In the '80s Reagan brought the Soviet Union to its knees by ramping up the US's military spending and the USSR went bankrupt trying to match it, spending more than 30% of GDP on the military.

Today the CCP is facing a similar dilemma. The massive cost of expanding its military and maintaining the south sea islands is coming at the expense of its citizens, the housing boom that drove much of the economy has delivered 50 million surplus housing units and is starting to stall, the global slowdown and tariffs are creating a manufacturing slowdown, the defaults by citizens and businesses are peaking, and the population is rapidly ageing with retirees reaching 30% of the population in a few decades.

To top it all China's aggressive foreign policies has cost it its allies with the exception of a few despotic 3rd world countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gB_53L2g_o&t=12s

Interesting and complex topic Shadow Minister. In my view the stability of the world is dependent on the fall of the CCP and the dividing of China into at least four parts- Northern, Shanghai, Canton, Western China.

shadow,
In the '80s an overvalued rouble meant the Soviet Union was almost bankrupt before Reagan brought it to its knees. So China's economic problems are hardly comparable.

____________________________________________________________________

Canem,
Why do you think the division of China would be desirable, let alone necessary, for stability?

Nathan,

That the USSR was spending 30% of its GDP on the military didn't help either and nearly as much before 1980.

The major factors against China are:
1 it is spending far more than its revenue and the debts of the state, the local governments, the banks and individuals are becoming unsustainable. The BRI is a disaster with many borrowers set to default. The housing bubble has sucked up the investments of a large % of Chinese savers.
2 The young vibrant workforce from 20yrs ago is now ageing and there are far fewer young workers starting.
3 Just about every neighbour is pissed off and arming itself against Chinese aggression.
4 the favourable trading policies it had with the richer countries is coming to an end, and gov interference in the markets has external people disinvesting.

While nothing immediate is likely to occur, it is beginning to look as though China has peaked.

China has its problems, and that's plain to see. However economically the United States is in a far worse position. The Americans live in a fools paradise believing renewed prosperity is just around corner, whilst all indicators show economically they are in decline. As America resort to excessive militarism as a counter to Chinese expansionism such moves are in no one interests, and should be called out by others, including Australia.

Pauliar,

Once again your complete ignorance of a subject didn't stop you from pontificating on it. Apart from predicting America's doom every time there is a hiccup what else can you add?

desirable, let alone necessary,
Aidan,
Desirable & necessary for some stability for the whole World judging by the present situation !
America couldn't control its Superpower status, Russia is quietly working on it & China is clearly out of control already. It already has far too many people spread over the Globe which is increasingly resented by all.
My money is on Russia ! They're best situated in every way to become the most stabilising global influence.
That of course depends how badly the rest want Peace.

shonkysinister,

You have a mortgage on ignorance, as demonstrated by the laughable claims you make on this forum. Your grovelling adulation of the dysfunctional Trump was clear evidence of your retardation.

Pauliar,

The only things worse than your complete ignorance is your continuous lying and your adulation of the green paedophiles and green thief and homophobe.

P.S. you have yet to prove me wrong.

There is no comparison between the Cold War with the USSR, and the current war with China. The West didn’t get itself hopelessly entwined economically with Russia as it has with China, and there are no Ronald Reagans around now to do anything about it.

China will not "fall" any time soon, if ever. Don't get excited about relatively unknown people who have set up a YouTube chanel so that they can air their personal opinions.

China is a massive world power and how the
West reacts to her will determine the future outcome
in our relations. She's a power that can't be ignored.
She has great capacity for retaliation.

We should all be concerned about her capacity for
chemical warfare. We still don't know where COVID
started and what the future may hold.

Any Nation that rules its citizens with violence will ultimately fall, as the human spirit will resist injustice. It may not fall in our lifetime but it will ultimately fall in generations to come, as its present leaders might be held in high esteem, but generations change and so do leaders.

Foxy,

The similarities between the USSR and China are that the demise of both is due to inefficient/incompetent central planning.

Their ability to retaliate may presently be considerable, but is more likely to wane over the coming decades.

shadow minister,

The following link may be of interest:

http://economist.com/news/21609649-china-becomes-again-worlds-largest-economy-it-wants-respect-it-enjoyed-centuries-past-it-does-not

shadow minister,

I again left out a crucial bit:

http://economist.com/news/essays/21609649-china-becomes-again-worlds-largest-economy-it-wants-respect-it-enjoyed-centuries-past-it-does-not

shadow minister,

I found the link from the Economist a very
interesting read. I hope that you shall enjoy it as well.

Only a scumbag would like to see a fifth of the Worlds population (China) fail. China despite a century of wars, exploitation and mismanagement has shown that it can right itself and provide for its people. Not perfect by any means China has its internal problems, as well as envious external nations which are trying to bring it down.

Pauliar,

You really are a nasty little scumbag troll.

The CCP kills 1000s of its own citizens every year, oppresses millions of minorities, has a judiciary simply to rubber-stamp arbitrary arrests and confiscations and continuously spies on its citizens and killed roughly 50 million people in its cultural revolution.

China emits more GHG than the USA, India and Russia together and is still increasing. It threatens all of its neighbours and is trying to annex territory from them by force.

It is the closest to a fascist state that the world has seen for decades and is in no way a good global citizen. Only a moron couldn't see that.

Foxy,

Thanks for the article I agree with all of it. You only have to compare China to Taiwan to see how China could have been without the communists.

shonkysinister,

As I don't have the same opinion as you on China, you resort to the name calling and attempted insult, water off a ducks back. The answer to the China problem for the World is not belligerence and sabre-rattling leading to war, but rather dialogue and cooperation. Unlike you, I don't have some sycophantic adulation for America. You happily accept mass killings and gendercide by "your" side whilst condemning same by the "other" side, I don't engage in some easy tit for tat exercise but rather condemn both. You want to go down the same old path of condemnation leading to war, history shows us the failure of that folly, Korea, Vietnam, Middle East and Afghanistan should have taught us a lesson, but it seems not, we still have the warmongers and supporters of mass murder, people like you.

So crybaby Pauliar,

First, you dish out the insults and then weep when you get served back. Secondly, I don't recall any mass murders from "my side" for nearly a century. It would appear that you are the only supporter of mass murder on this site.

Secondly, mostly what I have posted about China are well-documented facts and the opinions are of high-level analysts, not just me. But you are entitled to your brainfart opinion.

As for sabre rattling, the western action is in response to the Chinese sabre rattling.

Labor won't be going to the next election thinking about China. The increasingly idiotic Albanese has just announced that climate change - the very thing that lost the ALP the last election - is the most important thing on his agenda,

Albanese continues to be the best chance for that other idiot, Morrison, to continue his also useless reign.

There is speculation this morning in Canberra that the government is about to dump the French submarine. More evidence for China of our pathetic lack of defence; our inability to make sensible decisions. It's the fall of our own country we should be talking about, not China's.

Not mentioned by the rumour-mongers is the News's report that our government has announced a deal with the US and UK for Australian submarines to go nuclear.

Hopefuls are branding the idea as "China's worst nightmare". Hmmm.

It's getting harder all the time to predict what we will get next from our erratic, unreliable government. Some would say that's a good thing, but you can bet that the CCP knows what our government will do before we do.

Any Nation that rules its citizens with violence will ultimately fall,
Josephus,
Some nations have a problem with indisciplined citizens & the way to deal with them is harsher discipline which the indisciplined refer to as violent !

I agree with ttbn on this one. The situation with China, because of economic interdependence, makes it vastly different to the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

"Iron ore with 63.5% iron content for delivery to Tianjin fell further to almost $110 a tonne, less than a half of a record high of $230 hit in May and the lowest level since August 2020 after China, the world’s biggest steelmaker doubled down on production curbs and as a sharp downturn in China’s property sector brought down the demand. The Chinese city of Handan became the latest region to implement restrictions on steel output after provinces of Anhui, Gansu, Fujian, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shandong, and Yunnan were told to limit their production to 2020 volumes amid China’s efforts to curb carbon emissions. Meanwhile, home sales in China slumped 20%, according to Bloomberg calculation, and one of the biggest property developers Evergrande is on the brink of default."

The property development industry in China which until recently constituted up to 30% of GDP and the major consumer of steel is in serious trouble with 50m unoccupied apartments almost entire cities empty and the property prices starting to fall. Nearly every property developer is either bankrupt or close to default.

The Shanghai stock market is dropping daily and the major banks being obliged to lend money to CCP owned property developers are now looking at vast swathes of bad debt.

The Chinese dragon is looking a little hollow.

There is now a fear that China in order to take attention away from its internal troubles may try to invade Taiwan.

A show of force might be needed to stop a tragedy.