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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Tibet is extremely sparsely populated, so their birth rates are irrelevant. There's like 3.4 million ethnic Tibetans, they can have 5x Han TFR and that won't matter.

All of this is just more cope. I think that for a few decades, there was a foreboding feeling in the west that eventually China will become the dominant superpower, and accordingly much mental energy was dedicated to crafting memes that dispel this impression. Like the idea that ethnic minorities in China will help in breaking it apart (this won't work any better than in Russia), or that low TFR or One-child-policy or pollution or real estate market collapse or COVID lockdowns or the crack in the Three Gorges Dam or the debt or x y z will signify the end of the Mandate of Heaven, or… I hope that soon people will realize how pathetic all this cope is. China is not a paper tiger, it's not all fake and propaganda, in fact they barely care what you think about them, it's a well-organized state, their bureaucrats are smarter than yours, they have repeatedly shown more capacity to remove threats to national stability than you have, and they are systematically patching all remaining vulnerabilities. In a sense, you project your own state's inability to manage itself onto China to see how it might conveniently take itself out of the picture.

Now, if you actually go and look at China's population pyramid, I think it's fairly clear the demographics for them are more of a long-term issue than anything, in the short term they can plausibly kick the can down the road and hope AI or robots or something will save them.

This is exactly what they are doing now, but that's also what the US is purporting to do. The problem is that they're very dynamic, in all possible way, and they'll clearly be able to produce millions of robots. Hell, even their Android ROM companies become behemoths that ship high-end race cars and develop humanoid robots (at market cap $127B). Apple (cap $2.6T) has given up on a car after a decade or so of work and is barely able to maintain its phone software. This isn't how things should look when you have a strong position and they're on the verge of collapsing.

(this won't work any better than in Russia)

Didn't Russia fight a violent internal war against minority separatist groups? I seem to recall that happening.

Broadly I think you are attributing a lot of views to me without any evidence that I hold them. Which is fine, I guess. I think that probably the truth on China is between "OMNICOMPETENT HYPERSTATE OF THE FUTURE" and "weak, lame, dying, about to crack."

This isn't how things should look when you have a strong position and they're on the verge of collapsing.

As I said, I don't think China is "on the verge" of collapsing over any sort of near-term timescale.

Didn't Russia fight a violent internal war against minority separatist groups? I seem to recall that happening.

Yes, we won. I refer to the “decolonizing” partition plans during this war, like this one. In reality, the colonized Buryats and all others eagerly enlist and fight in Ukraine (and get killed disproportionately). My point is that even a moderately effective state can easily suppress ethnic minority separatism within its borders, so hoping that China will somehow collapse due to ethnic tensions is not serious.

Uh, the chief military recruiting populations in the US mostly come from regions that would be more likely to take their chances at jumping in a major state crisis.

In reality, the colonized Buryats and all others eagerly enlist and fight in Ukraine (and get killed disproportionately).

Yes, I've seen the footage of the Chechens, they seem quite happy to be back in the field.

I don't particularly think China will collapse due to ethnic tensions.