Peter Zeihan

It's just that there have always been enough Chinese in the past to pick up the pieces and move forward on the other side of the break.

But that requires you having children.

And so this really is an end to the concept of China and the concept of even the Han Chinese.

Because we're in a situation now where probably they have more people over age 54 than under.

And I'm sorry, that just doesn't work.

And very soon it will be over.

That's before you consider the broader geography of China versus the rest of the world.

You got the first island chain off the coast.

So the Chinese have never, ever, ever been able to be a global commercial power, except when the United States, when it created the global system, told everybody that they couldn't bring guns to trade talks.

And that one decision that we made allowed the Chinese to play on the global field in a way that they just never could until that point.

And so, lo and behold, this is the one era of Chinese history where they're unified and successful.

Sure.

So before World War II, it's a good break, we basically had an imperial system where if you wanted links to resources and markets and populations that were outside of your home country, you had to build a navy and you went and took it.

You built your empire.

And those empires attempted to not trade with one another if they could help it.

They just traded within their own network.

That model generated what we like to call history, and it led to World War II, when all the empires crashed and burned at the same time fighting for dominance.

Well, at the end of World War II, the only Navy that was left that was worthy of the name was the American Navy.

And we had never been a trading power because we more or less had a continent to ourselves, and we're still digesting the continent.

So we had this idea that we will use our Navy to protect everyone, and we will allow everyone to trade with anyone else, and we will allow our market to be open to your goods if, in exchange, we get to write your security policies so we don't get another conflict like this again.