{"id":555515,"date":"2026-03-21T19:27:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/555515\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T19:27:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T19:27:24","slug":"china-is-quietly-looking-weaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/555515\/","title":{"rendered":"China is quietly looking weaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1980s, a lot of people wrote books and articles about how Japan was going to be the world\u2019s leading country. The most famous of these was Ezra Vogel\u2019s Japan As Number One: Lessons for America<\/a>. At the same time, in 1989, Bill Emmott wrote a book called The Sun Also Sets: The Limits to Japan\u2019s Economic Power<\/a>, in which he predicted that Japan would revert to the mean. History has judged Emmott the winner of this contest of ideas. He didn\u2019t get everything right \u2014 his characterization of Japan as an export-led growth model didn\u2019t fit the facts<\/a>, for instance \u2014 but in general, he got more right than wrong. His analysis of Japan\u2019s financial weakness, aging challenges, and low service-sector productivity were right on the money. <\/p>\n

At the time, though, with Japan at its zenith, it was easy to make Vogel-like predictions of continued domination, and it was out of vogue to be a contrarian like Emmott. The same is true of China today. Over the past few years, skepticism of China\u2019s rise has mostly evaporated in the West, and most Americans now believe that China has either overtaken their country or will do so in the near future:<\/p>\n

There are still a few hawkish types out there writing articles about China\u2019s coming collapse, but almost no one is paying attention. All the attention is on Chinese cars<\/a>, Chinese cities<\/a>, Chinese trade surpluses<\/a> \u2014 or on America\u2019s flailing in the Middle East, its chaotic policymaking, its divided society, and its inability to manufacture anything in volume. Between America\u2019s dysfunction and China\u2019s technological achievements, the idea of a Chinese Century has become conventional wisdom. <\/p>\n

In a post last year, I assessed that this conventional wisdom was probably right \u2014 that the 21st century would be a Chinese century, although China\u2019s dominance wouldn\u2019t be as pronounced or as beneficial to the world as America\u2019s was in the 20th century:<\/p>\n

\"WillWill this be the Chinese Century?<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I made the same mistake that Ezra Vogel and many others made when assessing Japan in the 1980s \u2014 of just assuming that recent trends would continue. China is about 12 times the size of Japan. It can dominate the world, industrially and geopolitically, without ever coming close to the U.S. or even Japan in terms of per capita GDP. <\/p>\n

I also hedged my bets a bit<\/a>. Though I\u2019ve always been highly skeptical of the idea that demographics will sink China (I think they\u2019ll be more of an annoying but minor drag<\/a>), and although I don\u2019t think China\u2019s housing bust will sink it, I do think that China\u2019s dictatorial system is already putting it in danger via the personal failings of Xi Jinping:<\/p>\n

\"XiXi Jinping is the main thing holding China back<\/a><\/p>\n

In the past couple of months, though, I\u2019ve become more of a Chinese Century skeptic than I was before. I\u2019m not quite ready to write a Bill Emmott-style book about how China is going to bump up against hard limits. But I do see several factors that have adjusted my thinking a bit in the direction of China-pessimism, and I don\u2019t see a lot of other people writing about these. So I thought I\u2019d write a post about why I\u2019ve updated.<\/p>\n

Basically, the four things I\u2019ve noticed are:<\/p>\n

China\u2019s industrial policy is hitting its limits faster than I expected<\/p>\n

The rapid rise of AI agents makes me think that China\u2019s technological advantage is less defensible<\/p>\n

Xi Jinping is entering his paranoid \u201cDeath of Stalin\u201d phase earlier than I expected<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attacks on Venezuela and Iran, whether you think they were good ideas or not, demonstrate possible Chinese military weakness<\/p>\n

These factors don\u2019t mean I expect China to go into decline today or within the next few years. But I do now think there\u2019s a good chance that China is now stumbling in ways that will become more apparent in a decade or two, and will cause it to disappoint many of the current boosters and bulls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1980s, a lot of people wrote books and articles about how Japan was going to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-555515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}