been all a scam and that its possible that these pollsters were getting ready to retire anyway and gave into party pressure to make Kamala look better than she really was. The end result is that we wasted our time believing nonsense and I am done with it.

[CamperBob2]

I agree that political sentiment analysis is one area where the high-level players really do have oracular resources that the rest of us lack. Besides Musk, a good example might be how Bezos pivoted instantly from neutral to pro-Trump leading up to the 2024 election. Seems clear that he knew what was about to happen when he killed the Harris endorsement in the Post.

But the question here is more general than that. Musk didn't have a reliable source of ground truth when he accused the Thai cave diver of being a pedophile. If he did, he didn't use it. Ditto, when he woke up one day and decided that Twitter was worth $54.20/share. You could point to countless other examples where highly-positioned, highly-resourceful, "high agency" people simply read the room wrong.

[alexashka]

> There's a lot of nonsense that comes out on both sides of the aisle. I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China and what's really going on behind the scenes in the U.S.

Isn't this simply the answer?

That what's going on is gaslighting of the public and that there are people behind the scenes and they don't want hoi polloi to know what they're up to?

This geo-politics (or politics) talk is 'intellectual' men's astrology.

When a woman asks me my astrological sign, I know she's a deeply unserious person. When a man says 'do they have a reliable supply of food and energy'...

[nebula8804]

I dont understand what you are getting at. There is always truth. It just isn't evenly distributed.