By David Archibald, AMERICAN THINKER
Anybody who was reading newspapers in the 1980s might remember the dire predictions of those times that Japan’s economy would continue to grow faster than the United States’ and overtake it in the very near future, now past. The superior Japanese growth rate was ascribed to a superior way of doing business and the guidance of the Japanese Ministry of Finance in picking winners.
Then the Japanese real estate bubble burst in 1990, and Japan has had a few lost decades since. The government tried everything to reignite growth, but all that happened was that government debt ran up. Japan’s GDP growth has averaged less than one percent per annum since 1993.
Thirty years on from those predictions about Japan, it is now China that is supposed to overtake the United States economically in 2032.
Previous forecasts of when that might happen include 2014, 2016, 2018, 2024, and 2030. China’s economy will stall out before that can happen and for much the same reasons why Japan’s economy stalled in 1990.
This graph shows GDP for the United States, China, and Japan from 1980 up to 2017, with a projection to 2030:
Note the stupendous divergence between the United States and Japan over the last three decades. The U.S. economy is now almost three times larger than Japan’s. It doesn’t matter that nobody predicted that that would happen. China has come from a very low base due to the Mao years. China’s growth is slowing down, as the world is now saturated with the stuff that China makes. China’s share of world merchandise trade has been sitting at 12 percent for the last five years. Just as that tailwind is dying, the Chinese are facing more headwinds from here.
Chinese coal production of four billion tons per annum has the energy content of 50 million barrels of oil per day. One of the reasons why Chinese goods are so cheap is that Chinese energy is cheap. Chinese academics have predicted that China’s coal production will enter decline from 2020. To stop their economy shrinking, the Chinese will be importing coal from then, possibly as much as 400 million tons per annum by 2030. This equates to about a third of current world coal trade. Chinese oil production started its decline in 2014. By comparison, the United States is likely to have continuing growth in oil production thanks to the Permian Basin.
China has many other problems. Grain and soybean imports are 15 percent of Chinese consumption. If that stopped, due to a blockade, say, then China would have to turn vegetarian overnight. The China we are competing with is three hundred million moderately well off in the coastal provinces and another billion quite poor peasants further inland. The one billion are more of a drag on the Chinese economy than a help. A lot of that four billion tons of coal per annum has to go to keeping them fed and clothed and warm.
China is also making life more difficult for foreign companies with operations there. The assembly type of operations that China specializes in might move elsewhere. There is a lot of latent potential for that sort of work in Vietnam and the Philippines.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Having done business in Japan. The positives are low crime and very homogeneous. Negatives the Japanese live in tiny dwellings. Japanese business people who live a few years in the USA many times do not want to return to Japan because the quality of life is in someways inferior. Very controlling social rules as opposed to greater freedom in the West. The small housing size is very difficult to get used to once one get used to more living space.
The population is very elderly and it is gradually starting to be a burden.
In spite of all the negativity about Japan’s economy, Japanese still live six years longer on than Americans of both genders. The standard of living of the median Japanese household is very high, possibly higher than the median living standard in the United States. Their quality of life is in many respects higher than ours. Although there has been some increase in poverty and crime in recent years, both are still well below American levels. Family structure is more intact than in the United States. Obviously, growth statistics don’t give us the whole story off a countries’ well-being.
America will collapse due to the ever increasing personal,national and sovereign debt.
almost as big as Texas.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
and honey
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/china-is-coping-with-pollution-by-buying-fancy-honey
http://www.chinaagtradefair.com/chinesehonemarket.html
and insects
https://travel.usnews.com/features/countries_that_eat_bugs
and reptiles, amphibians (frogs) and rodents, and clay
https://travel.usnews.com/features/countries_that_eat_bugs
Chinese restaurants here just feature beef, chicken, pork, duck, jelly fish, fish, clams, shrimp, lobster and scallops apart from vegetables, egg, and legumes, and seaweed.
I seriously doubt an an embargo on grains and legumes would do much, aside from the fact that they produce a lot of their own anyway. China is huge.
@ Michael S:
The Hopi prediction — I actually heard a hopi lecture about 40 years ago and went looking for it just now, the one I heard also said men and women would dress alike, but I guess they left that out for political correctness — says that the Great Spirit took the best of humanity from it’s last home, Mars, which we ruined, to earth and divided us into caretaker races, one for each continent, white, black, red, yellow, brown and that we are about to ruin this planet and have the whole cycle start again. All of the other North American plains indians ceded from the Hopis within the last few hundred years. I remember reading, “Black Elk Speaks” when I was 10 or so.
—
The passage still doesn’t make any sense to me. Nothing you said addresses it. Read it.
If Grain and soybean imports are 15 percent of Chinese consumption — it doesn’t say what the other 85 percent is, could be any proportion of vegetables, legumes, seafood, eggs, dairy, or meat — then 85 percent is other things. If grain and soybean imports are stopped, then according to the information the author, himself, provides, the effect would be negligible. Why would it turn them all into vegetarians if certain vegetarian foods are eliminated? The statement is nonsensical on multiple levels.
Also, the one child policy was ended decades ago.
@ Michael S:
There is only one bible with any divinity and it’s not yours. It has been said that the christianity cult is “a lie built on a mountain of deceptions”. There are so many interwoven lies in the fabric of the cult’s teachings that it’s hard to know where to begin, but ultimately they can all be traced back the book that christians call the “holy bible” (even though there is little about it that can be called “holy” without some risk of terminological inexactitude).
@ Michael S:
Luke 21:
[25] And there shall be signs… the sea and the waves roaring… for the powers of heaven shall be shaken…
I’m waiting for some brilliant liberal scientists to finally admit that the changing of weather is due to “the powers of heaven being shaken”, and not to people’s increased “carbon footprint”, or Donald Trump, or something like that. Climate is indeed changing, and maybe catastrophically; and the Bible said these things would happen. Must be Trump’s fault…
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Hi, Sebastian. This may help:
“…FAS pointed out that, “The United States was the lead supplier with a two-thirds market share of the then-small $15 million China beef market when it lost access in 2003.
“During the following 13 years, China’s consumers steadily consumed more red meat and poultry, owing to both higher individual income levels and population growth.
““Although traditionally the least consumed meat, beef consumption grew faster compared to pork and broiler meat over the past 5 years as rising prices for broiler meat and pork (due to lower production) made beef relatively more affordable”
— http://agfax.com/2017/10/16/livestock-market-chinas-meat-and-poultry-import-forecast-2018/
As millions of Chinese have become wealthier over the past decades, their tastes have changed. They now prefer American, feedlot-style beef over traditional foods; but the Chinese government has made life difficult for beef importers at times. They have tried to increase domestic production, which is probably what was inferred in the statement about soybeans. They have not been able to keep up, though, it seems, and the upshot of it all has been higher beef prices. That may be behind Archibald’s “vegetarian” comment — meat prices getting so high for the average consumer, that the Chinese need to return to more traditional diets.
I know personally, that China’s economy took a sudden correction around 2013, which means we see our family from there less and less lately. More is yet to come: I don’t know the economic fine print; but Japan’s economic slowdown corresponded to its sudden drop in birthrates and longer longevity, the “greying effect” that has been hitting every part of the world except Africa and the Middle East. The “one child per family” policy of recent decades in China cannot help but drastically hit its economy in the next few years, as retirement and health costs increase and the percentage of able-bodied workers decreases. Archibald also notes the increasing demand on decreasing energy supplies. None of this spells good news for China’s economic future.
Check out your Hopi predictions, if you will. I don’t know what they say; but my Torah predictions point toward Armageddon; and the latest economic trends seem to agree with them. Hollywood has jumped on the “trend”, to make some money on people’s aprehensions; but what I am talking about is not Hollywood stuff. National debt has gone through the ceiling, social order is breaking down; and more and more, governments are turning towards dictatorships — the way they did in 1he 1920s and 30s. China is no exception: President Xi has been building a Mao-like cult around himself, which may also produce Mao-like economic disaster.
Luke 21:
[25] And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
[26] Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
[27] And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
[28] And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
That’s the general trend. I’m curious what Archibald was thinking about, when he spoke of a “blockade”. Curious.
Am I missing something or does the following passage make no sense?