Try to look at where China is headed, and not where it was in the past or where it is currently. Somewhere around 2030, their economy will be the world’s largest, surpassing the U.S. economy. China is currently giving up some social welfare in order to invest abroad & expand their influence. Keep in mind that China’s vision isn’t 2-3 years out, they look decades on out, instead of spending all their money on public welfare, they’ve chosen the path of investing abroad, ie Xi’s Belt and Road Initiatives. The return on investment and foreign influence on Xi’s vision are staggering for this network of rails, roads, shipping,
etc. all leading back to China from across the globe. The interest return on China’s US debt of over $1 trillion is enough to finance any major public welfare programs mentioned above, instead, Xi is focusing on economics abroad in order to build an even stronger China that will yield even greater profits.
Again, the west shouldn’t look down on China’s communist past, and neglect the fact that they’ve arrived, and will eventually surpass us. The attitude here is that capitalism is better just isn’t true anymore (this is old school thinking and a thing of the past when China was practicing primitive forms of communism). Their government is much more efficient than ours today in getting things done, in mobilizing the workforce, in production and manufacturing. And how long did it take for them to get here? 45 years, while the west has practiced capitalism for how long? We use to laugh at Chinese quality, well guess what? Many of their products surpasses the quality of the US today, just look no further than how fast Teslas factory was built? How fast they’re able to ramp… this is why we so happily buy their products. Sure China lags behind in some areas, that is until they either acquire, steal or innovate their own capabilities and then beat us on quality.
Many good manufactures in China are willing to build public housing for their employees and their immediate families to live in and near the factory, keeping their worker’s spirits and happiness high. This trend will continue as more profits from Xi’s Road and Belt initiatives creates more profits. And when they surpass us by a factor of 200-300% you really don’t think China will use some of that profit and put it towards public works, welfare, Medicare, etc? Again, China is just getting started here, try to look further beyond right now and it’s scary how Gigantically BIG this country will be economically. It will be the mother of all Gigastates on steroids.
Again you’re stuck on this metric of we’re better than they are. China doesn’t have to take an entire sample size of education statistics from 1.4 billion people, it’s simply too much data to accumulate. The point here is a sample size of cities consisting of 200 million is enough, and no matter how hard we the West push our kids, we’re not getting to 200 million, it’s just not going to happen. Where else can you find that amount of big brains in one country, ready to join the STEM workforce? Here in the US, we have problems finding workers, there’s labor shortages everywhere, and that’s how they’re going to beat us.
Again, don’t look at China’s current 2nd standing, they’re going to beat us. You just have to accept this fact, every economist and their mother has resigned to this fact. There’s no changing it unless Xi decides to pull a Putin and the West sanctions them. If we do that, we might as well take a bullet to the head ourselves because economically speaking, it’ll be painful. But with Xi’s Belt and Road initiative, he’ll have plenty of buyers whereas Russia’s economy $1.4 trillion GDP doesn’t nearly measure to China’s $14 trillion GDP.
The West is very good with innovation, but it won’t matter, if you want to do business in China you have to give up your IP, unless you’re Tesla. This is the problem with capitalism, it has to expand in order to attract more investors. The moment companies stops expanding, investors are gone, eps goes down or stays stagnant. Capitalism will sell its own soul for the sake of expansion. And if you hold the high ground and refuse to enter China, your competitors will, and effectively outgrow you, then they will out spend you on R&D.
Do you see the problem here? They have a monopoly on their people, their people is their product. China got here within less than 50 years since Nixon visited China. What will they do the next 50 years with millions of kids with high IQ studying STEM? They haven’t even scratched the surface of their true potential yet. With huge sums of corporate profits, China will be able to pay/hire everyone, all it takes is one innovative mind out of 1.4 billion.. it’s a game of probability and they have the numbers to do it. They haven’t been able to lemme a leader of STEM as they’ve only been in this game for 50 years since Nixon.
Furthermore, China doesn’t need everyone in its country to be educated, they’ll need the majority to be factory workers, farmers, growers, shippers, etc. because if too many people are equipped with a degree, they’ll end up like the US where manufacturing jobs just gets shipped overseas. This is why the US is struggling, we’re a service economy now. We serve one another to get by, and in order to get by, we borrow, borrow and borrow. Hence the deficit…
Their government is working on a surplus, and can afford failed ventures. We’re working on borrowed money…. It’s easy for the rich to lose money, they can find ways to make it back. But when you’re borrowing because your country is in a deficit, guess what’s going to happen one day? Do you know what’s keeping us afloat? Money printing, bailouts… 2008.. bailout… money printing… Covid, bailout, more money printing….and more deficit. It’s a vicious cycle that hasn’t played itself out yet. I’m not too confident with the US economy the next 2 decade, but it doesn’t mean I’m going invest in China neither. Xi can decide to take profits from any tech company and put it towards public use (or $$$ towards more failed ventures). The difference, China can afford it, over $600 billion a year in surplus or 2 times the amount of Russia’s current entire useable reserves can bailout or finance all kinds of ventures.
You’re missing my point, China needed to adopt communism in order to overthrow the emperor system, they pivoted from that to adopt socialism as well as capitalism, making their country a hybrid. China is no longer fully Communist, they’re working in a hybrid system of all three with a very logical/ambitious leader who has vision and deep pockets. The question here is are you ready to be #2 or are you in the mindset that we still have a chance to be #1 in terms of economics around year 2030?
It will take a major catastrophic idiotic mistake for China not to beat us economically in terms of GDP. As for better healthcare, income per capita, that can come later… as long as they have someone like Xi in power. Where would we be today if Trump was in power? will democracy, capitalism survive him? I think not…. but that’s a different debate that I don’t care to get into.
