The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - China Has No Chance || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

The Chinese are stockpiling resources - food, fuel, and materials - to help it endure a protracted conflict with the US. Is this something to be concerned about?Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/china-has-no-chance

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from a toilet in New Zealand. I just had to do a video here for the view, which I will share with you now. Yeah, so you're not going to have my ugly mug on this one, but just keep in mind the theme of where I am and what I'm doing. Anyway, the question from the Patreon page is pretty straightforward. China is stockpying all kinds of things, foods, fuels, materials in order to survive a protracted conflict with the United States. Is that something that will work? And the short version is shit. No, China is the world's largest importer of energy food stuffs, the materials they need to grow food, as well as every mineral in the world.

There really isn't a lot of raw material that is produced within China. It's brought in its process. It's turned into value-added goods, mostly manufacturing, and then exported. So China is vulnerable to cutoffs at all stages of the production chain of every industry in the world. Now, they are, yes, storing lots of food. stuff, but let's assume for the moment they get to their goal of having 120 days of import cover for oil. Well, number one, so that would last them 120 days. Number two, they don't have the salt domes that the United States has, so storing has to be largely done above grab,

which means it's something you can hit with a missile, which means that in a hot war, it's all going to be gone within the first couple of days anyway. And keep in mind, the Chinese are vulnerable to the United States, sea power, not just on the Chinese coast, but anywhere that can interrupt anything with the Strait of Malacca arguably being the most sensitive spot, because that's where about 80% of their oil imports come from. Same basically goes for food. Storing food requires storage facilities. So a while ago, the Chinese built a massive corn storage facility,

but all it was was giant piles of corn piled up along the side of the road, and they all rotted within a year, and it all went to nothing. Some version of that will happen for everything, and even if I'm wrong about energy and food and all the material inputs, they still have to export stuff. And their number one customer is the United States. So the Chinese battle plan literally is for the United States Navy to all sail within sight of the shores so that the Chinese can hit them with their air force.

And then for the United States to continue to patrol the global ocean so they can still import all the food and energy that they want and that the United States will still keep its market open so that the Chinese can pay for everything. It's a stupid, stupid, stupid plan. And so if there ever is a real fight between the Americans or the Chinese, not saying there will be, I honestly don't think there will be, but if there ever is, then the Chinese will be in the same situation I am in the shiver.

Although the view won't be nearly as good.