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Xi Whizz, where did my century go? – politicalbetting.com
Xi Whizz, where did my century go? – politicalbetting.com
According to the long list of “inevitable” events this is meant to be China`s century, a century when it overtakes the West and becomes the world’s hegemon. However, as we approach the first quarter things appear to be going seriously off the narrative. No longer is China the world’s most populous state, as we look forward its population is about to fall off a demographic cliff. The current 1.4 billion Chinese will decline to about half that by the end of the century on the base case and the pessimistic case sees less than that. And that’s not 700 million sprightly twenty-year-olds but a large grey-haired population which will need the young one to look after them and pay for them. There is no quick fix to the demographics. The impact of the one child policy has reduced the population of childbearing age, one child is now a social norm and the economic pressure on young couples means large families are unaffordable.
Comments
Excellent header @Alanbrooke although I would ask how you see India's demography going especially with the possible issues over major water shortages.
The secret files that expose a multibillion-pound cover-up at HS2
As the cost began to spiral, bosses allegedly shredded documents, sacked whistleblowers and used misleading projections to keep the scheme alive and the cash coming. The result was a ‘fraud against the British people’
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hs2-billion-pound-coverup-cost-files-investigation-skzv2nxwj
A Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan by force by the decade's end is all too possible.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/shock-rage-increasing-unease-uks-jewish-community-wrestles-with-response-to-war
Essentially a reporter goes to speak with Britain's Jewish population to take the temperature. Pretty much the entire article focuses on how military action in Gaza may divide opinion among British Jews. Right at the end of the piece it acknowledges that the main concern British Jews have is rising antisemitism and the fears they have for their own safety and the future of their schools and synagogues if there is a prolonged war. A shocking revelation but essentially a throwaway sentence at the end of the article. Talk about agenda drive journalism!
On the islamaphobia/antisemitism comparisons - I'm sure there is plenty of islamaphobia/hostility to muslims in the UK. But are there many muslims fearful for the future of their mosques and schools if there is a prolonged war in the middle east? The reason so many muslims feel able to be so strident in expressing their views, as they are entitled to do in a free democracy like the UK, is precisely because they don't fear these things. Jewish people on the other hand often seem reluctant to give full force to their rage at what is happening, perhaps for fear of 'provoking' a response.
I think you may even underestimate the sudden demographic change - the long run births per annum number in China is around 16 million per annum, and is down from a recent peak of 18 million in 2016 to 9.5 million in 2022.
Pro-rata the UK has a third more births per million population.
https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief-no-153-india-overtakes-china-as-the-worlds-most-populous-country/
To hope for a black swan.
To hope that Storm Rishi causes weather related havoc in Scotland, the North of England and Wales, preventing electors getting to the polling stations (Tories having already voted by post).
Less political news in the media, due to Christmas.
Few, if any, small boats in January. Look - 90% fewer boats than six months ago!
If Trump looks like winning, play on fear that Labour will be scared to stand up to him.
Would he go in early to mid January before post Christmas credit card bills arrive?
I honestly don't think we will see another hegemonic power like the United States was after 1945 or certainly between 1990-2010. It was a highly advanced economy when most of the world wasn't and crucially most of the other highly advanced economies were US allies under essentially US global leadership. I doubt that will be repeated and if China thinks it can be replicated they may be in for a rude awakening.
In the next few years a major problem with China is going to be the accumulation of debt in the residential property sector. So much of the country's wealth and, in particular, so much of their secured debt is tied to property. The Everglade crisis is indicative of this but it is very much not alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in_China#:~:text=List of cities 1 Dantu - has been,empty" for least a decade. [19] More items
Good header @Alanbrooke
India is still more of a democracy than most of Asia
Fair enough. But I would say this: if that's your view, then you shouldn't stay out of the debate. The extremists on all sides who want to spread fear and hatred will not stay out of the debate, and they won't remain silent.
Good people remaining silent will not stop the hatred spreading.
My response is - what can I possibly say that is useful? The situation is so complex and I will inevitably only give one aspect of my views in any one comment. So, eg, I find some of the comments on here verging on the Islamophobic, I comment on this, and I am accused of ignoring attacks on Jews. I haven't piped up to criticise Hamas for murdering innocent people because (a) I wouldn't have thought it needed saying, (b) I'm guessing Hamas aren't reading PB and (c) if they were wouldn't be saying crikey lads, that centrist dad in South London is giving us some stick, maybe we've gone too far this time. It's one of those issues where people have a lot of strong feelings, for all kinds of reasons. Any comment will offend someone. And no comment will add to what's already been said, or even do justice to the nuances of my own views. So by and large I stay out of it, unless someone says something on here that winds me up.
Heat pump anecdata.
I've been playing for about 18 months with a portable heat pump running off solar to cool the hosue in the summer, and reduce gas consumption in winter by heating it a little when we have sun (chilled air exhaust through a mini window to the conservatory with the door open).
This morning it's given me a raise of 5C in the kitchen-diner purely off solar power.
So it may be time to drill a hole in the wall and plumb it in permanently.
It is perhaps the most “authentically Italian” city I have ever seen. Even more than Naples. Basically zero tourists
Absolute drivel.
Meanwhile I have a friend who went on yesterday’s march and who suggested I may have a blind spot towards “Israel’s genocide”.
Almost everyone has gone mad.
The Times SUNDAY SCOOP !!! is not the most reliable news source available.
I’m installing it in a loft conversion at the moment. Complete with solar to contribute.
You simply dial for a temperature and it heats or cools as required.
Unlike air source water heating it is relatively easy to fit.
Polls closed 11am UK time (shortest voting hours anywhere but most people vote by post)
https://elections.admin.ch/en/ch/
https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/direct/rts-1?tvLiveId=3608506
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Swiss_federal_election
https://www.ch.ch/en/elections2023/
Argentina also votes today, polls close 10pm UK time.
Thanks,
DC
And on the upside China has a high average IQ, a hard-working and resourceful populace, notably low crime rates, limited racial issues (they out everyone troublesome in camps) and roughly zero guilt about its past - unlike the Woke crippled west. Tables show Chinese universities fast catching up with the west, maybe they will overtake. And their determination to plan and complete infrastructure is formidable - better than the west
It may be that planned autocratic “state capitalist” economies do better in the ultra-hi-tech world of the 21st century than liberal democracies. We just don’t know
https://twitter.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/1715450649603699060?t=8RyY84TIUX1HLR-Atfz5Ig&s=19
China knows its at is peak for the next decade or so. What does it do ?
Despite accusations of warmongering as it builds up its army, China hasnt really done much shooting, bar with India in the Himalayas. Its hard to know if thats about to change as with more strength and power attitudes change.
Xi is another septuagenarian and maybe like Vlad he's link of his legacy
✔️ Woke
✔️ IQ
Catania is the first economic and industrial hub of Sicily. The city is famous for its mainly petrochemical industry, and the extraction of sulphur. In the year 2000, according to Census, Catania was the 14th richest city in Italy, with a GDP of US$6.6 billion (€6.304 billion), which was 0.54% of the Italian GDP, a GDP per capita of US$21,000 (€20,100) and an average GDP per employee of US$69,000 (€66,100).[75]
...
Today, Catania, despite several problems, has one of the most dynamic economies in the whole of Southern Italy. It still has a strong industrial and agricultural sector, and a fast-growing tourist industry, with many international visitors coming to visit the city's main sights and the nearby Etna volcano. It contains the headquarters or important offices of companies such as STMicroelectronics, and also several chemical and pharmaceutical businesses. There have been several new business developments to further boost Catania's economy, including the construction of Etnapolis,[76] a big shopping mall designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, the same architect who designed the FieraMilano industrial fair in Milan, or the Etna Valley,[77] where several high-tech offices are located.
Tourism is a fast-growing industry in Catania. Lately, the administration and private companies have made several investments in the hospitality industry in order to make tourism a competitive sector in the Metropolitan City. Etnaland, a large amusement and water park located in Belpasso, is in the metropolitan area of Catania, 12 kilometers (7 miles) from the city center. It is the largest of its kind in Southern Italy and attracts thousands of tourists, not only from Sicily, but also from the rest of Italy. According to Tripadvisor (2018) it is the third-largest water park in Europe.[78]
The seaport of Catania is linked to the road-rail distribution hub of Bologna. In September 2020 Mercitalia Logistics opened the first full railway route to link the city to Northern Italy. It replaced an older mixed maritime-railway line.[79]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catania
Wandering round the city centre rarely gives a full sense of a place.
///ai.woke.iq
Tsk
Interviews should stick to interviewing politicians not creating their own political hypotheses.
But it still surpassed every other nation
FWIW I don’t think China - nor India, nor the EU, nor anywhere - will ever again match the dominance of the USA 1945-2000
It will be a true multipolar world, more like the mid 19th century, with Britain superior but not dominant, and other powers rising or already able to challenge - France, Germany, the USA, Russia
But a high price is paid in lost creative thought, so China is less likely to tap into the rewards of future technology. The slightly more open system that existed before Xi, while still a dictatorship, would have been better able to harness the talents of creatives and innovators. And it was also able to handle the transition from one leader to another.
Xi Jingping is 70. Perhaps he will still be China's dictator in 2040, at the age of 87. But then what? After around thirty years of one-man rule somehow a succession will have to be handled. It is not a recipe for long-term stability.
I’ve just had great frutti di mare in the famous 2000 year old fish market. Fantastico!
Apparently the weather is weirdly warm and sunny even by Sicilian standards. It’s 29C and cloudless in late October. It should be more like 22C
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Similarly with infrastructure. Forget HS2, a Japanese style Maglev (which the UK built the first working one, by the way, at Birmingham airport) will connect Edinburgh with London in an hour and a half, give or take. The north south divide, gone in an instant. People commuting from Manchester to Birmingham in minutes. You could nip down to London from Manchester for a spot of lunch, and still be back at your desk before your boss notices you're gone. Cost of billions, but also a delivery time of 25 years or more. Plus needing the power to override every Nimby objection from Lands End to John o Groats. So if you're a politician, why greenlight it now? You'll never see anything but bad headlines for doing so.
I know my second example is a bit more off the wall there, but my point is that politicians think and legislate for no more than 5 years down the line. With the result that we have schools falling apart with crap RAAC, thick kids, and crumbling, patchwork infrastructure.
Contrast that with Saudi, for example. And their mad Neom project. It's utterly bonkers, but they have the ability to say "let's do this" and if it takes ten years or 25, so what - they'll be in power forever. But my point is they are not constrained by short term, 5 year election cycle thinking.
Liberal democracy has many, many advantages. But planning further than 5 years in the future is not one of them.
America? Lol
Britain? Er
France? Bon jour Mme Le Pen
Russia? Lol
Germany? Heading for permanent decline
Despite everything thrown at it, including the plague and the world’s longest lockdown, China still looks remarkably stable, to me
The human species’ best times are behind it. A combination of rapid climate change, collapsing demographics and (yes) AI mean this century may end up belonging to the jellyfish and/or the robots.
Or not, but it’s a risk.
China cannot say the same.
Before Xi it looked like they had hit upon a method for doing so, even while remaining a dictatorship, which was impressive, and would have been a firmer basis for Chinese global dominance than the singular rule of Xi.
Sure, in the short-term it has some benefits, but it incurs a higher cost later on.
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
https://x.com/theeconomist/status/1715789427660759500?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg
One of the things that fascinates me is how the Belt and Road will end up. A friend of mine who had spent a lot of time in Africa predicted the Chinese would get taken to the cleaners when the African decided they didnt want to play ball any more.
It seems that Rishi’s phone - the one he claimed he’d changed and therefore could not possibly supply WhatsApp messages from to aid the Covid enquiry - is still operational.
They’re getting the old iron belt up pretty quickly. Fewer marginal blue-wall constituencies or ancient woodlands on the lesser Caucasus steppe though.
Tbilisi is hosting a new Silk Road forum on Rustaveli Avenue this weekend too.
The Belt and Road is looking like a v expensive white elephant.
It's the "What have you done for me lately?" school of international affairs.
"Thanks for all the investment, now bugger off" would be used by any nation that feels strong enough to do so.
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Can we adapt? Yes, of course, but it does require some effort to integrate migrants. In the end we are going to have to do so, or wind down to an inverted demographic pyramid weighing ever harder on our youngsters.
That's before effective policy on climate change, and economic development of poor communities. Without that there will be major push factors as well as pull.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1_QhJ1EhQ
Worth noting that the UK's Skynet (yes, really) military satellite communications system was launched under a Labour government... (Harold Wilson's, to be specific).
https://x.com/chriso_wiki/status/1716072715591819507?s=46
I don't entirely buy it, but it would reconcile with the theory that China's GDP is overstated by a similar amount or more, based on secondary statistics like electricity consumption.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-low-fertility-rate-population-decline-by-yi-fuxian-2023-02
https://time.com/4791867/china-population-crisis-india/
https://www.voanews.com/a/satellites-shed-light-on-dictators-lies-about-economic-growth/6813119.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lhmd-_ATWc
Yes the West critically examines its past, that's not a bad thing, quite the contrary there is centuries of evidence that reflection and self-analysis are the keys to success and doing better in the future.
Yes China puts its troublesome minorities and anyone who questions its agenda in camps. That's a weakness, not a strength, questioning like reflection is again a key to successful development as it allows course correction and better development.
Yes they're doing well on infrastructure to be fair, that is an actual strength.
Overall though the West is doing better that China in two out of three, which in the words of the late philosopher Loaf, Meat "ain't bad".
You might want to read up before your next travels on concepts like critical reflection and then critically reflect yourself upon why the democratic West has outshone its more autocratic rivals for centuries. You might want to consider how despite the USSR having an early lead in the Space Race it was America at the height of the Civil Rights Movement that was able to put man on the moon.
Happy to be contradicted if wrong
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-automating-eldercare-robots
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-M98KLgaUU
Lately, I've been considering that it may be Xi's legacy project. Old man in a hurry and all that. Every reform and development that they make with the armed forces seems to focused on enabling that goal. Shandong carrier, Nanchang destroyers, etc.
On the other hand, if we do get to AGI within the next decade and it doesn't kill us all (or, more likely, ignore us, the way you or I might ignore an ant) AGI itself will be able to design better and more efficient robots within that timeframe. That is of course, a huge, speculative if. But if the singularity does hold true, and it's benign for human civilisation, the next decade or so could be revolutionary. Assuming of course, we don't all wipe each other out first.
Russia would be left with the ballet and some Easter eggs.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
When people talk about 2019 as the baseline, it tends to be followed up by "and Starmer needs an absurd number of gains to get even a small majority." Maybe it's better to think of that follow up as being potentially borked.
Partly because of Scotland, partly because of Corbyn, partly because of the madness of 2016-now.
And no, Starmer < Blair, but Sunak << Major.
Yes, big Conservative win to big Labour win is a crazy number of seats changing hands. But perhaps these are still crazy times.
That Norwegian sign was seen on the streets of London yesterday. Apparently. And reported as seen in New Zealand as well.
https://x.com/sqlblues/status/1716004324508111080?s=61&t=wWWeJB3W_ksMJK4LA1OvkA
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
(And thanks to @Alanbrooke for the header.)
But you’re right in thinking that extrapolation of current trends - including demographics - is quite likely to be a very poor means of forecasting beyond the next decade.
And demographics isn’t everything in forecasting, apparently.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2023/10/602_361506.html
Sometimes (like in 2001) the electorate decides to vote the same way as it did last time, which results in the same seats going the same way approximately.
Sometimes (like in 1997, 2010) a portion of the electorate decides decides to vote differently, which can result in considerable changes.
Sometimes (like in Scotland 2015, Canada 1993) an even more considerable portion decides to vote differently, which can result in overwhelming changes.
The baseline is 2019, but that means nothing much, since the evidence so far is that the electorate could vote very, very differently.
And I agree that while Starmer is less than Blair, Sunak is even more less than Major, so it more than balances out in Starmer's favour.
(not using and replaced your less than symbols, since they bugger the sites formatting).
1960s Leon would have been bemoaning the Civil Rights movement and saying how much better autocratic USSR is, since it wasn't tearing itself apart with Civil Rights.
You constantly belittle and bemoan everything that makes the West great, but its our strength not our weakness.
“The House of the Mutilated” - the place for war amputees
Opposite the filthiest opera house in Europe
I can surely dig out an overarching metaphor here? The decline of Europe in a single piazza? The triumph of litter and decay over both Conceptual Fascism and Romantic Aristocracy? Nice ice creams?