China in Crisis
China is in crisis; according to geopolitical analyst and author Peter Zeihan, this decade will be China’s last decade as an international power, and the entire system of the Chinese Communist Party may also implode with the breakup of China.
It’s not clear precisely what is happening in China, but China is in crisis, with youth unemployment hitting a high in June 2023, with 21.3% of people aged between 16 and 24 unemployed.
The reason is that not enough graduate jobs are being created in the Chinese economy to develop its middle class.
There is a mismatch between Chinese university graduates and the jobs available within the Chinese economy.
The last time there was this imbalance in China was the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, with mass protests on the Chinese mainland.
China is also facing a crisis with its population being miscounted by at least 100 million people, and those people are the millennials who have not been born, which has increased the price of labour within China and with retirement and ageing out of the Boomer generation.
Furthermore, in China, the Boomer generation is now hitting mass retirement at 60 unless they change their policy and increase the working age by decree or by law.
This will further harm China’s ability to export manufactured goods at low prices, with the United States moving its suppliers of manufacturing goods from China to Mexico to ensure Americans still have the choice and convenience of cheap manufacturing goods.
The rest of the world has not noticed the growing issues and crisis rowing within China due to distractions within domestic politics with the United States focusing on the Orange Man, a.k.a. Donald Trump, the Japanese rearming, the cover 19 pandemic due to governments looking inwards and not outwards.
What Does This Mean with China in Crisis
The Chinese Communist Party put forward a grand vision of China being a united entity for at least over 2000 years, if not more, going back around four millennia; this is, unfortunately, complete and utter horse shit.
As a united entity, China has spent more years being divided into separate warring kingdoms than it has been a united entity.
China is a monoculture dominated by the Han Chinese, making up 92% of its population, though these figures vary by percentage points.
China is typically disunited, but during different moments in its long and bloody history, a power in the northern plains of China, a.k.a. northern China, is united under new dynasties or regimes that proceeded to go on and conquer the other regions of China.
China is a massive country that requires a centralised government typically run from northern China, with the other regions breaking away at different points in history only to be reintegrated into greater China.
China faces many crises that could see the nation shatter and reintegrate after a Civil War period.
Food and Energy
China is dependent upon food and energy imports, and this is a reason why China is facing a crisis due to the reliance on supply routes stretching from the Bosporus and the Aegean, through the Persian Gulf and through the Indian and Vietnam, seas which is a vulnerable supply line for China.
All it takes is China’s enemies or state-sponsored privateers to seize these goods, which could devastate the Chinese economy.
If the USA and China went to war today, China would starve to death within six months.
China is dependent upon global supply chains and global security that have historically been maintained by the Pax Britannica from 1815 to 1914 and then from 1945 to the present day by the Pax Americans.
Basically, the Chinese depend on infrastructure and, more importantly, the protection of the seas that was guaranteed historically by the Royal Navy and then the U.S. Navy.
With the United States no longer interested in global affairs and that system is going away, the U.S. Navy focused on constructing supercarriers, which are nation killers and not destroyer-heavy Navy that is essential for protecting global shipping lanes.
As of writing this article, the USA has 72 destroyers and 17 cruisers, which is not enough to keep the seas safe.
China had to get rich and develop a strong international Navy before the Americans pulled out of the global system they had created.
Unfortunately, China is getting old before it can get rich and has not made the transfer from an industrial economy into a consumer economy.
Its domestic population can no longer meet the required domestic consumption that is no longer optional.
