Why China Will Not Become the Dominant Power in Asia

[ReverendSpecialK]

Interesting lecture on China's future, economy, politics and military by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb and Adjunct Associate Professor John Lee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0

[another505]

Interesting lecture on China's future, economy, politics and military by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb and Adjunct Associate Professor John Lee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0

can you give a summary

tl;dw, maybe later

[ReverendSpecialK]

Excerpt of the video summary:

The belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is based on assumptions that its continued and rapid economic rise, and its emergence as a regional peer of America’s in military terms is all but assured. Such a belief underpins arguments that a fundamental strategic reorganisation of Asia is inevitable, and that it will be necessary and perhaps even desirable to concede to China significant ‘strategic space’. Dependent largely on linear extrapolations about the future, such arguments ignore the implications of China’s economic, social and national fragilities, its lack of major friends or allies in the region as well as the considerable military deficiencies and challenges faced by the People’s Liberation Army. With the Defence White Paper due for release in 2015, the government should bear in mind that planning for an era of Chinese dominance in the region—or even its emergence as an American strategic peer in Asia—would be premature if not improbable. Australia should not design its defence force for war with China, but it should be able to counter Chinese coercion and contribute to Allied military operations if necessary.

[Admiral Piett]

Yeah, there are a lot of lectures and books about this floating around. I never like dealing with "inevitability" myself when it comes to such issues. China has an awful lot of internal problems it needs to deal with. Luckily for average Mr. and Mrs. Li, Xi Jinping seems to be well aware of that and is working rather hard at fixing stuff and removing all the old-school minions of Jiang Zemin who basically trashed the country for 20 years. Whether or not Xi started the process in time is something no one can predict. He has been heavily purging the PLA's top leadership and the propaganda ministry lately (Liu Yunshan seems to be next on the "anti-corruption campaign" hit list.), and he is finishing up with the internal security services. Rumour has it he may actually be quietly shutting down the 610 Office, the Chinese Communist Party's extralegal security service (not unlike the Gestapo), since the old head was removed on corruption charges and has interestingly not yet been replaced. Xi has also started to reign in the blatant fabrication of economic data that was rampant for the last couple decades since he realized lying to everyone about China's growth rate wasn't the smartest thing to do. The official figures are still higher than various independent assessments, but the gap between the two is starting to slowly shrink.

The PLA itself is getting better. Corruption and a poor command structure are its two biggest problems right now, the former is currently being addressed (don't know how well though) and the latter. Well. We will see. They REALLY need a joint operational command structure though, it is pretty embarrassing that they don't. Right now they are supposed to be a big, scary, modern military force, but they have one of the most inefficient, bureaucratic and, quite frankly, archaic command structures in the world. There was lots of talk about military reform in 2014, but that rapidly disappeared. My guess is the PLA was bitchin' and moanin' about them losing their prime position to the PLAAF and PLAN and the old guard fought to keep the old, heavily army-centric system in place. Since a large portion of the PLA leadership has been purged and replaced by fresh blood perhaps the reforms may take place soon. Who knows?

[ikalugin]

(watching the video)
The basic argument - that the Chinese growth model is running out of steam is valid. The fact is that GDP PPP wise PRC is already ahead of USA, thus should it continue to growth at a "normal" rate (ie around the same as developed countries) and ignore the pensions problem (it may, as the social security does not appear to be on the top of their list), continue downsizing it's population - it would probably keep it's comparative position.
Even if it does not (and get scaled down), it would still dominate the region due to the US global rather than regional commitments.

The GDP, large industrial base, significant improvement in tech sector, prioritisation of security spending over social spending and huge manpower reserves imply that PLA would receive ammount of both funding and new, increasingly competetive equipment. We all heard the rumours about the Chinese carrier construction for example.

[ikalugin]

From minute 50 - it gets interesting.

[Yakhont]

A bit dry with no slides or diagrams

I recomend this that is short and more colourful. Abit outdated but still relevant

Good primer on China
https://www.stratfor.com/video/chinas-g ... -challenge

[rex88]

In general, bias for or against China developmental trajectory comes in 4 flavors:

1) "I predict China will collapse, because we want China to collapse"
2) "I predict China will rise, because we want China to rise"
3) "I predict China will rise, because we have to prepare for the worst"
4) "I predict China will collapse, because we have to prepare for the worst"

Legend:
1 = hawkish mental wank3rs from the West + bitter and warped exiles from China
2 = Western leftists + nationalist bumpkins from China
3 = Western liberals with commercial background
4 = realists??? does anyone truly think this, or are they category 1 in disguise???

"China collapse theorists" surface frequently these days, but often times people from a same camp also decry how the country is becoming a "major threat". For the past 60 years China's developmental path has quite consistently defied mainstream Western projections (often not in a good way), and the latest round of self-contradictory projections is just another attempt for the so-called "Realist school of political thought" to wrap their heads around a set of utterly alien footprints.

But hey, if you say two contradictory things, you're bound to be half right, and your audience will have to suffer your voice twice instead of once. Why not do it?

[Gronank]

Don't quite see what the big deal is. China has thousands of years of tradition of collapsing, yet it is still there.

[another505]

Don't quite see what the big deal is. China has thousands of years of tradition of collapsing, yet it is still there.

It has thousands of years rising too