On water, hence huge infra and water transfer projects. Again conditions permitting, the POLITICS can address/mitigate GEO in geopolitics. The reality is PRC water ways are most heavily utilized in the world, meanwhile US waterways, which also requires expensive infra upkeep (read US army engineer corp work), which US Has neglected due to lack of mass infra capability, to the point that climate change is making US river networks too shallow to even transport bulk agri goods. Zeihan has to jerk off to US train network because US lack the infra capabilites to make her rivers work to potential. Yes PRC geo may be "worse" than US on paper, but it's not so worse that coordinated PRC human intervensions can overcome and engineer competitive advantage when lacking natural blessings. People seem to forget PRC geography sustained dominant Chinese societies for 1000s of years. It may not be as blessed CONUS, but it's not antartica, ultimately Chinese geography is better than most of the world for human flourishing. That's why there's 1.4B people there.
On soil/ag, yes per capita PRC land/water resources limited, but reality is PRC is increasing absolute food security, per capita staples production went from 350kg to 400kg over 20 years with 200M extra people. That's absolute food security in terms of calories. Which BTW since population are net declining, resource stress will only reduce over time. Fertlizer consumption also digression, it's mainly due to PRC choosing to (successfully) spam fertlizer while taking time to figure out GMO agri policy and agriculture being makework jobs or 200m famers when really GMO+automated large scale agri can optimize. It's a politcs issue being addressed, but it's not the wanking material PRC collapsists want it to be. Yes it's more constrained than US agri powerhouse, unless full blown maritime war (queue Zeihan blockade meme), in which case everyone, including US will starve because reality is, PRC conventional missiles can take out 150 US refineries to stop most energy/agri inputs (including fertilizer). Because once again, POLITICS, in this case technology, can trump geography. I surmise Zeihan will still laud US shale/energy autakry when reality points to US losing actual energy security because gunpower can now pierce his "fortress America".
On PRC political instutions, they're fine/great. His entire argument over cliques and wealth transfer between provinces (which US does between states), is more PRC collapse talk for his audience who laps it up. Like PRC didn't become first competitor US seriously worries about threatening US primacy since WW2 (i.e. more so than USSR) for doing a "bad" job. For reference most of PRC defense modernization, moving up value chain, leading innovation/R&D indexes happened in last 10 years, after Why Nations Fail. To throw Zeihan bone, his assessment on PRC military might have been closer to truth in the 2010s based on info from 2000s, but this isn't 2000s anymore. There's a reason Zeihan doesn't get invited to any credible think tanks to talk - he doesn't actually know much of the politics.
On demographics, this is where popularizing of simplistic Zeihan analysis from naive population pyramids readings generates the most basic collapists narrative. Especially when talking about geopolitics / strategic competition. It's not just the general demographic trend that determines outcomes - it's not subsistence farmers driving up productivity and building national power but skilled labour coordinated at scale. Most of East Asian tigers with shit TFR grew massively and are leading various strategic tech industries because they simply had more aggregate talent than previous generations. Now consider PRC is generating more STEM than OECD combined (~5m), because even with bad TFR and 20% youth unemployment, PRC massive population baseline is producing the greatest high skill demographic divident in recorded history. Without exaggeration, literally never in human history will so many educated / skilled bodies been produced and coordinated within one country, multiple times more than US an absorb via immigration. Sure, PRC net demographic decline might be a factor starting in 2050s (not a death spiral because PRC high savings/ownership insulates), but for next 30 years, and especially within frame of Zeihans geopolitical competition, PRC has the greatest demographic potential in the world, , and it's not even close. Consider 2000 PRC GDP was ~1T @ ~2M STEM grads, 2022 GDP ~18T @ ~17M STEM. All recent news of PRC leading in various S&T, R&D, industries etc? Lag effect from 2010s when PRC had less than 17M STEM. Now project to 2030 with STEM @ ~50M, likely topout ~80-100M @ 2050. This simply reflects PRC demographics moving from 25% skilled work force to 60-80% like developed countries, i.e. it's not going to stagnate like JP who simply can't produce enough skilled talent at parity. PRC for next 30+ years is going to gain significantly more productive people even if there's less people. And when they stagnate/decline from when net population loss actually effects that cohort, they'll be doing so from a much higher baseline than now. Also less net people = less import dependency which Zeihan likes to wank about. TLDR is PRC relative to geopolitical constraints, currently has probably the the most FAVOURABLE demographic trends for geopolitical competition.