Minxin Pei on why China will not surpass the United States | Hacker News Reader

Minxin Pei on why China will not surpass the United States

economist.com

11 pointstwolf91061615 comments

Pretty good analysis here, just one piece I strongly disagree with: that part about China’s armed forces capabilities surpassing that of the US. In sheer troop numbers, yes that’s inevitable, but total effective capacity to wage global war? Various technologies - especially the ones that don’t officially exist, whatever they are (some Army buddies have told me of a few things that frankly I don’t believe because they’re too sci-fi; if true are cataclysmically terrifying) - will likely negate most of that advantage. Coupled with the allies the US brings to the table - by FAR our biggest advantage - their best possible outcome is to be “close enough nobody wants to find out”.

So surpass? Not happening. Scary dangerous anyway? Oh yeah that’s a guarantee.

Can you detail or allude to this unofficial sci-fi technology?

I have heard (failed to corroborate) that if Chine measured their GDP using the algorithm that India uses today, then they would already be the largest economy.

Until economies GDP is measured the same way, I have no idea how they can be compared.

PS. I would love a website that explains how each of the major economies measures their GDP.

Just compare construction GDP between China and US. Both report a similar amount nominally (once adjusted for exchange rate), but China uses more than 10x the cement and steel as the US.

This is for actually building things. On the tertiary side, housing service GDP (ex. rent and inputed rent) has the US report 2-3x more than China despite having 25% the population.

Minxin Pei that name is familiar for some reason.

I found it, this right here.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-dis...

I'm inclined to weight anything Minxin Pei says with a phat zero.

Did you actually read the article? It's a criticism of China's initial coverup of the outbreak. I don't see how that should discredit the author.

Based on your cursory reading skills, I'm inclined to weigh anything you comment on with the same.

Minxin Pei isn't always someone I agree with (frankly, not remotely so), but he's no slouch on analysis of China policy and the Politburo.

It's all but certain that they will surpass the United States in at most 20 years, by quite a margin. They have the industrial base, the population (growth of which they could stimulate, alleviating the "aging population" problem within 18-20 years), and most importantly they are not in the cultural decline as the US quite obviously is.

They are on the upswing on all fronts. They also own much of Africa and Afghanistan's natural resources, and as of March of this year, they're done playing diplomatic games with the US, too: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/03/19/chinese_o...

Your link demonstrates that one of their officials said that they think the US can't deal with them from a position of strength. Sure, they say that. The reality? Well, we'll see. Officials say a lot of things; actual reality does not always correspond to statements.

They never said that before, this was a _highly_ unusual, stunning rebuke. You don't say stuff like that if you lack the confidence.

>in the cultural decline as the US quite obviously is.

[citation needed]

The complete inability of the United States to deal with the pandemic suggests that the US is unable to mobilize itself to solve large problems effectively.

The US response is not regionally uniform especially compared to some nations eg. Israel but we're doing ok from a global perspective. Generally, i think the regional differences are a feature, not bug, of the US but obviously this isn't really advantageous in the pandemic.

We developed several vaccines and slowly but steadily vaccinated huge amounts of people (we have a bigger population and lower density than to most nations we're compared to here).

We had a few missteps like the mask mandate press and mask efficacy warnings, but otherwise got key medical info and protective equipment out across a large nation rapidly.

We rapidly transitioned to remote work, host most of the requisite infrastructure and are home to most companies that made that possible.

We mobilized early to provide health care, from testing to pop-up hospitals across cities. Sure its sad to think of hospitals being overrun and using hotels, but many nations were left with even less.

Our only big mis-step was the political nature of the virus that we bred.

We're doing about as well as any comparably sized country and have developed two of the world's leading vaccines (China's vaccine, apparently, doesn't work). I'm not sure what else you can do to "deal" with an endemic disease that's never going away.

It's the inability to deal with severe, entrenched corruption that'll do us in, not the pandemic.

I didn't say that the pandemic will do the US in. I said that the pandemic demonstrates the US's inability to take effective action. China's ability to deal with problems that require collective action gives it a large advantage over the US.

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