The Juggernaut

James Fallows points to an affecting example of China's continued impoverishment as reason why "who worry about China as the all-conquering juggernaut that has coped with every internal challenge and is sitting around thinking about how to take over the world" are off-base. And certainly there's something to that. But in other respects it's the still-in-many-ways-bleak reality of contemporary China that makes it seem threatening.

If the PRC is such a juggernaut now what's it going to be like when the average Chinese person is, say, half as rich as the average American? And that China is still going to see itself as a relatively poor country that owes little to the world but is owed much from it. Depending on what kind of things you're inclined to worry about, that can look like a looming environmental catastrophe, a looming national security catastrophe, or probably one of any number of other kind of catastrophes. Of course the flipside is that it's also a great opportunity for a huge number of people to escape grinding poverty. As such it's difficult for me to let my outlook be dominated by worry. But I think I do see what the worriers are worried about.

Comments

No, Matt, you just have the same "Yellow Peril" fear that existed back in the 1920's.

China isn't run by Fu Manchu, Matt. Get over it.

The reality is that nations rise and fall. It's called "history". The US is going to be eclipsed sooner or later. As Stewart Townsend said in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", "Empires crumble. There are no exceptions."

The US is simply panicking because a country with a billion people is starting to develop a functioning modern economy (with all the pollution, labor problems, product quality problems, etc. that entails) and is likely to within a few decades have a financially bigger economy than the US.

That's it - end of story. All this "environmental disaster", "national security disaster", blah, blah, is nothing but plain, simple fear that some other chimpanzee has got it or will get it better than you.

This statement, for example:

"China is still going to see itself as a relatively poor country that owes little to the world but is owed much from it."

On what is that statement based? Personal knowledge of the polls of the citizens of China? Personal conversation with the pundits of China?

Or just your own paranoia?

What does that statement even mean? "China" does not see itself as anything, any more than the US does. SOME PEOPLE in China may see it that way. SOME PEOPLE in the US already do see it that way, which is why the US is such an imperialistic POS. If you're claiming China IS going to see it that way and become an equally imperialistic POS, provide some evidence other your gut fears.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 30, 2008 11:58 PM

Depending on what kind of things you're inclined to worry about, that can look like a looming environmental catastrophe, a looming national security catastrophe, or probably one of any number of other kind of catastrophes. Of course the flipside is that it's also a great opportunity for a huge number of people to escape grinding poverty.

I wonder if there could possibly be some cheezy and admittedly false derivation of some Chinese pictogram you could use to describe this combination of catastrophe and opportunity?

Posted by DAS | March 31, 2008 3:35 PM

Thing is: our current standard of living, energy consumption, waste generation etc. are unethical and impractical because they cannot be universalized. If everybody else lived like we do, we'd all be dead in no time, so unless we want to face a Mad Max 2 type scenario in a generation or two, we better think of something really smart or, gasp, change our ways and thinking.

Posted by novakant | March 31, 2008 3:39 PM

Fallows’ example of Chinese school girls not having new clothes is totally unrelated to China threat as a country. China as a country can afford to get there students new clothes, just as the U.S. can afford an expanded S-CHIP, or any number of other programs.

I don’t believe China is a huge threat either, but the pictures fallows demonstrate how busy China is ignoring the domestic needs of their population, not some burgeoning financial priority in China’s future.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | March 31, 2008 3:47 PM

You forgot looming demographic catastrophe. The "One Child" policy coupled with the targeted abortion of girls is going to bite them in the ass.

Posted by danceswithgoats | March 31, 2008 3:50 PM

I'm not a China-the-enemy fearmongerer, but I will note that I was reading last week about a country with enormous economic potential that deliberately starved its population of consumer goods in order to fund armaments.

That was The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Tooze.

Not that China = Nazi Germany, but I bring it up because it's far from evident that Chinese consumers will insist on rising supply to meet their demand.

As Tooze points out, there was a very real sense in which Germany's arms expenditures gave the consumers what they wanted. The German people cherished and identified with the Wehrmacht. The Reich's rearmament purchased a sense of pride that was economically no less sensible than the sense of satisfaction from owning one's own car or house.

Posted by Anderson | March 31, 2008 3:54 PM

I wonder if there could possibly be some cheezy and admittedly false derivation of some Chinese pictogram you could use to describe this combination of catastrophe and opportunity?

From 'Forgotten I Ching Demi-Hexigrams'
( Peril Press, 1966; trans. By N.Chtulu )

No. 268: "Bottom Dropping Out"
____ ____
____ ____
____ ____

"This half-hexigram is close to 'Sui-Sui', or, 'To be broken, smashed in pieces'. It represents a bucket, long used to scoop up the wealth of the earth, which has been misused and neglected, and now has a hole it its bottom; the wealth contained in it has poured out.

"So too for America, who must now suffer the loss of pride as well as wealth, as many citizens of other nations (some formerly seen by Americans as backward and ignorant) enjoy higher standards of living and opportunity.

"But, of course, some in America will remain happy and secure, because patched or whole, they own the bucket."

Posted by Jemand von Niemand | March 31, 2008 3:59 PM

The "One Child" policy coupled with the targeted abortion of girls is going to bite them in the ass.

It's going to bite *someone* in the ass. Disaffected young men are a classic constituency for military aggression (as well as the fuel therefor).

Posted by Anderson | March 31, 2008 4:07 PM

This half-hexigram is close to 'Sui-Sui', or, 'To be broken, smashed in pieces'. It represents a bucket

Nooo they be stealin' mah bukkit!

Posted by jeet | March 31, 2008 4:17 PM

Anderson: There really isn't strong evidence to support the gender imbalance will translate into horny dudes putting on military uniforms and fight for the motherland thesis. A China person from Brigham Young first proposed that hypothesis, which is rather unpersuasive. Other issues may emerge as a result of the gender imbalance, but military aggression is unlikely to be on the list.

I think people may have missed Fallows' point, which is simply to note that China is much more focused on domestic issues rather than hatching schemes to become a regional or international power. Sure, Beijing wants recognition and international cred where it's due, but it also recognizes that to obtain that reputation, it must first lift itself up. There's a serious cognitive dissonance in mutual perception, and that's partly due to the opaque nature of Chinese politics and policymaking, and the propaganda machine that churns out rote officialspeak. Fallows echoes Susan Shirk's recent book "Fragile Superpower." Shirk includes in the book a pretty telling example of the aforementioned dissonance: When she tells US officials the title of her book, they ask "What do you mean fragile?" And when she speaks to Chinese officials about the book, they ask "What do you mean superpower?"

To be sure, there are serious issues and friction between the two countries, but the discourse shouldn't be framed within a zero-sum game in which China's alleged "rise" means a concomitant "decline" in US influence and power. I can drivel on and on about this, but I'll end here for now.

Posted by damienics | March 31, 2008 4:25 PM

If the PRC is such a juggernaut now what's it going to be like when the average Chinese person is, say, half as rich as the average American?

Uh, there's a LONG way to go before this happens.

Posted by AKBY | March 31, 2008 4:27 PM

Really the best outcome for us would be for China to peacefuly break up into several states, Machuria, Mongolia (they gain the Chinese Mongolian Province) the Uyghers make their own state, Tibet makes it's own state, Taiwan makes it's own state.

Even if it can't be done peacefully, if it can be done while securing the Chinese Nuclear stockpile it still might be worth it.

Posted by MNPundit | March 31, 2008 4:33 PM

What in Chinese history would lead any reasonable person to believe China has ambitions to threaten the United States?

Beyond taking actions to deal with threats (real or perceived) on its borders, China has not been an expansionist military power. The Mongols weren't Chinese.

Sorry, but we Americans have become a psychopathological nation always in search of an enemy. We are such a sad people.

Posted by davep | March 31, 2008 4:34 PM

Anderson: There really isn't strong evidence to support the gender imbalance will translate into horny dudes putting on military uniforms and fight for the motherland thesis. A China person from Brigham Young first proposed that hypothesis, which is rather unpersuasive.

Okay, but could you cite something other than "because you say so" as to why that's the case?

I wasn't positing some quasi-Freudian displacement of eros into thanatos; I was observing that young men who feel shut out of their society's normal path to full cultural citizenship (there has to be a better word - "stakeholders"?) are likely to be disaffected and aggressive just for that reason.

That dissatisfaction could just as well be turned against their own regime - except that the regime itself can figure this out, and has a dangerous incentive to point towards an external enemy.

Another resemblance to Germany's situation 75 years ago is China's contradiction in status: an economic powerhouse with ancient glory that can nevertheless feel shut out by more modern states. All 3 of the fascist aggressors in the early 20th century, Germany Italy & Japan, had this particular pathology to some extent.

(Italy of course was not much of a powerhouse or an aggressor, but was another johnny-come-lately country with memories of greatness that felt shut out of the imperialist glory contest.)

We need to stay engaged with China, which is unlikely to pose a national-security threat directly to us, but we don't need to act as if trouble with China is somehow off the table, either.

Posted by Anderson | March 31, 2008 4:36 PM

Thing is: our current standard of living, energy consumption, waste generation etc. are unethical and impractical because they cannot be universalized. If everybody else lived like we do, we'd all be dead in no time, so unless we want to face a Mad Max 2 type scenario in a generation or two, we better think of something really smart or, gasp, change our ways and thinking.

This really doesn't make any sense. The vast majority of the world doesn't live like us. Therefore, it's not a problem. As large populations like China begin to modernize, it becomes a problem. That's when we gain the obligation to change. But 20 years ago? I disagree that it was unethical at that time.

Posted by mpowell | March 31, 2008 4:43 PM

Beyond taking actions to deal with threats (real or perceived) on its borders, China has not been an expansionist military power.

This can be jiggled to be true, depending on how one defines things like "borders." China obviously has expanded greatly over the past millenium. It rules over a great many people who are not "Chinese" any more than the Mongols; the Tibetans have been trying to remind of this here lately.

An observer in the 1920s could have remarked that Italy was not an "expansionist" power based on its history. Germany was able to get pretty far on the grounds that it was only seeking to adjust its borders to embrace the German-speakers of Europe.

Besides, expansion is not the only cause of a war. Germany in 1914 did not start off with plans to Conquer The World!!! but rather to preemptively strike against a strategic situation that it saw developing to its disadvantage. Russia appeared to be getting stronger, the French finally got their 3-year conscription bill passed, the British were unaccountably peeved (/snark) at German naval competition ... there was a pessimistic sense that things were not getting better for Germany, so it was time to strike now, not later.

(Germany in 1939, argues Tooze, faced a similar dilemma, except of course that Hitler really did want to conquer the world, or a good piece of it.)

If China feels threatened, justifiably or not, by Russia, America, or (say) India, then that could lead to war.

Of course, as I said up front, I'm not into beating the drums for a wasteful, terrible war against China. On my own theory, such drum-beating would tend to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I don't see the point either in simply dismissing any notion that China might actually put its military to some use in the foreseable future.

Posted by Anderson | March 31, 2008 4:45 PM

China is frightening not only because it threatens my own country's power (and you know what, that is a valid reason to be nervous!) but for a few other reasons.

1) The Chinese Model of Economic Growth coupled with totalitarian/authoritarian regime has worked. It is a competing paradigm that many other countries may adopt compared to liberal democracy and thus it's not unreasonable to feel threatened by it.

2) The Chinese are far FAR too much like us. They think themselves center of the universe and as far as their concerned the rest of the world can go to hell in regards to how much the Chinese should listen to them. This is bad policy. It is bad when my own government does it, and it's bad when the Chinese government does it.

Posted by MNPundit | March 31, 2008 4:55 PM

Beyond taking actions to deal with threats (real or perceived) on its borders, China has not been an expansionist military power. The Mongols weren't Chinese.

This is simply not true. Most Chinese dynasties were expansionist - and tried to expand as far as geography made it reasonable to do so. It would be just as true to say the US is not an expansionist power because we stopped at the Pacific. How do you think the Han people control so much of what is present day China? Do you realize that to this day in many provinces of China there still live dozens of different minority peoples, the beleaguered survivors of centuries and centuries of Han expansion? The myth that China "never expands beyond its borders" takes it for granted that the Chinese borders are what the Han people say they are, and not what Tibetans, inner Mongolians, Manchurians, Uighur, Kazakhs, Naxi, Bai, Yi, etc. (as well as Vietnamese and Koreans right up to the 19th century) would like them to be.

China has always attempted to expand to the limit of its possibilities. That doesn't make the Chinese particularly bad - the West is no better, but it's also a myth that China is some sort of pacifist country happy to look inward. I don't think the West has much to fear from China over the next century - but the Russians do.

Posted by vanya | March 31, 2008 4:55 PM

Vanya put that point much better than I did -- I blame the antihistamines. (Fuck pollen.)

Another point, related I think, is that China has always been too damn big for any kind of central control to work for more than a couple of centuries. There's a reason for those "warring states" interludes. Compare the disunified state of Germany and Italy pre-19th century.

Now, with modern communications, China at least has the *potential* to be more unified than ever before. I'll defer to the China experts on the extent to which that's actually been accomplished today in 2008, but however disorganized modern China may seem to us, I suspect it's still a quantum leap forward for them.

Posted by Anderson | March 31, 2008 5:02 PM

There's also plenty of poor people in the U.S. (yes, even so poor that they go two years without buying new clothes--Fallows' class bias is showing), but that hasn't stopped us from engaging in foreign aggression. Fallows makes the classic, amateurish mistake of conflating the interests of a nation's rulers with the interests of that nation's population as a whole.

I'm not especially worried about a new Chinese imperialism, but such imperialism would not be inconsistent with continued Chinese poverty.

Posted by ML | March 31, 2008 5:18 PM

I wasn't positing some quasi-Freudian displacement of eros into thanatos; I was observing that young men who feel shut out of their society's normal path to full cultural citizenship (there has to be a better word - "stakeholders"?) are likely to be disaffected and aggressive just for that reason.

I guess if you're arguing vaguely that there's potential for "disaffected youth" to act wily, then sure, it's possible. What's the normal path to "cultural citizenship/stakeholder in society"? If the normal path is something like getting education, a decent job, and eventually marriage, then I don't really foresee any significant setback in that regard. China has done pretty well in that regard, and barring any catastrophe, its citizens should be relatively content. People have posited that the more abundant males could spell troubles for finding a mate, but that's not likely to be directly related to the manifestation of male aggression.

The only seriously likely scenario under which China would take military action would be a scuffle over Taiwan. And yes, we shouldn't omit that possibility, but it's not an inevitability. I suppose if you're from the realpolitik/Mearsheimer school of int'l relations, you might look at Germany etc. But I'm not sure that the analogy is terribly solid. Currently, Chinese domestic politics informs the bulk of its actions abroad and on the world stage. And I think China is by and large still confused and unsure about where and how it wants to be in the international arena. They certainly feel much more threatened by internal forces than external pressure.

Posted by damienics | March 31, 2008 5:18 PM

I guess if you're arguing vaguely

It's what I do best. Thank god for the internets!

Posted by Anderson | March 31, 2008 5:58 PM

It strikes me that the Chinese are engaging in a form of expansionism now. Many merchants and businesses throughout Asia are Chinese run and owned. See Siberia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. This is not a government policy but if these expat populations become overly disaffected and repressed then this could create international tensions.

I am not worried about the Chinese expanding territorially. The Russian demographic death spiral is giving the Chinese plenty of room to expand to the North if they so choose. Not sure that they would want/be able to given their population issues.

Posted by danceswithgoats | March 31, 2008 6:01 PM

"unless we want to face a Mad Max 2 type scenario in a generation or two, we better think of something really smart or, gasp, change our ways and thinking."

It's called nanotech and it will obsolete most of the problems facing the world in the next fifty or seventy-five years.

After which, it will obsolete humans, fortunately.

Sitting around worrying about China being "expansionist" over the next fifty years is a luxury of the citizens of the only remaining superpower whose military expenditures exceed that of the rest of the world and particularly that of China by, what, twenty times.

It's all bullshit. "Yellow Peril" crap. Brown chimpanzees worried about the yellow chimpanzee. Since the yellow chimpanzee IS a chimpanzee, there is, of course, some reason for concern that it will behave stupidly. Big surprise.

But it's not a frickin' crisis we have to respond to with more military spending. That's bullshit to justify more bribes to politicians from military contractors.

As for the Chinese being expansionist in the past, let's point out that they had the population to do so and didn't have nukes hanging over their heads. When you had armies that rode on horses with swords and spears, that sort of thing was feasible. That old style expansionism is over. Unless you're the supreme nuclear power on earth, you're not going to be trying to conquer the entire Far East just because you have a lot of people. Nukes don't give a damn how many people you have. The Chinese rulers know this.

They also know that nuclear deterrence only goes so far. Just because you have enough nukes to threaten some other party - even one with more nukes than you - the world isn't going to let you take over everything just to avoid a fight. The Cold War proved that, and the Middle East is proving it again to the US and Israel. The Chinese understand that because they're on the side of those reining in the US on Iran and elsewhere.

So they're not going to build up their military and then expand all over the place. It's not feasible.

Of course, as the neocons have shown, not being feasible doesn't mean they might not try. And states have to be imperialist to some degree - it's their nature.

But it's overstating the case that China HAS to be a "threat" to everybody or even somebody just because it's economy is getting better.

Right now, the biggest threat to world peace is the US. Concentrate your fears there, not on some fantasy Chinese invasion fifty years from now.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 31, 2008 7:05 PM

I'm not a China-the-enemy fearmongerer, but I will note that I was reading last week about a country with enormous economic potential that deliberately starved its population of consumer goods in order to fund armaments.

That was The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Tooze.

Yeah, well. Problem is that China's skimping on the consumer goods in order to fund industry. The numbers that hysterics love to throw around about Chinese military spending -- up 10%, 20%, whatever it is lately -- are mainly a reflection of the sorry state that the PLA has been in forever.

Posted by sglover | March 31, 2008 7:35 PM

Take a look at China's surrounding neighbors. Being a distant superpower separated from all other significant world powers by two oceans and being a Eurasian superpower are two completely different ball-games. Chinese power will scare far more, if only because of that close proximity. If China is smart, they will tiptoe around very carefully, lest their neighbors (heck, even leaving the US and Europe out of the picture) contain them, as Russia, India, Japan and other South East Asian states are more than capable of doing.

Posted by scottynx | March 31, 2008 8:24 PM

Not that I expect anyone to do it, but what we really need to do, it seems to me, is to envision, to figure out, what a world in which many more people can be more or less sustainably prosperous looks like, and then move toward that model.

Call me crazy.

Posted by Daddy Love | March 31, 2008 9:25 PM

Reading most of the silly comments on this thread makes me think of Jeffrey Dahmer, sitting at home and munching someone's leg while nervously wondering whether the guy running the local Chinese take-out "might be up to no good"...

Let's consider the last sixty years. I'd guess that America has been directly or indirectly involved in about 80% of the world's wars during that period, sometimes on the right side and sometimes on the wrong side. China has been involved in virtually none of them, about the sole exception being those directly on China's own border.

Someone has already pointed out that American military spending is greater than that of the entire rest of the world combined. I'd guess that if you look at the twenty top military-spending nations, China would be toward the bottom of that list if ranked by fraction-of-GNP.

And I'd take issue with Vanya regarding Chinese "expansionism". Except at the (relatively uncivilized tribal) margins, I don't think that Han-controlled territory has changed much in the last couple of thousand years. My very strong impression is that for millennia, Chinese leaders have regarded China as the important part of the world, and never had all that much in exploring---let alone conquering!---the "outside barbarians". Now cultural traditions sometimes do change, but I've seen so sign of that yet. The contrast with the all the European Powers couldn't be greater.

Quoting Freud to explain Chinese expansionism is pretty typical. Freud was just an ignorant, unscientific cult-leader, not all that different from L. Ron Hubbard. Perhaps we should ask the Scientologists their take on Iranian strategy.

Presumably knowing nothing of this area of foreign policy, Matt is simply regurgitating the ignorant DC "conventional wisdom", heavily influenced by the powerful arms industry lobbyists. This makes perfect sense, since Matt is clearly training to become an O'Hanlon speechwriter.

As is the usual case in foreign policy matters, our own "Hack" is dead-on correct.

Posted by RKU | March 31, 2008 9:35 PM

Thanks for the compliment, I get them so rarely here! (Wonder why...)

One quibble:

"Presumably knowing nothing of this area of foreign policy,"

Actually, Matt knows little about ANY area of foreign policy - or at least those areas involving the military and conflict. Even so, he does occasionally get it right. But not in this case.

Your first paragraph was cool! Matt's next book title: "The United States and Hannibal Lector - Coincidence or Consequence"...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 31, 2008 9:49 PM

Re: Thing is: our current standard of living, energy consumption, waste generation etc. are unethical and impractical because they cannot be universalized

Sorry, but I can't see the logic there. Why must something be universalizable to be ethical? Should I not have cats as pets because many people don't/can't/don't want to? Should a person with some unusual gift or talent suppress it since not everyone shares it? Where is it written that the only ethical (or practical) world is one with an utter sameness for everyone everywhere?

Posted by Jonf | March 31, 2008 10:08 PM

I don't think that's what novakant was saying. I think he was saying that if we assume that everyone deserves or is allowed the same standard of living of the US, then the Earth can't sustain that level. Therefore he views our standard of living as "unethical" because not everyone can share in it

I think that's not true, but I understand the point.

First, I think he's wrong about the level of civilization the planet can sustain, global warming not withstanding, especially with technology advances. And this is not even arguing from my Transhumanist perspective, but just from a conventional science level.

People have argued about this for decades, but as far as I know it's never been definitively demonstrated that the Earth's "carrying capacity" is not quite a bit larger than the present population - even at US standards of living, outside of recent global warming issues (which are primarily an issue of technology). The old "Club of Rome" simulations back in the 70's were a joke and known to be so by anybody with knowledge of computer modeling at the time. Paul Ehrlich's book, "The Population Bomb", was essentially "crank science".

Second, I think he's arguing backwards - that because the US allegedly can't export its standard of living to everyone, we should reduce our standard of living to, in some sense, not give everyone else "false hopes". I don't think that argument makes much sense. In any event, 300 million people aren't going to give up their standard of living for any other population, so the issue is moot.

What the US should be doing is making sure that the Chinese have access to whatever technology is necessary to make sure that their economic growth doesn't harm the environment more than necessary or contribute to global warming as much as ours does, regardless of what positive impact this technology sharing might have on China's economic size vis-a-vis ours, That would be an "ethical" thing - and more importantly, the "correct" thing - to do.

Note: I never argue "ethics" or "morality" as I view those as content-free concepts.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 31, 2008 11:43 PM

It's called nanotech and it will obsolete most of the problems facing the world in the next fifty or seventy-five years.

Yeah, and Fleming's brainchild was supposed to eradicate disease forever. Biotech was supposed to revolutionize the world as well, but the initial breakthroughs, much like antibiotics, were never equaled or bettered as the field progressed. Expecting mechanosynthesis to fulfill some Star Trek replicator fantasy in half a century, and pinning the continued viability of an overburdened planet to such advances, doesn't square with reality.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | April 1, 2008 12:39 AM

How can millions of young men with no hope of marrying or having offspring not be an explosive social problem? Since the Chinese regime doesn't want to be overthrown, it will be tempted to turn that aggression outward, even more so as its industrialization policies destroy the environment.

Posted by Eric | April 1, 2008 1:45 AM

Assessments of the capabilities of nanotech in half a century don't square with assessments of far more limited technology from half a century or more ago.

I also allowed for seventy-five years in case fifty was insufficient for ubiquitous nanotech. The first fifty will do the necessary breakthroughs for my purposes, followed by application over the next twenty-five to fifty years.

Biotech is by definition more limited than nanotech, even if biotech techniques will be very useful to nanotech in the near term.

We don't even need general purpose assemblers to achieve this. Specific purpose assemblers generated automatically by the advanced engineering AI made possible by nanotech-based neuroscience research will be sufficient. The first fifty years will produce a complete map of the human brain and cellular structure. Advances made subsequent to that basic knowledge will be swift.

Specific nanotech applications would include Professor Smalley's energy program - which could be implemented over the next twenty-five years or more to solve the immediate energy and global warming problems, even without major advances.

Further applications would resolve human disease problems, eliminate large-scale pollution, solve issues of food production and storage (much food in the world is wasted by inadequate storage facilities which nanotech could easily resolve), generate cheap and effective housing and clothing, and in general generate adequate consumer goods for the entire population of the planet.

There will be screwups as long as humans are running the show, of course, but that will change within fifty years anyway, first because of more effective AI which will improve human performance and second when the first Transhumans appear.

By end of this century, matters will be resolved.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 3:33 AM

"
You forgot looming demographic catastrophe. The "One Child" policy coupled with the targeted abortion of girls is going to bite them in the ass.
"

WTF??? The man/woman ratio is a problem sure, but the one-child-policy? You think a China with 2 billion citizens in 2030 rather than 1.3 billion is going to be easier to handle (and easier on the rest of the world).
So China goes through a period (if I had my drothers a *long* period) during which there are more old people than young people. I have yet to see any sane explanation of why this is a "demographic catastrophe" as opposed to simply a differently structured society.

Posted by Maynard Handley | April 1, 2008 3:52 AM

"Assessments of the capabilities of nanotech in half a century don't square with assessments of far more limited technology from half a century or more ago."

Wishing doesn't make it so. Ever heard of something called fusion? Fifty+ years on, and we're still fifty+ years away from getting it to work in a practical fashion.

Nanotech may save the day, but as others have pointed out, it's more than irresponsible to simply assume this will be the case so we don't have to bother doing anything right now.

-----------------------

Regarding the Chinese male excess, it will be extremely interesting to see how this plays out.
One possibility is polyandry, but this is very rare and, in the few places like Tibet where it did occur (the usual case being that only two brothers together could generate enough resources to sustain a family) it often led to exactly the sorts of anger, resentment and violence you'd expect.
A second possibility might be a generalized social acceptance of prostitutes, so that these men, even if they don't get the rest of family life at least get regular sex. This strikes me as plausible.
A third possibility is massive importing of brides from places so poor and fscked up that moving to China seems like progress (Africa sure, the Middle East maybe). This, of course, just spreads the problem across the entire world, though with Africa's penchant for insane wars, everything might balance out in the end. Of course China remains pretty xenophobic, so it's not clear either the young men involved or the rest of society will accept this.
Finally, if we're assuming nanotech is going to save us all, obviously what will save us in this particular case is sexbots.

Posted by Maynard Handley | April 1, 2008 4:09 AM

Re: Therefore he views our standard of living as "unethical" because not everyone can share in it

That's pretty much what I thought he was saying and that's what I was addressing. Again, inequality is part and parcel of reality, and we're never going to get rid of it. Calling it "unethical" or "immoral" means that we will always and everywere be unethical and immoral. Now, if you want to talk about alleviating grinding poverty and its misery and degradation-- yes, that is immoral and we should be seeking to alleviate it. It's wrong that a large fraction of humanity has no access to safe drinking water, that people die from easily treatable diseases, that their children cannot even learn to write their own names, that even in this country people sleep under bridges. But saying we should cure those ills does not say that everyone must or should live like an American investment banker. I have no moral qulams about ther being rich people, if we could eliminate brutal poverty.

Re: Since the Chinese regime doesn't want to be overthrown, it will be tempted to turn that aggression outward

Many of those young wifeless men will be only children. Their parents will not want to see them risked in foreign adventures. They will probably not want to risk themselves.

Posted by JonF | April 1, 2008 6:21 AM

Many things here that I need to respectfully disagree with.

1) Russia isn't in a 'demographic death spiral' whatever that means. It had a temporary period of very low birth rates, in Russia's case compounded by high birth rates. This isn't uncommon for either animal or human populations as a response to social stress- and Russia has certainly had a lot of social stress in the last 20 years or so. Seldom do such populations go extinct, and neither will Russia- the birth and death rates correct themselves after a time. The Russian birth rate is increasing, now, and is expectd to be at the replacement level by about 2020.

2) Contra JonF, I would disagree about inequality and standards of living. I don't want everyone to be _the same_ but I do want the gap between rich and poor to be not very great. No American investment bankers in my ideal society. Also, poverty in the third world is largely related to wealth in the rich countries. There simply aren't enough natural resources in the world to support _both_ the super luxurious lifestyles of the Western oligarchy and the basic needs of people in Guinea-Bissau, Paraguay or Bangladesh. For example, the more hydrocarbons that we use in this country on heating our large houses and fueling airplane travel, the more it throws in doubt the ability for poorer countries to use those hydrocarbons (which are after all a limited resource) for necesities like fertilizer.

3)To say that 'inequality' is part and parcel of reality is like saying the same thing about unchastity. True, but there are degrees and degrees of inequality which are rather different from each other. The gap between an American investment banker and a Bangladeshi slum dweller is not really comparable to the gap between Hunter A and Hunter B in a hunter gatherer band.

4) There's every reason to worry about China and the oversupply of young men. China isn't a democracy even in the sense that the Western countries are, so it doesn't matter what these young men or their mothers would like. It matters what the government thinks, and I can easily see the government deciding to use foreign conquest as a safety valve for its excess male population.

Posted by Hector | April 1, 2008 8:07 AM

You forgot looming demographic catastrophe. The "One Child" policy coupled with the targeted abortion of girls is going to bite them in the ass.
Posted by danceswithgoats

A China with 2.1 billion people contending for a decent life in a land with the water and energy resources to support 600 million decently is a lot worse than having 1.1 billion. The demographic lesson "surplus males" is trumped by "insufficient younger people" to be discarded in war and not kept to run an economy to support older people. That is what already happened in Europe. Great reluctance to lose your only child in war. Whereas high birth rate times aligned well with periods of Euro aggressiveness and expansion outside Europe of people of their ethnicity, and within Europe in the recorded history of continental wars and impact of primogeniture on what 2nd, 3rd, 4th born males in families did. (the choices since 1st born got the estate was war, priesthood, crime, or scraping out a living in landless commerce activities).

Same pattern today. High-breeding African and Islamoids ethnics are the source of most of the world's criminal and war activities. Not moderate-breeding Italians, Argentinians, Chinese, etc.

**********************
And I'd take issue with Vanya regarding Chinese "expansionism". Except at the (relatively uncivilized tribal) margins, I don't think that Han-controlled territory has changed much in the last couple of thousand years.

RKU, Vanya is correct, you are wrong about the Han myth the Han are fond of citing that they are not expansionist...which any look at history shows is about as credible as "Islam is not expansionist! We are the Religion of Peace!" mythology.

The Han have mostly done Borg-like expansions engulfing and assimilating, then eradicating other ethnic identities, mostly within the last 1000 years.

Vanya - Do you realize that to this day in many provinces of China there still live dozens of different minority peoples, the beleaguered survivors of centuries and centuries of Han expansion? The myth that China "never expands beyond its borders" takes it for granted that the Chinese borders are what the Han people say they are, and not what Tibetans, inner Mongolians, Manchurians, Uighur, Kazakhs, Naxi, Bai, Yi, etc. (as well as Vietnamese and Koreans right up to the 19th century) would like them to be.
China has always attempted to expand to the limit of its possibilities. That doesn't make the Chinese particularly bad - the West is no better, but it's also a myth that China is some sort of pacifist country happy to look inward.

Adding that the expansionist drive of the Han may be slow, but it is inexorable and profound. I would add to Vanya that last year, China passed several milestones in recent years. (1)The Han invaders now constitute a demographic majority in Tibet after 50 years of slow slaughter of Tibetans and Han colonization.(2)The Han now have achieved 85% of the population of Manchuria.(3)The conflict with the Turkic Muslim areas is about Han colonists. (4)The Chinese are now settling in Burma and Han are attempting to insert enough of their people to effectively exploit the resources of Burma for the mutual benefit of the Chinese and the dictators. (5)The Chinese are moving to replace Hmong mountain outposts within China and expel the people to Laos.

And note that China is aggressively pushing for more Chinese to move overseas, while China demands those settlers in America, Canada, Europe, SE Asia continue to view themselves as Han Chinese 1st and foremost and assist the Chinese people as their duty when called on to help with commercial or military intelligence..Ask a Chinese-American if people in the Home Country view them as American or Chinese...

Finally, China in it's own view is a victim of "Great Humiliations". Which is quite troubling, because in the Chinese view, that natural order is that all nearby nations acknowledge the Primacy of the Han and render Tribute to them. Then internal war, the Europeans and then the Japanese violated the natural order. Which must be restored. This has been a cornerstone of the Chicom creed - To Avenge the Great Humiliations. Which means that the Chinese place great emphasis on teaching the Chinese that the "deal" that was cut in ancient times was that other peoples like the Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Nepalese, Manchurians, E Siberians, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Koreans, Tibetans, Burmese, even the Indians in some iterations, could all live in happy harmony with the Chinese. Who would be their Father Nation protecting against outside barbarians in return for respecting Chinese wishes and modest tribute...And that the goal is a peaceful, but nevertheless revanchist, restoration of returning those wayward nations to their proper sphere as China's satellite peoples..

All those factors indicate that a dominant China could be a headache and that is why none of the nations near China buys the myth of inward-looking China and either look for a compromise with China or deals with the USA-Japan-India axis to contain China.

Everyone expects Taiwan will be the next target, and how that is dealt with will define Pacific diplomacy for some time...

Posted by chris ford | April 1, 2008 11:04 AM

Maynard: "Wishing doesn't make it so. Ever heard of something called fusion? Fifty+ years on, and we're still fifty+ years away from getting it to work in a practical fashion."

Fusion is brand new science. Nanotech is mostly new technology with some new science. We don't KNOW fusion can work until it works. We KNOW nanotech can work because it works in nature - all we need to do is figure out how to control it.

Nanotech research has made major strides much faster than fusion research. It's also a hell of a lot cheaper to do. There's simply no comparison.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 5:25 PM

JonF: "I have no moral qulams about ther being rich people, if we could eliminate brutal poverty."

I agree with you on that completely.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 5:29 PM

"There simply aren't enough natural resources in the world to support _both_ the super luxurious lifestyles of the Western oligarchy and the basic needs of people in Guinea-Bissau, Paraguay or Bangladesh. For example, the more hydrocarbons that we use in this country on heating our large houses and fueling airplane travel, the more it throws in doubt the ability for poorer countries to use those hydrocarbons (which are after all a limited resource) for necesities like fertilizer."

Hydrocarbons are a poor example. Technology, especially nanotech, can change most of these sorts of examples.

And not everyone needs to or even desires to live like Paris Hilton. Most poor people in the world would be satisfied to live like a US middle class citizen (they might want more, but their ability to get it will still be limited as human differences in abilities remain - for a while at least.)

And as I mentioned above, it has not been established that the "carrying capacity" of the Earth is not capable of this. And again, this is not even considering the full impact of new technology, which is virtually guaranteed in this century.

Again, however, in the future it will become apparent that the best way not to consume all available resources is to become an entity that does not need to consume those resources to insure its survival.

And only nanotech can make that possible.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 5:38 PM