China's inevitable rise to dominance is hitting some speed bumps.
The Chinese are not going to supplant America:
China’s economy, long in decline, is now in freefall—thanks to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s mismanagement. Case in point: This year, the U.S. economy is forecast to grow faster than China’s for the first time since 1976, with strong indications that China has entered a prolonged era of slow growth. More surprising is that Xi, in an attempt to stabilize China’s finances, has largely abandoned his ambitious plans to overhaul China’s growth model, choosing instead to double down on the very economic policies that got China into today’s economic bind in the first place.
Well, declining rates of growth, to be more precise.
Xi is making decisions that create this "freefall." But remember that maintaining the Chinese Communist Party's absolute control of China is the primary objective of the CCP regardless of what else must suffer to achieve it. China once thought economic growth was key to the CCP's rule. Now apparently that is no longer the case.
I recently addressed the population foundation of Peak China. It seemed clear that if China passed us by economically, China could not hold the lead.
I may have been optimistic about China taking the lead. Still, as I've written before, "In the future, when people speak of the 'American century,' we should be able to respond, "'be more specific.'"
Really, people, stop swooning over Chinese allegedly near-genetic long-term planning ability. I mean, explain this failure of foresight.
UPDATE: This is timely!
China is amazing, just not for the reasons most opine. The country will soon have traveled from preindustrial levels of wealth and health to postindustrial demographic collapse in a single human lifetime. With considerable time to spare.
Tip to Instapundit. And yeah, as Green observed, predictions of doom have been around for a while without coming true. But I never believed the very true demographic trends meant China would go down fast. Although politically, who knows?
NOTE: My most recent war coverage is here.
