Turchin vs. Zeihan on China

Game on; and Noah Smith says that China will underwhelm

Peter Turchin writes,

China is currently the most consequential country in the world. As the American Empire continues to disintegrate from within, the most likely next hegemonic power is going to be China.

…At the opposite end of spectrum are pundits, like Peter Zeihan. He has been predicting that China would collapse in the next 10 years since 2010 or so; most recently here. As one commentary on this video said, it is “amazing someone can be consistently wrong and this confident.”

Again, based on informal following of the news, my working hypothesis is that China’s stability will be pretty good to 2040 and probably beyond. From the structural-demographic point of view, the major worry for the Chinese ruling class should be serious overproduction of credential-holders and the resulting high unemployment rate for university graduates.

Zeihan and Turchin focus on very different variables. Zeihan emphasizes material factors, while Turchin looks at social cohesion, or asabiyah.

Zeihan sees China as dependent on imports for food and energy. It is very vulnerable to deglobalization and the breakdown of order in the world. As Zeihan sees it, America’s abandonment of the role of world policeman is a huge threat to China. If the Middle East goes up in flames, China has no oil. If the seas become unsafe for commerce, China starves.

Speaking of deglobalization, I have started reading Tara Zahra, Against the World, a book about the hostility to globalization that took hold following World War I. Of course then, as now, the background includes an elite in disrepute.

Turchin sees China as socially cohesive, or at least not in as advanced a state of decay as the West. Turchin’s famous phrase is “over-production of elites,” which he sees as a prime historical source for social breakdown. That is, when there are more people born into elite social classes than elite roles for them to fill, disappointment and dissension set in. He sees this as a clear problem for us. But regarding China,

there are a number of worrying signs, but overall I think that China currently is pretty stable, much more so than the West. I look forward to see whether this preliminary impression is supported, or overturned by a formal data analysis.

Meanwhile, Noah Smith writes,

I think it’s very possible that the Chinese Century — or the Chinese Half-Century, or whatever it turns out to be — will underwhelm. Technologically, most rising countries transition from making things better to making new things, but China may remain mostly a fast follower. Economically, China will have the most global heft, but its living standards may remain below those of the U.S. and Europe. Socially, China may remain repressive and stifled, without the kind of efflorescence of art and culture that came out of Japan, the U.S., and the UK in their heyday. Geopolitically, China may remain inward-focused and never transform the global system the way other powers did (though given its repressive politics, this will probably be a plus for the rest of the world).

…I think there are many ways in which Xi’s overwhelming power and personal limitations are combining to hold China back from its potential greatness.

Smith writes,

Put in plain terms, Xi Jinping is reorienting China’s economy around producing a bunch of stuff that Chinese people don’t want or need, because this fits with his idea of what makes a country strong.

That is what industrial policy is all about, though, isn’t it?

substacks referenced above:

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Xi Jinping is the main thing holding China back

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So, It's China