Zeihan stans regurgitating 101 Zeihan US strong PRC weak argument, and forget that in geoPOLITICS, the political component is as important as geography. Natural advantages can only do so much if they are squandered. Even Zeihan concedes this. Also some basic media literacy when evaluating his claims designed to sell expensive dinners to wealthy American exceptionalists. Rudimentary critical analysis like:
>US has more navigable river
Go do a search of country with most internal navigable water ways, it's PRC with more than 2x of US. This is basic tier fact check. US technically has a lot of exploitable waterways, but PRC has much more significant urban/manufacturing clusters linked via the waterways. Vs US waterways are primarily used for transport of bulky primary Ag goods... barge freight in US is massively underutilized because US is systemically bad at infra upkeep (drediging / maintenance etc). Politics > geography.
>has great ports on both oceans.
Has great port potential but poor quality ports due to inability to build infra and reliance on human labour. Go look at list of port rankings, PRC has 8 out of top 10. Like does it really matter US has deep water coasts to accomodate 10,000 world class ports when economics preferences consolidating large scale ports. Or that PRC infra capability can simply dredge out huge port projects at still fraction cost/time of US building on the most ideal site. Politics > geography.
>is self-sufficient in energy
Only on the most surface analysis. US is self-reliant in the sense it has resources in the ground that are economically exploitable. Versus PRC with massive imports to maintain production, implication being US can trivially choke PRC inputs via blockade/embargo (act of war)... by targetting shipping. Here is the reality, US is only as self sufficient as 130 vunerable refineries can process petro products which sustains everything including ag inputs. In event of war, which those musing US blockading PRC shipping forget actually will be, PRC can retaliate by compromising these refineries with cyber warfare, or in event of full escalation conventional hypersonics. There's a reason Biden told Putin/Xi that he considers cyber attacks on US infra comparable to initiating physical war. In age of vunerable networked infra nodes, during an actual shooting war, US is more vunerable and less self sufficient than EVER simply because adversaries like PRC has the capabilities to compromise critical CONUS infra. Like gunpower ended actual fortresses, network and conventional global strike capabilities ended Zeihan's fortress america. Politics (PRC indigenous defense drive) > geography.
>has horrible demographics
China actually significantly better off demographically TO COMPETE with US vs just about everyone else. Yes there's broad demographic decline, but S&T investements and academic reforms has massively grown the segment of educated / skilled talent. Huge population base effect = PRC generating something like 4.5M STEM talent with exploding pHDs, about all OECD combined. This is multitude more than US can generate domestically + immigration. PRC is only getting better demographically equipped to challenge US primarcy. Think of how JP/SKR/TW consistently moved up value chain, destroyed US lead in semi, even though most they had shit tier demographics but moved up value chain by converting new gen disproportionately into STEM. PRC is doing that with 20x more talent and will be going after every sector. What else does declining population imply? Less import dependancy and more strategic options. Politics (PRC investment in human capita) > demography. Granted does not negate, but there's demographic divident political hacks at PRC scale.
>large navy but only 10%
...
>US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day
This is whoefully out of date, PRC has been building mid-tier sized European navy every year, hulls of surface combatants are all blue water capable. But ultimately PRC simply choose not to take on global commitments and freeloads off the US... because why would they not. Apart from courtesy anti piracy, and foreign port visits, PRC likes to stay within IndoPac and turn SCS into Chinese lake. With PRC ship building capacity, it would be trivial for PRC to build a replenishment fleet comparable to USN and replace US policing duties, which would open up global basing options for others who want to freeload off PRC. Ergo US has to fulfill commitments or else they lose hegemonic competition/perks to others who are willing. Now go look at USN readiness / retention decline and the sad state of the fleet due to massive over commitment / tasking and ask yourself why PRC would stop an adversary while making mistake. Or circle back the PRC global hypersonic developments and translate that to port strikes, the TLDR is USN naval assets are single deployment assets, less if replenishment fleet gets scrapped.
>fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles
Zeihan was wanking about surrounding PRC with AShMs at a time when US policy / wonk writings thought this was a great idea (it is), but when US foreign policy tried implement said 1st island chain plan last couple admins, they found very few takers. TLDR is majority of ASEAN/region is neutral and no one is really suicidal enough to be PRC missile sinks in a Sino-US war. Right now the only takers is Japan, TW, and maybe SKR. And bluntly, if you look at current/trending force balance differential in region and future PRC military aquistions, PRC doesn't even need a navy to completely destroy major US ally in the region, who are all islands and existentially vunerable to import disruptions. Not to mention these allies are more liability in actual war... because PRC attacking them will trigger security commitment in 1st Island Chain where US does not want to fight.
>China has become a great economic power
This is peak US exceptionalism wank, China has become a great economic power because it exploited US failures in domestic and foreign policy. People want to think it's US benevolence when it's actually US incompetence that built modern PRC. There's a reason why US vs PRC competition is about systems and not just geographic blessings. It's not geography that's massively failing US, it's the politics. Whatever you think of PRC/CCP politics, so far it's closing the gap faster than US can contain.
I've read all of Zeihan's books, and you may be emphasizing different points than those he focused on.
>US has more navigable river
You may be right. You quoted the poster, who said they quoted Zeihan. Are both countries blessed in this regard? I guess this affects transport, like you mentioned, and farming. I don't remember these particular details from the book, I'm sure he's written hundreds of words on the rivers in these two countries. Does China have enough fresh water, and farmland they can irrigate? If so, then this might not be as big a deal as other factors for these two countries.
>has great ports on both oceans.
You mentioned how many large ports China has. I assume that is because they have been exporting so many manufactured products to so much of the world over the last couple decades. Zeihan seems to make a case that this might not be true for long, due to demographics (there will be more Indian labor, Mexican labor local to the U.S., Columbians and Vietnamese working even cheaper, better Japanese robots, etc) and also due to changing circumstances of international shipping (if the U.S. stops securing shipping around Eurasia where does that leave China? Can they reach their trade partners? Import resources? Do they have capable enemies that they will have to deal with?)
>is self-sufficient in energy
Zeihan made a big deal out of the U.S. fracking developments over the last ten years. He didn't mention this is the context of war with China. He said that because of the end of the cold war and recent advances in fracking it is not longer in the interest of the U.S. to police the worlds oceans, secure the Middle East, etc. He said that would leave other countries, like China, India, Japan, countries in Europe, etc. in a position where they need to secure their own oil supplies, oil still being a very important energy source, and trade routes. All these other countries have enemies and friends. He's saying that the U.S. can withdraw as much as it wants, for the most part.
>has horrible demographics
Zeihan has talked about demographics a lot. Not just China but many other countries will be dealing with the consequences of lower birthrates - an aging and shrinking population. As countries become richer their birth rates go down, eventually below replacement rates. There won't be as much young labor, nor middle aged investors, and there will be more elderly people to take care of. How dependent are our systems on growth? What happens in various places when population and gdp are shrinking? He says that China will have it's hands full over the next ten years dealing with this, but that the U.S. has a large generation of 30-somethings that postpones our "decade of reckoning". Different countries are in different demographic situations. Japan is a rich country that is currently dealing with this situation. Russia is dealing with this also, but not doing so well.
>US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day
You mention that China now has a deep water navy. Based on my reading of Zeihan, I assume they will have a chance to put it to use eventually. Depending on how things go they may need to secure oil shipments from the Middle East, and they could be in competition with Japan and India for that and other resources.
>fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles
I just don't recall Zeihan talking much about the U.S. going to war with China, certainly not for world domination, like the cold war with Russia. He seems to be saying that there's no reason for the U.S. to start a confrontation with China, that long term it makes sense for the U.S. to continue the trend of withdrawing. I assume he's talked about a possible conflict around Taiwan, but it wasn't central to the trends he focuses on. I know that shortly after sanctions were imposed on Russia, after the Ukraine invasion, he talked about how similar sanctions might affect China, and how that may affect China's thinking on Taiwan in the near future.
He said the U.S. was most likely to approach future conflicts like the recent conflict in Ukraine, using sanctions, weapons, and intel to support allies when it is in our interest, but not sending troops.
>China has become a great economic power
I don't think anyone would deny that. The last few decades in China have been amazing! Unprecedented in history.
I agree with you that politics can be relevant. This is something Zeihan has talked a bit about. He's mentioned Argentina as being a country with a lot of potential, if they could get their politics together. He's talked a bit about internal China and U.S. politics. But he talked much more about the upcoming challenges, different for different countries, due to a changing world order, demographics, and geography. He said there were going to be a lot of failing countries in the next decade or two, more places like Sri Lanka. The world will not be as stable as it has been.
I wasn't sure why you talked so much about a direct confrontation between China and the U.S. If anything Zeihan seems to be predicting that China has demographically and economically peaked, and that they are likely to implode in the next ten years.
I consider Zeihan to have an interesting perspective on all this. I take him as pessimistic food for thought.
General digression on Zeihan: His books are... fine for pop geopoltics. Zeihan "thought" is also an ecosystem of books / lectures / newsletters / videos where his predictions are crafted to appease his differnt paying audiences based on rudimentary geopolitic prognosis (geography+demography is not new framework) and superficial arguments and sometimes just bad data. Strafor trained him to be a good salesman. His US stronk, PRC weak arguments has been largely uncritically parroted by PRC collapsists, an ever trending topic due to ongoing Sino-US competition. Zeihan makes a lot of predictions (with mediocre hit rate)... about many countries, more from perspective of geopolitical potential frequently divorced from actual political realities. Apart from US domestic politics, he's not a particularly deep subject matter expert in other countries, including PRC, but many none the less latch onto onto his napkin analysis and combine it with other superficial PRC collapse / doomed talking points. Ultimately it's pop geopolitics, like there's a reason he hasn't given talks at any prominent PRC focused think tanks or policy circles where at least 10+ years ago, he's (well Strafor) was memed as more marketting than useful analysis.
>navigable river
Both are blessed. Major rivers and taming them is what made Chinese empire. Zeihan's thesis around PRC rivers is focused on history of flooding of farmland heavy Yellow river in north, concentration of industry around more easily navigtable Yangtze/Pearl rivers in south. How north/south divide historically caused political /regional power arrangments that are easy to fracture (China broke again meme), and historically massive disasters when river misbehaves. Notes CCP undertakes massive infra/water works/transfer projects to stitch everything together (pre CCP historically as well). His basic TLDR is China has to spend massive resources to bribe provinces to unified and China has been fractured longer than it has been unified historically (false), and spending all this money on infra projects = PRC will stay capital poor (lol), and it's also why PRC buys (bought) so much superior US tbills, implying USD is keeping PRC political unity afloat. This is message sold to US exceptionalist/China collapsist. Meanwhile PRC capital accumuluation has increased massively while reserves have shrunk to historic lows (2T at time his writing 2008, 4T peak 2013, now 1T).
In comparison, what does he say about US waterways, oh it's great, links up with farm land and coasts, protected by elements because geography, links strait to gulf/east coast. I think he literally used the word "perfect", don't need any extra infra or management, why even have a highway system, but we built one anyway because US so rich, #1 etc etc. Nevermind US corp engineers also historically conducted massive infra/water management projects, and inability to build/sustain "extra infra" in decades after to present makes these waterways severely underutilized / never properly exploited. Nor that US states have vastly different Federal funding/dependency... almost as if US Gov has to bribe states to keep country cohesive. Meanwhile PRC state/infra capacity actually exploiting waterways thoroughly, controlling previously massively catastrophic flooding that previously killed MILLIONS, now hundreds (which Zeihan has tweeted about as if it's omen of coming collapse). Zeihan magnifies US potential vs PRC risks.
In terms of water, PRC via Tibet headwaters has some of the greatest hydro resources in the world but PRC is water stressed (1.4B population does that), but central gov doing massive water transfer (north/south) to alleviate. There's plenty of articles about US water crisis as well. Hard to say long term, but PRC ag hasn't been particuarly impacted but this is where politics > geography, with caveate that PRC population decline will trend towards less pressure / managable crisis over time.
>ports/diversification
PRC isn't particularly export dependant (currently ~20% vs peak of 30%+ vs US 14%), export heavy / dependant is like 30-40+%. As for demographics, PRC automation installation of industrial robots last few years is larger than US/JP/SKR/GER + around the next 14 countries combined. For cheap labour, PRC companies diversified lowend/light industry to region first to emesh them into PRC supply chains via companies controlled by PRC. The TLDR is PRC is strategically outsourcing some stuff (low end labour, high pollution sectors) to make region more dependant (cooperative model), while all signs point it maintaining manufacturing domestically for internal market. In terms of resources, everyone has lots of raw global inputs to defend. Ergo PRC rapidly building up navy (most ships right now while US hulls projected to decline). I argue they can defend against anyone except USN out in open waters, while aquiring capabilities to deter Sino-US war (likely over TW) in meantime. Meanwhile, PRC has near monopoly on various rare earth processing that will take decades for others to reshore.
>fracking
...
>didn't mention this is the context of war with China.
Not in books as far as I know. But he's rationalized fracking/energy security in remarks/interviews over PRC at mercy of US blockade because US now energy secure talking points, which now prevalently informs the ever popular PRC is vunerable to blockade narrative. As for US withdraw / serve as offshore balancer, US can do that, but all developments in recent years have shown that PRC is exception to US FP indifference and US will be involved directly in PRC containment. The broader point is he believes energy self reliance + fortress America gives US almost impervious position of strength. But we are approaching point in history where US geography is no longer impregnable shield anymore. See recent US conniptions over PRC (global) hypersonic developement. PRC would of course be happy if US withdraws, but US energy security may/will be just as vunerable as PRC if there's confrontation.
>demographics
All this is true, but in context of great power competition between US/PRC, societies can manage different demographic pressures/patterns while relative gap in comprehensive power can still narrow/shift. Average PRC citizen can have a much shittier QoL vs US, but workforce and industrial policies can still be organized to be systemically competitive, if not more so. PRC can shrink to 1B people, with gen pop stuck in miserable East Asian work culture with poor safety net (though keep in mind PRC has highest savings/homeownership rate and relatively less reliance on welfare state), while still grow military to multiple times current size and move up value chain to increasingly threaten US primacy because there's still easy catchup growth and demographic divident in terms of disproportionate STEM talent vs past workforce that was mostly low skilled. PRC soon keeping hands full (for much longer than 10 years) doesn't mean PRC comprehensive power have peaked or PRC will undergo decline, or according to Zeihan, collapse.
>navy,competition
I don't see where the competition is TBH, plenty of resources to go around for short/medium term and little appetite for war (except PRC/US over TW). As for PRC navy, it's doing more deployments abroad, but doesn't have any foreign security commitments. Like there's no reason to war with India, it's border skirmishes were fought with stone and sticks. Neither country interested in ruining "Asian Century". Japan only if they support US in TW scenario. Senkaku/SCS disputes not worth military/navy, relegated to "domestic" matter for coast guard. But yeah the Chinese navy will be used to do navy things for PRC security interests.
> recall Zeihan talking much about the U.S. going to war with China
No he's pretty firm offshore balancer, America can influence abroad at home while most world collapses without US order advocate. Surrounding PRC with missiles is talking point commonly associated with malacca blockade talk. But US bipartisian anti-PRC FP looks to be doubling down on interdicting directly in TW, because loss of TW risks collapse of US East Asian security architecture. Zeihan thinks PRC will collapse so why bother.
> pessimistic
For the audience his writing caters to (US exceptionalist), his pitch is (IMO) disguised pessimism - having rolled natural 20s on geography US has to work hard to fail, vs US competitors has to work hard to succeed (but here are surface analysis of why they won't). Like credit to him he does acknowledge US failings / challenges because the politics in US geopolitics has been underperforming, but he tends to trivialize US challenges with "at least our adversaries are doomed".
>US has more navigable river
Go do a search of country with most internal navigable water ways, it's PRC with more than 2x of US. This is basic tier fact check. US technically has a lot of exploitable waterways, but PRC has much more significant urban/manufacturing clusters linked via the waterways. Vs US waterways are primarily used for transport of bulky primary Ag goods... barge freight in US is massively underutilized because US is systemically bad at infra upkeep (drediging / maintenance etc). Politics > geography.
>has great ports on both oceans.
Has great port potential but poor quality ports due to inability to build infra and reliance on human labour. Go look at list of port rankings, PRC has 8 out of top 10. Like does it really matter US has deep water coasts to accomodate 10,000 world class ports when economics preferences consolidating large scale ports. Or that PRC infra capability can simply dredge out huge port projects at still fraction cost/time of US building on the most ideal site. Politics > geography.
>is self-sufficient in energy
Only on the most surface analysis. US is self-reliant in the sense it has resources in the ground that are economically exploitable. Versus PRC with massive imports to maintain production, implication being US can trivially choke PRC inputs via blockade/embargo (act of war)... by targetting shipping. Here is the reality, US is only as self sufficient as 130 vunerable refineries can process petro products which sustains everything including ag inputs. In event of war, which those musing US blockading PRC shipping forget actually will be, PRC can retaliate by compromising these refineries with cyber warfare, or in event of full escalation conventional hypersonics. There's a reason Biden told Putin/Xi that he considers cyber attacks on US infra comparable to initiating physical war. In age of vunerable networked infra nodes, during an actual shooting war, US is more vunerable and less self sufficient than EVER simply because adversaries like PRC has the capabilities to compromise critical CONUS infra. Like gunpower ended actual fortresses, network and conventional global strike capabilities ended Zeihan's fortress america. Politics (PRC indigenous defense drive) > geography.
>has horrible demographics
China actually significantly better off demographically TO COMPETE with US vs just about everyone else. Yes there's broad demographic decline, but S&T investements and academic reforms has massively grown the segment of educated / skilled talent. Huge population base effect = PRC generating something like 4.5M STEM talent with exploding pHDs, about all OECD combined. This is multitude more than US can generate domestically + immigration. PRC is only getting better demographically equipped to challenge US primarcy. Think of how JP/SKR/TW consistently moved up value chain, destroyed US lead in semi, even though most they had shit tier demographics but moved up value chain by converting new gen disproportionately into STEM. PRC is doing that with 20x more talent and will be going after every sector. What else does declining population imply? Less import dependancy and more strategic options. Politics (PRC investment in human capita) > demography. Granted does not negate, but there's demographic divident political hacks at PRC scale.
>large navy but only 10% ... >US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day
This is whoefully out of date, PRC has been building mid-tier sized European navy every year, hulls of surface combatants are all blue water capable. But ultimately PRC simply choose not to take on global commitments and freeloads off the US... because why would they not. Apart from courtesy anti piracy, and foreign port visits, PRC likes to stay within IndoPac and turn SCS into Chinese lake. With PRC ship building capacity, it would be trivial for PRC to build a replenishment fleet comparable to USN and replace US policing duties, which would open up global basing options for others who want to freeload off PRC. Ergo US has to fulfill commitments or else they lose hegemonic competition/perks to others who are willing. Now go look at USN readiness / retention decline and the sad state of the fleet due to massive over commitment / tasking and ask yourself why PRC would stop an adversary while making mistake. Or circle back the PRC global hypersonic developments and translate that to port strikes, the TLDR is USN naval assets are single deployment assets, less if replenishment fleet gets scrapped.
>fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles
Zeihan was wanking about surrounding PRC with AShMs at a time when US policy / wonk writings thought this was a great idea (it is), but when US foreign policy tried implement said 1st island chain plan last couple admins, they found very few takers. TLDR is majority of ASEAN/region is neutral and no one is really suicidal enough to be PRC missile sinks in a Sino-US war. Right now the only takers is Japan, TW, and maybe SKR. And bluntly, if you look at current/trending force balance differential in region and future PRC military aquistions, PRC doesn't even need a navy to completely destroy major US ally in the region, who are all islands and existentially vunerable to import disruptions. Not to mention these allies are more liability in actual war... because PRC attacking them will trigger security commitment in 1st Island Chain where US does not want to fight.
>China has become a great economic power
This is peak US exceptionalism wank, China has become a great economic power because it exploited US failures in domestic and foreign policy. People want to think it's US benevolence when it's actually US incompetence that built modern PRC. There's a reason why US vs PRC competition is about systems and not just geographic blessings. It's not geography that's massively failing US, it's the politics. Whatever you think of PRC/CCP politics, so far it's closing the gap faster than US can contain.