Economist Fact-Checks Zeihan's China Collapse Story

[Orbital-Fetus]

 

[Geek Nasty]

Didn’t get to watch all of it. Well prepared critic and Zeihan is way overconfident, but video does get a few things wrong:

• China doesn’t have a navy or infracture designed for global reach. The US has bases everywhere. China doesn’t have that yet and it doesn’t look like their global infrastructure plan will work.
• He cites the US distribution of consumption overy generations not chinas. The US had a unique baby boom generation who hordes wealth.

 

[WIA20XX]

Finally someone taking Petey to task.

He doesn't get a lot of love in more serious geo-poilitical, geo-economic circles.

 

[mitter]

Zeihan is an entertainer, not a truly knowledgeable person. This is true of most youtube personalities.

He knows how to put together interesting narratives and sound like he knows what he's talking about. But if you dig slightly beneath the surface, it is easy to see there's not much there.

 

[DonFrancisco]

He's a predictive analyst who has interesting takes. Like many analysts and policy wonks he's quite bull-ish on his takes. He takes the best case data for his positive outlook in North America and NAFTA and takes the worse possible models for china.

Is he wrong, perhaps? He does back it up with data and accepted models. Like all forecast models it is subject to change. Look at the world bank models on Latin America: Panama and Mexico are supposed to be models in the 2020s. Well one of Panama fastest growing sectors is mineral extaction and now that is all thrown into question due to massive protest on mining.

Let's see what forecasts pan out for China

 

[DrBanneker]

He's a predictive analyst who has interesting takes. Like many analysts and policy wonks he's quite bull-ish on his takes. He takes the best case data for his positive outlook in North America and NAFTA and takes the worse possible models for china.

Is he wrong, perhaps? He does back it up with data and accepted models. Like all forecast models it is subject to change. Look at the world bank models on Latin America: Panama and Mexico are supposed to be models in the 2020s. Well one of Panama fastest growing sectors is mineral extaction and now that is all thrown into question due to massive protest on mining.

Let's see what forecasts pan out for China

A big (actually) huge part of his ideas are the demographics as destiny and his bearish case on China, Germany, and Russia heavily rely on the worker shortage/fertility/immigration balance. Same for why he is bullish the US: large immigration to support the work force. Granted Japan, is far along this spectrum and has not collapsed spectacularly like he claims Germany and China will so we will see. He is very emphatic on his ideas though, sometimes to the point of verbal overreach.

Also, he was a VP at Stratfor which I hear was ok but never like a mindblowing revealing service when it was around so it's not like he has these huge prediction wins under his belt for unexpected outcomes.

 

[Geek Nasty]

Zeihan is an entertainer, not a truly knowledgeable person. This is true of most youtube personalities.

He knows how to put together interesting narratives and sound like he knows what he's talking about. But if you dig slightly beneath the surface, it is easy to see there's not much there.

You can fault his conclusions but the guy has an encyclopedic memory for stats.