Economist Fact-Checks Zeihan's China Collapse Story

Jesus...China cope, let's see your balance sheet buddy. At least we know that Peter is a shill for the USA....pretty clear who you are shilling for now.

Whilst I agree Zeihan exaggerates, on the second point which you say is the most important (pop decline), this cannot be fixed by more rural to urban migration. 2/3 of young people have already left for cities. Increasing retirement age also won't work because claiming pensions isn't a thing in China. Old people are paid for by their family. It's best not to accuse Zeihan of getting basic facts wrong because you got even more basic ones wrong.

Thank you for your research and insights.

My guy China has to important every man resource. Food, Metals, oil, etc. They are dependent on every other nation to sustain its economy. You're literally the degreed moron people talk about. Evergrande just went bankrupt their economy is shot.

Zaihan is the Alex Jones of Economics. My ten years in Beijing tells me; "always bet on RED". Your critique of Zaihan was 100% correct. Stagnation and even civil unrest in third tier cities wont bring China down. The wealth of those in the top 14 mega cities in China will certainly continue and self sustain for years to come. Beijing will course correct as they have internally since 2014 including the PLA. Correcting the property market after anti corruption drive was inevitable however the system of provincial authority that allowed local governments to fund themselves through property is what brought about the Tofu Dreg constructions and many completely unneeded cities. I would expect serious reform in the shadow banking sector.

Lightly researched bull shitter farming our views by trying to take down books with a couple googles. First and last watch of this channel.

to the point that young people are not the biggest spenders. Your own graph shows a drop off with age. So "20s and 30s" is wrong, but the main point that old people don't spend is correct.

To the demographics being pesimistic. The comparison examples you used don't make sense. Bulgaria is a tiny country that industrialized over a period of more than 100 years. China is huge and industrialized in only a couple decades. The speed and scale of the demographic collapse make it a qualitatively different beast.

China does depend on US navy for piracy protection. Huthis. Comparison to US navy via ship count is just asinine. They can't control hormuz with small ships that can't make it more than 500km from their mainland coast. You're making it out like there are only two sizes of ships: carriers and other. Zeihan is saying that carriers are not ideal because tehy're SO big. He's not saying that local fishing ships with a machine gun mounted on the front are good. China has precisely one foreign naval port. Then they have their sinking islands in the South China Sea.

The argument that access to foreign food will just magically be replaced by local production forgets entirely that 70% of modern agricultural output is dependent on fertilizer, which is made from fossil fuels, which are imported. Also, developing a farm takes time. People die without food in a mere three weeks.

Energy from Venezuela? Ha HA Ha. It's a literal failed state. Energy infrastructure costs 10s of Billions of dollars to build and takes years to decades to construct.

Solar and wind are just not capable of cutting it for China. The build out will take decades to bring the grid and all the necessary support infrastructure into play.

To the idea that losing their savings won't cause political upheaval because it didn't in Japan. Um, maybe at least read the wikipedia page on Japanese political history. Japan is a democracy, loss of support for the ruling party doesn't cause collapse. China is not a democracy.

To the idea that China will put a floor under the financial system. Capital flight has already begun. Evergrand has been ordered to liquidate. If the liquidation is allowed to go ahead, it will force people to write down what these empty condos are really worth. At the end of the day, you can't keep pretending that empty condos have value.

No evidence that Xi can't respond to problems coherently? COVID! As reported in the FT in early 2020, Xi disappeared from all public appearances in January to March of 2020. According to the FT, this is likely because he was blind sided by Covid, because his advisors had failed to inform him of it, so he withdrew to research before looking ignorant. Then the idiocy of zero-covid.

If Chinese economy is so terrible why do people except their payments for goods

Also you are really bad at communicating what sort of detailed information you did see when researching his claims. All you said was “I didn’t find anything to support this” as if you couldn’t find information yourself and do any analysis not already performed by someone else. Zeihan is full of hot air, but you are full of something else

Your analysis of the difference between US and Chinese Navy’s demonstrates that you are a layman on the topic, your analysis is very wrong. Chinese ships lack the operational range and support infrastructure globally to effectively police the seas. International trade without the US navy would be limited and China would be limited to a very small portion of it.

Thank you... An intelligent rebuttal. Q: Since no one can trust any information coming out of China (Art of War deception) how do either of you know the truth? Educated guesses or propaganda... vs the truth.

Your analysis is actually so ill informed, that as much as I disagree with Zeihan, you are so sub par that I think he wins on all counts against you. You are not smart

Zeican is sleeping.. It is USA more likely to be drying and dying when 34 Trillion debts will collapse on it bcos USA is more isolated when USD is loosing steam. The BRICs is also a reason for a collapse for USA and EU.

Still want to know how much China paid Marco for this

People like Zeihan play an important role in the progression of history.

During WW2 there was intense propaganda in the US against the Japanese. They were illustrated as small, weak, and backwater peoples. The American public felt very confident that they would quickly win. As the war continued, the public started questioning why the bigger, macho, and civilized Americans had not won yet. At this point, interest in funding the war effort through bonds had started to dwindle. During the Battle of Iwo Jima, many casualties occured at the hands of the "small, weak, and uncivilized" Japanese. This caused public outrage and had many to consider just leaving Japan alone. Thankfully, the American government pushed thru and were able to overcome this obstacle at home, but they needed to end the war quick. Any further delays would have caused the public to lose even more faith in their nation.

Zeihan and all the other doomsayers re China, to me, serve two purposes. One is that they are making everyone complacent, giving a false sense of security. "It's bad here, but at least we aren't China." If we follow Western growth models, China has not reached its peak yet and is just experiencing turbulence, as all nations do.

The other purpose is that these people give China good cover. They make everyone believe that China sucks and is really about to collapse this time, but it still hasn't. The only people they are convincing are those who are afraid to dig deeper and get out of their own circle jerk.

Whether you like China or not, they've been around for millenia. For most of history they've been on top. It's not impossible for them to be on top again.

When this guy was spouting absolute made-up nonsense about bitcoin, he showed his true colors. He’s a con man.

If I have to make a fact check of this presentation, i would say that there are huge "forgotten topics" the fact that the actual authoritarianism didnt lead to bad decision shocked me. Especially after catastrophic management of the covid and the huge tech crunch that led to the crash of the HongKong stock market....

The argument that China will raise its retirement age is absurd, anyone with half a brain understands that in intense labor that China has been so good at will never be nearly as efficient if it comes to a point where they rely on older people to do jobs that millennials (and sadly minors) do faster and cheaper. They would never encourage having more babies if they thought this was a viable option imo. Moving people from rural areas seriously? Those were just contrarian attempts to disprove Zaihan. I do appreciate your points and you make an interesting case and show that you are trying to be objective

The overall behaviour of the ccp and acquisitions investments and nation takeovers tell the tale of how they will continue to rise despite the silly arguments of zeihan

Nearly all your points are either trivial to Zeihan’s argument or involve cherry-picked data that runs counter to everything else we know. Congrats on the views, tho.

..."even country like Poland"... Thanks for a discriminating comment that represents how kind you're as a person!

He worked for the state dept, and in private intelligence. Just so happens to support sending massive amounts of money to the most corrupt country in Europe. Coincidence?

Okay... they are trying to make people have more babies... but the effects of that will be a long time coming if they find success... and they aren't finding success as far as I know. People are buying pets and the pet market is absolutely booming. Young people are pessimistic about the future and many are unemployed. Many have no dreams of having a family and children given the financial situation they are in.

Zeihan's just a hack.

You're either purposefully misrepresented a lot of his arguments or you don't understand them. I'm not necessarily a proponent of his ideas, but I would have hoped a more accurate analysis, especially because you claim to be an economist and thus have an unbiased (or less biased) pov. Pretty dissapointed by this video.

I think Zeihan's argument about China not advancing technologically is more about them not developing their own R&D sectors, therefore they are still reliant on IP theft. I don't know how true this is of why this would not be sustainable, as they could in principle keep " stealing" european and american IP.

The food crisis does not have to do with its current reliance on imported food, but the fact that are deeply reliant on the resources to farm, gas for fertilizer, phosphate etc. They couldn't continue their modern farming practices if they got cut off.

This guy is an apologist for China.

If all the weather men exchanged jobs with all the economists, nobody would notice.

I depend on my Musk-o-meter. Is Elon Musk still investing or selling? I assume he knows more than I. As for the fairness of your analysis, Zeihan is predicting future trends. AND he is foolish enough to predict the economy . NO ONE can predict the economy.
I did enjoy your work and I will watch several more. TY

I think Peter is correct on his points. But when it comes to picturing China's collapse. That is where I don't see it. And he really doesn't mention what that means. Revolution? New government? China breaking into smaller states like USSR?

I mostly take it as Chinese citizens will just suffer more. I mean, how many died under Mao??

I just finished watching Ziehan's talk on the impending China economic and tech collapses. My one thought, fact check.

Nice to hear other views on this subject.

Remember how he was predicting like half of China was gonna die overnight if they removed the COVID lockdown? I remember lol

Chinese ships lack the range in order to patrol the long trade routes. And I think you underestimate the impact of piracy. What happened in the red sea has confirmed that it is enough a little bit pirate activity to make insurance companies to cancel their insurances and so that make the shipping companies to abandon that route completely. Otherwise thanks for the great analysis.

under 35 yo spending doesnt include spending on college so the actual numbers on graph arent accurate. If China's pop crashes and is aging out then there is a huge labor shortage meaning their labor costs will skyrocket so your argument vis a vis Mexico is moot. AND moving the pop into the city-who the hell is going to grow their food? And if China continues to throw money at any scheme that employs people the Chinese will never get more productive.

Zeihan's commentary on the vulnerability of shipping routes looks to be proven correct.

See Zeihan is not wrong per se.... He just needs to tone down his wild predictions.

China may not collapse but is very likely to go into a Japan like coma state due to demographics issue. Which is more than certain

I’m thinking that comparing big ships to little is laughably irrelevant. PS I think the food problem is kind of a city thing… Are you really an economist?

My friend spent the last 25 years in China. He fled back to the US. Chinas president beat up investment, and screwed property owners. They sold their $450k home for $350k and had to send out money in increments of $50k to bypass Chinas restrictions.

Ah, disagreement between economist, geopolitical thought.Just like stock analysist

No issue with what he is saying, but reality shows Chinas labor cost has increased significantly. If the US can purchase from Mexico, why buy China? Where will China sell it's products? India?

1. You pick on data point from the US to debunk, I would like to see more than the US to make this claim. Seems like cherry-picking to me. 2. You point out that China has more ships and claims that it cannot protect shipping lanes. This is a clear indicator that you have no idea of how this works and the capacities of their power projection. here’s the short answer, they can’t leave the South China Sea. And they are surrounded by countries that hate them. They cannot protect global shipping lanes. Period.

NR 1 rule: Don’t listen to anyone but yourself because you know what is the right thing to do

Peter is a bit early and a bit extreme in his predictions. But, being early is a good thing for me as it shows his willingness to be CONTRARION which is required to balance the MSM narrative that China is going to take over the world. One of the better aspects of all his work is that he identifies who supplies the intellectual capital to keep things running.When the US pulled out all US knowledge workers from China, their ability to keep things running did seem to be reduced. His analysis on the chip hierarchy is quite compelling. The one bias I have against Peter is is his overly bullish US bias.

man hahhahahahhahahhahahhahahha Peter has mistakes in his arguments. but you are way way way off chart. Hhahahhahhahahhaha are you talking about Japan and Nigeria hahahhahhahhahhahahhahahhahahahhahahhahhaahhaha Japonia is not producing for the companies of other states who are looking for cheap labor. Nigeria hahahahhahahahha man for real? look Nigeria has incresed in population hahhahhahahhahhahahhahha. man you don't understand what is relevant and what is not. Bulgaria exploded because he entered UE. Just because there are other factors that does not mean the most important factors are not factors anymore.

I think you are wrong about consumption. It really boils down to a single accounting trick - do you account for buying a house at the time when it is bought, i.e. committed to, or while it is being used? Zeihan is probably using the former and you the latter. I agree with Zeihan, because it is about the commitment to future spending that is important. Not only when the cash flow happens.

If a person makes enough predictions, some of them are bound to come true. Then, far in the future, there will be fools who that person was wise.......

Accountant versus Zeihan, no match, accountants are useless and only good for bean counting and have zero wide skills.

This guy is a grifter.

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