Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Why won't China Surpass the United States? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

Singapore is what the CPC wants to think it's leading China toward, if it conveniently ignores that S'pore: 1) is a democracy where the dominant party accepts the results, even if its popularity fades; 2) is overtly and inclusively multicultural, not trying to Sinicize its citizens; 3) admittedly relies on foreign immigrants for much of its basic activities; 4) doesn't present a territorial threat to its neighbors, despite its superior military; 5) literally cannot survive without open trade access, and works constantly to build real trust among as many nations as it can; and 6) cracks down on even perceived corruption among its officials and enforces well defined laws dispassionately with everyone in its jurisdiction, not vaguely and selectively out of political convenience 🇸🇬
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America has regularly been on "fragile ground", like the War of 1812, the Panic of 1837, the Civil War, the anarcho-communist insurrections, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement. Each time we come out the other end fine and often more harmonized with our own ideal of "liberty and justice for all" (not just landed white male puritan conservatives). As much as our media dramatizes the current MAGA-"woke" culture war, we've already been through far worse.
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Aviation components, medical equipment, and agricultural goods of all sorts are some of the things China depends on the US for. That's before considering the education and tourism to Chinese visitors which if considered exports the US has a massive trade surplus on.
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The public sector has to exist to fund things that are required yet short-term unprofitable to a privatized industry, like infrastructure, education, and regulation. Though there is a balance to be achieved and China is certainly way biased towards its overbearing government.
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VisualPolitik originates from España 🇪🇸
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We like to dramatize our challenges and faults, because that's also how we at least partially resolve them too.
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@simonjones9455 The US has been on the "verge of collapse" since 1812, and various Panics, and the Civil War, and the anarcho-communist insurrection, and the Great Depression, and the assassination-a-month Civil Rights Movement. This "woke" vs MAGA battle is tame by comparison. America has already survived much worse.
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Modern China seeks its pre-industrialization glory, desperately wanting to return to an age when the mass of muscle under its management meant superiority, ignorant of the fact that creativity combined with power tools have made that strategy obsolete.
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What matters more is overall debt to GDP, along with how fast it's growing. America's grew by 10% across multiple administrations in the same last 10 years while China has doubled under their single Party, and China faces much greater challenges moving forward due to its own mistakenly tunnel-visioned policies and failure to generate trust in its claims of "win-win" partnerships.
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Have you ever noticed that STEM folks make for horrible managers and often don't last long as politicians? It's because the strong technical focus usually ignores the things people actually care about. This is why leadership positions get ironically filled by those who studied stuff like art and history.
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The PRC has had a horrible kill-death ratio for the objectives they achieved against a foreign force. In fact their modernization efforts may have been inspired by the Gulf War, where the curb stomping the Iraqi Army received didn't bode well for the PLA who were using similar equipment and doctrine.
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Which only makes China going to war even more risky for civilians, since their scope of "threats" is much wider. All it takes is a couple tankers to be mistaken as warships and suddenly nobody will be willing to sail anywhere near potential Chinese crossfire with the food and fuel China itself relies on.
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@JK-gu3tl It certainly worked for Táiwān, which was just as autocratic into the 1980s. Nowadays the Republic of China doesn't even come to mind among foreigners when they hear about the "White Terror".
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If it means lowering the bar on the definition of "poverty" and not really providing the freedom of movement and information needed to break upward, it's not really that much of an achievement.
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Overtake forever, or peak and stall? 🐇🐢
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@Mr.Septon Yet there's an active political fight over how much we'll allow those elites to continue getting away with. Hence the "woke" "socialists" who want to get the pie shared more broadly vs the MAGA folks who are trying to return to an ignorantly flawed version of past "prosperity". The US isn't necessarily overstretched, since practically all of those bases exist practically by invitation. For friendlier countries it allows them to spend less of its budget to gain a similar level of effective defense than if they had to fund and experience all that combat on their own, and even for places like Cuba or Pakistan the American presence provides a convenient scapegoat to redirect any internal unrest. America is incredibly resilient and the American Pie overall has not lost its flavor. China can try to grow their pie all they want, but the CPC is realizing that theirs tastes like shit and no amount of slicing will ultimately get people to bite... and it's all the fault of who made the recipe.
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@steenkigerrider5340 Arts, history, and humanities are what really drives education, because education is all about finding the norms and then stepping outside of it to explore ways to grow. Creativity and innovation come from intelligently violating established rules. STEM focused education by contrast is often tunnel visioned in technicalities and ignores what people actually care about. Hence why they often make horrible managers and don't do well in politics. This is why you often see a large organization headed by someone who studied something like English literature and then used those skills to get into law.
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@michaelotieno6524 China's middle class isn't doing so well either, with so many in multiple generations' income worth of debt just to attract a spouse and a better hùkǒu. All for overpriced "real estate" so shoddily built and maintained that it probably won't even make it to the end of the 70-year land use permit.
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Hence why the long fight for $15/hr and human dignity in the workplace, which is starting to come to fruition now that businesses realize they can't threaten with finding replacement workers or automation that itself shows a lot of troubling biases and limitations towards the customers.
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The "continue" part is up for debate, since looming aging, debt, and pollution could see China stalling if not falling backwards. We might already seeing the effects as the CPC shifts focus away from peaceable marketing and towards ideology and militarism, trying to shift away from relying on increasingly impossible growth as the basis for continued tolerance among the Chinese people.
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More realistically the CPC will be asked a lot of discomforting questions when entire neighborhoods of only-sons start to "disappear" during their combat deployment.
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America always criticized its debt load, but the debt doesn't necessarily make it weak. In fact the one time America cleared all its debts, speculations went so crazy that it caused the Panic of 1837, a depression and stagnation that lasted a decade with multiple states going bankrupt and defaulting.
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China loves to show off its HSR, which is deep in operating debt (having to compete with buses, planes, and regular rail to all the smaller cities) and physically built too weak to offset the costs with freight trains. Hence why the US rail network is nearing saturation transporting bulk goods and HAZMAT while China is paying triple to truck it over (before all the long daytime restrictions and random traffic "inspections" all along China's roads).
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The US military probably spends a workday a week shamming off, but at least its salvaging morale if not building rapport with your buddies in the unit. Unlike some classroom lecture on Maoist doctrine that is useless trivia in combat, and likely just propping up a facade of loyalty because you really joined the PLA for the job perks and not necessarily the Party.
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@arthas640 Right, this "woke" vs MAGA battle is tame compared with what America experienced before, like even the assassination-a-month Civil Rights Movement, not to mention 1812 and the Civil War where its continued existence was really in doubt. The CPC is starting to realize that they can grow the pie all they want, but if it tastes like shit it won't matter how they slice it.
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The CPC plays a father figure by infantilizing its nationals with childish slogans, tribalist ideals, blanket bans, and habitual overreactions. The West at least gives more privacy, predictability, and personal liberty to its residents.
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@michaelotieno6524 Only through direct payments, increasing reliance on imports, and a low bar definition of "poverty" compared to the true costs of upward mobility. It wasn't so much through anything the government did to help durably develop the impoverished. At least in America you're free to move about the country to where the jobs are, and changing residency is fairly straightforward; China's prescriptive hùkǒu system means a migrant loses nearly all their gains in private sector upcharges for things like schools and healthcare because they're not a "resident", all the while still enriching their executives and Party officials.
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Problem is China can't continue, it faces aging, debts, and pollution that simply can't be mandated away. Meanwhile America can find someone else to fill their order, and increasingly create small batches of it themselves.
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America at least listens to its people, because there's open discussions, independent journalism, and public elections. The CPC's patronizing attitudes makes it surrounded by sycophants and tunnel-visioned in its policies, which then have to overreact to unforseen/deliberately hidden issues that festered underneath.
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@RaulGonzalez-rs1be As in their buildings are built so shoddy that they fall apart with alarming regularity. You can literally see that they age faster than their completion date suggests.
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We also habitually dramatize our faults and challenges, because that's how we at least partially resolve them too.
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@527ctguy Right, China spends at least as much on internal "stability" forces as it does on the PLA. That's why its "military spending" seems so low -- it's not counting all the propaganda, guns, intelligence efforts pointing at its own people.
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That growth requires energy (which they're having trouble sourcing without high grade Western coal until they install cleaner alternatives while current funds are running dry), creativity (which is stifled by discouragement and enforcement against dissent), and the youth to produce and develop that growth in productivity over a couple generations. China would've had that room, if they weren't also old, cold, and constantly worried if something they once said will get them caged in an interrogation room signing vague confessions.
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@brentdallyn8459 Right, it's otherwise inexplicable about crematoriums running 24/7 nonstop and the steep dropoff of cell subscribers (likely not just dual SIM users abruptly abandoning one provider)
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The US is currently undergoing something like the Great Resignation or Renegotiation, with former workers leaving old bosses out to dry in the resurgence of consumer demand as a strategy to finally experience that "rising tide" that's been promised for decades, but was instead dammed away with rich man tax breaks and offshoring.
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Bigger doesn't mean better -- the average Chinese worker is far less productive and only getting older. The CPC's allergies to dissent makes its education and creativity lackluster, and these are exactly what's needed to break out of the middle income trap. And China's own debts have shot up alarmingly fast, like five times the growth of America's in the past decade, much of it into shoddy hardly-occupied "real estate" because of even lower trust in their stock markets. Now they're having problems just keeping the lights on, because most of their coal plants are optimized for higher grade Western stock, and they might not have the funds to get alternative sources built without the social unrest caused by multiple freezing winters during the wait.
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These don't really exist in China either. China's structures often become hazards in a fairly mild incident, and they age surprisingly quickly due to shoddy workmanship. Plus China's healthcare coverage is a joke, covering almost nothing on a medical bill.
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Are the patents actually good and defensible though? Or are they more like the near jokes that the USPO was handing out in its early years?
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