45
Washington’s fantasy of a war against China
(peoplesdispatch.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
45 points (100.0% liked)
Geopolitics
554 readers
5 users here now
The study of how factors such as geography, economics, military capability and non-State actors affects the foreign policy of states.
All articles will require a short submission statement of 3-5 sentences.
Use the article title as the submission title. Do not editorialize the title or add your own commentary to the article title.
In this community we encourage long, in-depth submissions. Submissions should not be news articles that merely provide quick updates on current events; instead they should include background information and an explanation as to why the events they describe are occurring.
Submissions should not be about an individual country's domestic policies. Instead, they should be about relationships between different countries and/or relevant international organizations. Things like breakaway politics are permitted in this subreddit, as they are relevant to and could affect the geopolitical system.
Submissions are strongly encouraged to come from reputable sources. When posting from a lesser known source, please check whether the authors have some sort of qualification demonstrating they are knowledgeable of the subjects they discuss.
Sources that include (or solely contain) maps, statistics, or other multimedia (videos, interviews, primary sources, etc.) are permitted and even encouraged in this subreddit.
We encourage discussion and welcome anyone to pose hypotheses and ask questions. We allow self-posts.
We encourage comments to be cited.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
For just one example of how ridiculous this sounds, the Chinese-based Deepseek recently made mockery of the billions invested in AI in the west, so much so it fucked with the western stock market AI investment bubble, just by fact of Deepseek existing and being much more efficient training, and meanwhile the US has a meme-based billionaire purging government agencies under the administration of a WWE-style mob boss president.
nononono you see china posted declining growth rates in consecutive years, its a trend now it will repeat for a century and china will have 300m citizens by 2100. china has collapsed, viva the united staets
I'm not really looking at the situation from these minor perspectives like ai, the reality of Chinese demographics is enough to show that there's a certain decline looming around China and this presents a current best opportunity for China to achieve its outward facing goals as a decline in growth will limit its future capabilities to achieve those goals
In the process of industrialization, the development of personal awareness, the pursuit of a high-quality life and women's increased participation in the economy have always led to a decline in fertility rates. China isn't immune to this. China's demographic situation is a natural outcome driven by the nation's economic and social development. This phenomenon is quite common. There is no need to exaggerate its influence.
If US AI just lost $1 trillion in market cap after the release of a model in China that cost $5 million to make, and uses 30% less resources to run, what does he that say about the US AI market?
As others have pointed out, birthrates in all industrialized nations go down when women are given the opportunity to participate in the labor market equally. Even in countries with exceptional socialized family support, those supports do not increase birth rates.
China is a leader in automaton and uses it's 5 year plans to ensure they keep automaton up while demographics go down.
Declining birth rates are not sign of decline, if that were true then America is in decline, along with most other industrial nations.
You say this as if the whole world's population isn't projected to peak at 11 billion then stagnate (even africa, the current fastest grower). Like, I don't get this obsession with focusing on Chinese birthrates.
It is a very weird obsession, especially since we know what birth rates look like in Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc. Basically all developed countries. Even the US would be having problems if it wasn't compensating with immigration.
It's also indicative of an inability to think outside of the capitalist paradigm of infinite growth. Just because capitalism is in trouble once growth stops doesn't mean that socialism works the same way.
And ultimately it is a form of projection, as it is Europe and the US that have much worse social contradictions festering at the moment for which there is no obvious solution within their current system.
My prediction is that, as with all of the "China will collapse" predictions that have been made for the past 30+ years, this one too will turn out to be a nothing-burger. The Chinese government will figure out ways to deal with the changing demographic realities that come with being a highly developed country and that will be that.
Automation will play a big part in the transition, as increasing the productivity of each individual worker means one worker can sustain more people. Where in capitalism automation only exacerbates the social problems by putting people out of a job, socialism can turn automation into a social boon by allowing people to work less and have more free time for things such as a family.