I'm curious why you think China will decline or be eliminated, I always thought that China was a reliable as a production/trading partner and that they planned for decades ahead with programs like Belt and Road Initiative unlike western politics that only looks as far as the next election. Very open to correction on this though, thinking about it not sure what formed my opinion on this.

▲ azinman2 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It’s foolish to be completely dependent on anyone else, no matter how stable the CURRENT situation is. We’ve seen this with the gulf countries and Strait of Hormuz, China with rare earth metals, Ukraine with grains, etc. Once China goes to take Taiwan all bets are off…

▲ jorts an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Their aging population will pose an extremely serious problem in the coming decades.

	▲	dhx 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If demographics are a problem for chipmaking in China, then it's good to compare against key chipmaking countries. To compare, 2024 (UN) fertility rates (highest-lowest):[1] `US: 1.62 Japan: 1.23 China: 1.02 ROC: 0.86 ROK: 0.75 (where an increase to 0.8 in 2025 was cause for celebration, as is a predicted increase to 0.85 by mid 2026)[2]` Alternatively (and perhaps accounting for migration etc), UN 2024 forecasts population differences in these countries between 2024-2050 as:[3] `US: +10% Japan: -16% China: -8% ROC: -6% ROK: -12%` [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer... [2] https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/01/24/IVHGRT... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...

▲ actionfromafar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The Belt and Road initiative is a nice try, but it's not a roaring success. The flaws of democracies are easy to see because of the openness, and whatever goes wrong usually do so over a long time. Dictatorships go wrong in more dramatic ways.