Hey gang,

By any stretch of imnagination I'm no expert on this topic. This is just my subjective opinion, based on stuff I've read and a bunch of YouTube clips I've watched.

Cheers

There comes a moment when a nation stops wanting to be great. Not because resources have run out or because enemies are stronger, but because the very idea of “straining yourself for the sake of the future” has become toxic. It feels like that moment has already arrived in China.

The tangping movement (“lying flat”) and bailan (“let it rot”) represent a quiet sabotage by hundreds of millions of people who refuse to work the 996 schedule (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week) for the sake of a GDP that gives them personally nothing in return. In the summer of 2023, urban youth unemployment officially reached 21.3%, and immediately after that, Beijing stopped publishing the statistics. In 2024, the number of marriages collapsed to a historic low of 6.1 million (down 20% year-on-year). People don’t just refuse to participate in the “rat race” or work overtime; they don’t want children, apartments, or the whole “Chinese Dream” anymore.

This is what the loss of a critical mass of passionarity looks like.

But the roots go deeper: for decades the Chinese Communist Party has been burning resources on bad investments. Ghost cities like Ordos or Kangbashi — billions of dollars poured into empty skyscrapers where nobody lives. Unprofitable high-speed rail lines built for appearance rather than profit — China Railway’s debt has exceeded $1 trillion, and many lines operate at a loss. Corrupt bureaucrats steal billions and flee abroad: entire neighborhoods in Vancouver are filled with ultra-wealthy former Chinese officials who moved their capital out and now live off passive income.

Because of this, ordinary Chinese have lost trust: they don’t want to invest in an economy where everything can collapse due to corruption or a property bubble. China cannot rely on domestic consumption — savings rates are high (around 45% of GDP), but people spend very little, preferring to hoard money for a rainy day. Economic growth is propped up by 996 labor and exports of cheap goods to Africa, South America, and other developing regions through the Belt and Road Initiative. But this is fragile: when young people refuse overtime and global demand weakens, the “miracle” starts cracking at the seams.

America isn’t there yet, but it’s already halfway down a different path.

Not all young people, of course, but the trend is alarming. 52% of American men aged 18–29 had no sex at all in 2023. The fertility rate of white Americans has been below replacement level since the 1970s, and immigrants no longer close the gap. Add to that an internal divide not seen since the Civil War: progressives consider the country inherently evil and in need of “refounding,” while conservatives see them as traitors. 47% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans now consider political violence acceptable (Rasmussen 2024).

But the main issue is that American youth hasn’t been physically exhausted. No one in the US works 996. The problem is different: for decades, schools and especially universities have taught them to feel entitled. Get a useless degree in gender studies or Black studies and immediately demand $100k+ a year because “capitalists stole everything.” They’ve been taught a simplified Marxism: take away and divide equally. At the same time, no one explained that entrepreneurs bear all the risk, put their own money into technology and science, and if the startup fails, they lose everything — not the state.

Real socialism, as twentieth-century experience shows, ends with bureaucrats coming to power who arrange a good life for themselves and equality-plus-shortages for everyone else. In capitalism, at least there’s a chance to make it big. But when young people don’t understand this and believe success isn’t about risk and hard work but about “fair redistribution,” the nation loses its engine. It just loses it in a different way from China: not from overwork, but from ideological poisoning.

In the modern world, essentially only one idea still exists for which a significant part of humanity is willing to die — radical Islam. If that energy were directed toward science and development, the Islamic world would have broken far ahead long ago. But the dominant “progressive” wing channels it exclusively into destruction and a return to the seventh century.

China burned through its passionarity in 40 years of forced sprint. America is dissolving it in ideology and comfort. The Islamic world is wasting it on self-destruction.

Empires don’t collapse from an external blow. They rot from within when a critical mass of citizens decides they no longer feel like playing the big game. Maybe this is indeed preparation for the age of robots?

In any case — China is already there. America is approaching. What happens next will be very interesting to find out. It even makes you want to live a bit longer just to see it.