China’s Long March through the Global South

Asia Times Deputy Editor David P. Goldman delivered these remarks on July 8 at the National Conservatism 4 Conference in Washington, D.C.

The “Long March” analogy isn’t my idea. Chinese policymakers talk of Mao’s civil war strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside.

Why is this important? The working-age population of high-income countries will fall by a quarter this century due to low birth rates. In the case of Taiwan and South Korea, it’s more like three-quarters.

That’s why I doubt China will invade Taiwan; the Chinese don’t fight for what will fall into their laps sooner or later like ripe fruit. But the working-age population of so-called Middle-Income countries will rise by half.

The world’s scarcest resource is young people who can work in a modern economy. Empires of the past fought over territory. China’s goal is to control people.

In 1979 China took a nation of farmers and turned them into industrial workers, and multiplied GDP per capita 30 times. Now it plans to turn a nation of factory workers into a nation of engineers — think of South Korea. That’s a messy and costly transition. But China is doing it.

In 2020 I wrote of China’s plan to Sino-form the Global South. It knows a lot about getting people who make $3 a day to make $10 or $20 a day.

China’s population has been in decline, but its highly educated population is growing:

Ten and a half million university graduates, up 60% in 10 years, 2X our total – and a third are engineers. That’s more engineering graduates than the rest of the world combined.

South Korea quintupled industrial production between 1990 and 2010 while its factory workforce fell by a fifth.

Will China collapse? Compare the US and China aggregate debt burden: the US is