The 21st Century Will Belong to China, Demographics is Destiny
This article is part of our documentary series Rationed State. Rationed State Part 2 – Rationing is available here.
Watch the video, it is central to this discussion.
“The World IsFlat” by Tom Friedman extolled the virtues of a global economy, and it became the de facto talking points for liberal intelligentsia to declare “Demographics is destiny, China will own the 21st Century”. This best destiny described by Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman of the New York Times has become so ingrained in our business strategies we became convinced that this prognostication was indeed an accurate forecast as we sent manufacturing off shore.
ADV China offers a well balanced look at China. Watch this video, it is central to this article.
On many occasions Friedman wrote about the superior organization of cities, industry and transportation in China. While lamenting censorship, you get the sense that Friedman felt that the inconvenience of backward US urban planning and lack of centralized planning outweighed well intentioned censorship. China was building great things, better things than the US, so that is the price to pay.
It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.
Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3.
Yes, this is the typical America bashing we have been accustomed to for decades, and in the past, comparisons of Europe to the US has been the foundation of those criticisms. But watch the video included with the article, and you’ll see that there has been a bait and switch swindle that has occurred in China. ADV China, two ex-patriots with businesses in China rightly report how the Ghost Cities in China are crumbling. Yes, after only three years, they are crumbling. Three. Years. The video will show you the construction techniques used, and most telling is that where ree rod and mess should have been used in concrete, wood has been used instead. No wonder these buildings are crumbling and dangerous.
Krugman and Friedman have propped China for nearly two decades, and the result has been investment that has fueled the “miraculous” growth, as well as the myths that China, under technocratic guidance, is the destiny of a sustainable and managed society. China is no longer a communist nation, it has been shaped into something far more sinister. It is a technocratically engineered society that benefit a small group of elite globalists. That is, though the use of technology and under the helm of scientific elitism, and centralized and controlled society has been created which answers to global elite, not merely the CCP. There is top down control of expression of opinion, and when required, violence is used to subdue uprisings like we saw during the COVID lockdowns of ShangHai. But cell phones with a tightly controlled internet are the tools that give the Chinese government the ability to measure and manipulate population and the economy. The Chinese population is a resource that is farmed out to global manufacturing concerns, cheap labor, which attracts investments that the CCP use to fuel their controlled economy. In the early days of communist China, education and science was discarded for approved thought from communal groups. It was consensus, but not based on sound principles of economics, commerce and science as we define them in the west, that drove activity. Today, technocracy is what runs China. It’s far different. It does use economics, science, and demographics to inform planning decisions, but the technocrats securely captures the output and other activities of the Chinese people.
In Rationed State, we detail how the proponents of sustainability are actually technocrats who are of the same mindset as Friedman and Krugman: let the smart, elite employ scientific principles, unfettered, to reshape society. China is the model, they know how to get things done. Look at all the cities they have built in record time.
But the result is that the cities are falling apart. Not in a decade, but within years. This is what the “architects of the future” are delivering in the model for the world to see. Why would you trust them to craft superior food manufacturing or delivery systems for you.