Wretchard, China faces challenges too.
It’s coast is wealthy, but the wealth is thinly spread over the Communist Party elite. Most do not share in it. When I visited Beijing in 1996, a tour of a cement factory co-investment with GE revealed that most workers were from XianXing province, illiterate, and used to going to the bathroom wherever in the fields. It was a constant struggle to prevent them from using the bathrooms for cooking and the stairwells for the bathroom.
XianXing is just dirt poor. You can’t imagine the poverty. The Joads would have considered themselves rich compared to them.
Moreover, China faces a huge problem. IF oil stays at this level or even goes higher, much/most of their trade goes away. Because it will cost too much to ship it. They don’t have the skilled labor force to make the higher-margin precision goods. Much less the capital investment of their own. They still depend on massive corporate investment to fund most of their development, their capital system is a cronyist nightmare.
Not to mention, one shipping container nuke and all trans-pacific and trans-atlantic trade ends as we know it. Just too much risk.
China’s solution to a collapse of trade, and their bare branches is likely a resource grab in Indonesia and Malaysia, also Burma, and definitely Africa. Which is weak and unprotected.
China is a threat and competitor, but they have huge weaknesses, which can and should be skillfully exploited. Should the world hunker down in resource poverty and/or nuclear isolation, the US can ride things out. Not so China.
No question our Navy needs to be much bigger, about twice the size. With new weapons systems to deal with quiet littoral diesel subs. But America is not Britain, we can subsist on our own continental resources. While CHINA is a net food importer.
Yes the elites want a “humbled” America as they celebrated 9/11 and the “humbling” and they’re likely to get a nuclear version of that, eventually. But they won’t like the response I think. Nor will China. China won’t be able to FORCE the US, Australia, and Europe trade with it. In the event a shipping container takes out a city.
