Ben Shapiro debunks 5 myths about China

“China is a power in a state of inevitable collapse,” Ben Shapiro declared on the latest episode of his new show, “Facts.” “The only question is when and how much damage they’ll do before the Chinese regime implodes.”

Convention of States polling from earlier this year revealed that nearly 80 percent of American voters would support boycotting Chinese-made products in response to aggressive behavior from the Chinese Communist Party. Just under 60 percent wanted President Biden to be “more aggressive” in containing China. Additionally, three-quarters of voters said they did not approve of the federal government or state governments investing taxpayer money into companies or funds with ties to the Chinese state.

Evidently, China is a very real threat to American interests, and the American people know it. However, as Ben Shapiro recently revealed, a few damning metrics betray that the CCP is not nearly as impenetrable as they want us to believe. He briefly breaks down each of these frailties, beginning with:

1. Demographics

Citing research from geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, Ben notes that China is “currently… the fastest aging society in all of human history.” Earlier this year, Zeihan predicted that the People’s Republic will collapse sometime in the next decade, one possible reason for this collapse being the nation's swiftly aging population. Thanks, in part, to China’s one-child policy, which, over three decades, prevented an estimated 400 million births, the nation suffers a “narrowing [of] the bottom [or youngest] seven age blocks,” indicating that those coming into the workforce cannot replace those leaving.

“China aged past the point of no demographic return over 20 years,” Zeihan warns in the video below.


As Ben argues, this raises the question of “who’s gonna pay the bills?”—which leads to the second problem in Chinese society today:

2. Lack of Innovation

In 2014, Harvard Business Review ran a piece titled “Why China Can’t Innovate,” in which three scholars explained several theories about why China, despite “no lack of entrepreneurs, market demand, or wealth,” is falling behind the world’s leaders in innovation. One major reason is that China’s top-heavy government systematically constrains organic entrepreneurship.

“The Communist Party,” researchers summarized, “requires a representative to be present in every company with more than 50 employees. Every firm with more than 100 employees must have a party cell, whose leader reports directly to the party in the municipality or province. These requirements compromise the proprietary nature of a firm’s strategic direction, operations, and competitive advantage, thus constraining normal competitive behavior, not to mention the incentives that drive founders to grow their own businesses.”

Ben added other reasons besides this one, including, for example, that China relies heavily on IP theft. Government reports indicate that China’s intellectual-property theft can cost the U.S. up to $600 billion per year. In 2019, one in five American corporations reported China stealing IP in the past year, according to a CNBC CFO poll.

3. Debt

“If you can’t pay for things through innovation or manufacturing, you got to get a lot of money from someplace else,” Ben Shapiro reasoned, adding that the country’s GDP is disproportionately funded by debt. In-depth research from S&P Global shows that “China's corporate debt of US $27 trillion is equivalent to 31% of the global total, making it too big for investors to ignore. Its debt-to-GDP ratio of 159% is markedly higher than the global rate of 101% and twice the U.S.' 85%, implying substantial financial and economic contagion risk [emphasis added].” Although China’s total debt remains lower than the United States’, its private debt (corporate and personal) to GDP ratio is shockingly higher. In 2006, that number stood at under 120 percent, compared to 155 percent in the U.S. By 2017, America had dropped to under 152 percent, while China skyrocketed to 210 percent, surpassing even Japan, the world’s most indebted nation.

4. Military

The American public is understandably intimidated by China’s reportedly aggressive military. However, collapsing birth rates and financial insecurities have taken their toll on the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Many U.S. officials continue to warn that China has become a “near-peer” military threat; nevertheless, RAND report findings delineate that the U.S. still enjoys “unquantifiable advantages” over the PLA.

Allegedly, China’s military is fraught with insecurity and encumbered by less advanced technology. Internal PLA sources bemoan “shortcomings in the effective integration of joint functions, including planning, firepower, and reconnaissance capabilities,” and “lack of experience.” They also fall far behind in another crucial area: the development of advanced microchips, an argument Chris Miller, author of “Chip War,” often makes.


Of course, this could actually make China more dangerous, as Taiwan, a nation long on China’s radar, is the world’s single greatest supplier of coveted microchips. Astonishingly, “Taiwan is home to 92% of the production of logic semiconductors whose components are smaller than 10 nanometers,” Forbes reports. Although this might incentivize Chinese military action against Taiwan, it nevertheless indicates that the People’s Republic lags behind other developed nations in several crucial ways.

5. Dictatorship

Lastly, Ben Shapiro blasts China’s “biggest” problem of all: its one-party dictatorship. “Dictator Xi Jinping,” Ben rails, “in an attempt to enshrine his own power, has doubled down, seeking more economic control, more autarchy, greater militarism, more carbon-based fossil fuels to push manufacture and growth.” Last year’s massive anti-government protests, among other signs of “regime fatigue,” betray increasing unrest among the Chinese people. One Indian news outlet forecast that the nation’s “aggressive internal dictatorship… is bound to fail.”

Of course, none of this means China isn’t a serious threat. To the contrary, it likely portends that China might become more aggressive “in the near term in an attempt to shore up their foundation because if they don’t, that collapse is going to happen sooner rather than later.” Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note that, once again, Communism has failed horrifically, leaving a seemingly “strong” nation on the brink of decay and implosion.