Is China going to vanish?
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I have no idea if this is valid, but if so, it couldn't happen to a nicer country.
Link to video -
Interesting guy, formerly at Stratfor. from his 2014 book The Accidental Superpower:
Zeihan frames the current geopolitical situation as the drawdown of the global economic system that the United States imposed upon the free world at Bretton Woods after its victory in World War II: The United States used its overwhelming naval superiority to build a global trade network as a means towards the end of soviet containment, but is belatedly realizing that the Soviets are gone, that the rest of the world's markets don't have much to offer because they are entering dire economic straits due to aging demographies, and that America is insulated both geographically and, thanks to shale oil, energy independent.[13]
With that in mind, Zeihan predicts a U.S. disengagement from the world, which in turn will leave other states to fend for themselves in securing access to food and energy commodities. He predicts an imminent period of international disorder:
"American disinterest in the world means that American security guarantees are unlikely to be honored. Competitions held in check for the better part of a century will return. Wars of opportunism will come back into fashion. History will restart. Areas that we have come to think of as calm will seethe as countries struggle for resources, capital, and markets. For countries unable to secure supplies (regardless of means), there is a more than minor possibility that they will simply fall out of the modern world altogether.">
The book was well received, noted as being one of the "best political books of all time" by BookAuthority,[15][16] and was given high praise by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Kirkus reviews.[12][17][18]
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Interesting. One of his central points seem to be that the whole economy is built on debt - and that house of cards can only stand for so long.
If true - it has serious (though, not as dire) implications for us as well. We've given out a lot of cheap debt here, and the good ideas and ventures will have gotten funded a long time ago.
But, I guess we're still working in the framework of a return on capital - maybe he's asserting that the link to that in China is weak.
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Couple of disagreements...
- I think both Obama and Trump had a foreign policy, albeit not always articulated well, but it definitively existed and most countries were not confused with what it was.
- China may change, but China will not vanish.
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It seems to me that this guy likes predicting very dramatic things that are going to happen, and has a tendency to make long-term predictions based on fairly short-term trends.
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I have been saying the same thing as this guy for a long time in the various coffee rooms.
Maybe not as "dire" as his predictions, but the overall concept is that China's time in sun will be very short.
