[retrochameleon]

In my eyes China seems to have a very strong position. They have invested so heavily in optimizing their industries, regulations, etc. that they really seem to operate many orders of magnitude more efficiently than anyone else.

They also have a great advantage in their communistic structure. If they decide on a big project, pivot, allocation of resources for long-term strategy, they just do it. You don't have to convince citizens or states. They just do it if it makes strategic sense.

Those benefits often seem to outweigh the issues of citizen happiness, cohesion, government support. China has gotten incredibly good at controlling their citizens such that dissent seems like a pretty small issue for them to deal with.

As I understand, China is facing some difficulty scaling up food production for strong food security. I'm not familiar with their issues regarding power generation, but I'm curious to know more. While I'm not surprised they are indebted, like almost every other country in the world, I don't see that stopping them from ignoring the rest of the world when they don't think anyone else can stop them. Whenever tensions reach a breaking point.

On top of all that, China seems to have a lot of good talent, particular in the technology sector. We are at the precipice of an AI and drone-enabled world war, and if a country were to make vast strides in that technology to get ahead of peers, the power differential could be quite scary. And if any country has the industry and resources to produce tons of such weapons at scale, I'd expect it to be China, maybe with some help from their allies.

[yason]

China has been a rising star for a long time, albeit not without its share of problems obviously. I heartily agree there's a lot of momentum in China to the direction of things getting better whereas traditional western countries lack much of that, and might even ride a momentum for the worse. And China's centrally-led government can be very effective and more sophisticated, in a way most other dictatorships simply aren't. But China is still too weak to make moves. Their domestic policy and handling of their internal affairs eats up their resources of force, and they also have a long border full of territorial skirmishes they can't just ignore while acting out militarily. It's hard to see China being able to make a move that would be a threat to West and that wouldn't cost way too much. China can certainly posture threats left and right, but I think they understand they don't necessarily need to consider carrying out those threats for real. They also know the art of patience, and together with that and some effective propaganda they can just sit, wait, and slowly move the piece towards their favour, and there's some calm wisdom in that that I greatly appreciate. The constant talks and news we see about a threat posed by China is likely a significant part of just that.