James Kynge

They're trying to get the economic benefit of moving closer to China without annoying the United States so much that Washington creates a backlash against us.

So it's a game of cat and mouse, I think, right now.

And, you know, the world is so complicated right now.

It's going to be interesting to see how this one plays out.

I certainly couldn't call it.

Yeah, it's really hard to overstate how exercised people are in Europe about Greenland.

A lot of people, policymakers, just can't get why the U.S.

is being so aggressive on this point.

They feel that there's a pathway to greater U.S.

influence on Greenland that takes a peaceful route rather than talking about some kind of military overture.

My hot take is that this data shows yet again what a highly lopsided economy China is.

And I think there are two numbers that absolutely show this so clearly that it's so stark.

There is one great strength in the Chinese economy and there is one, well, there are several weaknesses that lead to a particular weakness.

The great strength is that China is a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse

that increasingly inspires awe around the world.

And yet, the weakness is that its economy is so poor at directing the fruits of this advancement to its people that the birth rate that we've seen in China last year has fallen to its lowest level since 1949.

That's the communist revolution of 1949.

So, you know, we've got these two amazing things going on.

This hard-charging technological superpower now, which is a peer competitor of the U.S.

in technology and an economy that can't even return the fruits of labor, as it were, to people so that they feel that they can have families and have as many kids as they like.