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Guest wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 05, 2024 10:00 am

“Excess mortality has remained high in the Western world for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines.

This is unprecedented and raises serious concerns."

Source: British Medical Journal

We may be reaching the point of China’s nearest approach to US economic power, and the distance may grow quite rapidly again once that point is reached. That may mean for example that whereas there had until recently been a working assumption that China’s growing military might would mean its eventual absorption of Taiwan was only a matter of time, the window of opportunity may rapidly be closing. If China does not take Taiwan soon, its power relative to the US’ may start to decline so rapidly that seizing Taiwan quickly becomes implausible. Xi Jinping may soon face a now-or-never moment.

Navigator wrote: ↑

Wed May 29, 2024 12:45 am

I am not a prophet, but can only guess by probabilities.

The political discord in both Taiwan and US make it increasingly likely. Any significant economic event could tip the scales. But we are getting closer and closer. October and April seem to be the best months for weather concerns.

China’s window of opportunity to take Taiwan will close soon
Xi Jinping will soon face his now or never moment

Not so long ago there was a widespread assumption that China’s economy surpassing that of the US to become the world’s largest was both inevitable and imminent. This was expected to be a major historical event, heralding a shift in geopolitical power to the East. This was not the first time in recent decades that an East Asian economic surpassing of the US had been expected. In the 1970s and early 1980s there was much talk of how Japan’s economy would become the world’s largest, and many a sci-fi movie of the era imagined Japanese economic and cultural dominance in the future.

Yet of course that never happened. Is the case of China different? It increasingly appears not. Or at least, if China’s economy does have a period as the largest, that increasingly seems likely to be very short-lived.


There are a number of reasons why. Partly there is a natural rhythm to economic catch-up for countries that begin quite poor (as China did, and Japan before it). An initial generation or two may be willing to work long hours for relatively modest pay by international standards, because even those levels of remuneration seem fantastically high to workers whose parents lived at subsistence levels off the land. This means that the fruits of economic growth can be used largely for investment, because even modest enhancements in consumption feel like riches beyond imagining. But at some point, as wealth increases, the expectations of younger citizens change and they demand more resources being devoted to consumption and more of their time being spent in leisure. Also, rapid economic development leads to developmental dead-ends and errors, with infrastructure built that is never used, borrowing mistakes that create debt overhangs, and even sometimes corruption and criminal gangs as new wealth creates opportunities.

Another consequence of economic development will become especially acute for China: a reduced birth rate. As well as the normal pattern of more educated and wealthier women achieving more reproduction control, China had more specific measures to attempt to limit its birth rate in its rapid population expansion phase, including the notorious “one child policy”. Its population has already peaked at about 1.4 billion, is now falling and projected to fall to around 1.2 billion over the next thirty years, and then crash to 600 million by 2100.

The US population, by contrast, is expected to continue to grow, from about 340 million now to over 380 million in 30 years’ time, dropping only slightly to about 370 million by 2100. To make up for that difference in population growth, China’s GDP per capita would need to grow nearly 1 per cent per annum faster than the US’s for the next 30 years and nearly 1.5 percent faster than the US’ from then until 2100.

This may be possible in the short term. Although China’s international trade position suffered significantly in the aftermath of Covid (with the gap between its GDP and the US’ widening from about $5 trillion in 2021 to around $10 trillion in 2023), it appears to be benefitting from some fairly shrewd economic repositioning with respect to the Russo-Ukraine War. Projections last year from economic forecasters CEBR had China managing about 1 percent faster GDP per capita growth than the US for some time, allowing it to briefly overtake the US economy by the late 2030s, though the US re-overtakes within a couple of decades as the demographic effects kick in.

Those projections, however, assume US GDP per capita only grows at its recent rate of about 1 percent per annum. That could be too pessimistic, given the effects on productivity growth we are already seeing from AI and the stream of other new technologies (eg green tech, driverless cars, lab-grown meat, cancer vaccines) that appear on the cusp of widespread adoption. If there is only slightly faster US growth, China never overtakes.

As well as the economic implications, these trends may also have geopolitical consequences. We may be reaching the point of China’s nearest approach to US economic power, and the distance may grow quite rapidly again once that point is reached. That may mean for example that whereas there had until recently been a working assumption that China’s growing military might would mean its eventual absorption of Taiwan was only a matter of time, the window of opportunity may rapidly be closing. If China does not take Taiwan soon, its power relative to the US’ may start to decline so rapidly that seizing Taiwan quickly becomes implausible. Xi Jinping may soon face a now-or-never moment.

FullMoon wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 04, 2024 12:17 pm

I think he's a typical self-deluded liberal. Nothing more.

Probably correct. Somehow they got a superiority complex in higher education that is wholly undeserved. Sadly the Uni's are rapidly losing their relevance and respect. Group think insanity

I think he's a typical self-deluded liberal. Nothing more.

Clarkmod wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 04, 2024 10:24 am

OK, it's time to stop fanning the flames. Liberals need to feel free to post news analysis, same as anyone else.

Navigator wrote: ↑

Mon May 27, 2024 12:47 am

This is a great video of a portion of an interview with Sarah Paine, a professor at the Naval War College.

She makes many of the same points John has made, and explains how we can tell if the CCP is going for Taiwan or not. Worth the 4 minutes to view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSTuahfAZf0

Vladimir Putin is testing Nato borders for weak spots, security chiefs warn
Frontier disputes with Estonia and Finland could be prelude to Russian bid to seize control in Baltic after overcoming Ukraine

Russia has begun probing the borders of Finland and Estonia for weaknesses as it draws up what Western security chiefs suspect is a long-term plan to capture parts of the Baltic region after the war in Ukraine.

In the space of just a week, Moscow has ignited border disputes with both Nato member states, issuing a draft proposal to revise its sea border with Finland and removing a series of buoys in Estonian waters used to mark a river frontier with Russia.

The moves followed a warning last week by Micael Bydén, Sweden’s chief of defence, that Vladimir Putin aims to eventually seize control of the Baltic and use it as a “playground” to “terrorise” Nato members.

Diplomats from the Baltic states and security experts have told The Telegraph the provocations were part of a wider strategy by Moscow to test the West’s resolve and potentially to seek out weak spots for a future incursion.

“This is part of this ongoing hybrid warfare: Russia is aggressively trying to destabilise our society and also our support for Ukraine,” said Viljar Lubi, the Estonian ambassador to London.

“We need to be well prepared. It is not always easy, because you don’t know exactly what the next move is. They go into the so-called grey area, where we don’t know exactly what is next.”

Finland, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which won independence from the former USSR in 1991, are all Nato members committed to defending their land borders from Russia.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, and a surge in imperialist rhetoric from Putin, concerns have grown that the Russian leader could be plotting land grabs in that region within the next five to seven years, if he manages to defeat Ukraine and resupply his army.

Pattern of provocative behaviour
On May 23, Russian border guards removed buoys floating in the Narva river between Estonia and Russia, in what Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said was an “unacceptable” part of a “broader pattern of provocative behaviour”.

The guards took the buoys in the middle of the night, Mr Lubi said, and Estonian requests for a full explanation have so far gone unanswered: “It was surprising for us, especially because it came without warning.”

The Narva region is mostly Russian-speaking and there is currently no formal border agreement between Tallinn and Moscow, which potentially makes it an attractive target for a future Russian incursion.

Also last week, Russia’s defence ministry issued – then quickly deleted – a decree which appeared to adjust sea borders around the Gulf of Finland and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Lithuania said the move was a “deliberate, targeted escalatory provocation”.

Kai Sauer, the Finnish ambassador to Germany, said the recent accession of Finland to Nato was clearly a factor in the manoeuvres by Russia.

“In military terms, our threat perception has not changed, but it seems quite clear that we are facing certain hybrid activities,” he said.

“It is clear that with the Finnish and Swedish Nato membership the geopolitical situation in the Baltic sea has changed. I think it’s also quite predictable that Russia is adapting to that change but how that will manifest itself is less clear.”

Another potential flashpoint is the Swedish island of Gotland, located in the middle of the Baltic Sea between Stockholm and Kaliningrad.

“I’m sure that Putin even has both eyes on Gotland. Putin’s goal is to gain control of the Baltic Sea,” Mr Bydén, the Swedish defence chief, told German news outlet RND.

“If Russia takes control and seals off the Baltic Sea, it would have an enormous impact on our lives, in Sweden and all other countries bordering the Baltic Sea. We can’t allow that... the Baltic Sea must not become Putin’s playground where he terrifies Nato members,” he added.

On Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, referred to the Estonian incident and warned that Russia was evidently “preparing for provocations in the Baltic region against borders”.

Baltic is Nato’s ‘most fragile’ border
Aliona Hlivco, a former Ukrainian MP and the managing director of the Henry Jackson Society, a security think tank, said she saw disturbing parallels between the latest Baltic dispute and the prelude to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It is all a means of probing to see how far they [Russia] can go, though they do not currently have the military capacity to go for an actual war with the Baltics,” she said.

The Baltic region, she explained, was “the most fragile border of Nato” not just because it was porous but due to its contingency of “Russian diaspora which they can mobilise through Russian propaganda and TV … we had all these factors in Ukraine”.

Russia is currently rearming its forces as it continues its latest offensive in north-east Ukraine.

But Western leaders such as Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, have warned that Moscow’s rearmament could also make it ready to attack a Nato state within the next five to seven years.

guest wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 03, 2024 12:28 pm

From the Drudge Report:

Mexico elects first female president: A scientist, a leftist and former Mexico City mayor...

How bastion of machismo got female leader before USA...

Peso Tumbles...