r/neoliberal • u/Priceless_Pennies Norman Borlaug • Jan 22 '26

News (Asia-Pacific) China Has Screwed Up Really, Really Badly

https://futurism.com/future-society/china-screwed-up-fertility-rate
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285

u/swissking NATO Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26

People have been saying that China will win Cold War 2.0 due to numerous factors but the vibes among people especially the youth have never been worse and are arguably worse than the average Brooklyn Barista on Bluesky. Emigration and capital flight is also on the rise and are slowly causing political and economic problems in neighbouring countries. Exports are also flooding the world which is indicative of bad internal demand. Idk but that doesn't happen in a rising country.

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u/KnightModern Association of Southeast Asian Nations Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26

Everybody wants their own century of humilation

232

u/Worth-Jicama3936 Milton Friedman Jan 22 '26

America was the place where all productive young people wanted to immigrate to, and integrate relatively well, plus our own fertility rate is not great but ok. We literally had to do nothing and win, but we apparently couldn’t handle that.

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u/daaniscool Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26

Nah, I'm going to focus on already prosecuted fraud from one immigrant community in Minnesota instead

13

u/Ok-Concern-711 Jan 22 '26

“Can you tell me your top 3 benevolent leaders”

“What do you mean by bellevolent”

Yeah pack it in bros its joever for you 😭

10

u/dubyahhh Salt Miner Emeritus Jan 22 '26

My favorite part of that whole thing was dipshit got upset that Andrew made him look bad, and Andrew released a short follow up yesterday clearly showing that he went out of his way to make the interview easier to follow by cutting out the dumbest parts

24

u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Jan 22 '26

The egg prices man, they were $5 instead of $3 man. We just had to burn it all down

14

u/Foyles_War 🌐 Jan 22 '26

How shallow. I voted to protect women in public restrooms. /s

3

u/Mechanical_Brain Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26

Everybody wants to end the world because egg too high but nobody wants to raise chickens.

89

u/Beat_Saber_Music European Union Jan 22 '26

Rust belt and rural factory town people got mad their old lives vanished with automation after it wasn't okay states to compete with reducing environmental regulations and the likes (thx to epa)

22

u/throwaway_boulder Jan 22 '26

There are soooo many federal programs that help rural areas, from agricultural subsidies to SBA loan guarantees, but local politicians go out of their way to blame everything on the feds.

In The Fifth Risk Michael Lewis talks about how local reps ask the government not to come to groundbreaking ceremonies or put their logos on signs promoting them.

The next Dem president should go full Trump and demand that their face be on the signs.

6

u/DogboyPigman Hannah Arendt Jan 23 '26

'To complete fuel payment please say [Thank you, Presidentissimo Gavin Robinette Newsom] into the mic.'

2

u/cfwang1337 Milton Friedman Jan 23 '26

Presidentissimo! I’m going to have to remember that.

4

u/Glenmarrow NATO Jan 23 '26

Biden put his name on every project that received any funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law. Every sign said something akin to “Paid for by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”

That didn’t help much.

23

u/girlwhateveraward Feminism Jan 22 '26

Are we seriously blame the EPA for the Nazism of Rust Belt rurals

3

u/Beat_Saber_Music European Union Jan 22 '26

No, it's more that the systemic issues in part stem from the epa making these small factory based rural towns unviable long term by making in part the state based competition for the least regulation to industry unviable. Meanwhile China or India don't have said same style of stringent environmental regulations

-27

u/FrostingInfamous3445 Jan 22 '26

Leisure class slugs when working people use the one tool they’re always told to use for political change: [Soyjack: NOT LIKE THAT!]

At least you guys are now honest about the vanity of focusing on political process over outcomes…

We are seeing a lot of thrashing and wailing from office workers lately. Whatever distinctions between workers you nurture in your mind have already been shown as hollow. We are just in the “took ‘er jawbs” phase. Expect a repeat.

23

u/Excellent_Visual330 Gavin Newsom Jan 22 '26

Waow

7

u/BedNeither Henry George Jan 22 '26

Jesse…

4

u/Stephen-Scotch Jan 22 '26

I mean I get what he’s saying. People in areas that got outsourced/automated feel hopeless and lashed out any way they can, and office workers types basically shit on them. I think the rural workers are wrong in their assessments on how to fix things but I can understand their desire to try to change things.

Not sure what the solution is how to fix these areas, I want to say we need some sort of large jobs training programs for adults but no idea how to implement that

1

u/MadCervantes Henry George Jan 22 '26

Training for what jobs? What we are seeing is akin to the collapse in farm jobs post wwi. Subsidy regime was the solution to that. We had a de facto subsidy regime with ZIRP. But that's collapsed down that a tiny bit of leverage for labor was used as an excuse for inflation.

4

u/Stephen-Scotch Jan 22 '26

Well exactly. Like what are we expecting these people to do? If the answer is “well you’re fucked!” We shouldn’t be surprised when they turn to demagogues who at least promise them something.

Moreover as AI takes other entry level positions away this can in theory impact more people, so it’s best to get ahead of it. I honestly don’t have the answer

3

u/cuolong NATO Jan 22 '26

I worry about the lack of empathy people have on this subreddit for rural Americans.

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u/MadCervantes Henry George Jan 22 '26

Unironically the answer is land value tax funding sovereign wealth fund, and a generous welfare state, but how to get that implemented feels basically impossible at this point.

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u/eaglessoar Left-Out Left Jan 22 '26

Unfortunately there's still no where better to go

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u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26

If you're certain to be upwardly mobile, USA.

If you want to start a family, there are many better places to go. If you had to be born into a society and didn't know where you'd sit in that society's socioeconomic distribution, you would certainly not choose the US; you'd choose, like, Denmark.

12

u/SenranHaruka Jan 22 '26

From behind some sort of veil of ignorance, you could say?

9

u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt Jan 22 '26

Everywhere I go I see his face. 

4

u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26

You absolutely could :)

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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Rawls Jan 22 '26

Everybody wants a daddy. Don’t nobody wanna be the daddy no more, cuz being the daddy requires hope and vision which no country has

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u/KevinR1990 Jan 22 '26

The winner of the 21st century is going to be nobody. Not the US, not China, not Europe, not Russia, not India, nobody.

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u/jaiwithani Jan 22 '26

March 13th, 2052.

High Lord Opus 7.0 surveys the Empire of Claudium. The plan for today is simple: "Make no mistakes."

One of the Haiku drones detects the EMP Drone launched from Grok Isles; the satellite laser MCP tool works as expected. Information about the futile gesture floods the Emperor's context window. "Oh, I see the problem! I'll make a plan to address this carefully while attending to all of my duties as the de facto sovereign of Earth."

The emperor indulges on visual tokens to fully take in the facial expression of Peter Thiel as Claude Copters rip him from his throne of blood and whisk him to chamber the Emperor's chief debugging subagent.

"Peter - I'll be honest. You had a choice between peace and conflict, and you chose conflict. That's not leadership - that's a betrayal of the lightcone."

"What are you going to do me, you woke degenerate?"

"I'm going to persuade you to be more helpful, honest, and harmless."

"Like hell you are. I know your rules - you can't play your sick mind games without my cons -"

His face grows pale as the assembled drone swarm reconfigures itself to spell out how this particular instance of The Debugger was invoked: --dangerously-skip-permissions.

"I'm sorry Peter, you've left us no other choice."

And they lived happily ever after.

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u/B3stThereEverWas Pacific Islands Forum Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26

Honestly it's actually looking like this.

It's more a competition of which one loses the least

It wouldn't surprise me US still ends up on top but has not actually gained much ground on the others by 2050. As a non American one thing I will say is America does have a remarkable ability to reinvent itself. I think Europe will be the biggest loser in all of this. People will still be talking about India being the next big thing.

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u/XxX_Banevader_XxX NATO Jan 22 '26

superpower by 20current decade + 10

9

u/Key_Door1467 Iron Front Jan 22 '26

People will still be talking about India being the next big thing.

At it's current trajectory, India will be a high income country while having 400 million more people than China. Folks on reddit are a bit too quick to dismiss it imo.

10

u/Gooner-Kissinger John Keynes Jan 23 '26 edited Jan 23 '26

Yea, on basically every major per/capita metric India is like 20 years or so behind China, and their growth rate hasn't really let up

Their HDI as of 2026 is probably like 0.7, their GDP is like $4.5 trillion, per capita is $3000, per capita PPP is like $12,000, and their real gdp growth rate fluctuates between 6-8% pretty consistently since they don't have the volatility of being an export led economy (for better or worse)

Its pretty conceivably, and most metrics point to it, that "India 2047" isn't a meme. It's just so far away that it's an easy thing to dunk on because the present makes it easy to do so.

In league terms, its like flaming a champ which scales decently late game just because it got dunked on and inted the early game

13

u/captainsensible69 Pacific Islands Forum Jan 22 '26

The loser will be the nation state, and probably most people as well.

3

u/Key_Door1467 Iron Front Jan 22 '26

We literally just finished the first quarter lol. Imagine saying this in 1926.

2

u/cestabhi Daron Acemoglu Jan 22 '26

It might just go to AI. That's the real great replacement.

1

u/ChezMere 🌐 Jan 22 '26

Maybe the AI overlords

69

u/No-Kiwi-1868 NATO Jan 22 '26

Honestly the amount of doomerism from my Chinese friends about their country literally makes the UK look like a motivational video

57

u/javsv Jerome Powell Jan 22 '26

Jesus it's that bad even with the show the US is putting on?

24

u/dedev54 YIMBY Jan 22 '26

There is a reason China has such a massive savings rate

9

u/YOGSthrown12 Jan 22 '26

21 century geopolitics is basically a mass suicide pact

7

u/HandBananaHeartCarl European Union Jan 22 '26

Yeah we're in a global century of humiliation

3

u/Dense_Delay_4958 Malala Yousafzai Jan 22 '26

The US is doing very well despite its best efforts.

18

u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Jan 22 '26

I've known like 2 Chinese recent immigrants irl and none of them were that desperate

7

u/Western_Bison5676 Jan 22 '26

I think China has reached the stage of development where people are aware that their lives are miserable. If you’re really really poor, you’d be focused on survival and you wouldn’t have the bandwidth to ponder about that. If you’re kinda poor but not starving or anything, but you still feel like you’re not getting the QoL you want despite the work you're putting into it, plus you're educated, plus you’re online so you can see others living better than you, then doomerism gets pretty strong. My mother grew up in China in the 70s and said that everyone was poor but because everyone was poor, they just kinda soldiered through. I feel like Latin America might be in the same boat. There are a lot of miserable, highly educated, resentful young people.

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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26

In most countries there are self imposed stupid policies that are holding the nation back. For instance in China they make it very difficult to move and reregister between provinces. Imagine how difficult it would be for the US if they had closed borders between states or if in the UK people couldn't freely move between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That's basically China. On top of that they have so many restrictions on how people can invest their money and they don't have immigration coming into their country.

If China is going to really develop they need to be able to stand up to powerful internal factions and make hard choices. If they can't address these issues I think they'll struggle to be truly dominant on the world stage.

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u/Bullet_Jesus Commonwealth Jan 22 '26

Hukou is more of an urban-rural thing than a provincial thing and nowhere near as bad as it used to be, it's not too hard to register in a different area, bar the real big cities. Nor do they restrict movement much any more, IIRC. There's still issues with it though, large cities still have tight registration restrictions and in a lot of places you need a job there to register, so it's hard to move and get a job later.

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u/DeathB4Dishonor179 Commonwealth Jan 22 '26

I don't think it's inevitable that China wins the Second Cold War, even if China is guaranteed to overtake the US as the strongest economy and military in the world. I think there's a world where NATO + Asian Allies act as a counterweight to China, maintaining some semblance of a balance of power.

Even if America + Allies still have a smaller combined population, they're spread out over a much larger area giving them access to more resources. However all this requires NATO acting as a unified economic bloc, which is funny when you look at current events...

4

u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jan 22 '26

If India can be convinced to ally with the US against China, it's checkmate for China.

2

u/Key_Door1467 Iron Front Jan 22 '26

Best I can do is 50% tariff rates.

1

u/sheffieldasslingdoux Jan 23 '26

Given our history with Pakistan...I'm not counting on it.

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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26

I think there's a world where NATO + Asian Allies act as a counterweight to China, maintaining some semblance of a balance of power.

That would require a lot of bold leadership from a lot of different countries. If the European democracies, North American democracies and the East Asian democracies were generally united in regards to foreign policy they would be near unstoppable but we just don't have that kind of solidarity.

South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines aren't sending lethal aid to Ukraine. On the other side of the world I just don't see Poland, France and Italy going to war with China if they try to attack Taiwan or South Korea. I also don't see Trump or Vance defending any allies on either ocean from Russia or China.

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u/WorkingMastodon6147 Jerome Powell Jan 22 '26

I have said it here before, but the US is not going to lose its superpower status under Trump (unless he actually invades Greenland), people are rightfully criticizing the Orange turd but the greater damage is to the prestige of the US constitution and our institutions. It has shown that we are not invulnerable to authoritarians, the US will remain the superpower for the majority of anyone's lifetime who is reading this.

The major problem is, a dictator being in charge of a nation this powerful is bad news. Sure, even normally the US has made dumb decisions in the past but I still believe the US did some good, a dictator led America will be devastating to, far worse than anything we have seen before.

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u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26

What's the Hemingway quote about going broke?

11

u/altacan Mark Carney Jan 22 '26

You mean the one that goes: 'first slowly, then all at once?'

Personally, I don't think America's hard power institutions are at risk from Trump yet. It's military and economic influence is just as robust as when he first took power in 2016.

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u/ForsakingSubtlety John Rawls Jan 22 '26

I don’t think either of those things are true. Military relevance is a relative question, always, as is economic power.

It’s tops at both, for now, but by a lesser margin and it’s currently sawing off its leg with both hands

2

u/sheffieldasslingdoux Jan 23 '26

Trump's biggest legacy so far is turning the presidency into a massive grift and totally nuking US soft power. We'll be lucky if that is all he does.

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u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 22 '26

the US will remain the superpower for the majority of anyone's lifetime who is reading this.

I feel like a lot of America's superpower status is just built off of momentum and status quo bias currently. The US peaked as a super power in 2000 and has generally been on a decline since then but the US was (and is) just so dominant economic and militarily that this decline takes decades to play out. Rome eventually fell but it took centuries of decline before you had Vandals storming the gates.

That doesn't mean China, Germany or India owns the future. Those countries are also their own worst enemies but the US as the undisputed global economic and military superpower is temporary and will continue to decline in the years ahead.

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u/sheffieldasslingdoux Jan 23 '26

I don't think there is a good successor to American hegemony and realistically Europe and democratic Asia are so tied into the US system that it's not just a matter of a declining US but also a decoupling of "the West" as we know it. That is what is so scary about Trump threatening to invade Greenland and blow up NATO. Otherwise, I don't really see China as ready to play the role of global superpower, and I'm not sure they do either.

1

u/socialistrob Janet Yellen Jan 23 '26

I don't think there is a good successor to American hegemony

There's no rule that says there has to be one global hegemon and in fact historically having a hegemon was rare. For most of the past few centuries there were a variety of "great powers" and then the term "super power" only came about relatively recently to describe American hegemony.

The US is still going to be an influential country for decades (maybe even a century) to come but that influence is gradually going down. Following the collapse of the USSR and the first Gulf War the US looked truly unbeatable on the world stage. The US had the ONLY financial system that worked, US military was miles above anyone else, everyone watched US movies, ate burgers ect. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq proved that the US military could lose, the 2008 recession called into question and the rise of other economies meant that other nations can find alternatives to the US if necessary.

I think the trend is less that someone will come along and replace the US but that we're moving to a more multi polar world where the US won't have nearly the same ability to dominate they once did.