China's long term geography (100+ years)

j17wang · Feb 13, 2022

hashtagpls said:
In terms of grand strategy, the fact is that the Anglo Five Eyes historically and currently will not leave China alone, they will continue to harass and demonise and attempt to destroy and enslave China as they did during the opium wars and colonial era. China has every right to seek and acquire the sort of buffer zones for historic China/

I dont really care to excessively antagonize the 5 eyes, but it would be proper and fitting to give the Islamic emirates a chunck of the territories currently occupied by "washington". The muslim world has suffered much and should be higher up the reparations list from the US.

daifo · Feb 13, 2022

Prob North Korea if there was some western color revolution attempt. Though not sure who control those nukes @_@

OppositeDay · Feb 13, 2022

The only imperialist adventure that might be worthwhile is Myanmar. Deepens relations with northern ethnic militias. Give them covert military aids to defeat the junta and leverage the military power to get autonomy and a policy veto in a future democratic system. Basically a Myanmar version of Minsk agreement. Possible 10-20 years down the road, I think.

Actual annexation of China's neighbors is stupid and wrong. Remember we are the New China, not the old Imperial China. Some lesser imperialist shenanigans like the Myanmar scenario above might be justified by crucial national interests like access to Indian Ocean, but annexing neighbors is just no go. That's not what New China is about.

AndrewS · Feb 13, 2022

OppositeDay said:
The only imperialist adventure that might be worthwhile is Myanmar. Deepens relations with northern ethnic militias. Give them covert military aids to defeat the junta and leverage the military power to get autonomy and a policy veto in a future democratic system. Basically a Myanmar version of Minsk agreement. Possible 10-20 years down the road, I think.

Actual annexation of China's neighbors is stupid and wrong. Remember we are the New China, not the old Imperial China. Some lesser imperialist shenanigans like the Myanmar scenario above might be justified by crucial national interests like access to Indian Ocean, but annexing neighbors is just no go. That's not what New China is about.

The Communist Party founding myth for the past 70 years is that it created a strong unified China against nasty colonial powers like the British Empire or Japanese Empire who tried to carve up the country. It's a big stretch to go from this founding myth to celebrating conquest like those nasty colonial empires of the past. These days, the driving goal in China is domestic economic development.

And if China wanted more territory, then why did they voluntarily withdraw from:

1. North Korea after 1953. At that point, the North Korean government and military had disintegrated.
2. Withdrawing from the areas they had occupied in the Indian NorthEast in 1962. And note that the road to Delhi was open.
3. Returning the remaining border areas in Vietnam which the Chinese Army had occupied from 1979-1990.

weig2000 · Feb 13, 2022

sndef888 said:
Just a bit of r/imaginarymaps type discussion, mods please remove if inappropriate

The US spent 250 years and expanded from east of the appalachia mountains to basically the entire north america, and is continuing expansion westward with their colonies in Hawaii, Guam and in the process of colonising Japan.

What do you guys think will be the long term geographic change of China, gain or loss? I'm talking long term (100-300 years), possibly outliving the PRC

The biggest change I can think of is that Korea will most likely become a part of China in the future. I got this impression after listening to a Yanbian news broadcast with chinese subtitles, and realised korean language (especially the yanbian dialect) sounds insanely similar to just any typical chinese dialect. It's probably even more intelligible than Minnan. That, and the fact that Korea is directly linked to China by land, and the border is a river (historically river borders are much more prone to political change than mountains). The entire coast from Dandong to Chaeryoung in North Korea is basically a plain. I could see a situation where North Korea destabilises and China comes in to rule by decree, and slowly takes steps like implementing mandarin/korean bilingualism until it is sinicised.

Chinese core territories have been quite stable after several thousands years. The peripheral regions (Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet and parts of Southwest China) have also been gradually absorbed into the Chinese proper in the last couple hundreds of years with some fluctuations. I don't see major changes in these regions given the demography and geography of them.

Korea and Vietnam have been the most sinicized peripheral regions that were not incorporated into China, not for lacking of trying. The Chinese rulers had basically given up trying almost a thousand years ago, but had been satisfied with having them as tributary states rather than absorbing them completely. Korea and Vietnam have since developed strong and distinct identities of their own, I don't see any willingness from either side to absorb/to be absorbed.

Other adjacent territories including Siberia and Okinawa are potential targets, but are not likely. Leaving aside the relationship with Russia, Qing Dynasty lost part of Siberia because in large part very few Chinese were willing to settle in those areas. Even today, Northeastern China is losing population and the demographic is aging. These very cold places are just not attractive to Chinese. Okinawa is an interesting case. It used to be a Chinese tributary state as early as the 19th century. It is now hosting large US military bases to threaten and contain China. If there would be some drastic geopolitical events in the future, it can be imagined that China will have the incentive and excuse to occupy Okinawa or at least make it an independent state that is friendly to China. This possibility can also be attributed to the fact that Japan is still not a completely independent country that has settled into a stable and friendly relationship with China. Its future status and direction are still up for grabs.

Australia is too far away. Unless there will be some significant demographic changes AND even drastic geopolitical changes happening, it's highly unlikely to become a target of territorial expansion for China.

antiterror13 · Feb 13, 2022

China don't need to expand their territory as long as can get the resources needed, which is the case in the current situation

But I believe eventually in 20-30 yrs, Mongolia may want to be part of China, autonomy together with Inner Mongolia. Also China may get some land from North Korea "freely" to get access to Sea of Japan.

I don't think there is for China's interest to get more land in Siberia, including Vladivostok

solarz · Feb 13, 2022

Scenario 1:

Capitalism continues to exist and Earth remains divided.

China will be the strongest faction in the Solar and Proxima Centauri systems, being the only faction backed by national force. The other factions are mega-corporations, including the struggling dinosaur SpaceX.

North America and Western Europe is a dystopian nightmare in the veins of Cyberpunk 2077, while China is a shining beacon of freedom.

Scenario 2:

Humanity transitions from Capitalism into Socialism. The world is united under a new world order led by China. Scarcity is eliminated on Earth, but outer colonies are the new Wild West of Capitalism.

ZeEa5KPul · Feb 13, 2022

solarz said:
Scenario 1:

Capitalism continues to exist and Earth remains divided.

China will be the strongest faction in the Solar and Proxima Centauri systems, being the only faction backed by national force. The other factions are mega-corporations, including the struggling dinosaur SpaceX.

North America and Western Europe is a dystopian nightmare in the veins of Cyberpunk 2077, while China is a shining beacon of freedom.

Scenario 2:

Humanity transitions from Capitalism into Socialism. The world is united under a new world order led by China. Scarcity is eliminated on Earth, but outer colonies are the new Wild West of Capitalism.

Man, I'd read the book/see the movie.

FairAndUnbiased · Feb 13, 2022

OppositeDay said:
The only imperialist adventure that might be worthwhile is Myanmar. Deepens relations with northern ethnic militias. Give them covert military aids to defeat the junta and leverage the military power to get autonomy and a policy veto in a future democratic system. Basically a Myanmar version of Minsk agreement. Possible 10-20 years down the road, I think.

Actual annexation of China's neighbors is stupid and wrong. Remember we are the New China, not the old Imperial China. Some lesser imperialist shenanigans like the Myanmar scenario above might be justified by crucial national interests like access to Indian Ocean, but annexing neighbors is just no go. That's not what New China is about.

no, that's not a good idea. imperial conquest drains resources. there's no point. the real question is just defend + build net energy producing assets. Here are the fundamental struggles in the next 100 years:

1. who survives climate change/peak oil in the mid/late 21st centuries
2. who wins the industrial space race i.e. establishes permanent habitation and production in orbit or Luna.

Wealth is basically resources + energy. Whoever gets to make space a net positive energy source (can extract more energy + materials and use it to influence Earth than it cost to get to orbit) gets to have exclusive access to a net expansion of Earth resources, rather than just recycling the same resources and energy over and over like we are doing right now. In addition it gains the strategic high ground. You can see everything once you have sufficient spacecraft for permanent overwatch.

China is making the first critical steps to getting there. The most critical part is oxygen/metal refining:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. Then you have the plans for

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and

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. This all tells me that the real game, if humans survive climate change, will be decided in space.

Now why is climate change and peak oil so bad? Climate change represents a net drain on energy to counteract it. But that energy used creates more climate change. So at some point there's diminishing returns, or you're forced to give up on mitigation and then massively expensive disaster strikes. But then comes peak oil - you don't have the energy to spend on mitigation because energy growth is smaller than demand and eventually energy growth itself hits 0 while demand growth continues. So you're forced to allow disaster to strike. But once disaster strikes, it damages energy/resource infrastructure...

These are the fundamental questions. We're hitting the carrying capacity of the planet. You either expand the carrying capacity, you hit it exactly and struggle for resources under it while it slowly declines, or you overshoot it and it's all over.

There's no other option. The next 100 years will be nothing like the last 1000 years. It's all or nothing.

@9dashline

ZeEa5KPul · Feb 13, 2022

FairAndUnbiased said:
no, that's not a good idea. imperial conquest drains resources. there's no point. the real question is just defend + build net energy producing assets. Here are the fundamental struggles in the next 100 years:

1. who survives climate change/peak oil in the mid/late 21st centuries
2. who wins the industrial space race i.e. establishes permanent habitation and production in orbit or Luna.

Wealth is basically resources + energy. Whoever gets to make space a net positive energy source (can extract more energy + materials and use it to influence Earth than it cost to get to orbit) gets to have exclusive access to a net expansion of Earth resources, rather than just recycling the same resources and energy over and over like we are doing right now. In addition it gains the strategic high ground. You can see everything once you have sufficient spacecraft for permanent overwatch.

China is making the first critical steps to getting there. The most critical part is oxygen/metal refining:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
. Then you have the plans for
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
and
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
. This all tells me that the real game, if humans survive climate change, will be decided in space.

Now why is climate change and peak oil so bad? Climate change represents a net drain on energy to counteract it. But that energy used creates more climate change. So at some point there's diminishing returns, or you're forced to give up on mitigation and then massively expensive disaster strikes. But then comes peak oil - you don't have the energy to spend on mitigation because energy growth is smaller than demand and eventually energy growth itself hits 0 while demand growth continues. So you're forced to allow disaster to strike. But once disaster strikes, it damages energy/resource infrastructure...

These are the fundamental questions. We're hitting the carrying capacity of the planet. You either expand the carrying capacity, you hit it exactly and struggle for resources under it while it slowly declines, or you overshoot it and it's all over.

There's no other option. The next 100 years will be nothing like the last 1000 years. It's all or nothing.

@9dashline

Peak oil is no concern of China's. Have you seen what it's doing with EVs? Oil will go the way of whale blubber by mid-century.

China's long term geography (100+ years)

j17wang

Senior Member

daifo

Major

OppositeDay

Senior Member

AndrewS

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weig2000

Captain

antiterror13

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solarz

Brigadier

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel

FairAndUnbiased

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ZeEa5KPul

Colonel