Zero-Sum Grand Strategy: Just Say No!

Robert Kaplan has annoyed the highly-intelligent Praktike:

Robert Kaplan is Afraid | Liberals Against Terrorism: I have to say that it would be deeply unfortunate and downright foolish if America and China backed themselves both into a 'second Cold War,' as Kaplan puts it. It could only be the result of a mutual miscalculation. There's no doubt that we should be prepared militarily, and we shouldn't be naive in scrutinizing Chinese intentions. I admit that I have my own inchoate concerns about Chinese nationalism, its drive for new energy supplies, and its rumblings over Taiwan. But there are obvious and important differences between the Soviet Union and China, just as there are differences between the late 19th Century balance of power that Kaplan so lovingly uses as an analogy (which, as every schoolboy knows, collapsed after Bismark departed the scene) and the current state of play in the Pacific region.

The Soviet Union was, notably, communist and autarkic. China, by contrast, is developing via an export and FDI-led strategy--meaning that it understands that wealth, power, and geostrategic influence are best created by means other than territorial aggrandizement. The (nominally) Communist Party's internal legitimacy rests upon its ability to improve the living standards of its people, and that economic development is therefore its first priority. And that's good for us, because we like to buy cheap and increasingly well-made Chinese products, and we hope that China's huge population will become a vital market for our own goods and services.

U.S. policy ought to be about finding ways to create a win-win situation in Asia rather than on blundering into a pointless new Cold War that can only make everyone poorer and stupider. We shouldn't be afraid of China, but rather we should be afraid that U.S. China policy will be determined by people who think in zero-sum terms.

People like Robert Kaplan.

Comments

[Tim H.]

Tell us what the win-win is. Otherwise zero-sum looks a lot more probable, seeing as how China is competing for the same resources and jobs.

[Don Quijote]

And that's good for us, because we like to buy cheap and increasingly well-made Chinese products, and we hope that China's huge population will become a vital market for our own goods and services.

I am still waiting for someone to tell me which goods we will be able to sell to China over the next couple of decades. In as far as I can see, we are selling them the factories and they are selling us the output of these factories. We are losing our technical know-how and they are gaining it.

[Neil S.]

"China, by contrast, is developing via an export and FDI-led strategy--meaning that it understands that wealth, power, and geostrategic influence are best created by means other than territorial aggrandizement. The (nominally) Communist Party's internal legitimacy rests upon its ability to improve the living standards of its people, and that economic development is therefore its first priority."

This is the section of Praktike's argument which concerns me - the assumption that the ruling clique within China consists of rational economic maximizers. For a number of reasons (e.g. pollution, corruption, and a rapidly aging population), I believe that China will be unable to coninue to grow at anything like the current rate. And that when the growth rates decline, the rulers of China are likely to turn to other means to maintain their "internal legitimacy" - in particular, the focus on an external enemy.

The emphasis on US policy as the determinant of the behavior of the ruling class in China seems to me to be simplistic and naive. I believe that US policies toward China are much less important in determining the behavior of their leaders than Praktike seems to believe.

[praktike]

Why does Brad DeLong hate my lack of paragraph breaks?

As for you, Neil S., well, it was a blog post. Simplistic is what you get.

[Jason]

Ditto the above comments. What, exactly, do we produce that China would want to buy, and that we would want to sell them? Anything requiring Tool and Die/old school engineering that they really want, they could now make themselves. If they can't [produce something mechanical], all they need do (and have done in the past...) is buy a couple of the widgets and reverse engineer the rest. Ditto with basic electronics. Even Japan can't compete there anymore! Ditto with things like chemical and tires and plastics and steel. They only need the raw materials--NOT the technological know-how--to make these items, now. Some biology and physics work still can only be done here in the US, but not nearly enough to build a reasonable employment base. I would argue not that we are losing our tech base, but that we lost it all a long time ago. How many Americans could explain how a radio works (1920's era tech)? A TV? An internal combustion engine? Now--think fast--how many of you smart little monkeys out there who know how the above tech functions could actually build any of the above items? Or organize an assemble line? A distribution center? Bueler? Anyone? Ferris Bueler, Anyone?

[Jason]

Of course, we could always just sell them weaponry. After all, we still set the bar in that area! I can see it now: selling Star Wars style satellite weapons systems to the "foolish" Chinese at a handsome markup. Who cares if they dominate space, right? No one can live there. I say tack on a coupla strategic nukes and first class guidance systems just to "sweeten" the deal. Hell, maybe we couold lease them our armed forces as "contractors", or something . If we are the best at something we might as well exploit it right? Comparative Advantage?

[Maynard Handley]

So, Jason and Don Quijote, you present quite a puzzle.

You freely admit that the current US makes little of interest to the rest of the world (specifically China, but the rest of the world can also buy from China) yet you seem to imply that, even so, the status quo should remain, that the US should continue to have first call on whatever it wants from the rest of the world, in particular, of course, oil. You might see it this way, with the eternal argument of the aristocrat ("I was BORN into this wealth, so of course I deserve it") but you can bet the rest of the world does not.
(And that fraction of the world that might have been willing to help out the US five years ago has, after la affair "screw the UN, screw Europe, screw anyone anywhere who's not America [and for that matter screw blue Americans]" has given up. Heck, it just doesn't end --- think the Italians are going to be on the side of the US after the last week?)

Let's look at the world through non-aristocratic eyes. Wealth generation comes about through things like innovation, an educated populace, R&D, a helpful legal and financial system, natural resources, pre-existing physical capital, an appropriate cultural mindset and so on. On pretty much every single one of these the US did really well in the past, and is getting worse daily, often with the aggressive help of Bush and friends. Meanwhile on most of these China is bad but, as far as we outsiders can tell, aiming in the right direction. Assuming current trends the decline of the US is inevitable. It's not like it hasn't happened before, that a nation decides to give up on rationality and concludes that god will save it so it doesn't need to bother with hard work here on earth. Isn't that what the glorious middle eastern adventure is all about?

[RonK, Seattle]

People should remember that positive-sum games can be ever so much more cutthroat and unstable than zero-sum games, and that our identification of a particular win-win solution does not compel another party (or parties) to buy in.

[Nanute]

I've been wondering when we would see a thread on China. I think it might be a good time to start selling those weapons systems to Japan. The only thing we can still "export" is knowledge, and it is readily apparent that China doesn't have much, if any, regard for intellectual property. While the administration is busy fighting the war on terror, and looking at the "threat" of N.Korea, the Chinese are quietly going about the business of becoming a superpower. In todays technoligically advanced society, it won't take half as long as it would have 50 years ago. And don't forget, the Chinese are holding a lot of dollar assets in the bank!

[bakho]

Wow. Is this the protectionist web site?

The US probably has the largest population of Chinese outside of Asia. That seems like a good anchor for relations. Win-win global community means discussing problems and combining efforts to develop solutions. Certainly oil supplies are shrinking but that only means opportunities for new technology and products. China expands the market for technology and can enhance return on investment.

The cold war type standoffs really are a waste of resources that in the long run don't achieve their goals. How long has the Cuba embargo lasted? How effective has it been at accomplishing political goals? How much longer will it last? Is it every likely to be successful given its history of failure. If you have an administration that wants to play Lone Ranger and refuses to negotiate and compromise with other nations, then maybe there is little choice but a cold war.

The tradeoff is supposed to be that we buy cheap goods from China and invest the savings in education and infrastructure in the US that moves our workers into higher paying jobs. Unfortunately, this administration has decided to forego investments in infrastructure and education and is instead giving away the treasury to the wealthy and wasting billions on an unwinnable Asian land war. It is not the trade with China that is broken. It is the US government that is failing its citizens.

[praktike]

You protectionist folks are a bit off the mark, methinks:

http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2005/Mar/03-517799.html
------------------
Washington -- Considering total trade of goods (exports and imports), China became the United States' third-largest trading partner in 2004 at $231.4 billion, behind only Canada and Mexico and well ahead of the fourth-largest partner, Japan, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In terms of U.S. goods imports in 2004, China was second, at $196.7 billion, accounting for 13.4 percent of all U.S. imports. In terms of U.S. goods exports, China was fifth, at $34.7 billion, behind only Canada, Mexico, Japan and the United Kingdom and ahead of Germany.

The statistic that gets the most attention, of course, is the bilateral trade deficit with China -- $162.0 billion in 2004, including a small U.S. surplus in services trade -- more than twice the second-highest $75.2 billion deficit with Japan.

In 2004, U.S. exports to China went up 22.4 percent while U.S. imports from China went up 29.0 percent.

The bilateral deficit with China has increased almost without pause for 20 years even as both exports and imports were on the rise. In 1985, the two sides traded less than $4 billion in products each way, and their trade was close to balanced. (See table below.) By 1995 the U.S. trade deficit had already risen to $33.8 billion. By 2004, U.S. exports to China were close to three times higher than in 1995, but imports from China were more than four times higher.

According to Commerce Department numbers, much of what the United States exports to China are machines and machine parts, especially computer components and integrated circuits. Chinese companies assemble the parts into computers, televisions, telephones, toys and other office machines and consumer electronics and ship those back to the United States as well as to third countries.

The United States also sells China land-intensive crops such as soybeans, capital-intensive technology such as commercial aircraft and materials such as scrap metal, the department says.

[Julian Elson]

I once built a little LCD radio...

[Julian Elson]

I once built a little crystal radio...

[Carlos]

I didn't read Kagan's article, but we should remember that power games ARE zero-sum games. Of course, the economy doesn't always work that way, but just because it's possible that China and the USA will both become richer in the future it doesn't mean that BOTH will become more politically and militarily powerful in the future. A China with a GNP per capita half of the USA would be the largest economy in the world and probably would be the dominant military power too. Now, as I'm not an American and I'm pretty used to seeing my country in a subservient position, I have no problem with that, but I don't think that the USA population is ready for the idea of taking orders from another country. It would be good if Americans started getting used to the idea of not being top dog anymore (at least sometime in the future), but pretending that the economic development of China isn't a long term threat to the geopolitical position of the USA isn't a step in the right direction.

[Berkeley Rad]

"...it understands that wealth, power, and geostrategic influence are best created by means other than territorial aggrandizement."

Tell that to Tibet, Hong Kong, and the nervous folks in Taiwan. And, why did China manufacture this current dust-up with Japan?

I hope it's only a cold war, but resource disputes sometimes get out of hand.

[Julian Elson]

Praktike, those figures surprised me. The U.S. in general imports 76% more than it exports, but with its trade with China, it imports 466% more than it exports!

[christopher Brandow]

big disclaimer, I am only halfway through the Kaplan article, but it seemed to me that he was arguing to bring the Chinese gradually into alliance with us and others so as to avoid pitting ourselves against each other.

[Knut Wicksell]

Europe has adjusted quite well (after two devastating conflicts) to no longer running the world. The United States will also adjust -- let's hope without the help of devastating conflict.

Brad's post is on the money. It was the 'realpolitik' thinkers (in our country Brooks Adams via Theodore Roosevelt) who got the world into so much trouble starting in 1914. It's not that nations don't have conflicting interests. Obviously they do, just like consumers and producers. Consumers like low prices, producers want high ones. The point is that it is better to look for peaceful resolutions of those conflicts rather than to exaggerate them to the point of folly.

Case in point: the 911 terrorist attacks. They killed an incredible number of people on the scale of terrorist attacks. They did no damage to the State that wasn't subsequently self-inflicted. It had no strategic, or even tactical significance. But 'realpolitik' thinking in the Bush administration made it so, to our eternal loss.

It is that kind of imbecilic ratiocination that got the Germans to invade Russia, and has taken us into Iraq, with soon to be comparable results -- the effective destruction of our land army.

We should settle for the saddle point. Minimize potential losses, which I believe usually lies somewhere in between win-win and lose-lose.

[Matt]

Praktike is right to take Kaplan to task for treating U.S./China relations as a zero sum game. Maintaining peace with China should be a core U.S. strategic objective. But Praktike is too complacent about the potential for conflict.

It is impossible to imagaine any Chinese government, nominally communist or otherwise, acquiescing in formal independence for Taiwan. For China, an independent Taiwan is a visible symbol of the country's humilation by Japan and the Western colonial powers; the depth of public sentiment on this issue is hard to overstate. In a pinch, the status of Taiwan trumps all development goals.

Similarly, it is very hard to imagine any U.S. government acquiescing in the invasion and forced absorption of a free and democratic Taiwan.

Thus, I worry very, very much about the potential for a conflict that the leadership in both countries wants very, very much to avoid.

The current U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity amounts to hoping that the prospects for peaceful unification will look better in 5 or 10 or 15 years, or that nationalist feeling in China will have softened in 20 or 25 years. I can't think of a better policy.

[pat]

"The statistic that gets the most attention, of course, is the bilateral trade deficit with China -- $162.0 billion in 2004"

China's total trade surplus was less thatn $60 billion last year, which means that it was running a trade deficit of $100+ billion with rest of the world. In many cases, Chinese is the final stage of an international asembly line, buying intermediate goods from other countries and putting them together and shipping them to the US. It is not very meaningful to focus on the bilateral trade deficit ...

[masaccio]

Given the enormous amount of pollution in the third world, and our university infrastructure, the obvious thing is for us to focus on environmental cleanup and prevention of pollution as an export strategy. About the time the third world is wealthy enough to need it, it will be ready.

[anne]

The idea that there is all sorts of international savings about, especially Chinese savings, reaching to invest in America is a tempting idea to adopt. Chinese households are throwing savings at us, buying our securities and leading us to continually add to consumption. Chinese households are leading us to import far more than we export. So, the problem is not our domestic policy but an international saving glut glutting America.

The idea is tempting, but does not hold. We have a serious and rapidly growing government deficit and minimal household saving. We consume far more than we produce, and that means we consume far more imports than exports. This trade deficit is not being made up by capital or savings imports from households abroad but from foreign Central Banks. The trade deficit is being funded by Central Banks, primarily Asian banks, and is not a sign of our domestic strength and attractiveness to international investors.

How long the trade deficit can be sustained at the current dollar value and at current low long term interest rates, I do not know. But, I am convinced the problem is real and serious, and must be dealt with at some point domestically, and not by directing anger abroad.

[Bruce Wilder]

I don't know if we should be any more anxious about irrational Chinese nationalism, than about the irrational American nationalism manifest in this thread.

The one positive thing, which I see, is that China's population is relatively old and aging. Those over 50 are terribly unhealthy, and so there will be no immediate retirement crisis -- life expectancy at 60 in China is not yet very high. But, also, there are is not the high proportion of teenage males, which is typical of the Middle East. It is teenage males, more than ideology, which makes for war and revolution. China is notably short on those, at least as a proportion of population.

[anne]

Bruce Wilder

http://www.indexmundi.com/china/life_expectancy_at_birth.html

Life expectancy in China is about 72 years as of 2004. About 73.7 and 70.4 for female and male. Do not discount what China was long ago able to do with simple health care procedures.

[chris]

Bruce:

On another site, aldaily.com, a few months back I read about the war tendency being dependent on young males outnumbering young females, shades of Strangelove manipulating a pocket calculator, and the Chinese population has reached this point due to female infanticide during the one child policy period.

Dr. DOR, please do you have the stats?

[anne]

There are many faces of China:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/arts/01beij.html?ei=1&en=e5501fc5e632eee1&ex=1115266185&pagewanted=all&position=

Amid Ghosts of the Red Guard, The Avant-Garde Now Blooms
By CRAIG SIMONS

BEIJING - In his gray fleece jacket and pressed khaki pants, Xu Yong looks more like a department store manager than a maverick who is one of the most successful promoters of avant-garde art in China and a protector of its historic architecture. Standing in 798 Space, his contemporary art gallery in northeastern Beijing, next to a row of faded photographs of a woman firing a handgun, Mr. Xu carefully thanks the city government for supporting the Dashanzi International Art Festival, a collaboration among 74 galleries and private art studios in a refurbished 1950's-era weapons factory.

It is perhaps his mild demeanor, coupled with his fondness for making art and old architecture profitable cultural enterprises, that has helped push the Communist leadership here toward aiding the arts and protecting the past. Two years ago Factory 798 was largely abandoned and physically crumbling, a forlorn complex of warehouses and workshops built by East German architects using World War II reparations money. It was given a number rather than a name, in the old-fashioned Communist manner.

Like many of China's state-owned enterprises, it was seemingly doomed, with only a few of its structures still in use. And, as with most of the oldest buildings here, there were demolition plans; in this case the mammoth work areas would be knocked down to make room for a business-development park.

Then artists began to move in, attracted by cheap rents and stunning spaces. By the time a friend took Mr. Xu to see the factory, a handful of musicians and painters had renovated studios. He was immediately attracted to the architecture. "It was obvious that the place had great cultural and historic value," he said.

That realization prompted him to lease a workshop of about 13,000 square feet, clean away a decade of disrepair and open his gallery, 798 Space, the complex's largest. In April 2003 the gallery attracted about 5,000 visitors and international news media attention with a show of avant-garde art appropriately titled "798 Reconstruction." This was followed by an influx to the area of artists, as well as the opening of galleries from Germany, Britain, the United States, Singapore and Japan.

For Mr. Xu, 50, part of the factory's value is intrinsic. The compound was active in the 1960's and 70's and many Maoist slogans (like "Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts") painted on the walls during the Cultural Revolution remain visible. Such propaganda, once ubiquitous, is now rare, and the building is a powerful reminder....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/arts/design/01smit.html?ex=1115265600&en=072f034da8856f01&ei=5070

The Met's Magnifying Glass on a Single Chinese Emperor's Court
By ROBERTA SMITH

When it comes to Chinese art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art can think big or small with equal effectiveness. Over the last two decades, in particular, it has alternated between encompassing horizon-broadening endeavors, like last fall's imposing survey of Chinese art from 200 to 750, and highly focused shows that spotlight a particular medium or period while demonstrating the extraordinary richness of the Met's holdings.

In its own high-powered way, "Defining Yongle: Imperial Art in Early 15th-Century China" exemplifies the Met's thinking small. With about 50 objects from the museum's collection and a few outside lenders, the show trains a magnifying glass on the court art of a single Ming emperor, the great Yongle, who ruled China from 1403 to 1424.

The first show at the Met to focus on one Chinese ruler, it includes a dozen new and newish acquisitions, and ranges through paintings, sculpture, lacquer ware, metalwork, textiles, cloisonné and ivory. It has been organized by Denise Patry Leidy, associate curator in the museum's department of Asian art, and James C. Y. Watt, the department's chairman.

Zhu Di (1360-1424), who would be called Yongle (Perpetual Happiness), is often compared to Peter the Great; the analogy fits in terms of brilliance, ambition, historical importance and brutality. Yongle's father, Zhu Yuanzhang, was the first Ming emperor, and a commoner who seized the throne after playing a leading role in the rebellion against the Mongol emperors of the Yuan Dynasty. Yongle (pronounced YOONG-LUH), his fourth son, was not supposed to succeed him, and he didn't. The son of an older brother was named emperor when Yongle's father died in 1398, but after three years of civil war, Yongle drove him from the throne. He then set about laying the cultural, political and physical foundations that would sustain China for centuries to come. During his relatively brief reign, he moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and vastly expanded the Forbidden City that 22 successive emperors would call home. He completed the Grand Canal connecting the Yangtze River to northern China and sent out six large armadas for trade and exploration.

At home, he commissioned scholars to write an encyclopedia of classical and contemporary knowledge, which eventually numbered more than 11,000 volumes. His centralization of power and money was a particular spur to the decorative arts....

[Don Quijote]

Maynard,

I am just observing the reality at hand. The US political & economic elites have decided to loot the country while a whole bunch of economist (free traders & supply siders) have been giving them political cover, they have been at it for thirty years now and if they are permitted to continue, and I expect that they will be, in another thirty years the US will be an english speaking version of Brazil.

PS As an American, I like the US being the top dog (It's probably makes for better top dog than many other country would be). It makes my life easier.

[DOR]

chris,

“Dr DOR” – thanks, but the MA was as far as I got.

The latest data I can find on China’s gender mix is 106 males per 100 females, aged 16-64. The source (http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph-T/peo_sex_rat_156_yea&int=-1, citing CIA World Factbook March 2005) lists at ranks 27 with larger male/female ratios, and 24 with more than 106 females per 100 males.

In other words, if the numbers are right, China is 52nd worst out of 223. However, the 16-64 begs the question of what's happening at the under-16 level.
.

[Dennyr]

US use to be tops in export of chemicals...but no more.

No Longer The Lab Of The World

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931106.htm

[Dennyr]

My previous post had the url cut off..

No Longer The Lab Of The World

U.S. chemical plants are closing in droves as production heads abroad

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931106.htm

In 1958, Hampshire Chemical Corp. opened a plant in Nashua, N.H. Over the next 46 years, the 41-acre complex alchemized hydrocarbon molecules into millions of tons of surfactants, the stuff that gives shampoo its cleansing power. Last fall, though, the facility's long run ended. Dow Chemical Co.,which acquired the property in 1997, shut it down. For Dow, it was another has-been operation. But for the nation, it's more than that. Chemical production itself is becoming a has-been industry.

Only a decade ago the U.S. was the world's top spot for making chemicals. Not only was it the largest market but it also had facilities that boasted the latest technology and the best knowhow. Most important, U.S. plants had a natural advantage, thanks to an abundant supply of cheap natural gas, a building block for plastics, fertilizers, and even pharmaceuticals. Today, none of that is true. Bigger, faster-growing markets are overseas. New facilities in the developing world are often as sophisticated and productive as those in America, if not more so. And in a crippling reversal, U.S. natural gas prices are the highest in the world. For the U.S., the likely results are less investment, fewer jobs, and fewer scientific discoveries.....

[Jason]

Some of my earlier comments here seem to have been taken a little out of context. I have never claimed to be a rabid protectionist. I am not against the concept of "free" trade, but I am very much against how trade policy has been implemented (esp. in the US, but also by foreign gov'ts). Free trade, ideally, should be win-win for all societies involved. In practice, this has not been the case. American elites (of all stripes) have benefited handsomely, but American workers (in industries that compete in tradeable goods) LOSE by having wages pushed generally downward. The gains are not shared equitably (note: NOT evenly, which will never happen) across society. I would *love* to see free trade where "losers" are equitably compensated somehow, but THAT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. In the view of American society, individuals that "lose" because of free trade are just that--losers. Isn't that "loser" image one of the new American stereotypes: the unemployed sheet metal worker living in some trailer and driving a rusted out '86 Ford van? Who cares that he's unemployed because his Trane AC plant moved to Mexico or China. He should've known better, and gotten some skillz, right? Maybe in programming? Oh, wait, most of that's gone now, too...

I am not mad at free trade, I'm mad that my own gov't refuses to take any reasonable steps to help make trade equitable.

[Jason]

Ha, I'm LIVING Dennyr's post above. I feel like I have woken up in some kind of LSD inspired nightmare. Where has my America gone to? I'm afraid I don't understand or enjoy this land of gibbering Southern Baptists and slithering free-marketeers. Perhaps the White Rabbit was not so nice after all...

[chris]

There's a good article at

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26603.shtml

on Taiwan in the China-Taiwan-U. S. great game. It is a review of the political groups and the use of nationalism in Taiwan. Good primer. I haven't finished reading it yet.

[DOR]

chris,

Thanks for the link! That is one of the best articles I've seen analyzing Taiwan domestic politics. A bit thick on theory, but very good nonetheless.
.

[chris]

In this or another thread it was mentioned about having a greater number of boys than girls is a sign of a tendency to war

"In the last census in 2000, there were nearly 19 million boys more than girls in the 0-15 age group. "We have to act now or the problem will become very serious," said Peking University sociologist Prof. Xia Xueluan. He cited the need to strengthen social welfare system in the countryside to weaken the traditional preference for boys."

and

"The vast army of surplus males could pose a threat to China's stability, argued two Western scholars. Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer, who recently wrote a book on the "Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population," cited two rebellions in disproportionately male areas in Manchu Dynasty China."

from "China grapples with legacy of its ‘missing girls’", By Eric Baculinao
Producer, NBC News, Updated: 8:56 a.m. ET Sept. 14, 2004, BEIJING, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5953508/

Checking the MIT press web site for info about the Hudson book,

Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population
Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer, http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=9963&ttype=2,

From the synopsis: "What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.

Hudson and den Boer suggest that the sex ratios of many Asian countries, particularly China and India -- which represent almost 40 percent of the world's population -- are being skewed in favor of males on a scale that may be unprecedented in human history. Through offspring sex selection (often in the form of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide), these countries are acquiring a disproportionate number of low-status young adult males, called "bare branches" by the Chinese.

Hudson and den Boer argue that this surplus male population in Asia's largest countries threatens domestic stability and international security. The prospects for peace and democracy are dimmed by the growth of bare branches in China and India, and, they maintain, the sex ratios of these countries will have global implications in the twenty-first century."

I lose track of where I read different things on this web site; it's an encyclopedia where the letters shift, so I am not sure if this is the post where this question was mentioned.

[Wes]

Chris,

A lot is made of China's skewed gender ratio and aging population, but the numbers are mostly exaggerated (usually unintentionally). To make a long story short, China's census numbers are chronically underreported, since local functionaries get perks for dropping the numbers down. Vaccine manufacturers have recognized this, and always supply 25% more vaccine (at least) to villages than would apparently be necessary based on the population figures made official-- with almost the entire stock used up in eac case. Furthermore, there are far more girls born and raised than official stats suggest. The girls are often sent to relatives and neighbors when the bean counters roll by, yet meetings among Chinese demographers all acknowledge that the female birth rate is much higher than is often appreciated-- maybe a M:F ratio of 111:100 or so. Still elevated, but not at the levels often assumed.

As for the One Child Policy, it's had little to no effect on China's population since its enaction in 1979. Almost all of China's fertility drop from the artificially high Maoist levels (he was vehemently pro-Natalist) occurred in the 1970s, when voluntarily family planning measures were introduced. Since then, the TFR has stagnated, and in fact risen somewhat b/c of the loss of some of the social safety nets since 1979. The OCP is not really enforced at all in the countryside, and you still see families with a dozen kids all around. There are fines in place in the cities, yet there more couples opt for small families anyway, and in fact a number of wealthier couples deliberately have larger families (and pay the fine) as a way of flaunting wealth. There are dozens of other loopholes in the OCP (e.g. military service) that gut it basically into non-enforcement. Again, China's official pop. numbers are generally underestimates, and China's population is therefore absolutely not aging.

To the extent that a male:female imbalance exists, it's partially being remedied in an old-fashioned way. Rural, unmarried Chinese men are taking wives among the millions of women refugees from North Korea, as well as from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as the overseas Chinese who are increasingly returning. I'd like to see China drop the whole damn lame OCP charade altogether, but perhaps in spite of itself, it hasn't had much effect overall.