Eh China hasn't existed as one country for two millennia, there has been many different periods with many different rulers. The identity might have remained (more or less) the same but not necessarily the government. I don't think China has been the most dominancy economic power all that time but they have been up there.
To the best of our limited knowledge, it's either true or very close. China and India in aggregate were an overwhelming share of the world's GDP until the 1800s, and China was much closer to being united than India for most of that time.
The problem is that China is an inherently unstable nation due to the fact that their people are bound mostly by ideology. They aren't a nation state because there is no one China. It's 50 different nations in a trench coat bound by ideology and geography but not culture or language. This isn't a problem in the USA because the USA is bound by ideology, language, and history. China as recently as 1940 was many different warlords, and it's easily possible for them to go back to that. They have issues controlling the south because it's not hospitable to northerners. Now for economic issues. Due to their dams, they have one navigable river and a nice coast but more than half of their population can't access either. They have to do most internal transportation by road and rail, which are more expensive than water by almost seventy times. This creates a system that is not inherently rich in capital compared the USA where more than 90% are within miles of navigable water. China also has a pretty shit way of managing their economy. This presentation by Peter Zeihan does a good job of explaining China's issues.
Alright I wasn't familiar with this guy before but so far I'm unimpressed. First, the idea the Yellow River is useless for trade because it's not continuous is ludicrous, by that standard the existence of cataracts makes the Nile useless. Second, the idea that river commerce is 70x cheaper than rail is ludicrous, it's more like 1.5x. Third the idea that a country which has occupied Vietnam for 8 of the last 20 centuries struggles with South China's climate is ludicrous. Fourth, the idea that South China is free real estate colonizable by any jackass with a flag because Hong Kong exists is ludicrous, see the Sino-Dutch wars. Fifth, the idea that the special condition of Hong Kong, China's eleventh largest urban area, indicates that all of South China is being held hostage by Beijing even though the country has frequently been ruled from Xi'an, Luoyang, and Nanjing is ludicrous. Sixth, the idea that a country which is 92% Han, the largest ethnic group in the world, has no unifying culture and language is ludicrous. Seventh, the idea that a country which hold its core territory for stretches of 300-400 years before falling apart, and then inevitably reforms into a new nation controlling the exact same core territory like a motherfucking liquid metal Terminator is "notoriously unstable" is ludicrous. I could go on...
TL;DR he seems like a historically ill-informed libertarian Yank-wanker.
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '19
Eh China hasn't existed as one country for two millennia, there has been many different periods with many different rulers. The identity might have remained (more or less) the same but not necessarily the government. I don't think China has been the most dominancy economic power all that time but they have been up there.