from Hacker News

A New Cold War Has Begun (2019)

by ALee on 6/7/20, 3:22 PM with 65 comments

• by shasheene on 6/7/20, 4:31 PM

  Due to decades of Deng Xiaoping's One Child Policy, China is a slow motion demographic car crash that's impossible to stop. China will "get old before it gets rich", and the days of 6% growth aren't coming back.

  I recommend anyone interested in geopolitics and the world over the next 30 years to watch this lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AvNT3vyzr0

  It's the best overview of the future wealth and strength of brutal Chinese dictatorship that I've come across.

• by riffraff on 6/7/20, 4:25 PM

  >Because, in a very different way than the old Soviet system, the Chinese system—the more authoritarian it gets—is over time more prone to crack up than America’s.

  I don't understand: what does the author think the difference is? I may have read the article without enough attention but I didn't get it.

  If anything, I got the idea it's less likely to crack.

• by ipnon on 6/7/20, 5:01 PM

  The low-tech economies of China and America are integrated, but what about the high-tech ones? Can American companies create sub-apps on WeChat like Chinese ones can?

  As far as I know, US-Soviet trade was not comparable in scale to US-China trade. Did a lack of trade prolong the Cold War of the 20th century?

• by sametmax on 6/7/20, 5:41 PM

  Why does everything has to be a war with the US?

• by gohai on 6/7/20, 6:02 PM

  Note: this article is from 2019. Perhaps the title could be updated to reflect this.

• by mleonhard on 6/7/20, 6:49 PM

  > With the waning of the liberal world order, a more normal historical era of geopolitical rivalry has commenced, and trade tensions are merely accompaniments to such rivalry.

  Background on "liberal world (economic) order":

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_economic...

• by scottlocklin on 6/7/20, 6:57 PM

  >For several decades, China’s breakneck development was seen positively in the United States, and the relatively enlightened authoritarianism of Deng Xiaoping and his successors was easily tolerated

  It was seen positively because our ruling caste of self-regarding morons thought China was more likely to become a liberal democracy as they became more prosperous and integrated with the world economy. An obvious delusion, even at the time. By contrast, the Chinese looked at what happened to Russia and decided to stick with totalitarianism in their economic development.

• by troughway on 6/7/20, 4:28 PM

  Begun? You have to be tonedeaf or willfully ignoring the amount of IP that Chinese corporate spies have outright stolen from North America over the last few decades.

  Let’s be honest - we have strong cyber security considerations because of very few, but very known bad actors. China is near the top of that list and has been for awhile.

  Nevermind all the other security considerations.