Is China the Next World Power?

china's the next superpower that's a given right this is the view that's been given by the modern media and the general world china is rising in the u.s is in decline we all know that however the truth is in fact far more complicated this video is here to look at what the actual situation is what is the future of chinese power what's the current state and future of china as a society nation and civilization that's the question of this video [Music] whether china will have a war with america and much of the rest of the world is a question that causes great angst for many why not burn that off by playing through world war iii conflict of nations is a free online strategy game that gathers millions of people worldwide conflict of nations is set in the modern world and is a game about world conquest it is a developed real-time combat system and over a hundred beautifully modeled modern weapon systems like nuclear submarines and airborne infantry units i've just gotta say the level of detail in this game is incredible you do all of this in a massive isometric map with 64 other players as you fight the death play with other real players and fight with an alliance system that allows cooperative games and challenges a large part of this game is managing your economy which is so developed as to have resources population density and morale if you click the link in the description you get the waterfall test special promo this involves getting 13 000 gold and a one month premium subscription for free this offer is available for only 30 days so move quickly start conquering the world today with conflict of nations china's economic growth over the last 40 years has been the greatest in human history china uses the equivalent of a city of rome's worth of concrete every two years in construction china is the world's largest industrial power and the fastest growing and second biggest commercial market their tech sector in areas like 5g biotech manufacturing and digital life has been expanding rapidly meanwhile china has been spreading political influence onto every continent with various ambitious investment schemes one has to remember that only 40 years ago china had an economy smaller than canada's or italy's and was a veritable black hole that foreigners never went to this massive explosion in chinese influence comes with a series of caveats and complications that we're going to discuss in this video we're going to look at china through a series of different lenses to see how it really exists china is an interesting geographic predicament 94 of the population is crammed into the wet eastern third of the country well the other two thirds are desert wild west largely inhabited by ethnic minorities that hate the chinese similarly the chinese have been in the region for 4 000 years at least and have terra formed and colonized their entire temperate zone which is why china has the same latitudes roughly as the roman empire of the united states the countries that are left around china proper are really tough since they've resisted chinese invasions and are still there china was the center of its section of asia for thousands of years with all the areas around it being chinese tributaries and adopting chinese culture this history has made chinese foreign policy profoundly arrogant and insensitive to local conditions this meant most of china's important neighbors are american allies japan taiwan south korea malaysia the philippines vietnam indonesia and india are american allies of some colors mostly since america is far away and will bother them much less as a global hegemon the chinese will it also doesn't help that washington is a much more forgiving and much less controlling ally than the chinese communist party china's main rival of the us is also quite arrogant a classic flaw of great nations but the two were arrogant in different ways both nations ignore local customs but the chinese assume other nations are barbarians well the americans assume they are wannabe americans the americans are far more naive the americans do stuff like setting up democracies where they have no right existing and murdering the leaders of foreign countries without plans on how to hold power afterwards the chinese do stuff like setting up donkey slaughterhouses in countries where that's a taboo or saying stuff like this to the global press the u.s foreign policy is far more emotional as it always has been but this has been amplified by the current crisis of confidence and division in american society a major advantage the chinese have is that they have a far more coherent elite chinese policy is much more long-term than american a country whose foreign policy is often determined by the whims of which parties currently in charge the chinese elite thinks in terms of centuries the american and weaks china becoming a massive economic power however drags most of the asian continent in their economic sphere of influence for practically all the countries in the continent china is their biggest trade partner for the smaller and poorer nations the pull towards china is often irresistible after the cold war the us decided to stop supporting thuggish third world dictators and they didn't have to worry at the soviets anymore this resulted in the greatest growth in international democracy ever in world history however this left the remaining autocrats around the world in a tough spot china was happy to fill the void all the autocracies in the world and the poorer nations that need chinese money were happy to become chinese allies myanmar laos cambodia sri lanka and all the stan countries have become chinese allies in this manner china has lots of influence in africa and latin america for the same reasons the chinese spread a lot of money around for these areas they really won't be that useful chinese allies when push comes to shove the chinese navy is too weak to project force outside of the asian continent tanzania will probably for example default on its debts to china at some point join the american alliance and since the us controls the oceans there's nothing china can do about it the general chinese strategy has been to entrap smaller and weaker nations in debt and then gradually get concessions from these countries such as ports in order for china to not collect this works under certain circumstances such as in sri lanka but we have to keep in mind that these countries can just default on their debt and have the u.s back them unless they're completely brutal autocracies we also have to consider that a lot of these nations populations dislike the chinese in central asia the dictators love the chinese for their money but the populations detest them due to their common struggle against the american system china and russia are now allies this is a strange partnership given both countries 10 u.s histories and conflicting self-interests as global warming continues russian siberia already fairly temperate looks more and more appealing to the chinese there are 200 million people on the chinese side of the border and 4 on the russian by 2040 the chinese are projected to become the majority in far eastern russia the second these two countries aren't scared of the americans they'll beat each other's throats china currently is a massive trump card over the region around them they control a quarter of india's water supply and are damping up basically every river that flows into india including the brahmaputra with the exception of the ganges india is about to go through a pretty serious water crisis themselves due to global warming and if the chinese can take control of india's water supply they would turn india into a puppet state the indians won't stand for this india is an american ally as well so a war between india and china would very easily escalate to a world war this is honestly the scenario that keeps me up at night a large reason for this chinese move is the north chinese plane is projected to run out of water by 2030 this largely isn't due to climactic reasons the area has a decently wet climate like illinois or iowa but chinese industrial practices tend to foul up the water they have one picture of china that will make you conclude the nation is absolutely screwed as demographics china's one child policy has worked too well when two parents make one kid that's only half replacement level when that works for multiple generations you've got a real problem the east asian nations with the exception of japan rush into the industrial world in a single generation this means they went from having 3.5 children per family to one having that generation of three people who weren't spending money on kids allowed massive economic growth however when that generation gets older it's a darker picture this doesn't account for the chinese government is probably lying about the statistics with the birth rate likely at one child per woman similarly china is becoming much more urban and is already very atheists which are the two worst predictors for a sustainable birth rate china is in that very situation the average chinese person is already older than the average american as america's demographics will remain relatively stable going forward china will get much older very fast aging populations have a lot of issues firstly older populations are less creative aggressive and innovative secondly aging populations are costly this would be moderately acceptable in a country like japan or germany who are wealthy and thus somewhat able to support their elderly populations however china isn't a rich country china can't bear to support the elderly population it's going to have a good example to look at is japan japan in the 1990s was in a remarkably similar situation to how china is today albeit a much smaller scale in the decades after world war ii japan experienced immense economic growth people worried japan would become the dominant power surprisingly more so than the us however the japanese economy imploded in the 1990s and has barely grown since japan has been called a post-growth economy and then it can't really grow since any growth would go into supporting their elderly population china and frankly most of the northern hemisphere is in this situation in the decades to come this is likely an origin the belt and road scheme moving forward china isn't in a position to be much of a market giving its aging similarly in the last couple years the us and other western countries have been doing much to block china economically and reindustrialize chinese goods are lower on the value-added scale so they tend to sell to poorer nations with 38 percent of their foreign sales coming from the third world which is far in excess of their percentage of the world economy the plan behind the belton road scheme is to turn central asia and africa and economic dependencies this is a region where a majority of the world's population lives if for when these economies would rise they'd buy chinese goods or at least that's the plan these populations are growing in young in some ways to a fault i've always found the belt and road scheme to be somewhat genius i remember six years ago i was looking at a map of the region and from my american of british descent perspective i was thinking about how china would have to expand its naval capabilities and break out past the first islands chain places like indonesia or japan however a chinese friend of mine then showed me a map of the belton road scheme and explained how china was going to expand by land instead i was annoyed i hadn't thought of it before with the exceptions of the people on china's southeastern coast the chinese have never been a navigatory people and their empires have always been land-based why should anything change similarly you would counteract the massive supremacy that the u.s navy has over the world's oceans however this scheme doesn't make sense economically in the long term with an aging population chinese imports wouldn't be competitive and so these countries would buy stuff from other people perhaps india the us or russia in the long term the chinese would only be able to maintain these allies when they have money and as soon as they lose that they'd have to use force i can't see this working with the current situation if china tried to gain military power directly over central asia the russians indians and americans would all team up and crush china as of now china has an immense advantage over the u.s and sheer numbers when both factions serve roughly similar organizational abilities as the u.s and china are the country that has the largest population wins most of the time we saw this in world war ii when the russians ground down the more technologically advanced germans a similar situation was carthage and the punic wars versus the romans in a war between the us and china there's no way the americans deal to match the four to one numerical superiority the chinese have it would be a kill ratio that's basically never been matched in history by roughly equal opponents however things aren't that easy if one includes america's allies like europe japan india etc the us is more militarily powerful than china having made a video about world war 3 the general conclusion i came to was that america would win if it could effectively mobilize its allies and if not china would in general the chinese are likely going to get more strong in the immediate future the western world is having a crisis of confidence while china is still coming off the tail end of their industrialization however in the long term due to their demographic crisis china will be in a worse position this is what i call a double facilities trap for those of you that don't know the city's trap as a situation in which an established power comes into contact with a rising one and the established one tries to crush the rising one before it becomes too powerful of the 15 examples of this over the last 500 years 12 resulted in a war in our situation the americans are worried at the chinese in the short term and that chinese the americans in the long term this does not bode well china's economy is obviously very impressive however there are several key weaknesses people don't often look for one of which is that china's economy is shaky the government prints an enormous amount of money and gives it to top companies and banks to invest this leads to a profound misallocation of capital similar to what occurred with the 2008 financial crisis in the west no one in china is in a position to call bs in the situation however in some ways this is very similar to what occurred in 1990s japan however the key difference is that japan was an island nation completely dependent upon the american empire the americans were in a position to puncture the japanese bubble the chinese aren't in a similar position the chinese can keep lying and no one will stop them however situations like this tend to result in misallocations economies that aren't properly managed always become more inefficient it's often hard to predict how this will play out but the general ways are in stagnating regular wages weakening financial sector and weakening global competitivity as china ages this will become a nastier and nastier situation china is currently a position in which its labor is getting too expensive for the goods they produce if you want to make a t-shirt you now go to bangladesh or indonesia since chinese labor has become relatively too expensive china has to switch to a higher level industrial economy producing more complex goods under decent circumstances i'm guessing china would be able to do this china is a culture that values education and craftsmanship the chinese don't make the crappiest stuff anymore anyway however if china has to make this transition while facing five other issues it could decisively damage china china is also currently going through an economic slowdown partially caused by them shifting to a more mature economy due to industrialization but also tariffs in the west but also the issues mentioned above this is effectively an existential crisis in china something i should elaborate upon is that china is currently having some issues due to western tariffs because china is a very heavily export-based economy and countries like the united states and other western nations are developing more tariffs and china doesn't have a wealthy enough internal market to buy all the stuff they're producing the communist party is still in charge of china while they lost power in most of the rest of the world since the ccp made an implicit promise with the people that they would tolerate all the autocracy and corruption in exchange for economic growth and greater wealth this has worked spectacularly well but no nation could face continual growth without a big recession or setback once that occurs the communist party is no base of real authority this is not a party that is genuinely loved for being communist they're loved for making china great and its people richer much of the chinese government's policies make sense through this prism the chinese government is trying to crack down on the population ahead of when they stop fulfilling their side of the deal this comes in the form of having cameras everywhere the social credit system which is meant to turn neighbors against each other various apps for social control and trying to create ideological and national fervor against foreigners similarly a major issue china faces as an economy is its near complete dependency on middle eastern oil they deal with this now by shipping oil through the straits of malacca and the indian ocean however a major issue for this route is that it's ocean based and the u.s navy controls the world's oceans the u.s could strangle china for oil this is why the chinese are putting so much investment into their navy which is expanding at a rapid rate although it'll probably never get close to equaling the americans it's also why the chinese are so insistent upon south china sea diplomacy the south china sea controls the route to malacca and so the chinese are building these artificial islands and behaving in a bellicose manner to gain more control over the route for their oil this is also a driving factor for the belton road china wants to ship its oil via land across central asia from their ally iran they're currently in a position to do this with railroads passing through pakistan to iran but the route doesn't have anywhere near capacity to support china and is long and tenuous and thus easy to cut something to consider is that if china gets cut off from the middle east they can burn coal which would be an environmental disaster global warming in real terms started with china being a coal dependent country china switching away from being a coal-based economy is projected to be the best thing for the environment in the history of the world if china stays on coal while india industrializes using coal as well global warming is not going to be in a great place the cultural revolution was one of the most important cultural events in history this was since 4 000 years of beautiful chinese civilization was thrown into a blaze and replaced by practically nothing going to china leaves a strange impression that it's a society without much beauty anymore you see these massive structures but they're more mammoth than really subtle the sheer scale of things is often impressive but the sky is a permanent polluted gray in most cities tiananmen square fills one with awe and fear rather than hope and love the sad thing is this was a society that a hundred years ago was one of the most subtle and elegant in the world this was a society with a fine appreciation for wisdom beauty and morality the removal of this ancient chinese society has created an ideological void with some exceptions no one really believes in anything in modern china except making money this is not healthy in a society life sucks and people need to believe in things to make it tolerable societies without powerful ideologies and religions die when they face struggle atheistic societies either become horrific tyrannies or infertile and ineffective the chinese government has been trying to artificially construct a philosophy resurrecting parts of confucianism and amplifying chinese nationalism mostly however they've been very cautious about pushing it too far since traditional chinese religions like confucianism literally tell people that it's okay to rebel against unscrupulous and dishonorable leaders and to have a moral basis away from the state both of which threaten the communist party communist state religion will always be stale and will never win hearts meanwhile this is why taiwan is such a threat in why china is so preoccupied with the destruction of an island the size of ireland with one sixtieth their population taiwan is a representation of a parallel development of chinese civilization that's a threat a parallel that's much better taiwanese society is known as much more polite kind and courteous than mainland chinese taiwan is far wealthier less polluted and is democratic the impression i've gotten from being in china and from my chinese friends is that people in china aren't very happy this comes across in statistics but happiness statistics are notoriously difficult to measure life in china between the long work hours an acronym for which in tech is 996 or 9 a.m to 9 p.m six days a week alongside the tiny apartments and lack of social connections in a society that's made the transition from a peasant to industrial one in a generation the general alienation of a life in which we returned from a long day at work to pass out in the couch would take out in their laps and repeat again that many of us can relate to occurs in china it's just far worse china's relationship system is also pretty bad due to chinese parents selectively having kids due to the one child policy china is 48.7 female this makes relationships more difficult and creates a large sexually frustrated young male population which is a terrible brew the collapse of the qing dynasty in the taiping rebellion which killed up to 30 million people in the mid to late 19th century was also presaged by gender issues like the ones we're currently having one of my favorite metrics to predict social instability is birth rate you often see declines in birth rate come with social instability people are biological creatures and when they stop having kids at a certain number something is often wrong sharp declines in birth rate prestaged world war 1 world war ii the crisis of the 17th century and the black death china's housing market is absolutely insane as well partially this is since the jobs are so urban centric and the chinese are inflating their currency so hard but also since the government controls all the land and then rents it out to their buddies who rent it out to other people thus resulting in insane real estate prices for the young people in the west who are struggling to buy a house or a condo understand it is practically impossible in china another thing to consider is that due to china's demographic structure the age group that's 30-ish right now is hyper-powered once that generation gets in the middle age and they still don't have a house or kids they'll get mad if things could get ugly something major they just need to bring up as a counterpoint to all of this is that chinese society on a material and interpersonal level works remarkably well streets in china are cleaner and trains run on better time than my hometown of philadelphia in america crime rates are also much lower as are murder rates if you're in a low-end job your chances of bettering yourself is also better china is a society that functions very well which is not something you can say about most of the world for all the nasty things i've said china can still become a dominant world power this is a checklist of what i would do if i was in charge of the ccp the first thing is the himalayas card is absolutely vital the chinese have already surrounded india with their allies and india is the main anti-chinese holdout left in south asia if china can get india to support them and they would effectively get all of asia as their imperium if china could get india as a vassal they'd have a large growing population they could exploit and sell uncompetitive goods to if the chinese can get an imperium over asia the following could occur they could militarily oppress central asia and turn them into feudatories russia is much more complex they could and are using their alliance to spread more influence into siberia once russia inevitably has a crisis of leadership or a civil war siberia would split off to join china weakening russia as a long-term rival the big issue with russia is that in the long term they make much more sense as an american ally the russians should economically and culturally be integrated into the rest of eastern europe for purely geographic reasons at least the only reason they aren't allies now is due to hang-ups in the parts of the americans china has an immense demographic advantage as of now in sheer population size when you have a population of 1.4 billion people you can easily swamp central asia 72 million in siberia's 34 million if the chinese were young they could populate a massive region of asia thus making their empire effectively permanent the best thing china could do would just be to clean up corruption the shi regime has been doing a good job of this but mostly on a local level well it seems like the chinese government continues to allow corruption the top level again another possibility here is that she is just using the corruption card to destroy factions inside the communist party he doesn't like and it's all a magic show i don't know what whoever comes after she will do however a high degree of centralized authority just begs for caligulas and neros absolute power without check of any social class often results in complete madness and inefficiency in the long term china needs to be seen as an honest non-thuggish nation by the world so that any successful countries don't just automatically sight of the us against them china needs to be seen as a nation where your money is safe which will protect global shipping and follow rule of law in order to not become another soviet union a huge card that could end up helping the chinese is the crisis of leadership that's currently happening in the west the western nations are now in a basically religious civil war between the right and left which consumes most of their population's excess energies much of the western elite hates itself so much that it's incapable of acting effectively if the west doesn't sort out its social issues within the next 10 years china wins incoherent elites have allowed nations which are materially much weaker to make huge gains the managers were able to conquer china with 100th of china's population in the 17th century since chinese society was so fractious at the time a similar thing can be said of the british conquest of india the spanish conquest of the aztekarenka empires or the roman conquest of greece probably not i would put the chances of communist china becoming a great power at around 20 i've argued all the major factors against it already i don't think the west would be incoherent enough to let the chinese seize power hating the chinese is one thing american republicans and democrats agree on and those two groups disagree on how many genders there are and what year the country was founded in i would give china a high chance if they had a growing and continually young population but that's such a decisive factor they just can't ignore it it gives china a serious time pressure which is quite worrying in a lot of ways if china is desperate the chances of a world war go through the roof as china tries to use their demographic and industrial superiority when they still can a significant percent of wars in the industrial world have started with miscalculated gambles caused by an existential threat due to demographics world war one and the american civil war are the top examples of this a chinese demographic collapse would be terrifying to watch it would probably be the most horrifying event of the 21st century it might be a bloody civil war societal collapse or the regime just killing everyone over age 70. although that would completely go against confucian morality i just don't see how it would really turn out a question i often get is that if china had a collapse would it divide in different bits no well the ethical minorities like tibetans and uyghurs probably get independents but han china is too coherent and ethnic and geographic unity to split it really annoys me when geopolitical analysts like peter zihan and george friedman say china is naturally predisposed towards disunity first of all china has spent 800 of the last 1 000 years unified which is way better than most nations secondly china proper is decently flat and also as a unifying river system in the long run however i think china is destined to be one of the most if not the most powerful countries by the end of the century this is since you just can't get rid of china you can't imagine a world where the japanese or vietnamese replace the chinese the chinese are quite competent once they turn their population around and get a government less morally corrupt than the communist party they'll be an amazing position now that china is rich and industrialized there's no way that they can go back to rice farming peasants an industrialized channel without serious mitigating factors is destined to be the biggest player in the history of the world with china being so much more populated than the surrounding areas once we have the railroad and highway and once the nomadic horse archer is gone the big thing that kept the chinese in china i don't see how the chinese don't populate central asia and siberia something else to consider is that china already has had an imperial system that's worked quite effectively for millennia that everyone else in the area is fine with for thousands of years china kept a tributary system over east asia almost all the neighboring countries like korea vietnam and japan have inbuilt cultural forms of submission to the chinese it's the reason the japanese have been able to adapt to foreign technology so well multiple times i just can't see a world in which china is wealthy and honorable that korea and possibly japan don't get sucked into its orbit like they have been for thousands of years what a feltest and thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video please like comment subscribe or stay tuned for additional content or alternatively check out my merchandise where i've got all sorts of cool what if altist brand maps t-shirts and mugs or alternatively check out my patreon like these wonderful patrons in front of you on there i've got the first four chapters of my cultural history of america the first 11 chapters of my history of the world i've also got exclusive videos where you can ask me what if questions and i'll answer as well as exclusive maps or alternatively check me out on twitter or click the link in the description for conflict of nations as always thanks so much for watching and have a great day

Channel: Whatifalthist

Views: 754,598

Keywords: dsdfs, Premiere_Elements_2019

Id: h7wZOGtsOWg

Length: 29min 20sec (1760 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021