Hey, Cain (and whoever else knows this sort of thing)

[Freeky]

can I get a professional opinion?


Earlier today, I was sitting around other members of my math class during a short break, and they were all talking about how China is going to be ruling the world within 50 years.  Ignoring the fact we'll probably all be extinct by then, what's the plausibility of this?

I apologize if you've talked about it before and I didn't know about it. I tend to steer clear of politic threads, they're as depressing as the ones about the state of the natural world.

[East Coast Hustle]

China is going to be a desert in 50 years. They won't be ruling much of anything, but they will have a surplus of a couple hundred million angry hungry fighting-age young men that they'll have to send off to die somewhere other than Tiannenmen Square.

[Cain]

China's economy levels with the US in about 10-20 years, give or take.  It is then set to continue growing well into the 2050s.

Economic strength is key for military strength.  If China has the largest economy, China wins at Ruling The World.  Now whether they actually use this strength is another question entirely.  The Chinese leadership seem fairly sharp, they are probably quite content to watch NATO spend blood and treaure in a futile effort to police the world, while they quietly chug along, making as few enemies as possible and buying up every natural resource in sight.

Of course, it may not happen that way.  Using the tools we have now, in 1910 we would have concluded Russia would rule the world in the 20th century.  Without a Russian Revolution, which not only led to the adoption of an inferior economic model but also indirectly caused WWII, which directly caused the slaughter of 20+ million Russians, Russia would've been a fully modernised state by 1950, and probably contesting the British Empire and America by the 1970s.  Which, incidentally, would be an awesome premise for an alternative history novel (alternately, have the Whites win in Russia, and institute a quasi-fascist state).  But I digress.

China historically spends a lot of time building itself up into a seething mass of potential, then collapsing in a spectacular manner and hosting numerous civil wars and secessionist movements.  Chinese nationalists, for instance, tend to be crazy as fuck.  Tibet don't like being told what to do and Xinjiang is culturally closer to Kabul than Beijing.  The "Consultative-Dictatorship" model seems to be keeping a lid on the worst of it, for now.  But all you need is one black swan. 

tl;dr version: should all the trends hold, China will rule the world by 2050.  Whether the trends do, and whether the world is worth ruling by that point are two related but seperate questions to consider.

[Freeky]

Sounds pretty logical.

And that is a greaet premise for an alternate history book. 

[Cramulus]

insightful analysis, thanks much

[Cain]

The book you want to read for this kind of thing is Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.  It's up there with The Twenty Years Crisis and Politics Among Nations as a seminal text for understanding global politics.

As an aside, I discovered today that China has a strategic pork reserve.  If nothing else, this qualifies them for Great Power status.

[Freeky]

That was a cool article, even if it is about food shortages.

[Elder Iptuous]

Gah!

China's Commerce Ministry said Friday that it planned to release part of the central government's 200,000-metric-ton stash of frozen pork onto the market, following earlier releases from pork reserves held by cities and at least 11 provinces trying to cap rising food prices.

So, they not only have a National Strategic Pork Reserve, but their individual cities and provinces do too?!

that's magnificent!
we need Bunkers full of Bacon, stat!