I stand second to few in my admiration for how well China has done. But the super boosters are super tiresome. If China had been a small nation, the best they would have done is parallel Japan: do very well, then the US breaks your legs. Reminds me of Americans in 1950 or 95.
They remind me of many Americans in 1950 or 1995. “We are at the top because we are the best. Our governance is superior, our culture is superior. It’s just because we’re better than you all, and we always will be.”
I doubt the CPC’s leadership is this stupid or arrogant (yet). They remember China getting its face pushed in for over a hundred years.
China is at the start of a good run. Leaving aside climate change and ecological collapse it’ll last 100 to 150 years, EXACTLY the same as the American run. China’s current rise is just a hegemonic replacement cycle story. Not even as impressive as Britain creating the industrial revolution. This is just taking the lead, China has done NOTHING revolutionary yet. This is a dirt standard hegemonic replacement cycle. Happens every 150 years or so.
(The American run began in the 1880s, when they overtook Britain in industrial production.)
The reason China succeeded when other nations didn’t comes down to three things: competence, the prior hegemon’s help and size. All three were required The Japanese were super competent after WWII, absolutely amazing. When they started to challenge the US, they were forced into the humiliating Plaza Accords. If China was the size and population of Japan, the same thing would have happened to them, no matter how “superior” their culture or leadership is. India failed despite its size because the government and leadership were (and are) terrible.
This also makes Chinese booster sneering at smaller nations the US has beaten down tiresome. It’s not the same situation. “Oh, they’re incompetent.” No, idiot, Cuba is an Island nation with 9.75 million people and no resources to speak of which has been under sanctions for every year of its existence since it through the Americans out. That they even still exist is amazing. Venezuela had 28 million and is close, Iran (though it is larger and further away and thus had a far better hand to play) has likewise been under sanctions since day one, and the Iraq/Iran war was sponsored by America.
China has done great. No regular reader of mine can think I don’t admire the hell out of China’s leadership and people (and I like Chinese culture and Chinese people and have all my life, I was practically raised by Chinese for my first five years.)
But stop with the glazing and remember that hubris is always punished.
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TG
Excellent points. But: the big problem with India is that it is suffering the Malthusian catastrophe. A few decades ago when the green revolution took off, if they had had 2 or even 3 kids each, they would have risen out of subsistence level poverty. They would have had to have, because that massive increase in food production was created by existing adults using existing tools and resources. But they kept pushing at the limits, and now the fertility rate is about 2, but not in a good way – because they are so miserably poor that it is physically impossible for them to have any more! The Malthusian catastrophe is NOT global apocalyptic famine, but brutal crushing subsistence level poverty. On a practical level, this means that India will have a very tough time creating an investible surplus. Perhaps globalism will allow them to use their poverty to attract foreign capital at scale, but historically societies crushed into subsistence have not industrialized well. One notes that China only did well after they stopped having the physical maximum number of children. China’s one child policy may have been ugly, but it was necessary (if not sufficient) for their current rise. The idea that this policy was irrelevant is a lie – the idea that China could have kept doubling its population every 25 years or so, and at the same time increased food production to 3X subsistence or more, is physically impossible, all the technology and resources in the world could not have enabled that. But we can’t let the people in places like India get ideas, or where would Elon Musk get his cheap labor from?
Feral Finster
The Americans have many areas of leverage over China, China is easily bottlenecked, and are picking off China’s friends, one by one.
marku
No small nation is really comfortable near a giant hegemon. Philippines are notably annoyed about fishing grounds and islands created out of nothing…
Just a fact of life. Will be interesting (I might not be around to see it) to see how charitable and benevolent China is when it takes over after the US finally is crushed into being a resource colony for it.
spud
if china does not put the free trade empire in its place. they will be soon viewed as parasites, like germany is viewed in the E.U.
always there to get your commodities as cheap as possible, always there to sell you something, to bad your having such a rough time.
that’s how germany treated the rest of the E.U.. guaranteed, the rest of the world is watching this closely as things unfold.
the rest of the world is sick of this current trade regime, which keeps on coming back like a bad meal.
china might not be as lucky as america was, we beat the free trade empire, the british at the time, not once, but twice, plus the civil war, which was a industrial war, vs. a free trade plantation economy, it stunned the free trade empires at the time, which gave us our freedom and sovereignty.
china has really not lifted a finger protect their own sovereignty, let alone the sovereignty of others that they covet for commodities and as customers.
a good first step would be instituting cradle to grave, so that the average chinese worker did not have to save ridiculous amounts of money for retirement.
this would give the workers the ability to maybe buy something from the countries that the chinese leadership covets for their commodities and market.
this would earn good good will and alliance.
then when the inevitable hits, the free trader empire wants a chinese allied country, its much easier to put the empire in its place, because china will now project power.
so the U.S. knocks their potential allies off one at a time, till they are at china’s doorstep.
then what are they going to do?
the russians should know better, their history is littered with those that covet what they have.
sabre ratting does no good, when the parasites do not believe the sabres will ever be used against them.
bruce wilder
The story the English told themselves (and everyone else who would listen) about their Industrial Revolution was the liberal story, a Whig history of institutional progress toward “freedom”. As a story, it sold well and the political model — Westminster and all that — was widely adopted, though often only after violent experiments in other directions. As an economic theory, it was necessarily incoherent, because many of the most salient advances of economic organization in the Industrial Revolution(s) were surprises. The liberal prescription — laissez faire — provided no blueprint of needed architecture for the economy. Neoclassical economics largely ignores the financial and bureaucratic structures of our actual economies.
China has ignored the English precedents on the political institutions of liberal nationalism and they studied very closely the mechanisms of money finance and bureaucratic enterprise structures. No idle musing on Ricardo’s comparative advantage for China; they went straight to network effects in location theory and manipulated the financial terms of trade and investment to induce capitalists to disinvest and eat their working class.
Discrediting neoliberalism has barely begun, but the China precedent cannot be ignored. At least I think it cannot. American oligarchy may be trickier than I imagine, but de-legitimizing nationalism is a dangerous gambit. Chauvinism may be an inevitable by-product of success — sort of like aging college alums taking pride in the athletic achievements of their Alma Maters’ football team — but it is also a means, providing a framework for sharing in common purposes that can map onto some concept of public good and national interest.
Mark Level
Well, one thing this site can’t be accused of is lacking a diversity of opinions. I think we all know who the China Beats All Chest-beater is, but we also have a “China is genocidal” tale-spinner, thinks the Xinjiang Uighur Muslim extremists are “victims” (pure State Dept. produced propaganda) while actually the Uighurs that signed up with Al-Jolani in Syria are openly murdering, torturing and throwing out of planes into the sea ethnic minorities in Syria over the last many months . . .
I generally agree, after a Century plus of humiliation, China made an incredible actual Great Leap Forward when the NeoLiberal Class deindustrialized the US, starting in the 80s but really picked up with Bill Clinton’s traitorous trade deals, to drive down US wages for all but the top earners. The synthesis of Communalist and Capitalist economics lifted billions out of poverty over 3 decades. An ancient, hardworking culture with a huge populace was destined to prosper.
I generally see that Russia and China have done a decent job of taking economic care of the majority of their citizens, which the US no longer even pretends to have any interest in. The Biden Admin did pretty much nothing on that issue despite the fake Bernie-posturing in the 2020 election getting them into office, and inevitably Trump and the R’s took the hot potato, are now driving everyone but their billionaire sponsors into deepening poverty.
Yes, hubris could greatly hurt both China and Russia as they ride. I did not comment on the last thread, so would like to catch up here by saying a couple of things. Perhaps it’s not impossible that the Trump mega-deciders (for the moment it’s Lutnik and viz economic impoverishment for the billionaire Tech Bros, Besent is large and in charge.
I agree generally with those who claim that the Admin might try to seize vulnerable areas of Canada as a crime of opportunity, but (as I’ve stated) won’t put many boots on the ground for long periods of time. Here’s the thing though; these fools can’t commit to one thing at a time, beyond issuing threats and seeing who will crumble. While you and the commentariat noted possible scenarios, LG&M reported that Trump has shut down the air space in El Paso, Tejas, for at least the next 10 days. Possible invasion of Northern Mexico with the casus belli claimed being Gangs, fentanyl (an official “Weapon of Mass Destruction”). Some commenters there thought that they might be opening up a corridor to mass-deport/ dump people ICE press-gangs off the streets with no pesky judicial pantomime.
In the meantime, it looks like the “beautiful armada” off the coast of Iran realized they’d be the trigger for a massive regional war and the possible incineration of much of the Zionist territory if they press full-on, it was all just thunder and bluff. (? Maybe; who the fuck knows?)
Meantime Massie and Khanna are spilling the tea on Epstein, Trump’s ability to claim there was no organized sex-trafficking (which the Atlantic magazine is also peddling) is melting into thin air. Even culturally, the admin failed, Bad Bunny celebrated nationally, the most-watched halftime show in all of history (beat Michael Jackson) and the Toilet Paper USA show a little-watched failure . . .
Now I could see a war somewhere to get an imaginary, news-cycle “Victory” but no real successes forthcoming. On immigration the polls now show roughly a 63% disapproval of Trump, 34% approval, so that once popular item (which the Dems of course ceded the field on, but not their base) has broken into pieces as well.
We’ve all noted that cornered, collapsing Empires are extremely dangerous. They will do something, most likely entirely irrational, it will fail in the mid-term if not immediately. Chaos is coming. Keaton Weiss in his year-end ’25 prediction claimed Trump will be eased out of office after the mid-terms. I see this as very likely, and don’t imagine that JD Vance as a front-man will do any better. He was just mass booed at the Winter Olympics by the Euro-Vassals. The R’s fucked up their shot, and even if there is still NO accountability in U$A for high-level pedophiles, the Brits, Norweigans and others are pushing criminals out. It’s too soon to sing “Democracy is Coming to the USA” (a Leonard Cohen Canadian fantasy) but China and Russia will ride this out, the “West” is approaching its final death-rattle as a World Hegemon.
Mark Level
Btw, just saw this, the “anti-Trump” media isn’t so, interesting part of the take “Donald Trump ruined Olympics” for US Super-Patriotism,
https://www.sbnation.com/olympics/1103468/olympic-patriotism-isnt-fun-in-trumps-usa?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
But MiciMaTT’s Media Narrative , NBC removed footage of ‘Muricans at the Winter Olympics wearing “Anti-Trump” winter hats with the ‘Murican flag and also on the rebroadcast edited OUT the crowd loudly booing JD Vance.
These Quislings are despicable. They ran cover for pedophile rings, and the Gaza Genocide, they will run cover for the MAGACrats’ narrative that all ‘Muricans are racist CHUDs as well. Imperial Fail. SB Nation does a bit better, notes “the sheen is gone” for Team USA.
different clue
I remember in the mid to late 80’s when America’s big fear was Japan . . . at least here in Michigan it was. I strongly remember at some sort of post-lecture reception where we were all milling around and eating, that somebody said something about his country feeling threatened by America. All I could think of to say was that America felt threatened by Japan. And I firmly remember having said something like: ” and if you think Japan is a challenge, just wait till China has fully developed. That will be like facing ten more Japans”. I can’t prove I said it, but I firmly claim that I did.
Separately, I remember at that time that one of the parts of the Main Hospital was named in honor of General Motors, the General Motors Patient Tower. One day one of the huge brass letters had fallen out of the plaque . . . the ” R” in “Motors” After a week or so I said to some random strangers waiting for an elevator . . . ” Well, I guess we’ve been sold to Japan. Its the General Moto’s Patient Tower now. ” We all laughed.
Now, after 40 years, the joke would feel dated. Younger people might not even know why it would ever have been funny.
Purple Library Guy
I remember that 80s cyberpunk and cyberpunk roleplaying games tended to assume Japanese dominance. Shadowrun had everyone spending Nuyen and lots of the biggest megacorps being Japanese. I was always a bit skeptical, the place just struck me as not big enough to push its influence much further than it already had. I wasn’t expecting China’s rise, but once they started I definitely wondered if they’d go all the way–I couldn’t think of any really good reasons why they’d STOP rising once they’ begun.
One thing that HAS surprised me in recent years is the Communist party retaining some Communist ideas. I thought China, once shifted to capitalism, would just go full capitalist oligarchy and let inequality soar through the roof, but that clearly hasn’t happened. The very wealthy no doubt have significant power, but the party continues to have its own ideas and smacks down would-be oligarchs when they come into conflict with those ideas.
different clue
Here is a little video from the InterestingAsFuck subreddit about some kids doing a kung fu excercise somewhere in China.
” Amazing video of kids in China mastering the tough move called “standing up with hands in pockets” during their Kung Fu training course ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1r2e7u7/amazing_video_of_kids_in_china_mastering_the/
This looks like the sort of thing China could still do even after it too goes through its
” Twilight of the Hegemon” in some number of decades from now. One hopes they keep all of this stuff preserved an ongoing even after the industrial cupboard runs dry.
Mark Level
This is bizarre and potentially consequential, at least to a point–
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/11/buddhist-monks-peace-walk-washington-dc?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
I had heard not one word about this until this morning. I am amazed they weren’t attacked and mass-deported by ICE en route, I guess they’re just so outside the radar it didn’t register with the likes of Stephen Miller?
The Libs and BlueSky Crowd I guess can’t organize any type of even “No Kings” demo in central DC, between the Trump Institute of Peace (sic) and the Trump Kennedy Center (in mid-demolition, like the East Wing.) The Lincoln Memorial has not yet been renamed the Trump Memorial, perhaps because Lincoln freed the slaves they don’t want to touch that?
I remember years ago there was a weird, small Taoist cult in the South and some police agency became aware of them, there were kids in the group, so cops swooped in to kidnap the children, for “deprogramming” or whatever. The adults put up no resistance, in line with their beliefs they just went limp and did not resist. I never heard how that story ended.
Were these folks tolerated because (a) many are American converts, and (b) it’s kind of against the Chinese government’s ethos that they are Buddhist and religious? I dunno. The final picture shows what looks like a Militarized ICE Goon looking on with confused uncertainty, but at least not attacking anyone or demanding papers.
This is relevant–Katharine Naujoks, 57, a high school science teacher, said: “The world needs a bit of communalism and camaraderie and peace and goodwill. A lot of people are looking for that. I want to be a part of this positive experience.”
Communalism, not Communism. Good for Therevada Buddhism. Is there still a Left, pro-Peace American Christianity? When I was young in the 1980s, there was a very large contingent of anti-war, anti-violence Catholics (& others) in New Orleans, Louisiana. Given the fake fundamentalism of the Trump movement, it’d be nice to see something come from this angle.
Bob
@differentclue
The kids in London have attained mastery of the last stage of the standing up with hands in pockets maneuver.
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Hegemons engage in genocide. It’s part of being a hegemon. It doesn’t excuse it, it’s just stating a fact. China is resurgent as a hegemon and thus genocide is on the table and inevitable. What China is doing to the Uyghurs is a genocide in my estimation. It’s not as violent as Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians but the end goal is the same.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting
Claiming the Uyghurs are all extremist Muslim terrorists is the same argumentation the Zionists and Zionist apologists use to justify Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. They claim the Palestinians, or Gazans at least, are all Hamas terrorists and as Rob Reiner proclaimed, the Hamas terrorists must be eliminated.
I don’t engage in double standards. If what Israel is doing to the Palestinians constitutes a genocide, and it does in my estimation, then so too what China is doing to the Uyghurs constitutes a genocide. In fact, HRW doesn’t go far enough because it stops short of calling it a genocide.
Like I said, no double standards. China often gets bashed for censorship and it’s a double standard. The West censors too. The West is not the bastion of free speech the West Super Boosters claim it to be.
For example, I recently deposited a comment to Taylor Lorenz’s latest offering and either she or YouTube censored it. I may as well be in China. I mean, what’s the difference?
Here’s the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3T5Wx93r5k&t=22s&pp=ygUNVGF5bG9yIExvcmVueg%3D%3D
Here’s the censored comment. The Party did not approve. The Party does not comprehend. The Party does not approve that which it cannot, and refuses to, comprehend.
I hate white women too, especially middle class, upper middle class and wealthy white women. Same for white men of the same economic classes. I’m white, fyi, but hardly MAGA.
Christy and Chuck are pathetic (no, you don’t know them but I do and they are representative — a fine example). She’s educated to the hilt but doesn’t work because she decided to be a ho and let him bring home the stolen bacon and all she has to do is pretend to like it when he demands it every day like a ritual. Demand what, you ask? Figure it out.
They train their kids to be the same way and do the same things and they call it success and happiness. This is what Pluribus is all about. Compare and contrast Pluribus with The Stepford Wives and Revolutionary Road and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They’re not truly human. They are emotionally and mentally stunted creatures who traded in their personal growth and potential for material comfort under the aegis of happiness and the American dream.
They’re boring zombies but don’t be fooled — they are dangerous. The most dangerous of all God’s creatures. They are what Donald Trump called the Jews in Miami — they’re Killers. Quite literally.
ventzu
I see two short-medium term threats to China, and it is not clear how it will respond.
1) The impact of automation and AI on employment and fulfilment for young people. If any country is going to solve this (egg, shorter working week etc), it would be China. But not clear yet.
2) The Chinese position of non-interference vs the US strategy of isolating and bullying smaller / weaker countries. The risk being that much of the RoW feels unable to depend on China, and therefore has to bend the knee to the empire. Their strategy seems to be focused on self-sufficiency and facilitating a gradual de-dollarisation such that the empire become effete.
However, in the meantime climate change continues unabated.
On India, the issue in my view, is that they never had a revolution to drive for independence. So some brown elite faces took over from the British, and the oligarch class had free rein, especially over the last 3 decades. Nehru was a socialist but also of the elite, and was no doubt stuck in the capitalist economics of the time. So there was no clear out of the comprador class, no radical redistribution of land and wealth, no major literacy / education programme, etc. So now billionaires pillage and the middle classes aspire to do the same.
Symptomatic of this thinking is Raguran Rajan, former central bank head, who a few years ago pontificated that India could skip the industrialisation stage and jump straight to the service sector stage. Except the latter has little real potential for innovation, is mainly low level jobs, and does little for the masses.
In this context, it is amusing to hear people talk of India being an emerging superpower., when it can’t feed, educate and house its own people.
Stormcrow
One thing about China that nobody really seems to talk about is this:
They share a critical advantage with Russia and the United States: once they united politically and succeeded at industrialization, they became practically impossible to successfully invade.
This boils down to geography, the same way it does with the US an Russia.
The only weak point in Chinese border geography is the Korean Peninsula. That is why Chinese policy has always been to make sure Korea could never fell into the control of a peer competitor. That was why the Ming Dynasty backed Korea to the hilt during the Imjin War, spending Chinese lives and treasure even though they couldn’t really afford to. That was also why Japanese control of Korea after 1910 was a mortal threat, that eventually would metastasize into a horribly destructive foreign invasion.
Of course, the CCP demonstrated that they understood this fact thoroughly when they intervened in the Korean War. Same story as the Imjin War: it was horribly expensive, this time in lives rather than treasure, but it absolutely had to be done.
Past Korea, once you allow for logistics, there simply isn’t any other feasible route in.
Once Korea was adequately secured, China could proceed with industrialization without having to constantly look over its shoulder, as every rival power in the geographic snakepit that is Europe constantly had to do. Although it took the death of Mao Zedong and the transfer of power into saner hands, before this advantage could be exploited.
Mark Level
L&S–
Your broad brush that “Hegemons commit genocide” is not true of every hegemon, but I’m not going to even bother to list contrary examples ‘coz it’s shooting fish in a barrel.
And gosh, Human Rights Watch won’t call it a genocide. Though we can all see, including you,that the Zionist Entity is enacting genocide, and this was openly planned and discussed widely among the Zionists since the late 19th century. Is Human Rights Watch utilizing Occam’s Razor? I’m assuming so– good on them for wanting to keep their credibility.
I had a good laugh at your “I hate white women” screed. Glad you are spending your time online wisely, pushing true social justice and uniting people against Trump . . . well, not so much. When I criticize people it is for comprehensible reasons of something they say or do, I’ve known some horrible white women and some great ones also. I can’t think of any group I entirely would attack (okay, billionaires and pedophiles and their enablers excepted. I suppose cannibals also, though they are rare. Rapists also.) But again, I appreciate the share, it tells me more about your personality.
mago
I once asked old China hand and beat poet Gary Snyder what’s up with the discrepancy between a Taoist poetic culture and a massive repressive bureaucracy and he said something about how they’re different parts of a common culture and consciousness. Or something. I’d have to check my notes, not my memory.
That aside, the issue of rich bitches and privileged assholes is one for the ages.
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.
I love the dispossessed, the voiceless and dependent: animals, children, the elderly. The genociders and cannibals not so much. But I’m working on impartiality as best I can. Round eyes slant eyes. Brown black and yellow skin. Old young fat ugly skinny. One taste. One life. One thread. We’re all connected.
Mark Andrew Oglesby
“But stop with the glazing and remember that hubris is always punished.” Ian, an excellent ending line: spot-on!
Kouroi
Tang Dinasty lasted for almost 300 hundred years, so why not give the same time to the current mandarins? Song, Ming, Qing were also around 250 years. Only the Yaun (Mongol) was less than 100. I think this would be a proper yardstick to treat the Chinese, rather than comparing them with other “empires”…
different clue
I saw a funny cartoon once, funnier to see than to read a description of. But I have no idea how to find it, so I will have to describe it.
There is a huge Chinese vase in a museum. The label says Tang Dynasty Vase. An old guy has just flicked it with his finger. It makes the sound ” ming” .
Pretty funny, huh? It was from the New Yorker of decades ago.
DougDiggler
Sorry I ever took Ian Welsh seriously. Unlike colonial powers US and UK, China didn’t have the luxury of looting the entire world for the benefit of its elite and was, in fact, the poorest country in the world when they finally got the imperialist boot off their neck. And now they’re the most productive. Maybe a lesson in there for those with the capability to learn. But the collective West is beyond all that, I guess. I will never take Ian Welsh seriously again, I guess.
Egoculexegonos
I totally agree, Ian. China, you’re doing great, especially when compared with the collective West, but you better learn from then what not to do.
Call it hybris, call it exceptionalism (almost *an* anagram of “except nationalism” XD)… very bad synergies can eventually come out of it once it gets started and acquires momentum.
Ian Welsh
How sad Dougy. There’s millions of sites on the internet, go find one that tells you what you want to hear.