In-depth conversations on the conflicts and rivalries shaping our world, explored in the detail the subject deserves. Dmitri Alperovitch speaks with the military commanders, intelligence officials, diplomats, historians, and strategists who shape events and study them closely — on the war in Ukraine, strategic competition with China and the future of Taiwan, nuclear deterrence, sanctions and semiconductors, and the changing character of warfare. Throughout, the aim is to understand not merely what has happened, but why — and what is likely to follow.
Geopolitics Decanted is hosted by Dmitri Alperovitch — chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator in Washington, D.C., national bestselling author of World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century, and co-founder of CrowdStrike.
Episodes
14 hours ago
14 hours ago
47 min
China's boom ran on the largest credit expansion ever recorded — roughly a third of global GDP in eight years. Rhodium Group's Logan Wright, who spent fourteen years tracking the financial plumbing from Beijing and Hong Kong, argues that engine has been shutting down since 2018 and the economy behind the headline numbers is growing at 1.5–2%, not 5%. China peaked at 18.5% of global GDP in 2021 and has been sliding ever since. The US has quietly outgrown it every year since.
Wright and host Dmitri Alperovitch talk through why PPP flatters an economy suffering from deflation, why $52 trillion of RMB penned behind capital controls makes outflows inevitable, and why the widely-cited pivot from property to EVs, batteries and AI doesn't survive contact with the data. Rhodium tracks industrial land sales and local-government revenue bonds: strategic industries went from 2% to 6% of issuance while the share of loans priced at or below the prime rate climbed to 59%. The story of China's credit of the last decade: not reallocation to productive industries but forbearance.
What emerges is a picture with no Lehman moment and no bank runs. Just deflation, a 9.5%-of-GDP deficit buying less each year, export competitiveness that comes from weak domestic demand rather than strength, and a decade that looks uncomfortably like Japan's.
00:00 Introduction
01:16 China's economic decline
03:25 How the US has outgrown China for five years
06:11 Why China's PPP lead doesn't matter
12:41 Beijing's fear of capital outflows
16:39 What could trigger a financial crisis
17:14 Credit is flowing to the least productive sectors
19:31 Throwing good money after bad
26:59 China's dependence on Europe
34:19 Can China boost domestic demand?
38:58 The Chinese economy in 2035
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