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0 pointslossolo2y ago0 comments

> A single cross continental pipeline will not supply a nation of 1-point-whatever (statistics are in flux on a monthly basis) billion people.

As another comment in this thread has already mentioned, they have sufficient local production to fuel their war machine, while restricting other uses.

> Ukraine alone can take that out.

It's actually quite interesting. Are you aware that there is a pipeline running from Russia through Ukraine that pumps Russian gas to the EU? Ukraine earns $800 million USD a year from this. Then, they buy back that gas. Life is a little more complicated than it seems.

> And China and Russia hate each other. Strange bedfellows, but would China want to rely on Russia for oil if it invades Taiwan and Russia has their country's oil supply in a firm iron grip? Putin? Nope nope nope.

It doesn't matter whether they hate or love each other, the only thing that matters is interests. Stalin was called a dictator and a ruthless killer by the West, but when he changed sides, he was suddenly 'Uncle Joe.'

China will only invade Taiwan if the US forces their hand. In the short term, it's against their interests to invade Taiwan, just as Taiwan prefers to maintain the status quo. They know that if they invade, the US can say, 'You see? We told you. Look what they are doing' which would result in sanctions from the US and EU and lead to internal problems. Why would they do it? It's neither logical nor rational, and it goes against their culture. There's a Chinese saying: 'The wise win before the fight while the ignorant fight to win'.

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AtlasBarfed2y ago· 1 in thread

To your point, China is no longer in the Western interest. That is what it is about. COVID has permanently changed the tenor of Chinese-based manufacturing. And the US Government is taking huge steps to start addressing its logistical dependence on China.

Now when I say that, I mean "in 5-10 years for some substantively detectible change" not "next month".

The United States/Americas is quite well positioned for resource independence since the Bakken Shale became so productive. They are globally dominant still militarily. The only weakness is the offshored manufacturing, and as I stated in a different comment, the world that supported China being the manufacturing center of the US is OVER. It died with Russia invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting supply lines, the autocratic power convergence of Xi. End of an era. 75 years of free seas trade "end of history" type thinking is over.

"US forces their hand" ummmmmmmmm what would the US do that would "force their hand"? That's a WEIRD comment. Of course the US is quietly and carefully going to draw down their manufacturing dependence over a decade. Of course China can trump up some Gulf of Tonkin incident or affront to provoke casus belli.

You are ascribing FAR too much intellectual stability to the Chinese government. The Chinese government is now an unopposed Kim-style autocrat. There is only what the dear leader wants, and the dear leader wants to be as Dear a Leader with capital letters as possible.

If invading Taiwan is what dear leader wants and it matches some false rallying war rhetoric that dear leader wants about "restoring China" as it demographically declines, then dear leader will do that. The CCP is actively crushing independent action by China's major corporations. They are installing "thought police" in every country, and the population is being subjected to higher and higher degrees of surveillance and control. This is not conducive to a functioning economy in the long run.

Oh, and as for your proverb: China has already lost the long run. They didn't establish themselves as a benevolent world power and construct their own political sphere. They do not have resource independence. Their demographics are collapsing. Their society is becoming closed, oppressive, authoritarian, and corrupt. And the world that powered their economic wunderkind of free open seas trade is ending.

BRICS by the way is NOT a sphere of influence. Russia and India hate China, South Africa is a western country by nature, and Brazil is an Americas country.

If you can explain how the long term economics of China will survive crushing authoritarianism, isolationism, and a sharp demographic decline, I'm all ears.

panick21_2y ago

In general I don't disagree with your point. People can go to far on China in how powerful they are. But I think you are going to far in the other direction.

You have a lot of confidence in the US to implement smart long term thinking industrial policy. Despite the US having shown to be very bad at that for a long time.

For a country that can seem to figure out how to build a single high speed train line or figure out that having a subway makes a lot of sense.

While the other country builds high speed train lines all over the place and has many cities building more subways then all of the US combined.

We can look at EVs as well. China dominates the supply chain and production.

Yes the US

> If you can explain how the long term economics of China will survive crushing authoritarianism, isolationism, and a sharp demographic decline, I'm all ears.

Authoritarianism increases and decreases over time. China has been well functioning for a while now. Claiming that Authoritarianism is gone ruin everything they do is questionable at best. Our actual insight into China government internals isn't mostly guesswork. Specially as there is lots of evidence that US democracy isn't actually producing fantastic long term thinking.

China isn't actually isolated right now. And they wont be unless they make pretty fundamental mistakes.

The West in totality is also suffering demographic decline. Specially Japan.

Its kind of Ironic that the fear of 'overpopulation' pushed by idiot leftists intellectuals in the West was the greatest strategic weapon ever invented against China.

> They didn't establish themselves as a benevolent world power and construct their own political sphere.

They are increasing their influence in lots of places. And lots of other places are willing to go with the flow. One can imagine a future where Russia, Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and many South East Asian countries become influenced by China over time. The same goes for Africa.

And places like UAE/Saudi and co aren't actually US allies in any meaningful way and would happily turn to China if they thought it gave them an advantage.

China doesn't need to lead them as the US leads NATO, but if they are all opposed to the 'Western Order' its gone be tough.

> They do not have resource independence.

But they do actually have control over lots of resources and refinement currently that would be incredibly hard for the West to be without. It would take very long for the West to produce sufficient amounts of these things. So I think in practice a divided market would be catastrophic for both sides.

Practically speaking the West does not have resource independence. And even best case, it would take decades to have it.

If China really wanted they could mass produce nuclear reactors and produce carbon fuel as needed. Its only a matter of investment. They have the Uranium/Thorium to do it. And if you do it at scale its not that expensive. If China were actually preparing for a serious war they would do this.

This leads me to think that China and the US will continue to rattle their chains at each other for decades to come with neither actually doing anything to throw over the apple cart.

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