The China Thread

[Sheilbh]

China practicing with their landing barges:
https://www.rfa.org/english/southchinasea/2025/03/14/china-taiwan-invasion-landing-exercise-south-china-sea/

My favourite explanation from a (Western) pro-China think-tank is that they are more likely to be used to deliver humanitarian supplies to disaster-struck regions with poor port infrastructure...

[grumbler]

China practicing with their landing barges:
https://www.rfa.org/english/southchinasea/2025/03/14/china-taiwan-invasion-landing-exercise-south-china-sea/

My favourite explanation from a (Western) pro-China think-tank is that they are more likely to be used to deliver humanitarian supplies to disaster-struck regions with poor port infrastructure...

That seems like a very impractical way of landing troops or vehicles in a combat situation.  One cruise missile or drone strike would take out the whole system. An amphibious landing needs to use amphibious assets.

[Josquius]

China practicing with their landing barges:
https://www.rfa.org/english/southchinasea/2025/03/14/china-taiwan-invasion-landing-exercise-south-china-sea/

My favourite explanation from a (Western) pro-China think-tank is that they are more likely to be used to deliver humanitarian supplies to disaster-struck regions with poor port infrastructure...

That seems like a very impractical way of landing troops or vehicles in a combat situation.  One cruise missile or drone strike would take out the whole system. An amphibious landing needs to use amphibious assets.

Surely they're the modern version of mulberrys for use once the bridgehead is secure rather than for the initial landings.
Though yes, technology is rather different to WW2, especially in light of Ukraine and the advances in drone tech the prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan even if they should make landfall look iffy.

[Jacob]

Here are some anecdotal ramblings from my trip to China. More specifically, Chengdu. I might say stuff about "China", but it's a perspective from experiences there, which may or may not be generalizable.

Chengdu is a "new first-tier" city (there's about 15 of them), meaning it's important and dynamic but still not as important as the "traditional first-tier cities" (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen - and I'd argue Beijing and Shanghai are the two most important cities, as their own residents would assuredly agree).

The Chengdu metro area has about 20 million people. When I first visited in 2008, it had no metro/ subway. Now it has 17 subway lines. Every subway station has bag scanners (like at the airport), and you may even receive a cursory pat down by the security staff. Schools and daycares have guards as well, as do most residential compounds. They're not particularly intimidating, but they're there.

Chengdu is famous - in China at least - for its easygoing food and leisure focused culture. The sentiment (from various family and friends) is that Chengdu property prices have not suffered, likely because many people from elsewhere like to move to Chengdu for the lifestyle (whether retirement or otherwise). Still there did seem to be some stalled construction projects and empty high rises in spots, though I can't be sure.

On the economy, the sentiment is that it's bad. Many university graduates are working shit jobs, like being delivery courier and the like. Graduates from even the most prestigious universities Beijing and Tianjin are applying by the hundreds to regular jobs, jobs that in previous times they would've turned their noses up at.

Student stress is a big deal. All students, apparently, take weekly tests with the anonymous results sent to the local health authorities. This being China, the settings on the tests machines are tweaked to make the school look less bad. By the estimate of a teacher friend, something like 30 to 50% of high school students have some sort of depression or mental health issue.

The competitive stress is still immense. Since Covid, only 50% of junior high students are allowed to continue to high school (as it was determined there was a shortage of trades people and the like). From there, there's the intense competition to get into university - to the good schools and good programs. Only now it appears that getting there is not a guarantee for a good job afterwards, unlike in the past.

[Josquius]

They only have academic high schools there?
In Japan they famously have entrance exams for high schools - though the when I was working there in Yamanashi at least there were more spots than people taking each of the exams so it wad a free choice, so it's not what it was as historically.
There's enough high schools for everyone however and not just academic ones. Commercial and technical high schools are common, this is where people not planning on university go.

[Zanza]

That's China speed for you. The West needed like eight or ten generations, Japan like five or six to hit the spot where the next generation is less prosperous than the current generation. China achieved it in two generations.

With the demographic trends it really seems China might already have peaked.

[Josquius]

That's China speed for you. The West needed like eight or ten generations, Japan like five or six to hit the spot where the next generation is less prosperous than the current generation. China achieved it in two generations.

With the demographic trends it really seems China might already have peaked.

Last year 100%.
Now...
Trump says "hold my coke "

[dist]

The Chengdu metro area has about 20 million people. When I first visited in 2008, it had no metro/ subway. Now it has 17 subway lines. Every subway station has bag scanners (like at the airport), and you may even receive a cursory pat down by the security staff.

Not really surprising. It already was the case in Beijing in 2016 when I spent six weeks there. I expect you can find the bag scanners at all subway stations across China. It's just part of China's security theater. No wonders it extends to schools and daycares. Something something about forcing people into compliance and ingrain the need for state/party overreach--I'm simplifying due to mind tiredness.

[Sheilbh]

That's China speed for you. The West needed like eight or ten generations, Japan like five or six to hit the spot where the next generation is less prosperous than the current generation. China achieved it in two generations.

With the demographic trends it really seems China might already have peaked.

Maybe.

But I think the pace of change is astonishing in China. I always think of someone like my mum born in the early 60s - in her lifetime there's changes around the edges but a huge amount of continuity in British life. In China she'd have experienced the Cultural Revolution/Red Guard at school, reform and opening as she moved into her twenties with Tiananmen as she approached thirty. Then the recovery and very open and exuberant times (primarily in first tier cities) through the 90s to the Olympics and now the pivot to Made in China 2025, bursting of bubbles, covid and more closure under Xi.

As that one lifetime shows I don't think it's all in one direction or all at the same pace. There are longeurs in that time. And it may slow down. On the other hand with what's going on in the US, AI development and adoption, Taiwan - it could be about to speed up (in one way or another).

My general heuristic is not to bet against the US because I can't think of many people who've made money that way in the last century - but I'd also say the same about China in the last 50 years or so. I feel like one of those will be proven wrong soon - but I'm not sure which (or if both). I certainly feel like since 2016 the "US is definitely going to be overtaken by China" takes have declined and now the "China's cooked" takes may go the same way.

Last year 100%.
Now...
Trump says "hold my coke "

I was in doubt about it last year and I still am. I think we need to counterbalance just thinking China's success is the result of Western failure and to acknowledge that at least some of it may be because of an effective (if chilling and authoritarian) governing class/state. Even America, as important as it is, isn't the centre of the world's story in a globalised age.

[HVC]

Looked up some pictures of Chengdu just now. It's a really lovely looking city. All the security seems odd to me. Does China have a history of terrorist violence, or is it more a "just in case thing"?

And while there are many cons to the Chinese system I always envy their ability to build infrastructure (though I question the build quality ). But I guess that's what happens when you can just disappear NIMBY dissenters

[Zanza]

Chinese civilization is five thousand years old and has been the pinnacle of human development for a fair share of that. So obviously they are capable of building effective states, great economic feats and astonishing cultural achievements.

But everything I read about their youth does sound like they will at least have a lost generation. And the one after that will almost certainly be smaller, but likely grow up with the same traumatic pressure during their adolescence. Korea, Japan, Taiwan etc. all seem to have a very similar trajectory.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Chinese civilization is five thousand years old

I'd be sceptical about that claim. (The jezuits have known to be wrong, as it originates from them apparently)

[Razgovory]

Well, at least 3,000 years.  Chinese writing dates back to a little over 1,000 BC.

[Jacob]

Looked up some pictures of Chengdu just now. It's a really lovely looking city. All the security seems odd to me. Does China have a history of terrorist violence, or is it more a "just in case thing"?

And while there are many cons to the Chinese system I always envy their ability to build infrastructure (though I question the build quality ). But I guess that's what happens when you can just disappear NIMBY dissenters

Chengdu is great ❤️

China has had some knife attacks on kindergartens and on subways a while back. I think the guards are a response to that, mostly.

[Jacob]

On the efficacy of Chinese autocracy: the Chinese system definitely has some serious inefficiencies, primarily around corruption and the risk of group think / the impulse to preserve face (for the state/ party/ officials). It is my belief that liberal democracy will produce better results over the long term. That said, liberal democracy is under attack. I have no reason to believe that Trumpist autocracy in the US or Orbanesque autocracy in Europe has any competitive advantages against Chinese autocracy. In fact, I expect that Chinese autocracy for all its faults still has an underpinning of "serving the people" and mechanisms for removing incompetent officials (beyond at the very top); something which I don't believe are features of the Trumpist oligarchs nor Orban's regime.