The CCP has another serious problem; it’s a house divided. Two main factions have developed in the Chinese Communist Party.
The original leadership of the CCP (and China) was Mao and the other people who fought in the Revolution. The government they established was supposed to be a meritocracy but human nature endured. Many revolutionary veterans took care of members of their own families and kept an eye on their political careers. These people are known as the princelings and as the revolutionary generation died off, they succeeded to many of the top positions in China. Xi, for example, is a princeling. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a major figure in the revolution (although like many others, he was in and out of power).
Then there are the people who aren’t related to somebody in power and rose up slowly through the ranks. These people are called the Youth League because most of them started their careers by joining the Communist Youth League of China as teenagers. They worked their way up through the ranks by working low-level jobs out in the sticks before eventually getting powerful positions in Beijing. Not surprisingly, many of them resent the princelings.
The current policy is to try to balance the two factions by giving about half the top positions to princelings and half to youth leaguers. But it’s not a stable situation. Especially because there’s not only plotting between the two factions but also plotting within each faction.
Nope. In Chinese mythology, the universe consists of three layers called Kingdoms. The upper layer is heaven. The lower layer is the rest of the Earth other than China. The middle layer, unalterably higher and better in every way than the lower layer, is China.
China: less than Heaven, but better than all the Earth. Culturally better, racially better, eternally and necessarily better. They can’t not be better. They’re the Middle Kingdom, existing on a higher plane than all others. Just one small notch below Heaven itself.
They may never have the power to truly dominate. But they always have the will to do so and consider it no less than their birthright.
Other country’s founding mythologies tend more to primer inter pares. The ones that truly place themselves a cut above everyone else tend to let that go to their head within a century or two. It usually doesn’t end pretty.
Agree and agree. Unless …
The Brits expanded into the commercial vacuum that was the Industrial Revolution. Along with some good luck on colonial arrangements vs. e.g. France and Spain, they had a good long run until the vacuum was mostly filled by them and their late-to-the-party competitors. Then things entered a stasis that would have been interrupted by something if WWI & WWII hadn’t upset the apple cart for nearly all the world powers of the time.
The US expanded into the commercial and geo-political vacuum that was 1946. With some good luck on the Soviets not getting too frisky before they fell apart the US has had a good run so far. And may well run with their lead for quite awhile yet if they don’t get too lazy or too stupid or too greedy. Meanwhile, many of the US’ late-to-the-party competitors are chugging along nicely. Whether that be Germany, SK, Taiwan, or the PRC. IMO that 1946-era vaccum is just about full. So the music is coming to a stop on that particular phase in the long term game. We’ll see who finds a good seat when the music finishes fading and stasis sets in.
For China to really become as dominant as those earlier players did in their time there needs to be a new vacuum the Chinese succeed in exploiting better than the other contemporary contenders. Pushing incumbents out of entrenched niches is too expensive and usually too violent. As **Little Nemo **almost said, they’ll become a power when they figure out what the new way to be powerful is. And beat the others to it.
IMO the best candidate for that next vacuum, that new way of power is AI, smart human-free factories and all the rest of that SF-busy-turning-into-reality stuff that SamuelA likes to go on about.
If the Chinese master that tech first, or master it second but implement it faster than does the West (perhaps by being better at ignoring the complaints of their idled masses), they will be very hard to catch up to or to stop. I don’t want to hijack the thread with what-ifs on how this transition may play out.
But IMO this is the next big vacuum in human history and the country (or metanat :)) that masters it first will be *the *economic hegemon for several human generations at least. And will preside over a substantial remaking of human society. Whether what we might call “Western middle-classism” survives this transition is a darn good question. But for another thread.
Agree and agree again.
A lot of the power of the US vis-a-vis pre-EU Europe was entirely that although we were about the same size (economically and physically) as the EU area collectively, we were far more homogenous. Unitary size is a quantity with a helpful quality all its own. The Chinese are similarly situated where they dwarf everyone around them, India excepted. (And India’s always an exception to everything. :))
That huge size difference is a real advantage when they’re rising, on top, or better yet, on top and still rising. Just as it was (and maybe will be again), a huge disadvantage when they’re down and sinking further.
The big guy doesn’t win every fight, but it’s sure the way to bet unless you know a lot more of the secondary details.
Here’s a list of the growth rate of the per-capita GDP of the countries of the world:
Here’s a list of the per-capita GDP of the countries of the world:
Notice that the countries whose GDP is growing fastest are relatively poor countries. The richest countries tend to be down below the middle of the list of the fastest growing GDP. What this means is that as a country becomes richer overall per-capita, it becomes harder to grow as fast. If you’re richer, your average income increases and it becomes harder to sell your goods overseas and your people will be more likely to want to import goods from poorer countries overseas. This means that there is a tendency for the per-capita GDP of a poorer country to gradually slow down as it gets richer and gradually become the same as the once richer countries.
No, this isn’t universally true. There are countries whose economies are badly run. Their per-capita GDP will be less than the rule in the last paragraph would say.
Suppose every country’s economy was equally well run. Suppose this lead to the per-capita GDP in every country becoming the same and the per-capita growth in GDP becoming the same in every country. This would lead to China having the largest GDP, right? It is the largest country, right? Yes, so what? You’re objecting to a world where every country is well run and poverty is rare?
It’s hard to compare the two political systems. Our system appears more adversarial but it’s designed that way. We have separate political parties that openly compete against each other. And we have a body of voters who decide between them in elections. So our political conflicts get resolved.
In China, the political conflict is all occurring inside a single political organization and it’s not intended for public viewing. The conflict goes on behind the scenes and the public image is one of a supposedly united party. In a situation like that, unseen tensions can build up.
Agree with your overall point about leveling growth rates with rising per capita GDP. And that a world of all well-run economies connected to well-run governments could be pretty sweet for all of humanity.
Certainly one of the signal economic achievements of the last 100 years is dragging much of Asia out of abject poverty. With a hefty fraction of that progress both in headcount and in gain per capita directly attributable to the post-Deng CCP.
Having said that, the objections of others are mostly with your "suppose"s. It amounts to the tautology “If China was economically and politically benign, wouldn’t that be benign?” Sure it would. But it both invites and ignores the counter tautology: “If China was a wealthy but deeply criminal society with a belligerent foreign policy, wouldn’t that be anti-benign?” Sure it would.
Which China will the rest of us have to live with going forward? Which China will the Chinese people have to live with going forward? There are signs today of both. Interesting times.
I think we are essentially saying the same thing, except your starting point is mythology and my starting point is politics. Without question, China has an ambition to subordinate its neighbors, but I do not believe in a “we need to conquer and annex them” sort of way. (Exception for Taiwan of course.)
But seeking superpower status? China basically doesn’t care about relationships far from its borders, with the exception of commerce. Like, China’s attitude toward Africa: priority one through a million is sucking wealth and resources out of it. You can’t be a superpower on the world stage if your interests are so one dimentional. That is in great contrast to the well-developed political agendas we saw of both superpowers during the Cold War.
Ahh, now I get what you meant. I thought your point was much smaller. And I agree with your interpretation if not fully with your prediction.
As you say, right now they are mostly acting like Amazon, trying to be the hub of world commerce, where most (and ideally all) economic flows flow through China to China’s gain. They have no more interest in invading, say, Laos than we have of invading El Salvador*.
I disagree (some) that their current set of goals is such a strong limitation on their future power.
A topic I harp about now and again is the degree to which economics has replaced civil society in the US. My sig used to say “When we stopped being ‘citizens’ and started being ‘consumers’ was the Beginning of the End of Western Civilization.”
Various SF stories have envisioned societies where the government is essentially economic, not political. The world is run by a set of armed corporations where warfare is business by other means, not politics by other means.
China may well be the prototype for that form of power. In some sense the Middle East oil powers are similar in that all power there flows from the end of a pipeline. But there’s an inherent difference between a resource extractive economy, no matter how lucrative, and an industrial economy. Even if by “industry” we mean 21st/22nd Century industry full of robots and services rather than 19th/20th industry full of laborers and smokestacks.
A China that is an economic empire builder will discover that they need to apply politics to keep the empire’s money flowing. As the Romans, British, and Americans discovered before them. e.g. As and when the next African country with sizeable Chinese investments suffers a revolution and the new government nationalizes the Chinese holdings, the Chinese will be reminded of the importance of hard power along with soft.
IMO they haven’t forgotten that even today. They’re just doing a good job, mostly of necessity, of leading with their current strength, which is the power of investment, not the power of armed coercion. They have an equivalent of the CIA or KGB and it is actively working to predict, prevent, and pre-empt those African revolutions I mentioned. How skilful are they? Damn good question. We shall see.
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I had to think a bit to recall a Central American country we haven’t invaded or stage-managed at some point. And even this choice is far from a lilly-white case. Over our 200+ years we’ve shown far from clean hands in all this stuff. ISTM we can expect no less from the Chinese. They’re at least as human as we are.
I agree, when money is threatened, then hard power looks real attractive. The US (like the UK before it) has been real good at spending $10 in hard power to save $1 in investments, and yes China may do the same.
But in Africa the current debate is not between Chinese hard and soft power, it is between Chinese soft power and* American* hard power, as illustrated a few years ago in Davos when one East African business leader said that the difference between the US and China was that the “Chinese are very good at building bridges, the Americans are very good at blowing them up” (which made Obama, who was there stammer uncharacteristically). And I think that means the Chinese are going to continue on this road and prefer to buy people out due to it being a geopolitical issue. For now. Until this generation is incharge. I make no promises about the next one.
A second thing is that the Chinese-US relationship since circa 1980 is not like the US-USSR rather it , closely resembles the UK-US relationship from about 1850. Like with the UK in the US, US investments and capital in the PRC have helped to fuel the Chinese rise. Like the UK-US; this has resulted in the old power ending up with huge debts and exposure to the new one. The question is, will the new power then compel the old one to reduce its military and accept a secondary role in its sphere of influence? The US did, in fact, do that with the Washington Naval Treaty, where it forced the RN to contract to be the same size as the US Navy, and accept US primacy in the Pacific.
Digging into just the chunk above, the deeper reality that the US will spend $10 of taxpayer-supplied hard power to protect $1 of corporate-owned investment. From the corp’s POV that’s a superb ROI. Less so from the taxpayers’.
China *may *be (or becoming) in the novel position that the corporation and the government are effectively the same entity. At which point both sides of the transaction *may *land on the same ledger. Which *may *alter their idea of its ROI.
But will China have any better luck, without going into full-blown colonialism, in getting past the endemic economic corruption that has so badly retarded so many African nations in their push for modernization?
When China builds a bridge…and then the President charges a special non-legislated, unilaterally-imposed tax of $10 for every vehicle that crosses, and puts all of that money into his personal secret account (enforced by bully boys with guns)…will Chinese investment be any more successful than previous nations’ efforts?
That’s irrelevant. For the simple reason that the US or Europe never really invested in infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa in the way, China is doing. Now it’s true a lot of Chinese investments in Africa is based on the model that the US used in the 40, 50 and early 60’s, which is supporting of building up of infrastructure. However, that kind of US support/investments were done in the Far East, the Sub-Continent and parts of the Middle East and they did have a big effect. The US was mostly out of that game by the time large numbers of African countries become independent
Fact is that infrastructure and social programs always have a beneficial effect. In your example, the fact that Mr/El/Monsieur Le President siphons off part of the toll is not the point, since bridges are not going to be built to make money. What it does is that it makes travel between A & B easier. A & B’s markets are now open to each other, a Farmer in A, can now sell his crops to a larger market, which means more money to spend for him, perhaps actual disposable income for the first time. And since in real life he probably won’t travel to B directly, now there is a transporter who can make money transporting these crops, so he makes money, hires, drivers and loaders, who get employment, and money, have enough transporters, then you build up a mechanics business for repair and spare parts, which alspo hire people and so on.
With respect, I think that endemic African corruption is far more of a problem than you’re allowing for. I think it is the second biggest problem on the continent, following after the vestiges of Colonial interference. I put it ahead of sectarian/religious violence as an obstacle to progress.
But, yes, building a bridge is better than not building a bridge.