Bill Maher Is Wrong on China | Quick Take | GZERO Media

​Ian Bremmer disagrees with Bill Maher's rant that the US has lost while China takes over the world.

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Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:

Happy Monday, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, I've got your Quick Take to start off the week. And today I thought I would address the question, has China won? My friend Bill Maher made news in his always fun and entertaining and quite enjoyable show with a serious rant this past Friday, saying that "we're not a serious people in the United States, we can't do anything, we can't build anything, while China builds their economy and takes over the world. We lost. We just don't know it yet." Here, take a look.

Bill Maher: In two generations, China has built 500 entire cities from scratch. Moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class, and mostly cornered the market in 5G and pharmaceuticals. It's got to be something between authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do, and a representative government that can't do anything at all.

Now I got to say this, lots of good stuff in there and it's worth a watch, but I don't agree. And yes, I will say so next time I'm on the show.

China's rise is extraordinary. It's now the second largest economy in the world. China is on track to surpass the US economy now in 2028. Though, that's going to push back by at least a couple of years after this year, when the United States grows by probably 8% and China grows by 5% or a little bit less. They're a tech superpower, in relatively short order in some areas of technology, even on parity with that of the United States. But they're still a poor country, quite a poor country. The average income in China just over $10,000, in the United States it's over $50,000. The Chinese market is closed. They don't allow people to get capital out. And the reason for that is because there would be a lot of capital flight for Chinese investors and Chinese people with cash, that understand that the level of uncertainty of what happens to your money in a country like China, a closed economy, is vastly greater, and therefore unsafe, for you for your children for your future, than in an open economy like the United States.

Now, it's certainly true that China builds faster. They invest massively in infrastructure. Anyone that's been to China, and has been there repeatedly, sees how incredibly the landscape has been changing. Top-down, state directed investment. Yes, it's inefficient, but it moves. And it moves on the back of Chinese labor. It moves on the back of the Chinese government driving that strategy. I'd also note that the average building in China, life expectancy of that building before it falls apart, needs to be destroyed and you need to build another one, is about 35 years on average. It's more than double that in the United States. Quality of build, intrinsic corruption, mismanagement, matters a lot in a country that continues to be, yeah, that poor.

Now also keep in mind that after decades of not spending enough in the United States on our own infrastructure, that is about to change. I would make a very strong call that this year, on the back of the $1.9 trillion of relief and stimulus that we've just approved in the United States, on the back of $4 trillion last year responding to coronavirus. Put that together, it's by far the most effective wide reaching economic response of any major economy in the world. The US will also do another $2 or $3 trillion later this year. And if you're worried about the deficit, look, the fact that the United States has been under investing in human capital and infrastructure means we should do that with the world's reserve currency and with low interest rates and with human capital that's very well-educated on average, but has been under invested in. That's going to make a difference.

Further, coming out of coronavirus, best vaccines in the world, most effective new technologies, Moderna and Pfizer.

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