| ▲ | paganel 4 days ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||
China is ten times bigger than Japan was at the time, a big enough difference in quantity has its own quality. China also has a much easier/cheaper access to natural resources compared to Japan, both internally and from external partners that are shunned by the US (think Russia or Iran). | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | hollerith 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
That's not an effective reply to GP because during the process GP describes ("Massive economic growth -> . . .") Japan has enjoyed complete freedom to engage in ocean shipping and ocean trade unless perhaps you want to argue that the knowledge that this freedom to trade could stop at any time (e.g., because of a new world war) prevented Japanese decision makers from making full use of ocean trade. Also, China would not have been able to rise anywhere near as high as it has without intensive use of ocean trade. In other words, although national economic independence matters a lot, it matters only in specialized circumstances, namely, war that is not restricted to only a few countries, but rather spreads to cover large areas of ocean; Washington's deciding to stop policing the world ocean; or Washington's deciding to stop enforcing a policy of freedom of shipping and freedom of ocean trade for every nation (modulo US sanctions). | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | alephnerd 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
The median Chinese in 2025 is also much poorer (edit: and much older [2] and less educated [3]) than the median Japanese in the 1980s or 1990s. China has built a successful tech pipeline, but it doesn't translate to significant prosperity in a country where median disposable household incomes are around $400/mo [0] - much lower than their peers in Thailand [1]. And China's HDI only caught up with Thailand's over the past 2-3 years, and China's GDP per capita has been stagnant for 4 financial years now. This does NOT imply Chinese collapse, but it does highlight real issues that exist with the China story. From a power projection perspective, China has capabilities that very few nations have and can tie with the US, but that has not translated to mass prosperity in the way growth in 1970s and 1980s Japan did. It is still an open question about whether or not China "Japanifies" or not. China is now at a crossroads, similar to what South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia faced in the 1990s. As long as the Xi admin remains avowedly opposed to what he termed "Welfarism" ("福利主义典范国家，中产塌陷、贫富分化、社会撕裂、民粹喧嚣，这不乏警示— 防止落入“福利主义”养懒汉陷阱"), Chinese growth will sputter. [0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t202501... [1] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023... [2] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/median-age [3] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/msch/CHN+JPN/?levels=1+... | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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