Or...Honey, I shrunk the economy!

China's GDP is forty percent smaller than previously assumed. Walter Russell Meade considers the implications.

One that he doesn't point out is the hysteria by some (including the NASA administrator, except that in his case I suspect that it's just a cynical attempt to scare Congress into giving him more money for "Apollo on steroids") that they will beat us back to the moon is even less justified than it was at the higher number.

China not only has a much smaller economy than ours after the PPP recalculation, but it has a much smaller economy per capita, since their population is over four times ours (resulting in average per capita income of about an eighth of ours), with a much smaller middle class. That means that the Chinese peasants, the vast majority of whom are still in poverty by US standards, are likely to be even less happy about boondoggles to the moon than we are.

And as Meade points out, the government is not sufficiently stable to risk the popular uproar that might be engendered by large numbers of people who are unhappy to see their national wealth spent to send a few taikonauts off to Luna, while they continue to have no running water. I expect the Chinese program to continue at its current snail's pace, but to think that they will beat us back to the moon any time soon, or at all, remains a fantasy.

[Via Instapundit]

I would point out that the size of their economy is irrelevant when they hold $1 trillion dollars worth of our debt. That could fund a LOT of space efforts.

(resulting in average per capita income of about an eighth less than ours)

I assume you mean "an eighth of ours." I took this wording to mean 7/8.

Right, fixed.

Rand is being a little disingenuous.

Contrary to what he states, the analysis he references doesn't even mention the Chinese space program.

Also, a six trillion dollar economy is hardly third world as it is the same as that of the United States had in the 1980s. Much greater, in fact, than the US had the first time we went to the Moon.

Also, Rand seems to forget that China is ruled by a government that doesn't particularly care what the people think and which has a military and security apparatis capable of imposing its will if necessary.He finally makes assumptions about the popularity of China's space program unsupported by any evidence.

(Apologies. The previous post was by myself.)

Rand is being a little disingenuous.

Apparently (like many words) you're unfamiliar with the meaning of that word.

Contrary to what he states, the analysis he references doesn't even mention the Chinese space program.

I didn't say, or even imply, that it did. Learn to read.

Also, a six trillion dollar economy is hardly third world

I didn't say it was. Learn to read.

...as it is the same as that of the United States had in the 1980s.

Again, we had a much lower population, and much higher per capita GDP.

Much greater, in fact, than the US had the first time we went to the Moon.

When we went to the moon in the sixties, it was important for national security. The same does not apply to China. Or to the US, today, despite Kay Bailey Hutchison's fantasies.

Also, Rand seems to forget that China is ruled by a government that doesn't particularly care what the people think and which has a military and security apparatis [sic] capable of imposing its will if necessary.

I do not "forget" that. Apparently you didn't actually read Meade's article:

China's political stability may be more fragile than thought. The country faces huge domestic challenges -- an aging population lacking any form of social security, wholesale problems in the financial system that dwarf those revealed in the U.S. sub-prime loan mess and the breakdown of its health system. These problems are as big as ever, but China has fewer resources to meet them than we thought.

Meade seems to think that the stability of China's government is fragile. Do you think him naive, too? The Chinese government knows that there are limits to their ability to quell dissent and still maintain a viable system, even if you don't.

He finally makes assumptions about the popularity of China's space program unsupported by any evidence.

It makes a lot of sense to me that someone who doesn't have running water isn't going to be thrilled about sending a few astronauts to the moon at a cost that could instead be building infrastructure. Where is the evidence, other than your wishful thinking, that it is popular? And try to keep your story straight. Is it a popular program that the government is undertaking at the behest of the masses, or is it an unpopular one that it imposes on them?

And where is the evidence that they are racing to the moon? At their current pace, they'll get there about mid century.

If the Chinese economy is 40% less than noted then the per capita spending on the military is actually much higher than previously thought. There has to be a perceived long term need for such a military commitment.

If I were Putin I would be worried about the Chinese coming North and West into Russian territory. These are the two directions in which they could move easily and quickly in order to secure more resources.

Such a war would also divert attention from the internal political problems that seem destined to get worse.

There is no doubt the Chinese are flexing their muscles both militarily and technologically as witnessed by their recent ASAT test and continued naval build-up.

Could this sort of thinking also be part of the reason behind the Russian opposition to the US Missile Shield?

Is there actually any evidence that China is trying to get to the moon, as anything other than a part of a larger strategy?

China has many problems, of which extreme levels of pollution partly caused by burning dirty coal to make power is not the least. It may well be that China is doing what the USA, with its much larger resources, should have started doing at least twenty years ago - making the first steps towards industrial space infrastructure, of which probably the first product will be SPS. As has been said often before in many places, including here, whoever does that first will control the future of humanity.

The lingua franca of space does not have to be English.

In my 2004 book, I came to pretty much the same conclusions as Mead does now - - that Chinese catchup was more likely to happen in the last half of this century, and that China had a number of precarious transitions to go through if t was to continue on a rapid development track. Look at Taiwan and South Korea for examples of development and political transitions in roughly similar cultures -- each took about two generations of difficult transition to achieve even basic democracy once they had industrialized.

I disagree that poverty will curtail a space program. So long as the Chinese continue to be richer today than they were yesterday, and richer tomorrow than they are today, their poverty relative to the US will not matter to them. And a space program is actually pretty cheap given that they have already developed enough technical capacity to do a lot without big further capital investments -- and the labor costs are being absorbed in a soft-currency economy. So, maybe no big moon landings or moon bases, but certainly continued slow and steady orbital activities, and maybe some around-the-moon flights.

Nationalism and continued economic improvement are the two props of the Chinese Comunist Party. And selected space spectaculars are actually a cheap and easy way of appealing to nationalism.

I agree with Rand about the pace of the Chinese manned space program, the evidence is pretty clear China is not getting anywhere quickly. But I have to disagree with his assessment of popularity of a moon program.

"That means that the Chinese peasants, the vast majority of whom are still in poverty by US standards, are likely to be even less happy about boondoggles to the moon than we are." -- Rand.

If that were true, why is the peasantry not revolting over the current LEO manned space program? In fact the manned program seems to bolster the popularity of the Chinese government by appealing to sentiments of Chinese nationalism among the populace.

Performing a stunt of landing one Taikonaut on the moon doesn't have to require tremendous expenditure or effort similar to the Apollo project. In fact once the Chinese are comfortable with EOR they could probably launch a simple Shenzou circumlunar flyby mission with existing Long March boosters.

Mark Whittington(?) said:

Also, Rand seems to forget that China is ruled by a government that doesn't particularly care what the people think and which has a military and security apparatis capable of imposing its will if necessary.He finally makes assumptions about the popularity of China's space program unsupported by any evidence.

You're quite correct on the ruthlessness of China's military and security apparatis but even they know the limits of their governmental striking power as Rand mentioned earlier. Wonder why the Chicoms oppose huge economical sacrifices concerning "global warming"?

I think Jim Bennet said it better than me.

Also, Rand seems to forget that China is ruled by a government that doesn't particularly care what the people think and which has a military and security apparatis capable of imposing its will if necessary.He finally makes assumptions about the popularity of China's space program unsupported by any evidence.

To the contrary, I'd say there's plenty of evidence that the government is very sensitive to what the public thinks and sees. They are extremely risk adverse to public embarrassment. I base these opinions on their behavior of the past few decades, for example, the political cleanup after the notorious 1996 Long March failure that hit a town and may have killed dozens of people. Sure it's doubtful that they really cared about the deaths, but they made several changes (for example, getting out of the commercial launch business and hindering an independent investigation into the cause of the accident) that ultimately have set back their space program.

Mark and Mike's veneration of the Chinese space program reminds me of statements often heard during that Cold War that the United States was in danger of falling behind the Soviet Union and the only solution was for the US to adopt a Soviet-style National Industrial Policy.

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.

Even if Chinese Communism accomplishes everything M&M hope for -- putting a trivial number of humans on the Moon at enormous cost -- that does not mean America must adopt the same Communist system.

America did not defeat Communism by copying the Soviet Union. Assuming China is a threat in the space arena, there are other strategies for addressing that threat besides an American copy of Chinese Communism.

For example, while China is spending huge sums to almost no one to the Moon, we might develop affordable systems that can send large numbers of people. Just as we did in aviation.

Is it a bad idea for the US to do *more* than the Chinese are planning to do in space? If so, why?

Mike Griffin seems to think it is impossible, given his statements that Orion will be the primary means of launching astronauts for the next 40 years ("an American Soyuz"). Mark has stated flatly that cheap access to space is impossible "until NASA invents a space elevator."

However, neither one of them can point to any physical law that prevents major cost reductions without recourse to unobtanium. So, if cost reductions are impossible under the Chinese Communist model they advocate, doesn't that indicate a weakness in their model?

After all, Mike Griffin did not start saying RLVs were impossible until after he got over $100 million from Congress to build a suborbital RLV (X-34) and failed. Burt Rutan, who didn't work under the ChiComm model, spent just $25 million on SpaceShip One and succeeded.

Which caught Mark Whittington completely by surprise. Prior to SpaceShip One, he stated frequently in print (with his typical cosmic certainty) that without funding for a new NASA capsule, human spaceflight in America would cease to exist. (In fact, he was still making that same prediction several weeks after SpaceShip One flew into space!)

As a result, M&M now say that private enterprise can do human spaceflight -- but only up to a certain altitude limit, at which point the laws of economics cease to operate and only the ChiComm system can work.

I expect that altitude will get pushed higher and higher, as private enterprise continues to do things M&M "knew" to be impossible for anyone but NASA. Nor would I be surprised to see the Chinese and the Russians beat NASA to the Moon, just as Mike predicts.

Unfortunately for M&M, the first Chinese and Russians to land on the Moon will probably be Chinese and Russian *Americans* traveling in spacecraft built and operated by American private enterprise.