Why New Zealand needs to prepare now for a future in 'a world without China' - Peter Zeihan
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/519988/why-new-zealand-needs-to-prepare-now-for-a-future-in-a-world-without-china
China is in trouble - and New Zealand should look to Japan for a way out of its reliance on it, a geopolitical expert says.
"No one is in a worse position than the Chinese," Peter Zeihan, a top geo-political strategist, says.
"According to the data that the Chinese have updated in just the last year... they've got a fertility rate that is one quarter, or below, replacement levels in all of their major cities.
"So, we're looking at the demographic collapse of the Chinese state within 10 years, and that assumes nothing else goes wrong - no trade war with the United States, no government breakdown because of the cult of personality that has arisen around chairman Xi [Jinping], no conflict, nothing."
Zeihan's dramatic predictions are in the latest episode of RNZ's multimedia programme, 30 with Guyon Espiner.
The implication of China's collapse as a viable global economic power, according to Zeihan, is huge losses to New Zealand's export market.
He has warned that globalisation as we know it is in its twilight years, with the US becoming increasingly isolationist and pulling back from its post-war role in policing global trades routes.
Over decades of diplomacy culminating in a free trade agreement, China has become New Zealand's largest trading partner buying more than $21.b in exports including dairy, meat and wood products each year. Few countries have achieved the diplomatic ties with China that New Zealand has won.
The US, he says, due its geographic position, security and self-sufficient energy production, doesn't rely on globalisation for survival in the same way most of the world currently does.
"The United States is the world's premier power not because of globalisation.
"If you remove the NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] states from the equation, we trade for about 3 - maybe 3 and a half - percent of our GDP."
To bolster its chances of survival, Zeihan believes New Zealand must be prepared to acquiesce more to US demands in terms of free-trade agreements, and actively pursue inclusion in sensitive security arrangements with Western allies, like the AUKUS pact.