What do you think of the gender imbalance in China caused by the one child policy? No country in history has had 50 million extra men than women. A massive population of angry young men who outnumber most other countries' entire populations is a disruptive force that could cause revolt from within or invade abroad.
As a parent who adopted a beautiful Chinese baby girl 26 years ago, I suspect this will go down in Guiness Book of World records as one of the greatest blunders in human history.
"These factors should cause the PRC to return to what is their primary concern, internal stability, and be less interested in foreign adventures not directly related to food and fuel." 1.4 billion people just recently lifted up out of a meager existence to get a taste of middle class life are going to need an expansionist foreign policy to fuel their hopes and dreams. No one in China with cable TV, 3 squares a day, a tiny apartment, a bus pass and a cell phone wants to go back to be a rice paddy coolie living in a nipa hut. 1,400,000,000 people is a lot of internal stability to manage.
So are they willing to go full Zeihan and say China might be completely out of it in a decade or two?
And the German apprenticeship programs? According to a German MOD employee on another site, that's broken down. Used to be 20% unskilled/welfare, 60% apprenticeship, 20% college path. It's now about 50/50 unskilled/welfare and college.
I don't think you need to go full Zeihan to accept the trend that the PRC's window to achieve their "Chinese Dream" is closing faster than they anticipated. The only question left than to answer is does that make them more aggressive or less? From how Xi has been conducting his foreign policy over the last year, it's more aggressive. This is even despite Biden bending over backwards to get detente.
-Having extracted us from Afghanistan to get ready for the big game.
-Continuing to Tear Russia up for cheap.
-Created a long terrm nuclear sub alliance (Needs a better short term plan)
-Just got Japan and South Korea talking so they can be on the same page when the ball drops.
- Also probably knows his son acted as a forensic intelligence asset in Ukraine nd helps twist the knife with Russia and the GOP because they know we won't reveal sources and methods.
Sorry. I just don’t see a president that has demonstrated elements of senility, and his cocain-addicted son, as a pair of brainiacs in international politics. As always, respectfully, YMMV.
He want to get some value out of tens of millions the CCP has invested in the Biden Crime Family and the entire network of Uniparty assets dependent on the good will of the CCP for their money. And assets in the military like Milley.
But why wouldn't he seek to get what the PRC wants through negotiation? If Biden is so controllable and gives favorable deals to the Iranians and the Taliban, why not seek to get Taiwan through negotiation? It's because Xi does not see the Taiwanese as likely to vote for re-unification in the next decade and the PRC's capability to project power will not survive into the late 2030s. Xi needs to move now and negotiations will not move fast enough for Beijing's timeline.
I had not considered that Xi may have concrete needs to move against Taiwan relatively quickly. Are you thinking of the projections of PRC’s demographics? My not-so-well-informed understanding is that, when you add in their need for forces to shore up their Himalayan and northwest borders, the demographic window to take Taiwan may be closing. Always willing to listen.
Setting aside Xi's own age and ambition for his legacy, the PRC is facing strong economic and demographic headwinds that will limit their ability to project military power after the mid 2030s for at least a generation thereafter. Both the official demographic and economic numbers are overly rosy and do not stand up to scrutiny. Their situation is a lot worse on both fronts than currently understood by most commentators.
In addition, the Taiwanese people are currently unwilling to unify with the mainland and barring a massive change in public opinion, I do not see that attitude changing in the next decade. Assuming then that Xi is serious about his commitment to annex Taiwan as part of realizing the "Chinese Dream" and to not leave the issue to the next generation; Xi has a problem. How to achieve the ideological strategic end goal given the PRC's projected means and ways with the associated economic, political and demographic obstacles? I think war is the most likely outcome. Not because Xi is likely to succeed, but because he doesn't seem to have another option given his suspected goal, his assumed timeline and his ways and means of achieving it.
Thank you for that analysis. That puts Xi’s recent characterization of U.S. efforts to be on at least equal grounds with PRC wrt island nations between the West Coast and Australia in better focus.
Second thought, based on reading a news article this evening. It seems State Dept has announced additional economic sanctions against PRC because of forced assimilation of Tibetans. I am more firmly convinced than ever that absolutely no one in DC has a firm grip on the realities of realpolitik. Unless, of course, the whole goal is to start a big enough war that one party or the other can simply declare martial law and be done with it.
My cousin's daughter lives in Germany and teaches immigrants German. She is well-educated. She met and married a man who was employed in the lawn care business. Perhaps he was bettering his language skills because he was aspiring to become an apprentice. I do not know for sure. Anyway, they both flew to Greece to have the wedding with his extended family in attendance...30 or so people. Some of her family from Boston attended and said it was a gala affair. The wedding was held in a Greek refugee camp. Her husband is from The Gambia, a Muslim. Viel Glück, Tinkerbell. I see 30+ people never entering a German apprentice program, now. They'll be living in my rich aunt's mansion in North Andover by 2026. Germany's loss.
Chain migration got my wife's mom, dad, 2 brothers and 1 sisters here. 2 other sisters came here by way of fiance visas. One married a BMC and the other a DS2...a shipmate who PenPal-ed her at my behest. Eldest brother came here to serve 26 years in the Navy as a cook. Back in the 70's chain migration meant that I paid for everything. Had to swear out an affidavit of support for them, meaning I, not the government, was responsible for them...that they'd not be a financial burden to the taxpayers. They never were. All got good jobs and are living the American dream. Two of the boys (college grads) served in the Navy, one a BT3 for 4 years and the other a GSEC/CWO4 for 31 years. The girl was a college grad and worked for Rockwell for 30 years. It took 10 years to get them all here. Cost me $10K(+) in old timey dollars. But I am with you. End chain migration. Go stand in line or just buy a plane ticket to Mexico City, take a bus to the border, cross and get your pre-paid Visa Card, an Obamaphone, a long term hotel voucher, medical care and some onerous summons to appear in Immigration Court in 2031 to plead your case. My wife is a college grad. She worked from 1 to 2 full time jobs plus up to 2 part-time jobs until she turned 71. I am pro-immigration. We just need to be picky and unafraid to sent poor choices back.
"Chain migration" is keeping families together; strong families lead to strong nations. You just made a strong argument about the importance of family bonds, then pivoted to "F the family, end chain migration."
My childhood Pakistani (Bangladesh) neighbors said that not everyone would adjust to living in the US and understanding the freedoms here. The odd honor killing/synagogue attacks here in the states proves their prescience to have been correct. (It was Grandma that said that in '83.)
I am for keeping families together. But immigration should be based on merit, the desirability of the supplicant. If an immigrant wants to keep his family together he or she can go back home or make the choice to not come here in the first place. An argument about keeping families together can be made for keeping a criminal married man or woman out of jail tool. I'll admit that I am happy that I got my wife's kin here. I assure you that I vetted them myself. Yes, I have pivoted, Tom. No, I am not a "F the family" kind of guy. I have pivoted because the current illegal immigration influx is suicidal. How many are enough? Another billion? Nobody in Washington will answer that question. Time to close the door. I sponsored my relatives, paid the entire cost of it, and they and I waited 10 years to legally get here. Further, I have loathed line jumpers since grammar school. My heart is sound. It doesn't bleed.
Those "strong families" migrating into the US illegally know and care about only one thing: more "family members"= more US government handouts. The day of an illegal crossing simply to find work and send funds back to their home country are long gone. they know they can come here and live the rest of their on the public dole. Enjoy your tax paying.
I subscribe to the theory that the PRC will only become more dangerous as its window to achieve its strategic goals closes faster than anticipated. Besides, we haven't even passed the most dangerous part of this decade of concern. Anyway, I do not see a downside to being over prepared. But, we are not even close to being ready.
I don't think it makes any sense to put stock in ideas like "limited windows" to invade Taiwan. There are always going to be sufficient millions of Chinese men to take Taiwan no matter what happens there demographically. There might even be enough millions to handle a larger war. There are enough millions to lose many cities to nuclear destruction. Proportions and statistical thinking are useful, for analysis, but they are not hard constraints. In the same way, the US could shed more than a quarter of its population in war and still around twice as many people as it did in 1950 and recover all of that population in a generation.
To ask a question like "is China willing to sacrifice millions of Chinese for an important political goal" in the context of any period of Chinese history is to answer it. The answer is Yes. The last Chinese pretender who was nervous about sacrificing Chinese lives and equipment in a war was Chiang Kai-shek, and he wound up ruler of an offshore island only: the guy who was willing to spend Chinese lives like sacks of rice is the guy that everything is named after now.
Demography and economics are hard constraints. You cannot project power abroad militarily let alone prevail if you have a 1:1 worker to retiree ratio and your economy is in the toilet based on systemic problems which cannot be fixed in the near term to mid-term. After mid-2030s, China will not have the demographic or economic capability to project power for at least a generation.
"in a generation" Twenty years is a long time, certainly longer than Xi can wait. At that is assuming China can increase its fertility rate from 1.08 (trending down to 0.8) to over 2.1. No industrialized nation has ever increased its natural fertility rate to that extent through government programs. The reason the US was able to recover so quickly after WWII was that its fertility rate was naturally over 3 throughout the Baby Boom generation.
Also, Xi makes the decision to invade and his legacy needs an achievement to cement him in the forefront of China's historic leaders. He's 70 and he doesn't have another 20 years to wait around for.
The ratio doesn't matter if all you need is several million fit and active guys. They have so many millions that it doesn't matter. You can also fix that ratio by just allowing nature to take its course with the elderly instead of expending vast sums to keep them alive. If there is one thing the CCP has never struggled with, and that the USSR did not particularly struggle with either, is killing off people that the states considered to be useless eaters. China is the world mass slaughter champ; Mao makes Genghis look like a chump. If even the Canadians have no problem making state-assisted murder a top cause of death, China will not hesitate to give Grandma and Grampa the big naptime retirement surprise gift, residual Confucianism or not.
Impossible things like one worker : one retiree are impossible. You fix that ratio by letting nature or a nurse with a vial of poison do their job.
These hard ratio arguments were also used to downplay the risk of war between Ukraine and Russia. Whoops. Didn't work out there, either.
Age gets a vote and an imbalance means that you may prevail in the short term but that Xi dynasty is going to come crashing down really hard and what legacy remains for Xi?
China can't convince its people to be dependent on market-economy lifeways. They'd rather lie flat, buy little to nothing, and live un-economic lives. Our people don't know how to live un-economic lives. Some of us starved while crops rotted in the field when the Whiz Kids' system required patching to handle COVID. It's been said the Chinese are, first and foremost, pragmatists. If we maintain parity in personnel and materiel, military solutions to economic problems look far less attractive than economic solutions.
What economic solutions square the circle of the people of Taiwan not wanting to be annexed and Xi wanting Taiwan to be annexed?
Xi has told his young people to "eat bitterness". He has told his military to prepare for war by 2027. He has told his Politburo to prepare to "struggle"; and that the Taiwan question will not be left to the next generation. Xi is currently 70. The life expectancy for a Chinese male is 76. Even if there was an economic solution to this impasse, it does not appear that Xi sees it or thinks it's likely in the next decade of his leadership. Nor does the opinion of the average Chinese person matter one iota to the question of whether Xi chooses war.
P.S. We have failed to "maintain parity in personnel and material" and we do not have any hope of getting back on the glide path for years.
They ain’t us. Compare Sherman’s march to the sea with Ye Fei’s defeat at Kinmen. Americans are horny for violence and the world knows it--violence abroad has been our best salve for violence at home. War bolsters our economy; call it our Norman inheritance. Xi might think he’s Taizong of Tang, but deep in his heart he knows open conflict with us could turn him into Yang of Sui.
“Meanwhile, the number of elderly Chinese will rise from 200 million to 500 million at midcentury, and providing for their needs will be a mounting challenge for China’s workers and policy makers.”
A thought provoking article but I would like to point out a few things.
Many countries regard the USA as a threat to intentional order not China. It was not China that attacked, invaded or sanctioned Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Libya, Panama, Serbia, Venezuela, etc. and is now threatening Niger.
We are building military bases around China and throughout the world. China builds infrastructure throughout the world in a modern version of the Silk Road. I wonder how we would feel if China built bases in Bermuda, Canada, Mexico and Trinidad. Not too happy.
A few years ago Trump was entertaining Xi at his Florida estate. How did we come to be talking about using force to keep China within its borders?
Finally, China has problems bit so do we. Fiscal and trade imbalances. Inflation. Crime. Drugs. Roads. Air Traffic. Derailed trains. Corruption. Wild fires. Etc. China could easily make a case that it is America that is on the way down.
State would surely like the world to believe that we have military installations everywhere, but the data shows a continous retreat since WW2. I refer you to Dr. David Vine's (https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/vine.cfm) research. As of his latest version of the Excel file "Lists of US Military Bases Abroad, 1776-2021", the US went from a mere 50 OUTUS installations in 1939 to more than 30k at the peak of WW2. By 1989, that number was reduced to 1,726 and by 2021 to 750. Give us another ten years and we will be under 500 given the decay curve. As the US retreats the rest of the world returns to historical norms - fertile ground for strongmen, barbs, and pirates.
Many more countries regard the USA as essential to intentional order. And we probably are on the way down. It doesn't help when you alienate countries we depend on like Saudi Arabia.
And China has a presence in Cuba and Venezuela in case you missed it. - them's some great friends. They also have a presence at multiple maritime chokepoints in case you missed that as well.
After hypocritically campaigning to turn Saudi Arabia into a pariah for killing a Saudi citizen, what did Biden expect when he went begging for oil and reopened negotiations with Iran?
Everything Biden does is hypocritical, but when it comes to the Saudis, there's not any president who made any good decisions building that alliance — that misbegotten alliance
Obama tried to make nice too. The game has been scheduled and will be played for a long time. You can't stop the game from happening. Just play to win.
Then it will set them off. What is debilitating? Decoupling from China? Withdrawing investment? Refusal to allow them to steal our technology? Establishing defense treaties with nations they wish to bully? Refusal to allow Chinese nationals access to our universities?
"China builds infrastructure throughout the world in a modern version of the Silk Road."
You passed over conveniently that this building of infrastructure puts the host nation in hock to the Chinese enabling the Chinese to achieve a soft takeover. Other countries have woken up to this.
Trump was also pursuing policies to contain the PRC. We are talking about keeping China within its own borders because the PRC has been talking about invading its neighbors. Funny how that works. Similar explanation as to why all the US's allies and partners want more US support in theater.
China is facing deflation (its much worse and harder to fix), a real estate debt crisis that dwarfs the US 2008 mortgage crisis, a population and local government that has most of its savings tied up in real estate, and a declining cheap labor manufacturing export model (which drives their economic growth). Unlike the US, China does not have the sufficient domestic consumer spending or the world's reserve currency to float them through the crisis.
On the demographic front, China has a 1.08 (trending to 0.8) fertility rate. This is on top of the fastest aging population in the world and the real possibility that they have under counted their Under 40 population by 163 to 220 million people. Finally, I see your wildfire and I raise you the worst flooding northern China has seen in recorded history. A thousand people died in Maui. Tens of thousands have probably died in northern China just based on rough estimates from open-source information.
Sal is spot on. WSJ articles are recommended reading. As are US-China Economic and Security Review Commission Report, Heritage Index of Military Readiness and Hoover's China Sharp Power Project Reports. Must build more combatants. Must have more forward in INDOPACOM. Must fix shipbuilding industry. Must build alliances like QUAD and strengthen Asian alliances.
All this drum beating for a war against China over its non invasion reminds me of the drum beating for war over Iraq's non-existent WMD. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame of me.
Let's see, Iraq is at best a mixed bag, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine are failures. The US needs a war they can win. Grenada & Panama, been there done that.
By Jove I've got it! Mexico. The order is inverted (invade the world, invite the world) but if the US can't take Mexico and those nasty cartels, well, it certainly has no business going up against China.
All this complaining about common sense preparedness in the face of naked aggression by revanchist authoritarians reminds me of when isolationists called Churchill a war monger in the 1930s, let alone all the pro-Putin talking points in 2021.
Recently it came to light that the CCP overcounted their younger population numbers by a million or more - definitely not good. Manufacturing re-shoring is already well underway and Xi's heavy-handed tactics, threats and China's disregard for IP are certainly meaningful contributors. I'm sure foreigners would love to live under a system so invested in social credit scores. And then there there all the indicators that point to a real estate bubble about to burst...
As Xi has removed anyone who might be a threat to him politically, just how much of this news reaches his ears and, who amongst his "inner" circle, is going to tell him that news? Hopefully none of it reaches his ears because we all know how much tyrants like surprises. Now if Europe actually plays a constructive role here, the math of China jumping ugly with her neighbors is a lot less likely. Can you say social unrest?
They've probably under counted their Under 40 population by 163 to 220 million. The Standing Committee probably has known this for some time. If Xi wants Taiwan, he needs to go now. The PRC will be in no condition to project military power in a decade.
My wish is a partnership with the US and the world to advance the goals of making life better, free trade, eradication of world hunger and free navigation of the seas, maybe even a colony on the moon.
But as My dear old Aunt Nell used to say, wish in one hand shit in the other see which fills fastest.
I'm just a simple man and I get easily confused. I see experts here and elsewhere and I cannot reconcile what I hear. I deeply respect Sal and the Front Porch members that are all smarter than me. But, then I read stuff from Gordon Chang and Peter Zeihan and I can't make the ends connect. Is China the 800 pound gorilla or is it a house of cards, ready to collapse in a light breeze? Are both versions true? Neither?
Hitler thought that the USSR was a rotten house that would collapse. Boy, was he wrong!
As noted elsewhere in the comments, there are an awful lot of young Chinese males that want to have easy access to sex. They are not getting it at home. Testosterone is a wonderful, yet dangerous thing. Young men are willing to do a lot of dumb things for little reason to begin with, but throw in the biological imperative, and you have a load of oil soaked wood just waiting for a random spark to become a conflagration.
We fool ourselves, in the West, that there are such things as clean wars. Wars are about Sex and Resources. And the resources are just a way to procure more sex.
It seems that the closer the CCP realizes things are heading to a crisis, they unhinged their thinking will become.
But, on the flip side, do we really think there military is a huge boogey man? We, the West, especially the US and UK have deep institutional knowledge in Power Projection and Blue Water operations. The CCP can study naval theory, but they have very little operational experience. Do they concentrate on core skills like DC, or are they in the same boat (no pun intended) as they IJN and their lack of deep DC skills? Will they continue to Fight the Ship when all goes to Hell or will they fold like a cheap suit? Do they have a Commander Evans and a USS Johnston?
Having a metric butt ton of young angry men is one thing, but employing them them in a useful manner is a different kettle of fish.
It's both. China is an 800 pound gorilla now that is sitting on a house of cards that is starting to collapse, but it will not completely collapse for another decade. This makes the PRC more dangerous in the short term and less dangerous in the long term....but we need to survive until the long term for that to be any type of solace. If Xi is serious about taking Taiwan under his leadership and the CCP is serious about taking Taiwan by 2049 (by all available information they are), then their window is closing, and their options are limited. This makes war in the short to medium term more likely.
And now Xi has 30 million excess males, 20% of which are unemployed due to the unfolding economic crisis, and an ethno-nationalist population hyped up on revanchist propaganda of realizing China's glory. How can Xi Dada employ and distract these people while achieving his strategic ends in the limited time available? War seems the most likely outcome.
"do we really think there[sic] military is a huge boogey man?"
Yes, China has 500 naval ships to the US's less than 300, and all of their ships are in theater. This does not even touch upon the capabilities of their Rocket Force or their Air Force. As Stalin said, "Quantity is a quality of its own." The PLA(N) does not need to power project into the blue water in order to be successful. They just need to project enough to get a lodgment on Taiwan and blockade until the land forces of Taiwan are defeated. The Rocket, Cyber and Air Forces will deny access to third parties.
This is assuming that there will be third party interference. DC can talk all it wants about defending Taiwan in the event of invasion. Words are cheap. The CSIS wargame projected tens of thousands of American casualties in the first 90 days of conflict. And that's to protect a country most Americans can't even locate on a map. Is there political will for that type of sacrifice? Any POTUS will have to consider that before committing forces. Does Trump or Biden have that type of will or political capital? Remember ways and means are only half the equation, will is the other half.
So, the name of the game is to convince Xi that today is not the day to invade until China's demographic and economic problems destroy their capacity to project military power. Because if Xi decides that today is the day, there will be hell to pay.
"Is China the 800 pound gorilla or is it a house of cards, ready to collapse in a light breeze? Are both versions true" - Yes. And in my uninformed opinion? Most societies are. IMO, most civilizations are slightly more robust than societies.
What do you think of the gender imbalance in China caused by the one child policy? No country in history has had 50 million extra men than women. A massive population of angry young men who outnumber most other countries' entire populations is a disruptive force that could cause revolt from within or invade abroad.
Xi will be forced to try and create external enemies
Xi already has identified them. He's been feeding his domestic audience with nationalistic revanchist propaganda for a decade now.
I suspect Xi and the CCP will have plenty of fuel to throw on the fire reciting the circumstances of the "Century of Humiliation."
Map of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand with the words "Here Be Women" superimposed on it....
I worry that it will be SoCal.
Nope women will be extinct there by then.
Your dream is neither accurate or pleasant.
I know but that was meant to be levity in a comments section LOL
And the willing beauties of the Philippines.
As a parent who adopted a beautiful Chinese baby girl 26 years ago, I suspect this will go down in Guiness Book of World records as one of the greatest blunders in human history.
Oh of course a mass Government funded movement to LGBTQ of course LOL
"These factors should cause the PRC to return to what is their primary concern, internal stability, and be less interested in foreign adventures not directly related to food and fuel." 1.4 billion people just recently lifted up out of a meager existence to get a taste of middle class life are going to need an expansionist foreign policy to fuel their hopes and dreams. No one in China with cable TV, 3 squares a day, a tiny apartment, a bus pass and a cell phone wants to go back to be a rice paddy coolie living in a nipa hut. 1,400,000,000 people is a lot of internal stability to manage.
Autarky and wag the dog to distract the domestic masses from their problems and give them a false hope of future glory. Where have I seen this before?
Argentina, 1982.
Mare Nostrum, 1923.
Lebensraum, 1914 and 1939.
Etc. ,etc.
So are they willing to go full Zeihan and say China might be completely out of it in a decade or two?
And the German apprenticeship programs? According to a German MOD employee on another site, that's broken down. Used to be 20% unskilled/welfare, 60% apprenticeship, 20% college path. It's now about 50/50 unskilled/welfare and college.
I don't think you need to go full Zeihan to accept the trend that the PRC's window to achieve their "Chinese Dream" is closing faster than they anticipated. The only question left than to answer is does that make them more aggressive or less? From how Xi has been conducting his foreign policy over the last year, it's more aggressive. This is even despite Biden bending over backwards to get detente.
Or maybe it’s because Xi sees Biden as weak and controllable.
I see Biden as:
-Having extracted us from Afghanistan to get ready for the big game.
-Continuing to Tear Russia up for cheap.
-Created a long terrm nuclear sub alliance (Needs a better short term plan)
-Just got Japan and South Korea talking so they can be on the same page when the ball drops.
- Also probably knows his son acted as a forensic intelligence asset in Ukraine nd helps twist the knife with Russia and the GOP because they know we won't reveal sources and methods.
Sorry. I just don’t see a president that has demonstrated elements of senility, and his cocain-addicted son, as a pair of brainiacs in international politics. As always, respectfully, YMMV.
"probably knows his son acted as a forensic intelligence asset" ROTFL!!! More like Hunter is a foreign intelligence liability.
He want to get some value out of tens of millions the CCP has invested in the Biden Crime Family and the entire network of Uniparty assets dependent on the good will of the CCP for their money. And assets in the military like Milley.
That's a bunch of word salad gibberish. You just need to tweak it a bit and you can run the DEI division in HR.
Tom, you need to ween yourself away from CNN. A steady diet of CNN DNC "news" is unhealthy.
But why wouldn't he seek to get what the PRC wants through negotiation? If Biden is so controllable and gives favorable deals to the Iranians and the Taliban, why not seek to get Taiwan through negotiation? It's because Xi does not see the Taiwanese as likely to vote for re-unification in the next decade and the PRC's capability to project power will not survive into the late 2030s. Xi needs to move now and negotiations will not move fast enough for Beijing's timeline.
I had not considered that Xi may have concrete needs to move against Taiwan relatively quickly. Are you thinking of the projections of PRC’s demographics? My not-so-well-informed understanding is that, when you add in their need for forces to shore up their Himalayan and northwest borders, the demographic window to take Taiwan may be closing. Always willing to listen.
Setting aside Xi's own age and ambition for his legacy, the PRC is facing strong economic and demographic headwinds that will limit their ability to project military power after the mid 2030s for at least a generation thereafter. Both the official demographic and economic numbers are overly rosy and do not stand up to scrutiny. Their situation is a lot worse on both fronts than currently understood by most commentators.
In addition, the Taiwanese people are currently unwilling to unify with the mainland and barring a massive change in public opinion, I do not see that attitude changing in the next decade. Assuming then that Xi is serious about his commitment to annex Taiwan as part of realizing the "Chinese Dream" and to not leave the issue to the next generation; Xi has a problem. How to achieve the ideological strategic end goal given the PRC's projected means and ways with the associated economic, political and demographic obstacles? I think war is the most likely outcome. Not because Xi is likely to succeed, but because he doesn't seem to have another option given his suspected goal, his assumed timeline and his ways and means of achieving it.
Thank you for that analysis. That puts Xi’s recent characterization of U.S. efforts to be on at least equal grounds with PRC wrt island nations between the West Coast and Australia in better focus.
Second thought, based on reading a news article this evening. It seems State Dept has announced additional economic sanctions against PRC because of forced assimilation of Tibetans. I am more firmly convinced than ever that absolutely no one in DC has a firm grip on the realities of realpolitik. Unless, of course, the whole goal is to start a big enough war that one party or the other can simply declare martial law and be done with it.
Influx of immigrants may be causing the German apprenticeship program numbers.
My cousin's daughter lives in Germany and teaches immigrants German. She is well-educated. She met and married a man who was employed in the lawn care business. Perhaps he was bettering his language skills because he was aspiring to become an apprentice. I do not know for sure. Anyway, they both flew to Greece to have the wedding with his extended family in attendance...30 or so people. Some of her family from Boston attended and said it was a gala affair. The wedding was held in a Greek refugee camp. Her husband is from The Gambia, a Muslim. Viel Glück, Tinkerbell. I see 30+ people never entering a German apprentice program, now. They'll be living in my rich aunt's mansion in North Andover by 2026. Germany's loss.
Maybe not. Chain migration should not be a thing.
Chain migration got my wife's mom, dad, 2 brothers and 1 sisters here. 2 other sisters came here by way of fiance visas. One married a BMC and the other a DS2...a shipmate who PenPal-ed her at my behest. Eldest brother came here to serve 26 years in the Navy as a cook. Back in the 70's chain migration meant that I paid for everything. Had to swear out an affidavit of support for them, meaning I, not the government, was responsible for them...that they'd not be a financial burden to the taxpayers. They never were. All got good jobs and are living the American dream. Two of the boys (college grads) served in the Navy, one a BT3 for 4 years and the other a GSEC/CWO4 for 31 years. The girl was a college grad and worked for Rockwell for 30 years. It took 10 years to get them all here. Cost me $10K(+) in old timey dollars. But I am with you. End chain migration. Go stand in line or just buy a plane ticket to Mexico City, take a bus to the border, cross and get your pre-paid Visa Card, an Obamaphone, a long term hotel voucher, medical care and some onerous summons to appear in Immigration Court in 2031 to plead your case. My wife is a college grad. She worked from 1 to 2 full time jobs plus up to 2 part-time jobs until she turned 71. I am pro-immigration. We just need to be picky and unafraid to sent poor choices back.
"Chain migration" is keeping families together; strong families lead to strong nations. You just made a strong argument about the importance of family bonds, then pivoted to "F the family, end chain migration."
Huh?
A nation does not become stronger by admitting strong families who are nonetheless unable to function in advanced societies.
My childhood Pakistani (Bangladesh) neighbors said that not everyone would adjust to living in the US and understanding the freedoms here. The odd honor killing/synagogue attacks here in the states proves their prescience to have been correct. (It was Grandma that said that in '83.)
I am for keeping families together. But immigration should be based on merit, the desirability of the supplicant. If an immigrant wants to keep his family together he or she can go back home or make the choice to not come here in the first place. An argument about keeping families together can be made for keeping a criminal married man or woman out of jail tool. I'll admit that I am happy that I got my wife's kin here. I assure you that I vetted them myself. Yes, I have pivoted, Tom. No, I am not a "F the family" kind of guy. I have pivoted because the current illegal immigration influx is suicidal. How many are enough? Another billion? Nobody in Washington will answer that question. Time to close the door. I sponsored my relatives, paid the entire cost of it, and they and I waited 10 years to legally get here. Further, I have loathed line jumpers since grammar school. My heart is sound. It doesn't bleed.
Those "strong families" migrating into the US illegally know and care about only one thing: more "family members"= more US government handouts. The day of an illegal crossing simply to find work and send funds back to their home country are long gone. they know they can come here and live the rest of their on the public dole. Enjoy your tax paying.
"Back in the 70's chain migration meant that I paid for everything."
This is an important caveat
Several years ago a German friend told me that the whole “college is for everyone” mentality is taking hold.
I subscribe to the theory that the PRC will only become more dangerous as its window to achieve its strategic goals closes faster than anticipated. Besides, we haven't even passed the most dangerous part of this decade of concern. Anyway, I do not see a downside to being over prepared. But, we are not even close to being ready.
Works both ways. A Great Pacific War may be a way for the US to disguise its decline.
Leapin' Gebbus, Billy. You have just given the 2024 Biden Campaign a grand strategy.
Once again Billy has shown that he is either watching too much Alex Jones or a badly programed GPU bot.
Don't knock Alex Jones, he called the "COVID Panic II: Blame Canada" a few weeks ago.
Alex has been right a number of times, as well as wrong. I haven't paid enough attention to him to him which is more prevalent
I don't think it makes any sense to put stock in ideas like "limited windows" to invade Taiwan. There are always going to be sufficient millions of Chinese men to take Taiwan no matter what happens there demographically. There might even be enough millions to handle a larger war. There are enough millions to lose many cities to nuclear destruction. Proportions and statistical thinking are useful, for analysis, but they are not hard constraints. In the same way, the US could shed more than a quarter of its population in war and still around twice as many people as it did in 1950 and recover all of that population in a generation.
To ask a question like "is China willing to sacrifice millions of Chinese for an important political goal" in the context of any period of Chinese history is to answer it. The answer is Yes. The last Chinese pretender who was nervous about sacrificing Chinese lives and equipment in a war was Chiang Kai-shek, and he wound up ruler of an offshore island only: the guy who was willing to spend Chinese lives like sacks of rice is the guy that everything is named after now.
Demography and economics are hard constraints. You cannot project power abroad militarily let alone prevail if you have a 1:1 worker to retiree ratio and your economy is in the toilet based on systemic problems which cannot be fixed in the near term to mid-term. After mid-2030s, China will not have the demographic or economic capability to project power for at least a generation.
"in a generation" Twenty years is a long time, certainly longer than Xi can wait. At that is assuming China can increase its fertility rate from 1.08 (trending down to 0.8) to over 2.1. No industrialized nation has ever increased its natural fertility rate to that extent through government programs. The reason the US was able to recover so quickly after WWII was that its fertility rate was naturally over 3 throughout the Baby Boom generation.
Also, Xi makes the decision to invade and his legacy needs an achievement to cement him in the forefront of China's historic leaders. He's 70 and he doesn't have another 20 years to wait around for.
The ratio doesn't matter if all you need is several million fit and active guys. They have so many millions that it doesn't matter. You can also fix that ratio by just allowing nature to take its course with the elderly instead of expending vast sums to keep them alive. If there is one thing the CCP has never struggled with, and that the USSR did not particularly struggle with either, is killing off people that the states considered to be useless eaters. China is the world mass slaughter champ; Mao makes Genghis look like a chump. If even the Canadians have no problem making state-assisted murder a top cause of death, China will not hesitate to give Grandma and Grampa the big naptime retirement surprise gift, residual Confucianism or not.
Impossible things like one worker : one retiree are impossible. You fix that ratio by letting nature or a nurse with a vial of poison do their job.
These hard ratio arguments were also used to downplay the risk of war between Ukraine and Russia. Whoops. Didn't work out there, either.
Age gets a vote and an imbalance means that you may prevail in the short term but that Xi dynasty is going to come crashing down really hard and what legacy remains for Xi?
China can't convince its people to be dependent on market-economy lifeways. They'd rather lie flat, buy little to nothing, and live un-economic lives. Our people don't know how to live un-economic lives. Some of us starved while crops rotted in the field when the Whiz Kids' system required patching to handle COVID. It's been said the Chinese are, first and foremost, pragmatists. If we maintain parity in personnel and materiel, military solutions to economic problems look far less attractive than economic solutions.
Century of humiliation and plus a certain runaway province that has a high level of state of the art manufacturing facilities.........
What economic solutions square the circle of the people of Taiwan not wanting to be annexed and Xi wanting Taiwan to be annexed?
Xi has told his young people to "eat bitterness". He has told his military to prepare for war by 2027. He has told his Politburo to prepare to "struggle"; and that the Taiwan question will not be left to the next generation. Xi is currently 70. The life expectancy for a Chinese male is 76. Even if there was an economic solution to this impasse, it does not appear that Xi sees it or thinks it's likely in the next decade of his leadership. Nor does the opinion of the average Chinese person matter one iota to the question of whether Xi chooses war.
P.S. We have failed to "maintain parity in personnel and material" and we do not have any hope of getting back on the glide path for years.
They ain’t us. Compare Sherman’s march to the sea with Ye Fei’s defeat at Kinmen. Americans are horny for violence and the world knows it--violence abroad has been our best salve for violence at home. War bolsters our economy; call it our Norman inheritance. Xi might think he’s Taizong of Tang, but deep in his heart he knows open conflict with us could turn him into Yang of Sui.
"War bolsters our economy"
WINNING wars bolsters our economy, or has in the past. LOSING is rather less helpful
"Nor does the opinion of the average Chinese person matter one iota to the question of whether Xi chooses war."
I guess they are more like US Citizens than I thought
“Meanwhile, the number of elderly Chinese will rise from 200 million to 500 million at midcentury, and providing for their needs will be a mounting challenge for China’s workers and policy makers.”
Soylent Green, anyone? 😁
Lets get a boiler room going to sell them anti-virus software. Two can play at this game!
More concerning is the growing evidence that China may have overcounted its population under 40 by as much as 163 to 220 million people.
A thought provoking article but I would like to point out a few things.
Many countries regard the USA as a threat to intentional order not China. It was not China that attacked, invaded or sanctioned Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Libya, Panama, Serbia, Venezuela, etc. and is now threatening Niger.
We are building military bases around China and throughout the world. China builds infrastructure throughout the world in a modern version of the Silk Road. I wonder how we would feel if China built bases in Bermuda, Canada, Mexico and Trinidad. Not too happy.
A few years ago Trump was entertaining Xi at his Florida estate. How did we come to be talking about using force to keep China within its borders?
Finally, China has problems bit so do we. Fiscal and trade imbalances. Inflation. Crime. Drugs. Roads. Air Traffic. Derailed trains. Corruption. Wild fires. Etc. China could easily make a case that it is America that is on the way down.
State would surely like the world to believe that we have military installations everywhere, but the data shows a continous retreat since WW2. I refer you to Dr. David Vine's (https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/vine.cfm) research. As of his latest version of the Excel file "Lists of US Military Bases Abroad, 1776-2021", the US went from a mere 50 OUTUS installations in 1939 to more than 30k at the peak of WW2. By 1989, that number was reduced to 1,726 and by 2021 to 750. Give us another ten years and we will be under 500 given the decay curve. As the US retreats the rest of the world returns to historical norms - fertile ground for strongmen, barbs, and pirates.
That's for regional powers to sort out. Welcome to a multi-polar world.
Many more countries regard the USA as essential to intentional order. And we probably are on the way down. It doesn't help when you alienate countries we depend on like Saudi Arabia.
And China has a presence in Cuba and Venezuela in case you missed it. - them's some great friends. They also have a presence at multiple maritime chokepoints in case you missed that as well.
Point taken about the Chinese presence in the few remaining communist dictatorships.
OTOH, there's a list of countries that depend on the US to defend freedom and peace; Saudi Arabia is surely on a different list!
After hypocritically campaigning to turn Saudi Arabia into a pariah for killing a Saudi citizen, what did Biden expect when he went begging for oil and reopened negotiations with Iran?
Everything Biden does is hypocritical, but when it comes to the Saudis, there's not any president who made any good decisions building that alliance — that misbegotten alliance
We are America, we have our cake and eat it too. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/74b99e73-894d-4502-9a56-6ad0196d70fe
Well, they sit along side and or near areas of strategic maritime importance......and coincidentally have a bit of crude to spare.
Obama tried to make nice too. The game has been scheduled and will be played for a long time. You can't stop the game from happening. Just play to win.
How about putting a steep tariff on Chinese imports. That might scare them more than a carrier battle group.
Pretty sure that's how the last big one got started. Lots of levers to pull aside from that one.
Which levers will the Chinese see as not hostile?
Hostile is fine, debilitating is what will set them off.
Then it will set them off. What is debilitating? Decoupling from China? Withdrawing investment? Refusal to allow them to steal our technology? Establishing defense treaties with nations they wish to bully? Refusal to allow Chinese nationals access to our universities?
None. They see Blinken complaining about IP theft as hostile. And that's after his groveled in front of Xi for an hour.
Many countries have a point. You left out Ukraine.
"China builds infrastructure throughout the world in a modern version of the Silk Road."
You passed over conveniently that this building of infrastructure puts the host nation in hock to the Chinese enabling the Chinese to achieve a soft takeover. Other countries have woken up to this.
He's repeating CCP propaganda. He didn't leave out anything.
Trump was also pursuing policies to contain the PRC. We are talking about keeping China within its own borders because the PRC has been talking about invading its neighbors. Funny how that works. Similar explanation as to why all the US's allies and partners want more US support in theater.
China is facing deflation (its much worse and harder to fix), a real estate debt crisis that dwarfs the US 2008 mortgage crisis, a population and local government that has most of its savings tied up in real estate, and a declining cheap labor manufacturing export model (which drives their economic growth). Unlike the US, China does not have the sufficient domestic consumer spending or the world's reserve currency to float them through the crisis.
On the demographic front, China has a 1.08 (trending to 0.8) fertility rate. This is on top of the fastest aging population in the world and the real possibility that they have under counted their Under 40 population by 163 to 220 million people. Finally, I see your wildfire and I raise you the worst flooding northern China has seen in recorded history. A thousand people died in Maui. Tens of thousands have probably died in northern China just based on rough estimates from open-source information.
If you want to simultaneously do right by the Chinese people while weakening the CCP, then send a flood of bibles and Christian missionaries to China.
Followed by a bunch of Beecher's Bibles?
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state ...
No worries, the Chinese can make enough ice coolers for the supply.
Sal is spot on. WSJ articles are recommended reading. As are US-China Economic and Security Review Commission Report, Heritage Index of Military Readiness and Hoover's China Sharp Power Project Reports. Must build more combatants. Must have more forward in INDOPACOM. Must fix shipbuilding industry. Must build alliances like QUAD and strengthen Asian alliances.
All this drum beating for a war against China over its non invasion reminds me of the drum beating for war over Iraq's non-existent WMD. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame of me.
Let's see, Iraq is at best a mixed bag, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine are failures. The US needs a war they can win. Grenada & Panama, been there done that.
By Jove I've got it! Mexico. The order is inverted (invade the world, invite the world) but if the US can't take Mexico and those nasty cartels, well, it certainly has no business going up against China.
Mexico's industrial capacity will bankrupt China. No need to invade Mexico, just send them more manufacturing contracts and FDI.
All this complaining about common sense preparedness in the face of naked aggression by revanchist authoritarians reminds me of when isolationists called Churchill a war monger in the 1930s, let alone all the pro-Putin talking points in 2021.
Recently it came to light that the CCP overcounted their younger population numbers by a million or more - definitely not good. Manufacturing re-shoring is already well underway and Xi's heavy-handed tactics, threats and China's disregard for IP are certainly meaningful contributors. I'm sure foreigners would love to live under a system so invested in social credit scores. And then there there all the indicators that point to a real estate bubble about to burst...
As Xi has removed anyone who might be a threat to him politically, just how much of this news reaches his ears and, who amongst his "inner" circle, is going to tell him that news? Hopefully none of it reaches his ears because we all know how much tyrants like surprises. Now if Europe actually plays a constructive role here, the math of China jumping ugly with her neighbors is a lot less likely. Can you say social unrest?
They've probably under counted their Under 40 population by 163 to 220 million. The Standing Committee probably has known this for some time. If Xi wants Taiwan, he needs to go now. The PRC will be in no condition to project military power in a decade.
My wish is a partnership with the US and the world to advance the goals of making life better, free trade, eradication of world hunger and free navigation of the seas, maybe even a colony on the moon.
But as My dear old Aunt Nell used to say, wish in one hand shit in the other see which fills fastest.
I'm just a simple man and I get easily confused. I see experts here and elsewhere and I cannot reconcile what I hear. I deeply respect Sal and the Front Porch members that are all smarter than me. But, then I read stuff from Gordon Chang and Peter Zeihan and I can't make the ends connect. Is China the 800 pound gorilla or is it a house of cards, ready to collapse in a light breeze? Are both versions true? Neither?
Hitler thought that the USSR was a rotten house that would collapse. Boy, was he wrong!
As noted elsewhere in the comments, there are an awful lot of young Chinese males that want to have easy access to sex. They are not getting it at home. Testosterone is a wonderful, yet dangerous thing. Young men are willing to do a lot of dumb things for little reason to begin with, but throw in the biological imperative, and you have a load of oil soaked wood just waiting for a random spark to become a conflagration.
We fool ourselves, in the West, that there are such things as clean wars. Wars are about Sex and Resources. And the resources are just a way to procure more sex.
It seems that the closer the CCP realizes things are heading to a crisis, they unhinged their thinking will become.
But, on the flip side, do we really think there military is a huge boogey man? We, the West, especially the US and UK have deep institutional knowledge in Power Projection and Blue Water operations. The CCP can study naval theory, but they have very little operational experience. Do they concentrate on core skills like DC, or are they in the same boat (no pun intended) as they IJN and their lack of deep DC skills? Will they continue to Fight the Ship when all goes to Hell or will they fold like a cheap suit? Do they have a Commander Evans and a USS Johnston?
Having a metric butt ton of young angry men is one thing, but employing them them in a useful manner is a different kettle of fish.
It's both. China is an 800 pound gorilla now that is sitting on a house of cards that is starting to collapse, but it will not completely collapse for another decade. This makes the PRC more dangerous in the short term and less dangerous in the long term....but we need to survive until the long term for that to be any type of solace. If Xi is serious about taking Taiwan under his leadership and the CCP is serious about taking Taiwan by 2049 (by all available information they are), then their window is closing, and their options are limited. This makes war in the short to medium term more likely.
And now Xi has 30 million excess males, 20% of which are unemployed due to the unfolding economic crisis, and an ethno-nationalist population hyped up on revanchist propaganda of realizing China's glory. How can Xi Dada employ and distract these people while achieving his strategic ends in the limited time available? War seems the most likely outcome.
"do we really think there[sic] military is a huge boogey man?"
Yes, China has 500 naval ships to the US's less than 300, and all of their ships are in theater. This does not even touch upon the capabilities of their Rocket Force or their Air Force. As Stalin said, "Quantity is a quality of its own." The PLA(N) does not need to power project into the blue water in order to be successful. They just need to project enough to get a lodgment on Taiwan and blockade until the land forces of Taiwan are defeated. The Rocket, Cyber and Air Forces will deny access to third parties.
This is assuming that there will be third party interference. DC can talk all it wants about defending Taiwan in the event of invasion. Words are cheap. The CSIS wargame projected tens of thousands of American casualties in the first 90 days of conflict. And that's to protect a country most Americans can't even locate on a map. Is there political will for that type of sacrifice? Any POTUS will have to consider that before committing forces. Does Trump or Biden have that type of will or political capital? Remember ways and means are only half the equation, will is the other half.
So, the name of the game is to convince Xi that today is not the day to invade until China's demographic and economic problems destroy their capacity to project military power. Because if Xi decides that today is the day, there will be hell to pay.
You may be right about China's shortcomings, but the US has plenty to address itself.
I like that comment!
"Is China the 800 pound gorilla or is it a house of cards, ready to collapse in a light breeze? Are both versions true" - Yes. And in my uninformed opinion? Most societies are. IMO, most civilizations are slightly more robust than societies.