Saving China: Three-Child Policy

Young Chinese children

If China was able to curb population growth with the One-Child Policy, can a Three-Child Policy help solve the current Chinese demographic crisis?

The short answer is no. Large families in urban settings don’t make sense. People in their mid-40s aren’t cranking out three kids. And if everyone moved out of the cities to have some space for larger families, China’s entire economic and political control model would collapse.

China would need to pull off a Star Wars-esque rapid cloning situation to have a shot at reversing the demographic decline they’re facing…

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon page. Specifically, how about solutions to China’s demographic problems? What if they started to institute a mandatory three child policy? Short version is clever, but no. Number one, roughly half of the Chinese population now lives in high rise condos. There isn’t room for one kid, much less three. 

So you got a mechanical problem there. And if you wanted to force everyone to have three kids, you’d have to first change the residency style of the country and basically force people out of the major cities where the economic activity is and where the services are, and where the government has control of things and push them back to the outskirts or into, the areas beyond. 

So you might, might, might, might, might, might, might, if you’re really brutal about it, get the birth rate up. But it would come at the cost of the entirety of the Chinese economic model, complete with the way that the Chinese Communist Party controls the population. So, no, second, I don’t even think it’s physically possible anymore, to move the numbers to the degree that are necessary according to official Chinese statistics, which are definitely not correct. 

The average age in China is now 44, 45, and getting people over age 45 to kick out three kids. I’m sorry. That’s just not biologically possible any longer. And that assumes the Chinese data is right, which it of course, is not. The debate within Chinese statistical circles, that is a thing, is how much they have over counted their population by whether it’s just 100 million or something closer to 300 million. 

But there’s a broad agreement that most of the over count are in people under age 40. And if you look at what has happened with the official data, they’re now saying they have roughly 60% as many people age 6 to 0 as they have age 11 to 6. So we’ve got a sharp collapse coming down the pipe, even according to the official numbers. 

If that thins out in the teenagers, in the 20 somethings, then you’re actually looking at the average age in China being a lot higher than 44, probably closer to 54 or even higher. And in that sort of environment, having three kids for the small number of people that they have of childbearing age just isn’t going to move the needle at all. 

Right now, The only theory I’ve even heard that might work, that would allow the CCP to maintain their political and economic system is Star Wars style cloning. 

And for those of you who are not Star Wars nuts, that’s basically taking an embryo, maturing it into a 20 year old in under three years. And the 20 year old that you’ve created actually has the full skill set and become a fully functional adult. Obviously our technology is not there at this point. Certainly isn’t in China. 

But growing an entire new generation of 20 somethings is the only way to make this work. And if you want to do it the old fashioned way, that takes at least 20 years, and the Chinese no longer have enough people to even attempt, regardless of what the government tries to force upon its population.

What Would a Conflict in Taiwan Look Like?

Taiwan flag is shown in an open matchbox, which is filled with matches and lies on a large flag | Licensed by Envato Elements

Let’s discuss what China’s potential invasion of Taiwan would look like.

Should China attack, both Biden and Trump have been explicit that the US would intervene economically and militarily. Beijing doesn’t believe that, though. Despite the echo chamber Xi Jinping has created, deep down, he knows that this invasion doesn’t bode well for them.

China lacks the logistical capabilities to move a large enough force effectively and efficiently across the Taiwan Strait, so Taiwan would have time to prepare, and it would become a shooting gallery. If they somehow managed to capture Taiwan, that would only be the beginning of China’s problems. China couldn’t operate the semiconductor fabs, supply chains would begin to collapse, energy and agriculture imports would falter…

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here come to you from Snowmageddon 2025. We’ve gotten about ten inches, so far. We’re expecting another three before the stops. And if you this is my last video, you’ll know what happened. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon page. A lot of people have been doing war games recently of the Chinese attack on Taiwan, simulating a combined naval and cyber attack. 

And what do I think of their prospects for Taiwanese success? And how do I think the United States, and especially Japan would respond? 

Under the Biden administration and now under the Trump administration, the American policy on Taiwan has actually been shockingly clear. It used to be we had something called basically deniability, where the United States deliberately said that it could neither confirm or deny any particular action. 

We called Taiwan a significant entity and a friendly entity, but not a country that has pretty much gone by the wayside. Now, while there’s not a firm bilateral defense treaty between Taiwan and the United States, both Biden and Trump have said very similar things that if there was an attack, the U.S. would intervene militarily and economically. Now, that is not believed in China. 

In China, the belief is at most they’d have to face some mid-level sanctions, kind of like what the Russians are dealing with with the Ukraine war. But let’s review a few basic facts. Number one, if you think the Trump administration is echo chamber, it is nothing compared to what’s going on in the People’s Republic. Chairman XI purged his last real advisors eight years ago. 

And so anyone who’s repeating the party line is doing just that, repeating the party line. And if you want to get in, good. Well, if you want to get in dead with Chairman XI, the best thing to say. So yeah, Taiwan is a real place. We shouldn’t invade that. That’ll end your career and several other things related to your life very, very quickly. 

Second, it’s a bit of a hop across the Taiwan Straits, over 100 miles. And, the seas are often relatively stormy. So if the Chinese were to pull this off, they would have to build a really large amphibious force. And they are working on that. But the time it would take to merge forces into the zone across from the Taiwan Strait and meet them up with their equipment and then sail them to the few points in Taiwan that you can actually land safely. 

That’s a whole other question. It would take weeks, if not months for the Chinese to arrange. And in that time, anyone else in the world could choose to do something. Most notably, the Taiwanese and Taiwan has had a nuclear power reactor for as long as I’ve been alive. 

So if the Taiwanese decided that they needed to build a few crude nuclear weapons to dissuade the Chinese, that is something that is well within their technical skill set. Third, let’s assume that none of this is relevant, and that the Chinese and the Americans do not intervene militarily at all, even though it would be an absolute shooting gallery taking out all of these troop transports, which are most of which are just civilian vessels that would be attempting to cross the Chinese strategy is literally to shove a million people in the boats and just kind of sail that way. 

It’s not a good plan, but let’s assume that it works. Then what, the Chinese can’t operate their own semiconductor fab facilities. There’s no way they can operate the Taiwanese ones, nor would they even get the plants, because those come from Japan or the United States. So the question then would be, what happens on the next day? 

Remember that the Chinese navy lacks reach. It is designed around the goal of capturing Taiwan, and it would probably be a real sight. But it’s not designed to project power, much less control ceilings. They just don’t have the range. They have a lot of ships, but they’re small and their legs are short. So you put a few ships in the Indian Ocean, maybe in the general vicinity of Malacca, and you cut off the energy artery. 

That’s where two thirds of their energy comes from. You do a few targeted strikes on things like pipelines, and all of a sudden you’ve got a country that imports 80% of its energy, having very little, if any. And that assumes the United States doesn’t do a cyberwar back. So, Chairman Ji, a decade ago knew full well that any meaningful attack on Taiwan is not just the beginning of the end of China’s of strategic power. 

It’s the end of China as an entity. It’s the end of the Hun ethnicity because of energy shortages and famine, because this is a country that imports three quarters of the stuff that they need to grow their own food. And so the decision was made to proceed because for nationalist reasons, they can’t do otherwise. But I really don’t see the strategic math of changing very much. 

All that’s changed is that China today is more dependent on international trade than it was 15 years ago, because 15 years ago, they at least had some people who were, you know, age 40 and under. Now they really don’t have many at all. We’re in the final decade, and if the Chinese are going to try something, they’re probably going to do it in the next decade. 

But if they do, they will be accelerating their utter end and removal from history, because they’re just won’t be enough energy and food to keep what’s left of the population alive. Do I worry about Taiwan? Not really. Does that mean I think semiconductors are safe? Absolutely not. The semiconductor supply chain is the most diverse and fragile thing in the world, and we only have lose one country of significance to globalization or depopulation. 

And the whole thing falls apart. I normally point at Germany is the country I’m most worried about, but as long as we’re talking about China and Taiwan, let me point at China, because they do the processing for a lot of the materials that go into everything. This industry really does take every one, and there’s no version of globalization that can take place over the next 15 years, where we don’t lose the ability to make those high end chips at all.

China’s New Ship: Enter the Sichuan

LHD Sichuan Class Aircraft Carrier | Photo by Wikimedia Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_076_landing_helicopter_dock#/media/File:LHD_Sichuan.jpg

Let’s talk about the Sichuan. And no, we’re not ordering take-out. We’re talking about China’s newest Type 076 amphibious assault ship, similar to the US Wasp-class.

Through the lens of global power projection, this falls short; it doesn’t have the range or speed necessary. However, this ship isn’t meant to cover too much ground. It’s designed for near-coast, amphibious assaults within 1500 miles of China. You know what lies within that range? The first island chain.

If all China wants to do is bully its smaller neighbors, the Sichuan will do the job fine. Should it find itself caught in any real naval combat…I hope they have enough lifejackets.

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Transcript

Hey all Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today, we are going to talk about the newest vessel in the Chinese navy, the Sichuan. It is a 40,000 45,000 ton carrier. And it’s roughly analogous to the US wasp class, which are the core of our expeditionary units. And so, of course, the core questions is, is this something from a military point of view, the United States should worry about, big problem that the Chinese have always had with all of their vessels is while they have teeth and they’ve got decent missiles, and those missiles have reasonable ranges. 

The ships themselves don’t have long legs, and the Sichuan is no exception, that it’s probably maximum emergency speed is less than 25 knots, probably closer to 20, which means that even three days in full sprint, it’s just not going to go that far. From the point of view of global power projection. It does have a wet deck. 

It is designed to help with amphibious landings. But it just doesn’t have the range or the speed to compete with anything that the United States has put in the water, really since the 1960s. It does that mean that it’s a pointless platform? Not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is it’s no good for power projection at distance. 

It can’t operate in the Central Pacific, much less the Indian Ocean or anywhere else. But that is not the strategic environment that the Chinese would like to contest with it. They’re concerned primarily about the first island chain, which are at the line of archipelago, starting with from Japan in the north to Taiwan to Philippines, to Indonesia and Singapore. 

That is the line of islands that basically block in the Chinese and mean that the Chinese are ever, ever, ever going to be a, naval superpower. They need to have a navy that’s at least five times as powerful as the US Navy, because they have to get through all these potential interdiction points or conquer them first before they can even pretend to be a global naval power. 

And the situation in that context is a step in that direction. Basically, if you’re within 1000 1500 miles of the coast, the system can operate, and it’s designed for insidious assaults. So you use those against islands in particular, most notably Taiwan and the Philippines. And for that specific task, this is probably the right ship for their needs. But if it comes up against any capable naval power and I’m talking here, Australia, Japan and the United States, of course, in this theater, want to look elsewhere. 

You’re looking at the United Kingdom or France or Turkey. This ship will go down fast. It’s not quick. It doesn’t have long legs. It requires a massive logistical train, which is something that the Chinese aren’t very good at at all. So in a hot war against a country that actually has a meaningful navy, this thing is almost useless. 

The Chinese aren’t planning on using it against somebody who has a navy. They’re planning on using it to intimidate the weaker powers immediately in the periphery. For that, it’s okay for anything else. It’s a reef.

How Was Trump’s Trip to Asia?

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit

President Trump has wrapped up a whirlwind trip to Asia; he met with several key regional leaders—including Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi and Chinese president Xi Jinping, participated in summits, and crafted some new deals (at least he said he did).

The United States is pivoting away from China and focusing on younger, faster-growing countries in Southeast Asia. This transition has been anything but smooth; wild tariff policies and inconsistent messaging are keeping things…interesting. The Trump administration has made a temporary truce with China, but let’s not expect that to hold very long. Deals with other countries will be nice if they happen, but until I see someone other than President Trump confirm them, I won’t get my hopes up. South Korea is the only tangible progress I’ve seen so far, with $150 billion in US investment in exchange for lower tariffs.

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Transcript

Hey all. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today, I gonna give you a quick breakdown of what happened in Asia last week. Donald Trump had multiple summits in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, up to and including a one on one with, the chairman of the Chinese system, Jinping. So. We’re in the midst of a major transition in the United States in terms of trading partners. 

And whether you think it’s for strategic reasons like the, the micro group and Trump seems to think or you think it’s for demographics reasons, which is kind of my general feel, there’s not a lot of disagreement, as to what’s happening as opposed to why it’s happening. So what’s happening from my point of view, is that the northeastern Asian countries, most notably China, are aging into not just obsolescence but national dissolution. 

And so the trade relationships with countries like China, have to go to zero more or less. Anyway. Now, if you want to do that earlier for political reasons, there’s some complications there. But, we’re going to get to the same places. It’s a question of time frame. On the opposite side of the ledger is Southeast Asia, where the demographics are broadly healthy and the relations with the United States are broadly positive. 

So it makes sense. You want these relationships to grow over time because they can. And if you choose to, denigrate those relationships, you’re making a political choice to punish yourself economically. So the relationships from a tariff point of view under Trump have been, in a word, erratic, with multiple times threats on the Chinese going up to 100% tariffs, and sometimes actually being there, but at the same time, in Southeast Asia, some of the codified tariffs that the Trump administration has put in place, not negotiation tactics, actually codified tariffs are some of the highest in the world, which is directly been penalizing American companies that have been working to move their trade exposure, away from China, since Covid. Anyway, Trump was known in Southeast Asia, met with a lot of the Asean leaders and hammered out a series of deals, most notably with Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. And really across all of them, the the core issue is that these really were only deals as declared by, Donald Trump himself. 

And none of the four countries are really talking about them in the same way. Most of these deals never even had a text released or even a press statement from the hosting government. So it’s all very much in progress. Basically, the approach that Trump seems to be taking is that our trade deficit in goods has been imposed on us. 

And his unfair, but our trade surplus in digital goods has been earned. And so therefore it is fair. If you don’t accept that, you can have tariffs. And needless to say, there’s a lot of countries who find that general negotiating position to be unfair. And so there hasn’t really been any meaningful progress made on the talks. A lot of little details have been popped up like, say, rare earths exports from Malaysia as being a big deal. 

But, you know, Malaysia already exported rare earths to the United States. They just put a limit on the exports to the world, not just the United States. So they would have enough of themselves. None of this has really been changed. And the country that is probably, from my point of view, the most important to the United States mid term as a trade partner would be a Vietnam and more technically technologically advanced than the Chinese are. 

They have over a, you know, workforce. It’s almost 100 million people. If you’re looking to plug gaps, it’s a country you want to plug them with. And we really didn’t get a meaningful deal out of these agreements. Moving up to Northeast Asia, there does seem to be more progress with the Japanese and the Koreans. The Koreans are in a desperate position because the demographics are so bad, and they realize that if they can’t maintain a working relationship with the United States of the kind of screwed as a country. 

So they were willing to give a lot more and we actually got our most detailed deal yet. Out of all the trade negotiations between the Trump administration and the rest of the planet just came out of Korea just a few days ago. That doesn’t mean it’s done. Basically promises that the North Koreans are going to dump, over $150 billion of investment to the United States, which I would argue they were going to do anyway. 

But now it’s codified. And then in exchange, they got a lower tariff rate. This is really the first deal we’ve seen out of the white House that actually has numbers to it. Now, it remains to be seen whether it can be done, because some of the numbers involved are pretty big for a country the size of South Korea, which has under 50 million people, but still progress. 

And then the final deal, with the Chinese will come back to that. Now, before you think that I’m just like, Trump’s an idiot and he doesn’t know how to negotiate, he certainly doesn’t understand trade. Let’s look at this from the Chinese side, because Chairman XI Jinping went to Asean almost immediately after Trump was there and talked about multilateralism and unicorns and chocolate and how we’re all one big happy family and signed a trade deal with the Asean countries, a face three day trade deal. 

So while the Southeast Asians and to a lesser degree, the Koreans and the Japanese are looking at Trump like God, when will this end? They’re not looking at gee and think, oh, thank God she was there. No, no. They’re like, you expect us to believe us that you’re the nice guy, the one who’s been bullying us on every issue for the last 30 years, that suddenly we’re going to love you. 

So you look at Trump and they say he doesn’t understand economics or trade and the right and then they look at gee and like he doesn’t understand diplomacy or trade. And the right one of the things to keep in mind about both leaders is both of them have actively circumscribed the type of people that they allow in the early circle to be people who will never even appear to know more about any topic than they do, because they don’t want to be told that they might be wrong. 

So we have these completely ossified Jared autocracies running the two largest countries in the world right now, and it’s showing up and how they’re dealing with every other country. So really all that leaves for today’s topic is how they dealt with one another because she and Trump met directly in Korea. We have a temporary defuzing of the trade tensions. 

There’s no reason on any side to think that this is going to last. But the Americans agreed to reduce the tariff rate. They were charging the Chinese. They removed their threat of an additional 100% tariff. So based on what the product is, the tariff rate from products coming from China, somewhere between 20 and 50%, again, in exchange, the Chinese agreed to limit fentanyl precursor exports to the United States and to start buying some soy. 

So from my point of view, on the outside looking in, the Chinese agreed to do some of the things that they have agreed to do over and over and over these last 15 years in exchange for actual concessions. And if the Chinese actually do what they say they’re going to do this time, it will be the first time that has ever happened. 

Part of the problem that the United States always has in trade relations with the Chinese is there’s rarely any follow up, and there won’t be this time, because that requires a team that is actually staffed out to enforce the trade deals. And even under normal circumstances, where the United States has the Commerce and the Treasury Department of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office dealing with trade issues, that’s a lot to do. 

And this time around, Commerce and Treasury in the USTR aren’t even staffed out. And Trump is handling the negotiations personally. So just as what happened in phase one trade deals between the Chinese and the Trump administration in the first Trump presidency, the Chinese aren’t going to do any of this. And we’ll be right back where we started six months from now. 

And one more thing. One thing that doesn’t change. You know, the more the things change, the more they stay the same. With these adjustments. This last week, we are now in our 540th tariff policy since January 20th. So the ambient chaos that is confusing American traders and manufacturers and consumers. Showing no sign of letting up. There’s no reason to expect that any of these deals are the final version. And until we get, well, maybe, maybe, maybe Korea. So maybe we have one. Until we have a whole raft of those, the back and forth and the ebb and flow continues.

Slavery Can’t Fix China’s Demography

Young Chinese children

To be thorough in our discussion of China’s demographic collapse, we must explore as many potential solutions as possible…even if one of those is a UAE-style model of imported workers (aka slavery).

China is already implementing quasi-slavery to help feed their solar industry, but this barely dents the demographic problem. The scale needed to flip the demographic script just isn’t feasible; we’re talking about importing at least 100 million workers. Any idea where that would come from?

The reality of the Chinese demographic situation is that their traditional system cannot withstand it, but that goes for capitalism and socialism as much as communism. So, new economic models will be ushered in, we just don’t what those will look like yet.

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Transcript

Everybody car video today, running errands, and they don’t have time. Anyway, I’ve got a question here that’s come in from the Patreon crowd. And it’s about experimenting with new economic models. So the world that we’re moving into is facing population collapse among people who are under age 55, having places like China, Japan, Korea and Germany and Italy first, and then moving on from there to other places. 

So the question is, how about some models that we generally look down upon because they’re, you know, gauche, like slavery, specifically, could China replicate something like, the United Arab Emirates has done where the population, is basically sustained by a huge imported workforce that does all the serious work. Could you do something like that while the Chinese agent of mass retirement. 

Two problems with that strategy. Number one, they’re already doing it to a degree. Keep in mind that while 90% of the population of China is Han Chinese, there are a number of minorities that haven’t been completely genocidal into nonexistence. And one of them, the Uyghurs of western China in the Zhejiang region are already existing in a degree of slavery. 

They they stationed Chinese Communist loyalists within the homes of people to make sure that people don’t have kids. And anyone who shows any sort of religious inclination, like wearing headgear, for example, or maybe saying a prayer in private is sent off to a reeducation camp, which is basically a work camp. And so almost everyone who has installed a solar panel in the last four years is benefiting from that system on a global basis because the silicon is processed and turned into solar lakes, in Zhejiang. 

And that really hasn’t moved the needle very much. Now, of course, there are only so many viewers versus, you know, ¥1 billion. Which brings us to the second problem is scale, when you’re in the United Arab Emirates and you only have a single digit number of million of Arabs that need to be supported with imported workforce, that’s one thing, especially when you’re drawing people from, say, Palestine or Pakistan or India. 

But there are a lot more Han. And so you would need to import bare minimum cheese. At least 100 million people in order to make a system like that work. And the scale of that just is not possible. And if you look at the countries that border, 

China, there’s no easy source. Russian Siberia is largely unpopulated. 

Everything east of the Urals is under 15 million people. Kazakhstan has of more people than that, but most of them aren’t in the border region. Most of them are further north. You get to Duke of standing Kyrgyzstan again. The eastern reaches are completely uninhabitable. And if you go south, you’re hitting Vietnam. And if the Vietnamese hate the Chinese more than anyone else. 

Myanmar is jungle and mountain, and most of their people are again on the other side of the mountains. And and of course, India is on the other side of the Himalayas, and that is everyone. So, you’d be having to bring in literally tens of millions of people from at least a couple thousand miles away. So the feasibility of that is not great. 

But keep questions like this coming, because we’re gonna have to figure out something as the world the populates the relationships among supply and demand and labor and capital are all breaking down. And the models that we have now, whether it’s fascism or socialism or communism or capitalism, simply aren’t going to work much longer for a lot of countries. 

And the sooner we come up with some other ideas, the better.

All That Bitchin’ Won’t Keep China Around

A skyline of Beijing, China

We’ve all been there. It’s Friday evening, the office is packing up for the weekend, and the boss decides it’s the perfect time to announce something big. So, I hope you enjoyed your weekend of mulling over the idea of what a 100% tariff on all Chinese imports would look like.

This is a retaliatory tariff in response to Beijing’s rare earth restrictions, but this is bigger than trade drama. China is falling apart demographically, which will domino into everything else over the next decade (ahem, like exports). Whether China-US trade stops because of tariffs or demographics, it is coming soon.

In short, quitcha’ bitchin’ and get ready for a world without China.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. It is the 10th of October, and it’s just after closing time in Washington, D.C.. And right after everybody closed for the day, Donald Trump said that there’s going to be a 100% tariff on everything coming from China by November 1st, if not before, because the Chinese are putting restrictive, policies on their exports of rare earth materials, most notably to the United States. 

Rare earths are materials that are produced in trace amounts as a byproduct of the refining and mining of other metals, most notably, silver, lithium, copper. You basically have to take the concentrate that’s left over once you’ve gotten the primary stuff and then go through a series of refining steps that are very energy intensive and very polluting. 

And China has cornered that market. So they produce more than 80% of all of these materials. In some cases, it’s a functional 100% monopoly. Anyway, a lot of these materials help other properties emerge in more traditional things that I can be used very heavily in things like defense, materials. And so the Chinese have always found this to be a very useful pressure point. 

They’re also very much used in semiconductors. Anyway, the Chinese have restricted their exports. Trump has said no more and is now basically, saying that he’s going to double or more the tariffs that are in place. And that’s just the beginning. Okay. Now, before anyone makes this about trade or makes sort of Trump, I need to remind you guys of something. 

The Chinese are dying out. They already have more people aged 54 and over than 54 and under, and within ten years they will not have enough people under age 60 to run an economy. So it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what your producer export or import. 

You need to assume that that trade relationship is going to go to zero. Doesn’t matter if you’re exporting soy or beef or semiconductors or ethane or anything. Zero zero is where this is going. It doesn’t matter what you import from China, whether it’s transformers or wire or process chemicals or fertilizer or anything. It doesn’t matter. It’s going to zero. 

The only wiggle room here is the time frame. Either the Chinese die out over the next ten years and it goes to zero, or the Trump administration puts into place and owners tariffs. And by November 1st, or maybe even before it goes to zero, either way it is going to zero. So everyone needs to plan for that happening. 

Does the time frame matter? Of course it matters. Would I like to have more time? Of course I would like to have more time. But to pretend that this is a purely political question that can be negotiated away is a fallacy. And if that is your position, you’re going to lose everything. So quit your bitching and start your planning for a world without China. 

Sooner or later.

Should China Invade Siberia?

Cleaning the tents in northern Siberia

While the Russians are busy throwing everything they can at Ukraine, could China make a move to seize Siberia?

This is highly unlikely and there’s really no point for the Chinese to make a move on Siberia. Best case, they get some oil fields (which they can’t operate without Western assistance) located in a cold and barren region with limited potential for any growth. And they run the risk of the Russians whacking that scary red button.

If any power wanted to challenge Russia in the Far East, they would need to cut off Moscow from Siberia. This would involve severing the Trans-Siberian Railway and making a move on the choke point in Tatarstan. But again…that nuclear carrot would still be dangling over the invader’s heads.

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Transcript

Hey, all, Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon page. And that is with the Russians. So obsessed with all things Ukraine, with all our military force going there, with the dependency they have on the Chinese for military equipment, would now be a good time for China. Just take over Siberia, I think. 

I see where you’re going. But, invading Russia is never as easy. It sounds, three things to keep in mind. Number one, the single most valuable thing in Siberia is the oil and natural gas. And the Russians aren’t the ones who really produce that. You’ve got something called the covector field, which is the general vicinity of Irkutsk, which is by, Lake Baikal. 

And then you have the fields offshore of Sakhalin Island in the Far East. Neither of these are operated by the Russians. They’re very technically challenging projects that are done by Western companies. And there’s still Western consulting work being done in order to allow the production to continue under sanctions. And if that were to end, or if the Chinese were to take over those facilities themselves, the Chinese do not have the technology to operate them either. 

So it would be kind of a wasted effort. So that’s number one. Number two. Population. Yes. There’s only 10 to 15 million Russians in Siberia. But that’s because the carrying capacity of the land is very low. You’re not going to be able to forward stage a population there that can really do much. The agricultural potential is shitty because the climate is so crappy. 

Third, if these reasons do not dissuade you, consider that the Russians still have the world’s single largest nuclear arsenal, and they made it very clear during the Yeltsin years that should the Chinese attempt to invade, that the Russians would not meet them with tanks and with guns and with men, they would just nuke China’s cities. And that policy formally remains in place. 

So if, if if the Chinese decided that they wanted to make a bid for Siberia, what they have to do is prevent the Russians from interfering in the operation. And the first piece for that would be to sever the Trans-Siberian railway. The TSR is a single transport network that allows European Russia to interact with Asiatic and Siberian Russia. 

And if you were to cut it somewhere closer to European Russia, then there’s really not anything the Russians could do in a conventional set to counter Chinese actions or Japanese or anyone coming in from the Far Eastern theater. The logical place to do that cut would be a place called totter Stand, the Tatars are an ethnic minority, the single largest minority 

in Russia and Kazan, their capital, is not only a relatively advanced city. This is not only the educational system that generated Mir. This is not only an oil area in its own right, but it sits on top of the TSR. So if Tatarstan were to declare independence or fall into rebellion in some way, then the Russian ability to manipulate events in the Far East, much less send troops, would be gone. 

And then all that would be left would be the nuclear card. And then we could talk about some really interesting things. No sign that that is happening right now, by the way, same goes on the Ukraine war. There’s a specific city that sits upon all of the connecting infrastructure that links Moscow to the Caucasus, Rostov on Don. 

And if Rostov on Don, which has been a major staging point for Russian forces in the Ukrainian war, were to fall or rebel or whatever, then all of a sudden Russian power in the Caucasus would be shattered and we’d be dealing with, at a minimum, a new Chechen rebellion. So there are these nodes in Russia that really matter. 

But at the moment no one is poking them with any sticks.

Can China Break Through the First Island Chain?

Photo of a submarine emerging out of the water

I often hear rumblings of China’s naval power, but one of the many reasons I pay no mind is the first island chain. This is a line of islands stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines down to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. And China has very little chance of breaking through that chain…here’s why.

China would have to occupy and pacify Taiwan and the Philippines’ Luzon. Then the Chinese would have to defeat Japan, which is laughable to even entertain. But let’s say China magically pulls that off, they’re still facing demographic collapse, dependance on imported materials, and trying to maintain global sea access. And of course, the US would withdraw protections from Chinese commercial shipping. Oh, and don’t forget the regional powers who would step in and ensure that China was contained.

Long story short, I’m not worried about China breaking through the first Island chain.

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Transcript

Hey all Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today we are taking a question from the Patreon crowd specifically. It’s about the first island chain and whether I think that can be the basis of an alliance that does not involve the United States to contain, the Chinese. Good question. For those of you who are not familiar with the strategic geography of the Western Pacific, the first island chain is a long line of populated islands that basically parallel roughly the entire coast. 

So Japan in the north, Taiwan and the Philippines in the center, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the south. And the reason that the Chinese stress about the first island chain is that there’s no obvious place for the Chinese to achieve naval breakout and project to the rest of the world. To this day, the United States counts basically all the members of the first island chain, except for Malaysia as firm allies. 

And Malaysia is obviously a robust trading partner. And so the Chinese have basically lost the opportunity to even attempt a breakout in any meaningful way. And most Chinese naval strategy is about how to punch through the first island chain and get beyond. The question, of course, is whether or not this can happen without the United States. And the short answer is yes, it’s pretty easy. 

Two things. Number one, achieving a temporary breakout for the Chinese achieves nothing. Let’s say that they are able to break through between the Philippines and Taiwan, for example. There’s a fairly big gap there. Okay. They’ve now made it out into the wider Pacific. But all their supply lines run through that break. So the Chinese don’t simply need to get a fleet out. 

They then need to keep the break open. And the only way to do that is to occupy the entire approach to and from that break, which in this case would mean the occupation and pacification of the Filipino island of Luzon, which is where the majority of the population lives in the Philippines, as well as the entirety of Taiwan. If they can do that, then they have a way in and out. Problem one that’s really hard and that’s probably the softest place in the chain. 

Problem two because of the presence of Taiwan right off the coast, they can’t just do this in one location. Southern China requires a breakout in the Southwest Pacific. Northern China requires a breakout in the Northwest Pacific, which means you’re not just occupying Taiwan and Luzon. 

You now also have to get the Japanese home islands. All of a sudden, you’re talking about a completely different sort of fight against a much more capable foe, that is much better able to defend itself. Otherwise, you might have a breakout for Shanghai, or you might have a breakout for Beijing, but you need both. That is the only way that China can survive in a world that has turned hostile. 

Problem three let’s say they do that. Not likely, but let’s say they do. So China is a country in demographic collapse. It lacks the consumption to produce what it needs. China is a country that is starved of raw materials. It has to import them almost first and foremost, including energy foods up there, too. So China doesn’t simply need to achieve breakout, it needs to achieve sea dominance on a global basis in order to access the world’s raw materials and end consumer markets. 

And, you know, I don’t know about you, but if a country starts conquering countries simply in order to get naval access for what? It’s commercial shipping, that’s a bad plan. So the very act of achieving a degree of security control over its near abroad pretty much ends any opportunity the Chinese would have for economic access to the wider world. 

One of the problems that the Chinese face, one of the issues that everyone who assumes that the Chinese are on this endless rise forgets, is that the Chinese economic system is utterly dependent upon freedom of the seas, and the only country on the planet who can guarantee freedom of the seas is the United States. Probably the best way to guarantee that the United States will stop protecting your civilian shipping is to start conquering other countries. 

So for this scenario to work for the Chinese, the United States not only has to say bygones and go home and cut all of its alliances and cease importing and exporting on a global basis. You then also have to have no one else trying to rise to that position, and the Chinese would have to conquer functionally the entire first island chain, which is an area with a combined population of roughly 300 million, I think maybe close to 400 million now that I’m thinking about it. 

And that’s just to achieve step one of a global breakout. So would an alliance of the first island chain be enough to stop them? Absolutely. Wouldn’t the alliance be needed now because the Chinese simply are incapable of taking on the whole thing, and taking on the whole thing would be the first step of getting to places like, I don’t know, the Persian Gulf. 

And along the way they would come across countries that are not part of the island chain, which could also wreck the entire thing. Australia, Vietnam and India being the big three. So this this firmly goes under the list of things the Peters Island doesn’t worry about.

China vs. Mother Nature: Can the Dikes Hold the Rain?

Person with umbrella standing on Xinghai Bay Bridge

Flooding has already claimed lives and destroyed infrastructure in Hebei, Beijing, and Tianjin. Over five feet has already fallen—more than an average year’s total rainfall and there is more on the way. There is more to this than just another bad weather forecast.

The North China Plain is flat and prone to droughts and floods. But the Chinese have learned to manage the Yellow River through a series of channels. Each year, the riverbed rises due to the silt, and the surrounding land now sits will below the top of the river. Which means that the dikes are the only thing preventing a catastrophe. We’re not just talking some rural farmland being flooded, we’d be looking at a mass casualty event in the heart of the country’s capital.

We’re not in panic territory quite yet. However, all it takes is a few more inches of rain and one of the dikes to give way, and hundreds of thousands of people will be at the mercy of Mother Nature.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here come to you from Colorado. And today we’re going to talk about weather in China. There are areas of Hubei province, Beijing, the capital, and Tianjin province, which is the super port, the artificial port that has a lot of the capacity that serves northern China, that have all gotten just huge amounts of rain. Some areas have gotten in excess of five feet of rain, which is more than they normally get in an entire year, and more rain is forecast. 

Normally I wouldn’t comment on something like a weather report unless it was a hurricane about to hit the, say, the Persian Gulf or something. This is an exception. The issue is to just flat out human geography, cultural geography, and, economic geography. 

The North China plane, which is where Beijing is and where roughly two thirds of the Chinese population lives, is a very large flat zone that is normally fairly arid. 

And if you look at a map of northern China, you’ll notice that the yellow River, the primary river, does a lot of curves and everything because it’s not particularly steep area. So this is a region that is always dealing with either drought or flood. And when it floods, things get crazy because the river basin, the actual channel, isn’t very low compared to everybody else. 

In fact, most public works by Chinese government is going back a couple of millennia have been built about wrestling the yellow River into some sort of submission so you can break the flood cycle. What that has meant is that they’ve channelized the river over most of its lower length. So that when you do have the river coming through, especially in drought season, it drops a lot of silt, which builds up the riverbed. 

And so they have to build the dikes higher. So in most of the places where the yellow flows through populated China, the riverbed now is actually at a higher elevation than the surrounding floodplain. 

As long as the dikes hold, this is not a problem. So, yes, we have had evacuations that affect people. Thousands moving into the tens of thousands right now. Yes. We’re expecting more rain, but as long as the dikes hold, this is a water management issue. The concern would be is if in a populated zone, one of the dikes gives away. Because if that happens and it starts to erode, then you have a different sort of problem. 

Then you have the river pouring out of the basin and down into where everybody is living. In the past, when this has happened, you have literally had hundreds of thousands of deaths. The last time it went down in the early 2000s, the Chinese mobilized several million people to fill up sandbags until the river could be wrested back under control. 

Industrialized China has done a great job with their water waterworks. I’m not saying I expect everything to go wrong. I’m saying this is the sort of thing that breaks confidence in governments very, very quickly. There’s nothing like having tens of thousands of people drowning in your capital to shatter political coherence. Now, Chairman XI is far more aware of social disruptions in China now than he has been in a while. 

He decided to cancel the recent EU China summit. So the Europeans decided to relocate it to China so that he would attend. He is there. He is obviously aware, and I’m not suggesting we’re about to have a catastrophe. What I’m saying is I can’t predict the weather. All I can tell you is they’re expecting to have at least another six inches of rain throughout the entire zone, which could turn this from an isolated point as the water is moving down the river to a broader system where all the tributaries start to flood, too. 

So it’s something to watch. It’s not yet something to panic about. And if it does become something to panic about, you’re not going to have to hear it from me, because it will be everywhere. Because China will be underwater…

The Live Q&A Is Tomorrow + China’s Stance on Iran

The flags of China and Iran
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Iran was once a breeding ground of strategic importance. Well, they at least had the right stuff in the right place…or there was enough chaos to convince people to watch them. But times are changing, and the Chinese are no longer interested in Iran.

Iran has had no shortage of setbacks in recent times: battles with Israel, US hitting nuclear sites, and a diminishing influence over Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraq. And the amount of oil coming out of Iran pales in comparison to that of Saudi Arabia (and others). The Iranians are also losing their “control” over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran is losing everything that has defined the country for decades, and the Chinese are taking notice.

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Transcript

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. And today we’re gonna talk about how the Chinese view the Persian Gulf, specifically Iran. 

In the last month, the Israelis have launched an air war that’s basically destroyed Iran’s capacity for air defense. And the United States then went in and dropped a few bunker busting bombs on their nuclear program. 

Too soon to know if that actually worked. But, you know, the point is, Iran is not having a great time of it. They’ve lost control of Hezbollah functionally in Lebanon, the Houthis aren’t doing the best. They’ve lost control of Iraq. It’s been a really bad few years for them, and it’s the type of thing that’s going to take decades to kind of fix. 

So a lot of folks have assumed that for the last 20 years that the Chinese have considered Iran a strategic pull of any of their multipolar policy. And that’s that’s just not true. It’s not that the Chinese don’t see things that they can cooperate with Iranians on. Far from it. But Iran’s just not that important. A couple things to keep in mind at their peak. 

Back in the 1970s, before the Shah fell, before the clerics took over and it became the Islamic Republic of Iran, that has been hostile to really everyone. Iran was a major oil producer, about 4 million barrels per day, of which about 3 million barrels per day would be exported. But at their height, three more 3 million barrels per day exported. 

They were only exporting half of what Saudi Arabia exported at their absolute lowest. Saudi traditionally, produces something like 9 to 12 million barrels per day, with like 80 to 90% of that being exported. Iran has a much larger population, much more domestic demand, and can’t produce nearly as much. So if you are going to care about the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia is far more important than Iran, and Kuwait and the UAE together are more important than Iran. 

And the Chinese know they can do math. So that’s problem one with a theory that Iran’s really important. Number two, reason that Iran would be important is because it shares a long border with Iraq. And if you care about Iraq for whatever reason, then the Iranians can cause no end of problems there. Well, under the Biden administration, we withdrew from Iraq completely. 

And all of a sudden the strategic interest just isn’t there. So Iran can no longer use Iraq as a launching point into other parts of the Persian Gulf unless it wants to invade it first. And that would be, you know, noticed, the third issue was the Strait of Hormuz. The idea is that Iran will use jets and missiles and speedboats to basically block the Strait of Hormuz and prevent oil from getting in and out. 

Two problems here. Number one, the U.S. doesn’t care for the United States purposes because we are now a significant net exporter of crude, and we just don’t take a lot of crude from the Persian Gulf at all. Our interest in the Persian Gulf has always been to keep oil flowing to the Bretton Woods allies, so that they would be on our side versus the Soviets. 

But the Soviet Union is long gone. And now the long largest consumer of Persian Gulf crude is China. So the idea that the United States will get involved in a war with Iran to protect oil flows to China, that’s some very bad strategic math. And the Iranians know that and the Chinese know that. So what’s left? Well, shit. 

That’s everything. So bottom line is that Iran is not nearly as important to the Chinese or the Americans as it used to be. Strategically. It’s only falling off the map, especially now that doesn’t have production ability. And economically, ever since the American shale revolution really kicked up around 2012, that’s when we got into oil shale in a big way, with the United States really doesn’t care economically. 

And that’s before you consider the recent changes in the administration, with the Trump administration being broadly hostile to all of the old allies, whether it’s France and Germany or Korea and Japan, countries that use Persian Gulf crude. So we need to start thinking about this in a different way. The country that is likely to close the Persian Gulf isn’t Iran anymore. 

It’s probably Saudi Arabia and maybe even the United States, because those are the countries that would have strategic alternatives. Saudi Arabia can ship a huge amount of crude out of its western coast, and just avoid Iran and the Gulf completely. And if you shut down the Persian Gulf, the countries that suffer, the one that really goes down the most is China. 

And so from the Chinese point of view, Iran is no longer a potential strategic asset. It’s a vulnerability. And it’s sooner or later the Americans are going to realize that.