> What's going to replace it? Rapidly aging China?

Using the age profile of a country with over a billion people to dismiss its geopolitical power has no credibility.

More appropriate to point out their (our) lack of domestic chip production and outsourcing of critical technologies.

>Using the age profile of a country with over a billion people to dismiss its geopolitical power has no credibility.

The first two charts are for GDP, which correlates pretty well with geopolitical power. Moreover if we're going by population, wouldn't that imply India, and then later Africa are going to be superpowers?

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dathinab 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

GDP is subtle broken in many ways

A "in general" correlates with geopolitical power doesn't necessary mean you can point at a specific case look at their GDP and come to a good conclusion. Especially not if it's as much of a special case as China.

> wouldn't that imply India, and then later Africa are going to be superpowers?

which might actually happen. If the US falls further from grace and the situations stays like that for a few decades, or the US and another huge power (e.g. China) fall into some costly conflict then India or a union of African countries have a serious chance to become a world super power.

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=> But more relevantly this discussion is going into red hering argument direction:

- No one argued that you should go _only_ by population, the argument is, that if a country with a gigantic population shrinks hugely they still have enough people left to wage large scale wars.

- Similar no one (should) argue that GDP is by itself meaningful for such an assessment, it's one imperfect not supper reliable statistical point. Especially given how things move wrt. dark factories (i.e. fully automated => no light one as no human there), AI and similar. Yes, if GDP is supper low or high that says a lot, but a lot is not everything and a average GDP for decade long trends in a word looking to face a major time of change means not much in any direction.

- Similar we are speaking about decade long developments, current military strength ist also just another non fully reliable indicator. E.g. Germany post WW1 had close to actual 0/no military strength, and then there was WW2 just a few years later...

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gruez 20 hours ago | parent [-]

So going by one statistic (GDP) is bad, but going by another (population) gets a pass because... China's "special"? I'm sorry, but that just sounds like a special pleading. I don't like this because it just turns arguments into a fact-free zone where objective facts don't matter and the only thing that does is handwavy vibes from either side. Is China going to be the dominant superpower? The supporters can handwave endlessly about robot armies and the superiority of an authoritarian political system. The detractors can handwave endlessly about the demographic crisis and the fragility of an authoritarian political system.

	▲	dathinab 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I litterally wrote a comment saying going by a single statistic is not sufficient. and it's not China being hadwaving "special" but the measurement you are applying really not working well for a country which is only half capitalist and half planed economy. Which is a separate argument from dark factories which is about (non low end) production in China getting increasingly decoupled from human worker and in turn is way less affected from a population collapse then it would be in other countries. This has nothing to do with robot armies, an argument you just made up, even if China would lose half their population they still had more people and in turn can theoretically man a larger army _even if they have a by % much larger population collapse_, they don't need any Robot army. Similar no one said their system is superior. Or do you mean the US, as a two party system with an extremely powerful president is something some would call semi authoritarian. Either way China having done some pretty effective decisions in recent years in some areas doesn't in any way mean it's the better system. Like a Monarch can do grate decisions, but Monarchy is still is a very bad system. Either way I also can't follow you how you jump from a listing of rough facts to there supposedly being a fact free zone. What there isn't is a single simpel conclusion. I mean it's a discussion where a single bad decision of a larger power can easily cause a unpredictable chain reaction which completely changes what are and aren't likely outcomes. The world is inherently complex and not everything has a simple black/white conclusion, actually most things don't have one. You can only look at all available metrics and do a guess what the future will bring.

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andsoitis 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> wouldn't that imply India, and then later Africa are going to be superpowers?

Conventionally, a continent isn't a superpower. A country is.

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graemep 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Africa is not a country.