China looks forward to becoming the largest economy in the world during the next few years, and a military superpower a decade after that.
Longer-term the outlook is less promising. Time is not on China’s side. There are numerous examples of this. One of the more obvious is the shrinking Chinese workforce and population in general.

The overall population growth rate peaked in 2016 at 0.59 percent and has been declining ever since. There is a worse problem with the shrinking labor force because of the working-age population declining. All this began in 2014 and will continue for decades. The biggest problem, though, is the growing shortage of workers. As the population ages, all those one-child families means there will be more elderly than the economy, and the shrinking workforce can effectively support. Currently, there are ten working-age Chinese for every retiree. By 2050, there will only be two for each retiree.

At that point, retirees will comprise 30 percent of the population versus 15 percent now. Traditionally, children cared for their parents in multi-generation households. That model is dying out, and China is faced with huge pension cost increases at the same time they expect their economy to be the mightiest on the planet. But at that point, the largest single government expense will be the care of the elderly, and this will impose crushing taxes on those of working age. Many working-age Chinese are worried about this as there is no easy solution in sight. China tried (in 2013) to relax the one-child policy but the newly affluent Chinese are less eager than earlier generations to have a lot of kids.

To make matters worse there is not much in the way of pensions or health care for most of the elderly, to begin with. The government recognizes this is a real problem but does not, and will not, have the cash to deal with it. The population shrinkage is accompanied by another problem. Since the 1980s many of those couples forced to have only one child aborted child if it was a female because much more importance is attached to having a male heir. There are nearly 40 million more males than females in China and the disparity is growing.

These surplus males are coming of age, and the competition for wives is causing problems. Women are taking advantage of their scarcity but men are also going to neighboring countries to buy, or even kidnap, young women to be wives. This is causing ill will with neighbors, where females are enticed or coerced, often kidnapped by criminal gangs, to become wives of Chinese men who have no other options. It’s not just brides who are moving to China, foreign workers are being imported. These will not become permanent residents because China, like most East Asian nations, discourages that practice. There are still more Chinese leaving than foreigners entering as permanent residents. It’s these migrants, temporary or permanent, that will become increasingly important in the next few decades for dealing with the rapidly growing labor shortage.

It’s not just population growth that is slowing. A decade ago, it became clear that the years of ten percent a year GDP growth were ending. Not just because economic growth was slowing, but because the central government was finally forced to go public for the first time about the false economic data that provincial officials had been sending to the central government for decades.

Since 2014 Chinese officials became more open about the problem, and have gotten accurate economic information for such things as annual GDP and unemployment rates. Apparently, Chinese GDP has not been growing steadily at near ten percent a year for decades. Chinese officials do eventually (months or years later) get more accurate data and while Chinese GDP has actually been steadily growing over the last three decades, its annual growth actually varied from 5-15 percent. Chinese official policy was to keep everyone calm by issuing less variable annual growth rates. In short, the official numbers were doctored.

For more accurate and immediate indicators of economic activity, Chinese and foreign economists and business leaders use things like electricity production, railroad traffic, and similar data that cannot be manipulated by local officials to make their city or province look more successful. Many financial experts inside and outside China fear that all this official manipulation of economic data (an ancient practice in China, is masking some serious economic problems that could go sideways at any time, cause a banking crisis that would paralyze the economy for a while, and cause political chaos. It’s very much a crouching tiger and hidden dragon situation. This is an ancient phrase warning that behind seeming success and talent lurks the possibility of imminent disaster. Chinese are ever mindful of this sort of thing.

The affluence has not just reduced the birth rate but increased the drug addiction rate. China will not release official figures but it is estimated (using arrests, drug seizures, and such) that there are over 20 million addicts in China and that this is rapidly increasing. This is happening despite vigorous government anti-drug efforts. Arrests for drug offenses have increased more than ten times in the past decade yet the drugs keep coming in (especially from neighbors like Burma, North Korea, Thailand, and Afghanistan).

Since the Chinese Communist Party is under growing popular pressure to do something about the rampant corruption in China, and specifically in the Chinese Communist Party, it has been arresting and prosecuting a growing number of senior officials. New anti-corruption measures were announced in 2015, included more scrutiny of senior officials and large corporations, which are the ones that pay the largest bribes. For years most Chinese believed the anti-corruption effort was having little impact. But in the last five years, there are some believable indicators of progress. This comes in the form of declines in gambling (a favorite activity of corrupt officials) in Macau, where most of the legal gambling takes place. For the first time in over a decade, annual casino revenue declined.

It’s not just drugs and corruption the government is cracking down on. Visible dissent is also a major target. The government has rehabilitated some old Maoists and encouraged a new generation of communist zealots to find and crush criticism of the government. This includes an unauthorized discussion of corruption, criticism of communism, or the Chinese Communist Party. This thought control is becoming more of a nuisance to the Chinese, which is not good news for the government of the world’s largest communist police state.

Victory At Sea

While the situation is bad at home, Chinese prospects outside the country are more promising. For example, China is catching up with the U.S. Navy in terms of quantity and quality of warships. Put another way, the U.S. Navy has suffered a major defeat in its effort to keep the American navy larger and more capable than the Chinese fleet. The problem is that the Chinese are building new warships much faster than the United States can and improving them with new technology, much of it stolen from the Americans. The Chinese warships cost less than their American equivalents and are delivered on time. For decades the U.S. Navy has seen less and less of that sort of performance in the United States. Since 2000 the decline of American warship construction capabilities has become painfully obvious and is now acknowledged as a major problem. Despite that nothing has been done to fix the problems.

Currently, the Chinese fleet has in active service two aircraft carriers, 75 subs including seven SSBNs (nuclear ballistic missile subs), eight SSNs (nuclear attack subs), and 60 SSK (non-nuclear attack subs). There are 300 surface warships including 50 destroyers, 49 frigates, 71 corvettes, 109 missile boats, 94 small ASW (anti-submarine warfare) ships, and 17 gunboats. There are 75 amphibious ships including (in order of size) two LHDs, eight LPDs, 32 LSTs, and 33 LSMs. There are 287 support ships including 36 mine clearing vessels, 19 oilers (for refueling ships far from a base), 30 coastal oilers, 27 fleet supply ships (for resupply at sea), six troop means of transport and a lot of harbor, training and medical support ships as well as intelligence collection ships, hospital ships, and submarine rescue ships. The Chinese navy has also made arrangements with the operators of over fifty civilian cargo ships and ferries to make their vessels quickly available in the event of a major emergency.

All the above comes to 743 active ships with over sixty percent combat ships and the rest support vessels. That support force is the true mark of a major high-seas fleet. China is not just building a lot of new ships quickly, it is also sending them on unprecedented long voyages. This has been going on for a decade. There are so many Chinese naval firsts now because for most of China’s history there was an attitude that there was really nothing useful beyond Chinese borders. Some ships were built for trade, but not on a large scale and never with a powerful navy to protect them. Then China began liberalizing and modernizing its economy in the 1980s which led to lots of exports and even more imports of raw materials and items that China did not make. That justified a larger, sea-going, navy. China’s economic interests are now, for the first time, worldwide and so is its navy. As any naval historian can tell you, a navy becomes effective only by keeping its ships at sea a lot. That’s how Britain won and maintained global naval dominance from the 18th through the early 20th century. That was how the United States took over that role by the mid-20th century and that is what may happen with China sometime in the 21st century. Currently the Chinese expect their fleet to become dominant by 2040.

Covid19

East Asian nations, including, China kept their covid19 infection rate low. That had little to do with being a communist police state because democracies like Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea produced verified results that showed how a disciplined response can keep covid19 infections and deaths and very low levels. China claims it suffered fewer deaths per capita and much less economic disruption than Western nations. The lower economic disruption is obvious. The death rate is less so because the government is not cooperating.

While exact Chinese covid19 infections and deaths data cannot be verified, the low losses in Taiwan and South Korea can be. China, claiming three deaths per million, admits it was not as effective as Taiwan (0.4 deaths per million) but did better than South Korea (29 deaths per million) Japan (52), or Singapore (5). The world average is 303 deaths per million and Western nations average a thousand dead per million. Reports from China indicate that Chinese covid19 deaths were much higher than reported. Even with that most Chinese were confident enough to go back to work, and large public gatherings like mass transit or movie theaters. To maintain this covid19 advantage China still sharply restricts Chinese from traveling outside the country and quickly quarantines any areas where more covid19 appears. These lower infection and death rates are the result of populations accustomed to acting in a unified and precise manner when confronting an emergency. It’s a cultural thing, which is one reason why for the last few thousand years East Asia contained most of the world population.

CHINA SKIRMISH WITH INDIA
Russian news agency TASS claims that mid-June 2020 fighting in southwest China (Tibet border with India) was more damaging to the Chinese than to the Indians. TASS reports 45 Chinese troops dead versus twenty Indian. The fighting took place on the shores of Pangong Lake. A 1996 agreement has troops from both sides entering disputed areas without firearms or explosives. The Chinese have taken to sending in their troops armed with wooden clubs and iron bars. This led to a battle on a ridge overlooking the Galvan River that was initially believed to have left at least twenty dead on both sides. Total casualties (dead, wounded, prisoners) were reported as at least fifty on each side. Currently, both Indian and Chinese troops are moving back from the border Ladakh (India) area where they have been confronting, and occasionally fighting each other since May 2020.

CHINA AND JAPAN FLASHPOINT
Two Chinese coast guard ships came into Japanese territorial waters (within 22 kilometers of one of the Senkaku Islands) and remained while attempting to force two Japanese fishing boats out of what China claims are Chinese waters. A Japanese coast guard vessel quickly arrived and the Chinese warships left. This is the fourth such Chinese intrusion off the Senkakus in 2021 and the first since China enacted a law authorizing their navy and coast guard to “protect” Chinese coastal waters off the Senkakus. Anticipating this, in early 2020 Japan established a military base on Miyako Island (between Senkaku Island and Okinawa).

The Miyako and Senkaku islands are between Okinawa and Taiwan. All three of these island systems dominate the seas between Japan and Taiwan and China has been making claims to some of these islands, especially the Senkakus, and indicating that all of these Japanese islands are actually Chinese. The new garrison on Miyako Island has 380 troops and is equipped with anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles. Chinese naval ships have frequently entered Japanese territorial waters (within 22 kilometers of land) around the Senkaku islands and remained in Japanese waters for an hour or more. There have been over thirty of these incidents since 2017. Miyako Island is 210 kilometers from the Senkakus and Japan plans to put garrisons on more of these small islands.

February 8, 2021: The China Ministry of Public Security released reported that there ten million births in 2020. This is 15 percent less than 2019 and continuing a downward trend.

Major breakthrough in africa
China has continued to expand its dominant control of African raw materials. Currently, Chinese firms control about 70 percent of Congo’s mineral deposits and mining industry. Chinese state-owned firms own most of this, which includes substantial portions of the global supplies of copper and cobalt. Since 2012 Chinese companies have invested at least $12 billion in Congolese mineral assets.

Some of those billions go to enrich Congolese officials who make possible Chinese ownership and protect it from local or foreign interference. The eagerness to gain control of so much cobalt is driven by Chinese plans to become the major producer of electric vehicles. Congo is the world’s biggest cobalt producer, each year producing between 55 percent or 65 percent of the world’s total cobalt. Chinese companies control around 40 percent of Congo’s cobalt deposits and means of extraction.

Cobalt is critical as a stabilizer in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. It takes about ten kg (22 pounds) of cobalt to manufacture an electric car battery. China is committed to producing electric vehicles (EVs) of all types. There is one type that has a particular political importance: the very small “city-town” mini-EVs that can go about 300 kilometers on one charge. The Chinese people want these, so the demand is huge.

The deal the CCP makes with the Chinese people is they can have goodies if they don’t challenge the CCP dictatorship. The mini-EVs are a pay-off. Hence, the Chinese government wants to assure uninterrupted access to cobalt and other minerals used in producing electric devices. The world is paying attention to this because the price of cobalt has risen by 20 percent to about $35,600 a ton.

China... Trying everything possible to take over the world , heavens knows I Will never wish them success.

The problem is nobody is pay attention to what is coming cause china is buying into Africa already and so called leader allowed it.... another colonization is progress cause china is borrowing everyone money we all think is free... let wait and see what is next...

Holamic:
The problem is nobody is pay attention to what is coming cause china is buying into Africa already and so called leader allowed it.... another colonization is progress cause china is borrowing everyone money we all think is free... let wait and see what is next...

Africans aren't paying attention to the world powers as history has always pointed out. It's the same old script of quest and conquers.

Although Africa is prime enough to be used as a destabilizing agent by world powers against other world power perceived as threats. with the availability of firepower and ICT radicalization can be easily achieved and used as a weapon.

All they have to wait for is a miscalculation, something china would surely encounter here in Africa.

China, China, China

The fact remains that they are going the Soviet Union way where the system will collapse. In this case it will be massive. Yes they have huge capital reserves, yes they control most international institutions, but a system that manipulates figures, seeks to control the citizenry with an iron fist, have a nonexistent judicial system, engages in aggressive expansion of their territory, allows millions to die just to prove a point cannot sustain the grip on power. It will always collapse.

Learn from history.

nthony10:
China, China, China

The fact remains that they are going the Soviet Union way where the system will collapse. In this case it will be massive. Yes they have huge capital reserves, yes they control most international institutions, but a system that manipulates figures, seeks to control the citizenry with an iron fist, have a nonexistent judicial system, engages in aggressive expansion of their territory, allows millions to die just to prove a point cannot sustain the grip on power. It will always collapse.

Learn from history.

China and Russia have a deadly history of revolutions, its for that reason they seek to run a police communist-style government where dissidents are totally suppressed and focus diverted from the inefficiency of the ruling party.

China's global dominance quest is far from reality because they need the west's very wealthy block along with large markets such as India to trade to totally cooperate for any form of global financial domination to even happen.

China has lost major battles with world powers such as Japan and superpower Russia, that fear is still embedded in their psychic which is the reason why they don't wanna engage the USA in any form of kinetic war.

And the west would rather let blood flow than give you power on a platter of gold...

A good example is the corona pandemic, china was busy selling propaganda via safety gear diplomacy during the peak especially to the west but the west called them out. As we can see the chinovac vaccine turned less effective and only purchased by Chinese allies mostly with and a total of 15 nations.

India in turn is now the largest exporter of vaccines to nearly 130 nations. Proving a point that credibility will always outdo propaganda.

Despite the west's shortcomings, credibility and rule of law always stand out.

The point is propaganda always runs out of steam and this is oxygen to china Communist Party in ruling china.