Name: Is War With China Inevitable?
Uploaded: 2018-07-12T13:42:53.000Z
Duration: 9 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In 1980, this was the small fishing town of Shenzhen, China.

Adverbs of degree

And here it is just 30 years later, with the population of over 10 million.

In that time, Chinese poverty dropped from 88 out of 100 people to less than 4.

And if you plug China's growth rate of 6.8% into the rule of 70, its economy may double in just 10 years.

To put that in perspective, that the US is growing about a third as fast.

So how is this level of growth for this long even possible?

The answer is, an incredibly tight Iron Fist.

The Chinese Communist Party is not a source of power, but THE source of power.

It elects the leaders of the eight other political parties, and owns everything—from oil, to phones, to tobacco, and life insurance for when that tobacco kills you.

It makes black mirror look utopian, with Social Points determining the train you ride on, and the school your child can attend.

But with absolute control comes absolute efficiency.

With a snap of a finger, cities like Shenzhen became special economic zones—bubbles of kinda capitalism or the market runs free.

Call it capitalist, communist, cruel or corrupt. But it's really good at getting things done.

In a democracy the president's real job is to get reelected,

which means spending today and worrying, about debt tomorrow.

That's the next president's problem, but because China is ruled by one party and its president less influenced by the immediate demands of voters, he can think in the long term.

And with less red tape slowing things down, his words are quick to become reality.

The only system of checks and balances is the world's biggest population ripe for revolt if things slow down.

It's how the country went from ancient to atomic era in only 30 turns.

So you might scoff at the size and budget of its military, but economic power is the ultimate power.

It determines a nation's sphere of influence, and bullets can always be bought.

The government knows its claim to power is rooted in its ability to keep growing.

So there may be ups and downs, but the trend is clear, China is gaining power extremely quickly, and those already in power tend not to share well.

To the leader of a country, war is just another tool of strategy.

If war would deliver more land power or resources than it would cost in dollars and votes, it's usually a go.

And if not, you pretend it never crossed your mind.

Since the US is China's biggest customer and it owes China kind of a lot of money. Both countries have more to lose than gain from war.

Not to mention the enormous destruction fighting would cause.

So is war inevitable? The answer seems obvious. Of course not.

Neither would even want it. But here's the paradox—the same self-interest that makes neither want war also motivates them to act as though they do.

In a world with nuclear weapons and highly dependent economies, war is extremely costly. But that makes the threat of war all the more effective.

Take a country like North Korea. Under normal circumstances, it could never get away with all it does.

But with a finger near or appearing to be near the nuclear button, it can do what it wants without fatal consequences.

It survives because it has convinced the world it's willing to fight, even though war would be its downfall.

So too are china and the US incentivized to convince each other they're willing to fight. It's an amazing tool for getting what you want.

China already does this in the south china sea—nearly colliding with american ships, who it knows would rather back off than risk escalation.

And in theory each knows how much the other really doesn't want war.

But when someone has so much to gain from acting otherwise, they can be very convincing. Just ask Kim.

And it doesn't take much for that performance to become real. This is Thucydides' trap:

Whenever a rising power threatens an established one, the probability of conflict is awfully high, whether between people, companies or nations.

Those in power want to keep what they have and are very quick to see others as threats, and those on the rise don't realize how much of a threat they are.

Say A increases its defense just in case, B may see that as aggression and do likewise.

Which A sees as confirmation—B is a threat.

Escalation has begun without either party wanting it. And for China and the US, there isn't just potential for miscommunication,

Like the rapid and unexpected rise of his country, Xi Jinping went from living in a cave as a teenager to ruling all of China and I mean ALL of China.

He's become known as Chairman of Everything:

For being President; the Party's General Secretary; Chairman of the Military; head of two committees he created for himself, and much much more.

He began a massive anti-corruption campaign to purge anyone, who might weaken his authority.

Then for the first time since Mao, he added himself to the Chinese Constitution.

Just in case you weren't sure who's in charge, he ordered the party's 88 million members to copy the document by hand.

And according to that same Constitution, this should be his final term in office. But instead he's taking the Putin approach, staying in power seemingly forever, by rewriting the rules.

If it isn't obvious Xi has very high ambitions.

He doesn't just want to rise or modernize, but monopolize. Reclaiming control of the Pacific from America:

One China policy; and One Belt One Road policy—connecting China to 68 countries and giving out loads of money for development.

China expands its influence and how could anyone say no? They don't ask about human rights or tack-on conditions, just dirt cheap loans.

This also means insisting it owns most of the South China Sea, even though Malaysia, Vietnam,

Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan beg to differ. And it's become the American military's favorite place to hang out.

Hey, this looks like a neat spot to sail, especially since its international territory, so we totally can.

Meanwhile China is literally dumping sand in the ocean to build new islands, and moving people on them. And it's not really

about land, it's got plenty of that. But THIS specific land. Oil, gas, fish and the passage of 5.3

trillion dollars of trade a year. But even more important is the military advantage. If anyone attacks China, especially the US.

Those few hundred yards of land are the difference between a fight on the mainland and one at a comfortable distance.

It's the same reason China puts up with North Korea. Not because they like them, but because it keeps America an arm's length away.

It's so important to China that it keeps the North alive at

huge political cost, and it's so important to the US that it's pivoted from the Middle East to Asia. And this isn't even mentioning their

disagreements about Taiwan. So the top priorities of two nuclear powers are deeply incompatible, with no easy or obvious solution.

The Internet is very much the same whether visited in Georgia or Georgia. But not in China, not Google or Facebook but

Baidu, and Tencent. Even the biggest companies struggle in China, where national companies dominate. Part of this is because of strict

Chinese censorship. The Communist Party even bans puns, which it says cause cultural chaos, but it's

also about economic control. It looks the other way as its own companies steal intellectual property

and hack American companies, these cost American companies an estimated 600 billion dollars a year. And because the US

considers its economic power central to its national security. This is a

major threat. China is also quietly ramping up its efforts in space and if artificial intelligence is anywhere as powerful as expected,

China is well positioned to lead the future. There's more funding for AI research and far more STEM graduates.

So America can either enforce the rules and risk escalation, or let

China surpass it economically and technologically. You should know, from the law of headlines—any title landing in a question mark can

be answered with NO, that war is not inevitable.

Unfortunately it would take more work to prevent war, the incentives are to escalate so things may get a lot

worse. But actual war could certainly be avoided. That's the same conclusion Graham Allison comes to, in his book Destined for War,

which I listened to on Audible, the absolute best place to find high-quality audio books.

Allison goes into far greater detail including lots of historical examples I ran out of time to talk about

here. You can listen to it or any other book Audible has to offer, completely free, by going to audible.com/polymatter

And in researching for my North Korea video, I listened to the real North Korea. Also on Audible a lot of stories about North Korea are really sensationalized.

But the author of that book actually lived in Pyongyang as an exchange student and talks about what it's really like.

is that I just don't have the time or sometimes patience to sit down and read a book but I can

always just pop in my headphones, while I'm walking to class doing chores or cooking. We all have time during the day,

when we're not really doing anything with our brains, so you might as

Members get one book of any price a month and if you don't like it just choose something else instead it's really really easy.

Start a 30-day trial and your first audiobook is free. Go to audible.com/polymatter or text Polymatter to 500-500

(I don't know why I subbed the last... but whatever.)