What will happen to the USA if China becomes the new dominant power?

29 comments

  4. I’ll wonder what miracle they performed to solve their pending demographic problems, and then wait until they cease to be the dominant super power because it turned out they just lied about whatever the solution was.

  5. I wish USA would just stay home for a while and stop trying to dominate- like we used to in the olden days. But then Hitler made us realize we couldn’t hide while the world goes to hell. Stupid Hitler.

  7. Too far ahead to see. That would probably be a late 21st century or 22nd century type scenario because it’s not happening anytime soon (outside of maybe some superficial measurement).

    The US has already secured itself until the 2060s/70s with its spending on certain infrastructure, the military, financial institutions, education centers, energy independence, etc that it will dominate for the next several decades in many fields.

    Even if China were to build up cities/military forces or manipulate its currency, it just can’t match the dominant geopolitical position the US is in. Meanwhile, China’s population demographics do not favor it. And the way the Chinese government is structured means it’s never going to get the full picture it needs to make the best decisions for itself. Hence, it fucked up in picking Russia over Ukraine.

    Otherwise, it all depends on how Millennials and Zoomers handle things going forward. If they fuck up for future generations, the 2070s-2100s will be China’s time to rise. If not, the next generation or two will handle the rest. So on and so forth.

    Even then, the US is in such a strong area that it’s difficult to tell the US what to do. People are still going to flock to the US, the US is still going to have an abundance of resources, and the US has a sizeable enough population to get things done.

    If China were to get ahead, the US would simply turn its engines on and compete.

  10. Thing is, China is in an atrocious diplomatic position; it has extremely few allies whereas we’ve got a ton. If China gets more powerful than the US individually but is still far less powerful than a broad alliance of states lead by the US, not much will change globally.

    And as with other historic terrible world powers, not much would happen to the US but far worse things would come to smaller/weaker countries than under US leadership

  11. Ignoring that the who, what, when, where, and how are important to know before this question can be answered, my opinion is that Chinese-style authoritarian governments will become even more widespread. There is nothing inevitable about liberal democracy in the world. Our American model, with its poverty and chaotic democratic institutions, is still better in my opinion than what China is offering its people. We do have almost unlimited freedom of speech and movement, something that China doesn’t even pretend to have. Our Bill of Rights, outdated as it may be, is still better than anything they have. Instead of judging the American system based on abstract ideals of liberty and peace, I prefer to compare it to the alternatives.

  12. Well, chances are I won’t be around to know because Yellowstone exploded and literally blew the US off the map, which is about what our would take for China to become more powerful than the US. Seriously, they can barely feed themselves, most of their neighbors are enemies, their allies are untrustworthy, and they’ve got one of the fastest aging populations in the world, possibly *the* fastest aging.

    That said? If the US disappeared from play, I suspect that global trade would drop off extremely quickly due to a sudden increase in piracy. I’m not sure if WW3 would break out but given China’s expansionist tendencies, I’d be shocked if they didn’t try to invade Taiwan almost immediately, and if that succeeded, they’d probably follow up with more. Whether these invasions expanded into WW3 would depend on whether anyone stepped in to defend Taiwan. Japan, Korea, Australia, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, and India are all strong nations who would feel directly threatened by a expanding China, so WW3 would be likely.

    But whatever the details are, it’s a certainty that the world would be a much less secure and stable place with China in the place of the US.

  13. Isn’t going to happen. In fact, we’re watching the complete unraveling of the Chinese system right now. Not only do they have a huge demographic problem, but they have a huge gender imbalance in under-40s. They are literally running out of not just kids but working age adults.

    Second, all that impressive growth in China was fueled by credit. The expansion of credit in China over the past twenty years is without precedent in history. It’s also worth noting that plenty of credible economists believe China has cooked the books on its GDP growth for years, so that the divide between stated numbers and actual numbers has widened to an incredible degree. Some have even suggested that China’s GDP is roughly half what China claims it to be. Not sure I’d go that far, but I’d trust figures on China’s electrical production and rail traffic a lot more than a number coming out of the CCP. Those you cannot fake.

    Third, all that industrial might has not translated into either national wealth or individual wealth. The average net on Chinese exports is 1.7%, according to the countries bureau of trade, a paper-thin margin. And China’s per capita income is on par with Guinea.

    Yet foreign investment, the bedrock of China’s growth, is drying up. First, Chinese wages have risen 15-fold since 2000 without anywhere close to a corresponding rise in productivity. That’s because the Chinese view of capital investment isn’t to gain ROI but rather create unemployment. The only reason lots of Western firms haven’t already pulled up tent stakes for India or Thailand or Vietnam is because they’re still trying to recover sunk costs.

    Yet Chinese youth unemployment is near 20%, which speaks to likely future social unrest. The nationwide protests around Thanksgiving were suppressed quickly, but should have proved ominous, because that’s how every civil war begins in that country.

    Adding to that, the capricious nature of Chinese governance of late has made it virtually impossible to have a reliable supply chain.

    I realize this is anecdote, but a client of mine had invested in a factory outside Shanghai 15 years go. They used to make money. Now, they have no idea when the next container is going to arrive because they can’t get anything close to a reliable schedule. Or, let’s consider the furniture my wife and I ordered when we were renovating our home. Ordered in May, 2021. Arrived in September, 15 months later. Used to be, furniture arrives in about 15 weeks as long as your order time didn’t straddle the Chinese New Year.

    This is why even Apple is pulling out of China. And now, after successfully tamping down Covid in its many variants over the past three years, they’ve finally capitulated in the face of widespread social unrest over the lockdowns. The problem is that the Sinovac wasn’t particularly effective against the original strain, let alone the many variants that have emerged since then. China’s healthcare system isn’t good at either prevention or critical care, and it has a high diabetes rate–One of Covid’s worst comorbidities.

    So, no. China hit its high-water mark in 2019, the same year as the high-water mark of globaliation. It is a rapidly-aging, highly vulnerable country that only survives on imported energy, imported foodstuffs, and an industrial model that is breaking before our very eyes. The parallel people like to use is Japan in the late 80s. Yet China’s collapse will be far more catastrophic due to a set of policy makers who are far more incompetent.

  14. If Chinese leaders had been wiser, they would have taken lessens from the U.S. post-war consumer boom and chosen a more thoughtful, environmentally-focused path of development.

    They didn’t…and now their internal environmental issues will be a bigger challenge to them than anything else. That will also cause more instability and threats to internal power.

  15. Won’t happen, the US is the most paronoid country in the world. Russia and China will say they have some sort of advanced weapon (lying about the numbers or it just doesn’t exist) so we freak the fuck out and make something way ahead of what they claim to have and mass produce it. The only way the US loses dominance is if we just combust from the inside.

  16. The question, I think, would have to be reframed as “what happened to the USA that allowed China to become the dominant global power?” And the answer might be civil war, but that would also lead to a pretty dire global recession which would also have an impact on China.

  17. With their population collapse coming? I guess we will start manufacturing old people medications.

  19. I’d welcome them as the new world police force, with all the second guessing and damned if you do and damned if you don’t that comes along with it…

  22. This question is preposterous.

    China is in a quagmire in more ways than one. And we know that based only on what the CCP is allowing us to see. It’s probably worse than we know.

    They’re in no position to become a “dominant power” in their current or near-future state. Especially when you consider how much soft power and cultural power go into global dominance.

  23. To the US? Probably not much. The Americas can be pretty self contained, and the US can more or less completely isolate. It would suck, but we do not need a global economy to function and we could do it as a last resort. For all the countries that China goes out and fucks with as the new dominant power? Life is going to be pretty shitty.

  24. ” Boulders fucking fall from the sky
    Death with no clue when or why
    The sun explodes and we absorb it
    Our planet spins right out of orbit
    Aliens show up and eat mankind
    **A virus spreads with no cure to find**
    **God has had enough of our shit**
    **A nuclear war breaks out and thats it** “

  25. What happened when the US took Britains spot as the new dominant power? Nothing, life goes on. Britain is still a country just like the US will still be a country and have influence. You don’t need the other to collapse to become the worlds superpower like the situation with the US and the Soviet Union.

  29. I’d worry more about the rest of the world than the USA

    China would be a disaster for EVERYONE, not just us

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