What if Late Trumpism is also peaking right now? And the same fate that may beset Xi's "Lion in Winter" phase is reflected in Washington in 2026: internal dissent among the MAGA coalition as it's clear they've overstepped and lost the center? Even outright fascism aspires to popular mandate and to grassroots fervor.
I can't bring myself to be too optimistic: even if Democrats can claw back some partial Congressional power and even if Republicans start to think about their own, individual post-Trump political interests and defect (a la Marjorie Taylor Greene), we'll still have another two years after that of lame duck Trump thrashing about with scary executive overreach covered by lawfare and a loyal Supreme Court. That's a long time with the eye off the ball in countering Chinese global influence. A lot can happen in geopolitics and relative superpower power within the span of a single administration.
But could we dare to hope that the West (maybe even with a more robust Europe that constructively frames the alliance) can right the ship after 2028? Maybe something a little more balanced and even better than "The American Century?"
I think the main, fundamental premise underlying Noah’s belief in the coming Chinese Century is the simple fact that they have 4 times the population of the U.S., and unlike India with a similar population their living standards have improved enough over the last few decades for their economic heft to begin to irreversibly surpass the U.S., at least for the next few decades until demographic issues rear their ugly head. There are of course lots of other country specific elements, but that base population difference is a simply overwhelming factor.
Right - we had a narrow, uncertain path to build a western alliance and manufacturing base that could counter China. It was going well under Biden but still we didn’t much room for error given China’s natural advantages.
And Trump destroyed the effort completely. In a few months we’ve shown we’re too unreliable to lead an alliance, no longer the obvious place to move for innovative talent, and not a good place to invest in manufacturing.
It certainly was narrow; Noah has previously talked about needing nearly every western aligned/developed country + India to basically join in a mega TPP in order to come close to the internal market size China has, which would have been a heavy lift to put it mildly
India is problematic because they'd try to use their importance to convince the West to let a zillion Indians migrate. India just tried to do this to the UK. Thank God Starmer didn't give in.
Not just the population size. Smith emphasizes its high levels of education - which is quite a story, after the Cultural Revolution trashed that sector.
The CCP's top-down, highly centralized ruling style is also a serious impediment to efficiency that Noah overlooks, as ~40% of China's GDP is still public sector.
But hopefully the damage that Trump/GOP have done to our alliances will not prove fatal when China finally decides to move on Taiwan--and us--in a few years time.
China (with India) has always had a much larger population than basically anywhere else going back to antiquity. That was true in 1985 just like in 2025 (or 1025, for that matter). So what’s different now?
That China’s had its economic miracle for the last generation, like Japan did after WWII (and that was going to continue forever, too).
As Noah’s essay points out, large populations and rapid industrialization are necessary *but not sufficient* conditions for new superpower status. More often than not the escape velocity sizzles at the crucial consolidation moment. It happened to China before in the Early Modern Period! So it’s really not the inevitable base-case that the 21st is the Chinese Century without the Americans getting *everything right* (and having a dose of luck).
I also think that a lot of these dynamics are more accidental than leadership-driven. The US has more often than not had bad leadership in the White House—*especially* during its Late 19th Century takeoff! Ditto for China. Both grew *despite* poor policy-making. And they both still are doing so today, which is amazing (and a little galling, frankly).
You state that Japan went from 95% to 61% of US in living standards, I think it more correct to say GDP. As someone who recently visited Japan and have a cousin married to a Japanese my impression is that Americans outside the top 20% have a lower living standard than the Japanese. As someone living out in Maga Land I understand the anger and frustration that pushed voters to Trump. Their standard of living has been in decline for forty years and know that (sadly) GDP growth does not translate into a higher living standard for most Americans.
I've lived in Japan and America, and I've seen how the middle class lives in both places. It's not comparable. The Japanese middle class lives in small, spare apartments with hard furniture, spends a punishingly long time commuting, and has to economize on food purchases. Yes, their country is safer than America and the city center is infinitely nicer. But when you enjoy those things, you don't also have to think about which cut of meat you can afford to buy this week...
I think Noah undersells the impact of demographics. Here's why.
If everyone knows the price of a stock will go up tomorrow, it will go up today. If everyone knows a hurricane will come next week, it will induce chaos this week. A crisis looming is in some sense a crisis arrived.
Scenario: it's 2035. Xi is 82 years old and has just passed through the retirement reforms needed to keep the working age population stable out through 2045. Everyone knows this population cliff is coming. Whispers of Xi on decline are rampant. He cracks down even harder on opponents. Is it so hard to believe this situation spirals into calamity?
So the idea is that the coming population cliff would make the question of "Who rules China in the 2030s" more critical, and thus lead to intensified power struggles?
I'll be honest, I'm not sure. Maybe as the country ages the threat of internal strife actually decreases.
My point though is that we can't just say "the numbers look good until 2045, therefore it won't be a problem until 2045" - it may cause instability of some kind in the decade beforehand.
Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
Fair. But we've seen Japan go down this route, and it didn't cause instability of any kind yet. Demographically, Japan is 30 years ahead of China. So for China it's 1995 now, demography-wise.
Also consider a U.S. lead AI takeoff (ie the US develops AGI then ASI within the next few years and eliminates any population advantage China has among other things)
All this pessimism. China feels rich and powerful for the first time in centuries. Does anyone think they will risk that for an uncertain result. Even the relationship with Taiwan could be solved by diplomacy, if both sides could reconcile their differences in government. The last statistic I read was that average wages in China were 25% of the average wage in Brazil, which was 50% of the average wage in America. So a differential of 8 times below the American average wage. A long gap to make up, with people becoming richer than their parents over a generation. Xi could spend his remaining years reducing the reach of the Communist Party and introducing local government.
I think the difference between China and other premier powers is ambition. China, for all its faults, does not want to conquer all of the world, or even all of Asia. This makes the Axis comparison imperfect: I do not think China is going to be that concerned about external enemies trying to destroy it in the long run. The main damage China could do is deal a death blow to the norm that countries cannot, and should not, invade other countries to reset borders. Russia did damage to this in Ukraine, but China could deal the death blow in Taiwan. This would make the world far more dangerous, but less because China is invading the world and more that other nations will feel free to pursue their own grudges from Azerbaijan to Venezuela.
In order for the US to maintain its own hegemony, and to keep that order from falling apart: it needed Trump to lose (probably in 2016). But Trump won, the American people think the juice ain't worth the squeeze and here we are. I think Americans will regret this choice, but they won't even know they made it.
No doubt China has its problems, as do we, but if you were to ask me which ship of state was going to hit an iceberg, the US ship is closer to that iceberg.
The dollar has fallen 11% since Trump, the most in 50 years. Inflation is running at 3% plus. There is a retail rush on gold due to FOMO. It may or may not just be hype, but it is not a good.
Every article I read says our economy is being held up by trillions in AI spending. Manufacturing is down, and we have not seen any evidence of the manufacturing boom Trump has promised. Trump has wrecked manufacturing supply chains. A 50% tariff on aluminum? You just cannot crap out a new smelter. A CEO being interviewed on Bloomberg recently explained it would take tens years to build out a new supply chain in his industry.
A falling dollar makes foreign goods more expensive, maybe that is Trump’s plan, but all it does is make the affordability issue more problematic. There is evidence of weak employment. I can tell you for a fact that if Trump manages to deport 10 or 20 million illegal immigrants, it will be horrid for the economy. Destructive and productivity will fall.
Focusing on China's stumbling and harming itself while we are committing suicide is a waste of time. Our problems are more urgent. China controlling 90% of processed rare earths? That is a critical issue. Collapsing supply chains is critical.
So yeah, maybe I am hair on fire, but I wouldn’t count on it.
China's property glut and manufacturing over capacity represent an unparalleled opportunity.
Imagine if Xi introduced a Universal Basic Income along with a Flat % tax on all spending. The flat % tax could replace all other taxes, so everyone was paid their gross income, and only paid tax as they spent it.
The combination of the UBI and flat% tax would be progressive.
To avoid double taxation, it could provide rebates:
1. On all business expenditure from the tax payable by their customers on the sale price of their goods and services (like GST, but with no exceptions. So the tax would be paid on interest and wages), This would eliminate tax from any business decision, and
2. On the resale of all assets equal to the lesser of: a) the tax paid on the original purchase, adjusted for inflation,; and b) the tax rate times the sales proceeds. This would efffectively tax all capital gains at the same rate as other income, when realised and spent, or when borrowed against and spent.
It would solve internal unrest, boost demand and reverse deflation; and take competitive pressure off the rest of the world, making China less of a pariah.
China could help other countries adopt it's model of central visioning, with private execution, and social underpinning,
It could make Xi, one of the history's greatest leaders for centuries to come. He would not need to conquer any other country. They would want to join in China's orbit.
What if Late Trumpism is also peaking right now? And the same fate that may beset Xi's "Lion in Winter" phase is reflected in Washington in 2026: internal dissent among the MAGA coalition as it's clear they've overstepped and lost the center? Even outright fascism aspires to popular mandate and to grassroots fervor.
I can't bring myself to be too optimistic: even if Democrats can claw back some partial Congressional power and even if Republicans start to think about their own, individual post-Trump political interests and defect (a la Marjorie Taylor Greene), we'll still have another two years after that of lame duck Trump thrashing about with scary executive overreach covered by lawfare and a loyal Supreme Court. That's a long time with the eye off the ball in countering Chinese global influence. A lot can happen in geopolitics and relative superpower power within the span of a single administration.
But could we dare to hope that the West (maybe even with a more robust Europe that constructively frames the alliance) can right the ship after 2028? Maybe something a little more balanced and even better than "The American Century?"
I think the main, fundamental premise underlying Noah’s belief in the coming Chinese Century is the simple fact that they have 4 times the population of the U.S., and unlike India with a similar population their living standards have improved enough over the last few decades for their economic heft to begin to irreversibly surpass the U.S., at least for the next few decades until demographic issues rear their ugly head. There are of course lots of other country specific elements, but that base population difference is a simply overwhelming factor.
Yes. Also, great screen name.
Right - we had a narrow, uncertain path to build a western alliance and manufacturing base that could counter China. It was going well under Biden but still we didn’t much room for error given China’s natural advantages.
And Trump destroyed the effort completely. In a few months we’ve shown we’re too unreliable to lead an alliance, no longer the obvious place to move for innovative talent, and not a good place to invest in manufacturing.
It certainly was narrow; Noah has previously talked about needing nearly every western aligned/developed country + India to basically join in a mega TPP in order to come close to the internal market size China has, which would have been a heavy lift to put it mildly
India is problematic because they'd try to use their importance to convince the West to let a zillion Indians migrate. India just tried to do this to the UK. Thank God Starmer didn't give in.
Not just the population size. Smith emphasizes its high levels of education - which is quite a story, after the Cultural Revolution trashed that sector.
The CCP's top-down, highly centralized ruling style is also a serious impediment to efficiency that Noah overlooks, as ~40% of China's GDP is still public sector.
But hopefully the damage that Trump/GOP have done to our alliances will not prove fatal when China finally decides to move on Taiwan--and us--in a few years time.
America's is almost 40%!
China (with India) has always had a much larger population than basically anywhere else going back to antiquity. That was true in 1985 just like in 2025 (or 1025, for that matter). So what’s different now?
That China’s had its economic miracle for the last generation, like Japan did after WWII (and that was going to continue forever, too).
As Noah’s essay points out, large populations and rapid industrialization are necessary *but not sufficient* conditions for new superpower status. More often than not the escape velocity sizzles at the crucial consolidation moment. It happened to China before in the Early Modern Period! So it’s really not the inevitable base-case that the 21st is the Chinese Century without the Americans getting *everything right* (and having a dose of luck).
I also think that a lot of these dynamics are more accidental than leadership-driven. The US has more often than not had bad leadership in the White House—*especially* during its Late 19th Century takeoff! Ditto for China. Both grew *despite* poor policy-making. And they both still are doing so today, which is amazing (and a little galling, frankly).
You state that Japan went from 95% to 61% of US in living standards, I think it more correct to say GDP. As someone who recently visited Japan and have a cousin married to a Japanese my impression is that Americans outside the top 20% have a lower living standard than the Japanese. As someone living out in Maga Land I understand the anger and frustration that pushed voters to Trump. Their standard of living has been in decline for forty years and know that (sadly) GDP growth does not translate into a higher living standard for most Americans.
I've lived in Japan and America, and I've seen how the middle class lives in both places. It's not comparable. The Japanese middle class lives in small, spare apartments with hard furniture, spends a punishingly long time commuting, and has to economize on food purchases. Yes, their country is safer than America and the city center is infinitely nicer. But when you enjoy those things, you don't also have to think about which cut of meat you can afford to buy this week...
There are some big monetary differences even account for PPP and distributional effects. The non-monetary concerns matter quite a bit too though.
Noah has a great article about this: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/yes-americans-are-much-richer-than
I think Noah undersells the impact of demographics. Here's why.
If everyone knows the price of a stock will go up tomorrow, it will go up today. If everyone knows a hurricane will come next week, it will induce chaos this week. A crisis looming is in some sense a crisis arrived.
Scenario: it's 2035. Xi is 82 years old and has just passed through the retirement reforms needed to keep the working age population stable out through 2045. Everyone knows this population cliff is coming. Whispers of Xi on decline are rampant. He cracks down even harder on opponents. Is it so hard to believe this situation spirals into calamity?
So the idea is that the coming population cliff would make the question of "Who rules China in the 2030s" more critical, and thus lead to intensified power struggles?
I'll be honest, I'm not sure. Maybe as the country ages the threat of internal strife actually decreases.
My point though is that we can't just say "the numbers look good until 2045, therefore it won't be a problem until 2045" - it may cause instability of some kind in the decade beforehand.
Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
Fair. But we've seen Japan go down this route, and it didn't cause instability of any kind yet. Demographically, Japan is 30 years ahead of China. So for China it's 1995 now, demography-wise.
Also consider a U.S. lead AI takeoff (ie the US develops AGI then ASI within the next few years and eliminates any population advantage China has among other things)
All this pessimism. China feels rich and powerful for the first time in centuries. Does anyone think they will risk that for an uncertain result. Even the relationship with Taiwan could be solved by diplomacy, if both sides could reconcile their differences in government. The last statistic I read was that average wages in China were 25% of the average wage in Brazil, which was 50% of the average wage in America. So a differential of 8 times below the American average wage. A long gap to make up, with people becoming richer than their parents over a generation. Xi could spend his remaining years reducing the reach of the Communist Party and introducing local government.
Well, look at what Germany did when they got rich and powerful. Or Japan. Or Russia.
I think the difference between China and other premier powers is ambition. China, for all its faults, does not want to conquer all of the world, or even all of Asia. This makes the Axis comparison imperfect: I do not think China is going to be that concerned about external enemies trying to destroy it in the long run. The main damage China could do is deal a death blow to the norm that countries cannot, and should not, invade other countries to reset borders. Russia did damage to this in Ukraine, but China could deal the death blow in Taiwan. This would make the world far more dangerous, but less because China is invading the world and more that other nations will feel free to pursue their own grudges from Azerbaijan to Venezuela.
In order for the US to maintain its own hegemony, and to keep that order from falling apart: it needed Trump to lose (probably in 2016). But Trump won, the American people think the juice ain't worth the squeeze and here we are. I think Americans will regret this choice, but they won't even know they made it.
We live in a funny world.
No doubt China has its problems, as do we, but if you were to ask me which ship of state was going to hit an iceberg, the US ship is closer to that iceberg.
The dollar has fallen 11% since Trump, the most in 50 years. Inflation is running at 3% plus. There is a retail rush on gold due to FOMO. It may or may not just be hype, but it is not a good.
Every article I read says our economy is being held up by trillions in AI spending. Manufacturing is down, and we have not seen any evidence of the manufacturing boom Trump has promised. Trump has wrecked manufacturing supply chains. A 50% tariff on aluminum? You just cannot crap out a new smelter. A CEO being interviewed on Bloomberg recently explained it would take tens years to build out a new supply chain in his industry.
A falling dollar makes foreign goods more expensive, maybe that is Trump’s plan, but all it does is make the affordability issue more problematic. There is evidence of weak employment. I can tell you for a fact that if Trump manages to deport 10 or 20 million illegal immigrants, it will be horrid for the economy. Destructive and productivity will fall.
Focusing on China's stumbling and harming itself while we are committing suicide is a waste of time. Our problems are more urgent. China controlling 90% of processed rare earths? That is a critical issue. Collapsing supply chains is critical.
So yeah, maybe I am hair on fire, but I wouldn’t count on it.
China's property glut and manufacturing over capacity represent an unparalleled opportunity.
Imagine if Xi introduced a Universal Basic Income along with a Flat % tax on all spending. The flat % tax could replace all other taxes, so everyone was paid their gross income, and only paid tax as they spent it.
The combination of the UBI and flat% tax would be progressive.
To avoid double taxation, it could provide rebates:
1. On all business expenditure from the tax payable by their customers on the sale price of their goods and services (like GST, but with no exceptions. So the tax would be paid on interest and wages), This would eliminate tax from any business decision, and
2. On the resale of all assets equal to the lesser of: a) the tax paid on the original purchase, adjusted for inflation,; and b) the tax rate times the sales proceeds. This would efffectively tax all capital gains at the same rate as other income, when realised and spent, or when borrowed against and spent.
It would solve internal unrest, boost demand and reverse deflation; and take competitive pressure off the rest of the world, making China less of a pariah.
China could help other countries adopt it's model of central visioning, with private execution, and social underpinning,
It could make Xi, one of the history's greatest leaders for centuries to come. He would not need to conquer any other country. They would want to join in China's orbit.