Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Things that seem epochal seem to be happening all at once, as I type, as though we are witnessing the hand of Providence. I may be speaking too soon, but rumours are growing of an economic collapse and a change in power in China. And to a more “pro-Western” regime.

What seems especially uncanny, and implausible, are reports of a sudden demographic collapse, of empty villages in the countryside, and of strangely empty streets in major cities. How can millions of people just disappear suddenly?

Possibly much work and purchasing has gone online, as it has, after all, in North America. Possibly an economic collapse means people do not have money to go out and spend, or work to get to. Possibly the government is harassing those who venture out, fearing any concentration of people might become an anti-government demonstration or a riot.

But counter to this last hypothesis, reports are that the extensive Chinese network of security cameras has been cut off. Surely not what they want to do if they fear unrest. A power shortage?

Whatever the case, it seems that something big is happening in China. And any thing big happening in China is big for the whole world.

Meantime, there is the apocalypse in Iran. Israel is suddenly, in lightning strikes,  wiping out much of Iran’s military capabilities and creating chaos in the regime. Rumours are that many top leaders have flown out to Russia or Pakistan. 

If true, this is what happens when a regime is about to collapse. The Iranian regime has for many years not had any popular support. The military was vital to hold the people down through fear. Now the military is in disarray, and shown to be weak. Iranians  may seize the opportunity to rise up. Iranian friends in Canada are cheering on the Israeli attacks. There is an organized opposition abroad; as there was when the Shah fell. Then, they successfully flew in to take charge and restore order. It may happen again now. Losing a war or some reckless military adventure is a common trigger for autocratic governments to fall. 

That’s two of the three strongest anti-Western regimes.

And then there is the third leg of the triple alliance, Russia.

Russia and Putin have also just gotten a big shock, with the Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia. It was actually eerily similar to the Israeli attack on Iran, happening almost simultaneously, as though the same mastermind was behind both. If not God, perhaps the USA? 

It took out a significant part of Russia’s strategic abilities; and it brought the war to the common people back in Moscow. Not good for popular support, I imagine. 

Online commentators also say Russia, having now lost a million casualties, is finding it hard to replace lost manpower. They may be losing this war of attrition.

At first glance, this looks improbable. Surely Ukraine has a greater manpower problem, with a much smaller population. They’ve been fighting just as long. And a greater materiel problem: their economy is smaller, and their factories have been under attack far longer.

But the argument goes that, in order to gain ground, the Russians have been using human wave attacks, in a war which heavily favours the defense. The Ukrainians, by staying mostly on the defensive, have been able to take advantage of this. Perhaps the optics were bad, but it was the smart move. Let the other side run straight into the machine guns. 

As for materiel, Ukraine still has all of the EU, and beyond, to draw on.

Rumours online are that all this recent attack puts Putin on shaky ground; a palace coup seems possible. As with Iran, a failed military adventure is the most common trigger for the fall of an autocratic regime. 

Of course, this has all been said before, the imminent fall of Putin has been widely predicted, ever since the initial Russian invasion, supposed to take three days, was repulsed. He has shown great resilience. But even a cat has only nine lives. This recent mass drone attack, and the detonation under the Crimean bridge, does look like a possible tipping point. Like the Tet offensive was for the US in Vietnam—the frustration and sense of failure is that much greater once having started to feel victory was at last within view. It must be psychologically devastating.

With Israel’s attack on Iran, Putin has probably lost his main source of drones with which to respond to Ukraine. There are suddenly leaks that Russia and China no longer see one another as allies—consistent with the rumours that China is about to turn pro-Western. It makes sense; China has unresolved historical grievances and border disputes with Russia, and not with the USA or the West. 

So Putin too might soon and suddenly fall.

If any one of these three regimes goes, the other two are more vulnerable. We’re talking dominoes. And China, the biggest and most important of the three, seems to be a pretty sure thing.

What will the world look like if all three dominoes are down?

Hugely enhanced prestige for the US and the West. 

Surely lesser regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea, who have been anti-Western, will also fall or convert. Partly for lost financial backing; partly for lost prestige; partly from spreading revolutionary fervour. 

More importantly, the anti-Western elites within the West will be relatively discredited: the multicult groups running Canada, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, and the EU broadly. Already in process, their fall may be turbocharged. The superiority of the Western way will have been emphatically illustrated.

Hugely enhanced prestige for Donald Trump. FWIW. Cue AI to carve a niche on Mount Rushmore. Maybe with an assist from Musk’s Boring Company.

This may be bad for peace in the Middle East. Hostility towards and fear of Iran has tended to drive Gulf States into cooperation with Israel and the US; this incentive will now be gone. 

However, a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, will have lost their funding. The current forever wars will cease. Certainly, this should end the conflict in Gaza. Without this hot conflict between Israel and fellow Arabs, the other Arab states may feel better able to sign on to the Abraham Accords.

I see a day peace will come to the Middle East. It once seemed impossible for peace to come to Ireland, too. Then it did. 

With Putin gone, Russian matters are unpredictable. But on balance, it would seem that, with the relative loss of strategic capabilities, a more bellicose leadership would have nowhere to go from here—just carrying on just the same. So if you see a problem, why reinforce failure? The obvious possible change is to try for peace. Even to end Russia’s dreams of standing apart from and against the West. That gives you a chance to declare a kind of victory. After all, culturally, Russia is Europe. Division is artificial. Pure self-interest suggests integration. It is only a childish national pride that makes Russia want to fight and seek empire.

One happy consequence of the end of the regimes in Iran and China could be a revival of Christianity. The CCP has discredited atheism in China; the Ayatollahs have discredited Islamism in Iran. Rumours are of a large number of Christian conversions as it is; although such conversions are more or less illegal in both states. With the lid off, this may grow; this may blow. And the vitality of Christianity in these influential nations, in turn, may also hasten revival in the older Christian lands; a revival that already seems to be starting. When the Iron Curtain fell, Pope John Paul II and Polish Christianity brought a new enthusiasm to Catholicism.

And Christianity is the backbone and foundation of Western culture. Is a Renaissance about to begin?

Just a Marker So I can Later Say I Told You So

 

It is becoming more obvious that the Chinese regime is collapsing. Having turned first to the iron fist, the CCP has predictably failed. Reportedly, systems are breaking down in China: internet blackouts, security cameras gone dead; explosions, fires, probably caused by sabotage; deflation, mass unemployment, business defaults, deserted shopping areas. The mandate of heaven is passing. 

Now the party is turning in desperation to the tactic they most feared: the Gorbachev turn. Rumour has it that the leadership is to be handed to Wang and Hu, two relatively reformist figures. Trying to open up and restructure (glasnost, perestroika) without knocking down the whole house did not work for the Soviet Union. In China, it previously dead-ended in Tienanmen. That’s why they’ve been resisting it.

It might have still worked in 2012. I doubt it can work now; Xi’s hardline methods have burned through the residual popular legitimacy this needs. I expect the whole thing to blow within a year.

Putin too is suddenly in grave difficulty, thanks to the recent Ukrainian drone strikes. If he goes, China is more likely to go. If China goes, he is more likely to go. Not that these regimes are dependant on each other, or ideologically aligned; but a revolutionary spirit is contagious across borders. 

Indeed, we already live in revolutionary times, and most established regimes look unsteady. Trump is staging a peaceful revolution in the US, as Milei is in Argentina, and Meloni in Italy. The regimes in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK all face hurricane-force populist headwinds. Klaus Shwab has stepped down. No telling who’s next.

Broken China

 

Where did everybody go?

The world is changing.

Now something seems to be happening in China. There are now enough rumours to convince me that Xi is on his way out.

I thought the Xi style of government was a desperation move by the CCP in the first place. My Chinese friends had asserted long ago that the CCP no longer had any philosophical or ideological capital with the people. The general public was simply ready to ride along so long as everyone was getting richer. Why rock the boat?

But by 2012, it was probably clear to Chinese leadership that economic turmoil was coming. China was facing demographic collapse. Even without it, they were reaching the limit of what economic progress could be achieved by cheap labour: the supply of such labour was running out. It was also only too likely that much of China’s progress and economic strength was always a matter of faked figures and Ponzi schemes. Any system that relies on central planning and not market forces will breed faked production figures and official corruption. There is immediate incentive to do it, and no effective checks against it.

So, fearing what happened in the Soviet Union, the CCP took the opposite course: cracking down instead of opening up. Going back to Maoist tactics. Appealing to fear and ideology. That was Xi’s mandate. He was the guy prepared to try it.

It was bound to fail; now it has. Because it cannot solve the economic problem or the demographic problem, things have gotten worse for the population, and there are growing protests. At some point, the regime must fear the army revolting and refusing orders. 

This to me explains Xi’s sabre rattling. Otherwise, it is crazy to systematically alienate all your neighbours as Xi has. And, if you believe you are a rising power, it makes more sense to lie low and look unthreatening while your power grows. The only explanation for China’s growing bellicosity that makes sense is that Xi was eager to keep the people focussed on a foreign enemy to deflect anger from the central government. And, at the same time, to keep the military on the borders, instead of near Beijing, to reduce the risk of a coup.

But the upshot is that China is increasingly isolated internationally. And this has led  the rest of the world, especially Trump’s America, to play rougher on trade, intensifying the regime’s economic problems.

So now it seems the faction led by former leader Hu Jintao has regained ascendency, and are demanding a return to the prior policy of opening up. 

This too is risky; risker now than in 2012, when the Politburo decided it was too risky. We may see a sudden collapse like that of the USSR. 

But at this point, China is running out of options.

It's the China Virus

 

All my Chinese students, surprisingly, and all my friends in the Philippines, seem to support Trump.

Why? Trump seems to want to be tougher on China than the Democrats.

One student today tried to explain. The bottom line is that they believe Trump means peace. He may fight China economically, but he does not want war. They appreciate that. Of course all American presidents are for America, not for China, But they don’t want chaos.

And, my correspondent says, although Trump is tough on China in trade talks, Trump’s economic sanctions against China do not really seem to have been a big problem. He forced them to buy a huge quantity of American soybeans. A year later, Covid hit, and China was lucky to have those soybeans. Okay, he kept Huawei out of the US market; Huawei is now bigger than ever. 

Perhaps these trade concessions were actually better for China. After all, what was lost by Chinese producers was generally gained by Chinese consumers.

As a Canadian, I had the same feelings about Trump’s renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. I was hoping the Americans would force the Canadian government to drop their egg and milk price-fixing. It would have been of great benefit to the Canadian consumer.

Beyond that, my student says, the Chinese find Trump humorous, and always interesting. They are accustomed to not taking anything at face value, and therefore do not get agitated by his rhetoric. They probably understand this, and get his sense of humour, better than Americans do: it is about face, about bargaining. You bargain for everything in China. You do not take it personally. Of course he is all about America first, but they think he is generally well-disposed enough towards China. And very funny.

This bodes well, I think, for Trump genuinely bringing about a period of peace and prosperity.

Either/Or

 

Teaching a Chinese student the common logical fallacies, we came to this example:

 

He became confused. “Isn’t that ‘scare tactic’? I don’t see it as an option.”

Which tells you something of the difference between Chinese and American culture. He assumed that supporting the president was indeed synonymous with being a patriotic Chinese, and that if you did not support the president, you were in serious trouble.

And now we must note that Justin Trudeau thinks the same way as the Chinese authorities. Those who do not support him are unCanadian and unacceptable. He accuses them of being under foreign influence, Russian, American, or Nazi; and they deserve to have serious trouble visited on them. They bank accounts seized, their licenses cancelled, held in prison without trial. 

The Real Wolf Warrior Diplomacy

 

Genghis Khan, founder of the Yuan

A Chinese student of mine, asked to think of a way the Song Dynasty could have saved themselves from their eventual conquest by the Mongols—a historical hypothetical—came up with the obvious solution. The Mongols were militarily superior; but the Song Dynasty was rich. Paying off the Mongols to leave them alone would not work—it just proved the place was worth conquering. That’s “Danegeld.” The obvious trick, he said, was to pay off junior Mongol officers individually, to subvert the Mongol effort.

That’s good Chinese thinking.

It stands to reason that China is doing this now, as part of their asymmetrical “wolf warrior diplomacy.” They are paying off people in foreign governments.

After all, this is what the British did for centuries. This is largely what “foreign aid” has always been—bribes to Third World leaders and elites. This is what China’s public “Belt and Road initiative” is. 

Why wouldn’t the Chinese also be paying off Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Jacinta Ardern, Anthony Albanese, Duterte in the Philippines, Moon in South Korea? This would explain their strange but persistent downplaying of the Chinese threat. Even politicians who campaign on anti-Chinese rhetoric, seem to end up not doing anything substantial. Obama’s “pivot to Asia” never happened. Duterte campaigned on military confrontation with China over the South China Sea; in power, he actually floated the idea of the Philippines joining China. 

Rhetoric may vary; but it would be foolish, of course, to bribe only one side. You’re going to buy some Conservative MPs as well.

Note too, as my student saw, that it is even more useful to bribe people lower down, who will have less personal prestige and profit invested the success of the country as a whole. You start by bribing amenable congressmen, senators, vice presidents, MPs. They may or may not then rise higher; with your help. Of course you will also want to bribe prominent members of the press, the security services, and the military. 

Bribery is how business is done in China; certainly including the business of government. Why wouldn’t they do the same overseas? It is not necessarily a matter of cash hand to hand; that is crude and undignified. The money can go to a family member; a fake or ceremonial position can be created with generous pay or a generous honourarium; a personal foundation can be funded.

Bribing prominent businessmen will not even be necessary. So long as it is profitable, they will tag along for the opportunity to do business in China.

The current government of China, as it controls the entire Chinese economy, is sitting on mountains of money. Relatively speaking, it would not be expensive to pay such bribes; cheaper, on the whole, and more effective, than money spent directly on arms. 

One would have to be somewhat discreet. But so long as you are also bribing people in the security service and the media, not all that discreet. 

What is preventing such a thing from happening? 

Only the patriotism and sense of honour of those in power in the West. This was always the West’s great advantage: those in charge sincerely believed in what they were doing, in the march of civilization, the rightness of the cause, and in personal honour and ethics.

This is obviously less the case now than it was. Our elites now seem ager to criticize their own countries, “Western civilization,” and “conventional morality.” Giving them an alibi to opt for self-interest. 

And they often seem to grow wealthy in government service. Is that possible, playing it straight and narrow, on a government salary? 

Of course they are being bribed by Big Business, by Big Pharma, by Big Oil, by Big Tobacco, by the various interest groups. Why not also by foreign governments?

There is no solution to this other than a return to the principles of Judeo-Christian morality. In the end, nations rise and fall on their moral worth.

Canada's Economy on Course to Surpass China's by 2060

 

Believe it or not.

The Vampires of China

 

These claims about the Chinese Communist Party are hard to credit. I have heard them from more than one source; but one source may be getting them from the other. They sound like enemy propaganda. On the other hand, we are discovering these days that most conspiracy theories are real.

It would explain the longevity of top Chinese leaders. It would explain why so many are dying now. And it would explain the Chinese zero Covid policy, which otherwise seemed mad. They kept it in place because the top leadership generally was immunocompromised due to multiple organ transplants, and so especially vulnerable to the virus.

If true, the CCP leaders have been killing young people in large numbers to give themselves a few years more of life. And not life of a high quality; life in extreme old age, with all of its frustrations, aches, and pains. Do they have no conscience? Having grown up in a Buddhist-influenced culture, do they have no fear of karma?

I suspect they do have a conscience, and do believe in karma. That is really the only explanation why they would go so far to extend their lives. They are desperate to eke out only a few more miserable years because they are aware of what they have already done, and know they face retribution after they die. It is typical psychopathic behaviour that, rather than take the easier and happier route of repentance or apology, they double down. As Himmler once explained, once they had started killing Jews, the Nazis dared not stop, for fear of retribution.

Elizabeth I, not at all the “good queen” she is often claimed to be, in her last years was terrified of falling asleep, because she feared she would not wake up. She would remain standing each night, to stay awake, until after perhaps fifteen hours in this position, she eventually collapsed. Her last words were supposedly “All my possessions for one moment of time.”

We ought not to envy such people. But we must also understand what they are.

Only the good die young.

What I Know about What Is Happening in China

 

I teach some Chinese students by distance. I get a hint of what is going on there. One student says that others at his school are posting things critical of the government online. He is afraid to write an assigned essay on “the effects of Covid.” He feels it might be too “politically sensitive,” and I must substitute a different topic.

The odds, no doubt, are that the Chinese government will survive this upheaval. But if they do not, it will change the direction of the world. It seems that other governments everywhere have been looking to the Chinese model and seeking to emulate their “basic dictatorship.” Just as years ago, everyone was looking to Japan for their economic model. It would change everything, and for the better, if the Chinese system were suddenly shown, like Japan’s economy, to hit a wall.

Mankind’s hopes, for the moment, are on the shoulders of the people of China.

China Erupts

 

Woke up this morning to things suddenly happening in China. Protests everywhere, demanding the resignation of Xi Jinping, even the end of the CCP. I hear Wuhan, Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Urumqi, reputedly every university and college campus. This has happened so suddenly there is no telling how far it might spread. My favourite China experts are saying this is the most significant event since Tiananmen Square. I’d say, if it persists, it is more significant than Tiananmen Square. That, after all, had a single focus, and so was easier to suppress. Yet it came very close to overthrowing the government.

As always, the tipping point, if it comes, will be when security forces refuse to fight, and join the crowds. Then the mandate of heaven has passed.

Imagine if the Chinese government falls; and the Iranian government; and the Russian government; in rapid succession. It would be as epochal as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Revolutions are usually a bad idea. Any government is better than none. Yet some succeed. There was no reign of terror after the fall of the Berlin Wall; The Philippines transitioned well from Marcos, and Portugal from Caetano; America turned out okay. 

There is hope here for a better world.

Video from Beijing

 

Looks as though SOMETHING is happening!

Now This Is Interesting

 

Why China Won't Collapse-?

 

Serpenza and C-Milk, two guys who spent years on the ground in China, and who married Chinese wives, are both assuring us that, no matter how dire the economic situation in China is looking, Xi and the CCP are not going to lose power.

I have long assumed that they would. It seems the general rule that, once the GDP per person hits about the $10,000 US per annum range, authoritarian nations transition to democracy. A self-sufficient middle class develops the strength to stand up to overly intrusive government at about this point.

Serpenza and C-Milk argue that, with new technology, this is no longer true. China is able to track everyone minute by minute through their smartphones and surveillance cameras. They have crushed all points of possible opposition. It is 1984 and Big Brother. 

This is doubly alarming, because the Canadian government seems to be reproducing, step by step, the Chinese model. Control over the media, including social media. A crackdown on truckers and farmers, the sectors of the population most able to function independent of government. Freezing bank accounts and criminalizing protest. Imposing electronic surveillance with ArriveCan. 

One marvels at how they dare do some of the things they are doing. Don’t they fear an eventual backlash from the voters?

Maybe not. Maybe soon there will be no more real votes or voters.

The same process seems to be moving along smarlty in Europe and the US as well.

I still think C-Milk and Serpenza are wrong, and that they will fail. While the new technology can be used to vastly expand government and corporate control, it also puts a computer and a communications hub in everyone’s palm. On balance, I think the stream of new information will outpace the government’s ability to control it. Thanks also to the “weaponized autism” of the nerds. The increase in authoritarianism is exactly because the bullies feel they are losing control.

I say the whole criminal enterprise collapses, and soon. I suspect China first. All it really takes is for some well-positioned military unit to refuse orders to fire on a  crowd.

At a minimum, anyone who, up until the start of the pandemic, still basically trusted government, now looks foolish.

What May Be Happening in China

 

This might have influence on the housing market elsewhere...

Is China the Emerging Hegemon Already?

 

Although it has often been quoted for scare value, perhaps we have paid too little attention to Justin Trudeau’s open assertion, years ago, that he admires China’s “basic dictatorship.”

This sentiment might manage to explain a series of otherwise seemingly irrational acts not only by Trudeau, but by other leaders around the world. Why limit fertilizer use just as the world faces famine? Why prevent fracking, tax carbon, and force an energy shortage? Why impose vaccine mandates and force mass firings of truckers and medical professionals in the middle of a supply shortage and a pandemic? Why are governments so keen on payments to stay at home, and universal basic income, in the middle of a critical labour shortage? It all makes no sense except in this context: a top-down revolution trying to impose a Chinese-style system. The apparent plan is to make people dependent on the government, and afraid of the government.

Even without being in the pay of China, a lot of politicians seem to want to emulate China’s basic dictatorship.

The thought has been attractive, perhaps, because China has seemed to work so well. Just as, a few decades ago, business execs were all talking about importing “Japanese management techniques,” back when Japan seemed to be developing faster than anyone else, and had the cachet. In more recent years, it has been China. Even if they were not prepared, like Trudeau, to say so openly, “Chinese management techniques” might have looked attractive. China could, as Trudeau further observed, turn on a dime in terms, of, say, meeting its environmental goals.

One indication that China is the model for other governments now is how almost everyone else quickly mimicked the Chinese response to COVID; the lockdowns.

Of course, the key Chinese management practice is dictatorship; along with Fascist collaboration between government and the big corporations. For this, the common people must be cowed into submission, by whatever means necessary. Voluntary associations, civil society, must be attacked and humbled. Occupations allowing too much personal freedom, like trucking or farming, must be suppressed. 

Then matters can be left to the mandarinate, who, of course, think themselves smarter than the average working stiff. A plausible enough argument, one relied on by Confucius, or Plato, before Marx. It is all for the public good.

How to get around the inconvenience of democracy? No doubt there are ways. Control the media. Threaten opposition with seizure of their assets. Make public demonstrations illegal. Introduce new voting procedures open to tampering, like voting machines and mail-in ballots. As Stalin said, it does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts the ballots.

We are seeing these things happen before our eyes.

On the other hand, the growth of information technology is exposing incompetence in the mandarinate. This makes them vulnerable, and some of their overreach may be due to fear. No government can stand if the people will no longer obey. Here too, China might still seem a model to a panicked elite. They have kept their people under their thumb. 

Governments everywhere are undergoing a stress test as they in effect declare war on their own people. There seems a decent chance that the government of China will collapse first, discrediting the whole enterprise. There are runs on the banks and tanks in the streets. Big developers are defaulting. Will the CCP be able to paper it all over and hold things together?

It would be a happier time if we could point to at least one clear counter-example, of a government opening up further to the people. If it then clearly succeeded, a new paradigm might emerge.

Perhaps we see something of this in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. There is hope we might see it in a Canada led by Pierre Poilievre. 

is China Screwed?

 

To my mind, much of this has the ring of truth.

A Little Trouble in Big China?

 

Peng Shuai

Xi Jingping did not attend the recent environmental summit in Edinburgh. This is responsible of him: airplane fuel generates a lot of greenhouse gases, and no agreement reached at such meetings is ever acted upon.

But Xi has not left China for any reason for over a year and nine months. This suggests something else: that he is at risk of losing his position. 

When Mao Zedong died, he left Hua Guofeng as his designated successor. Reportedly, Hua lost his primacy to Deng Xiaoping while he was on a foreign trip. When the cat’s away … Xi may feel himself vulnerable to something similar.

My Chinese students long ago said there was a sort of social contract in China: so long as everyone kept getting more prosperous, nobody was going to shake things up. But there is no residual good will. The Chinese economy looks shaky; it looks as though a real estate bubble is bursting. On top of COVID and a string of natural disasters.

I have long thought China’s sabre-rattling also suggested some power struggle at the top. A retired Australian general notes that, if China wants to take Taiwan, they are pretty much obliged for strategic reasons first to take out the US bases in Okinawa, South Korea, and Guam. But if they do this, surely, as with Pearl Harbor, they are going to have a Big War, probably sucking in not just the US, but Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NATO. It seems to me improbable that they would risk it. Or risk trying to take Taiwan without it. The threats are for local consumption.

In possibly related news, former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli has been accused online by tennis star Peng Shuai of having forced her into a sexual relationship.

It seems unlikely that Peng would have dared to post this unless she thought she had some high-level protection. Accusations of corruption are a standard tool in Chinese power struggles; Xi Jingping has done this systematically. But the gravity of the sexual charge, against someone at such a high level, is unprecedented. 

Since he is retired, it seems unlikely Zhang himself is the real target; more likely someone who is his current sponsor or mentor. I do not know who that would be, but either way, it seems to speak again of a serious power struggle at the top.

A Chinese View

 

Why Is China Being Such a Bad Neighbour?

 

China and India have failed to negotiate a de-escalation of tensions along their common border. China is now rushing further troops to the region. No doubt India is doing the same.

In terms of their national interest, China is acting irrationally. It makes no sense to alienate all of your neighbours simultaneously. And so long as China is developing and arming faster than their neighbours, stalling war for as long as possible and reducing their neighbours’ sense of threat is their best strategic path.

Three things might cause this mad behavior. First, the government in Beijing may see things going badly domestically. They are trying to distract the population from this and get them to rally around the flag to stay in power. Foreigners in general work as a scapegoat. Second, things may be going badly enough that, behind its opaque accounting, the leadership in Beijing believes their financial situation relative to their neighbours is actually deteriorating, or is about to; they need to strike when the iron is hot. This seems to have been why Germany went to war both times in the Twentieth Century. This thesis, however, seems least probable to me. Even if things are about to go downhill, China does not look powerful enough to take on India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the USA concurrently. If they really intend to attack any one of them in order to improve their position—for example, to seize Taiwan and its assets—they should be making nice with all the others.

Here’s another thought. The CCP has worked hard to destroy all rival internal power structures. They fear any organized group might develop into an opposition to their power. They no doubt have reason to. They have cracked down hard on religious organizations of all kinds: Falun Gong, the Christians, the Muslims. They have now also begun to crack down hard on large corporations, on Jack Ma and on Everbright. But the one potential rival organization they cannot crack down on is the military. A country always needs a military, well-organized and disciplined to take orders from its officers. This is why the military is the usual source of coups in any less-developed country. There has never yet been a military coup in a Communist country, but this may have been luck. Rumour is that it was touch and go whether the government of Deng Xiaoping could rely on any unit near Beijing to suppress the Tiananmen protests in 1989. Indeed, in most revolutions, it is all over when the army turns.

It may therefore seem prudent to Xi Jinping to keep the bulk of the Red Army and its most respected or ambitious commanders occupied at the distant border. The Himalayan border with India is ideally remote in this regard. The South China Sea is a pretty good place to keep your naval commanders busy; navy revolts in port were critical in the German Weimar and the Russian revolutions.

This would explain why there are no comparable border tensions or sabre rattlings with Russia or Mongolia. Their borders are still too close to Beijing.

If this assumption is correct, the last thing China wants is a shooting war. If they lose, the loss of face might easily be enough to topple an evidently shaky government. If they win, the prestige may go to the Army or to the local commander, setting them up for a coup.

The risk is of a miscalculation. And that they are acting so recklessly suggests the current regime in Beijing is indeed very shaky.

Kovrig and Spavor Leave a Chinese Box

 

Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been released from Chinese imprisonment, and are home.

Something is happening with China.

After denying the Kovrig and Spavor cases had anything to do with the Meng Wanzhou case, but were following Chinese due process, the CCP released them and put on a plane to Canada the very hour Meng was put on a plane back to China.

At her release, Meng Wangzhou admitted guilt and praised the Canadian justice system in a public statement at her release.

Both these facts are remarkable. They constitute a significant loss of face for China. China is admitting guilt, and praising Canada. Face is of paramount importance in China. 

In other, possibly related recent news:

Australia, the UK, and the US announced a new defense pact, including deadly new weaponry for Australia.

China started auctioning off its oil reserves. They announced this publicly.

Chinese real estate giant Evergrande is close to default.

Oil reserves are held in case of war. China has little domestic production, and its oil supply lines are highly vulnerable. If it is indeed selling off its oil reserves, it is telegraphing the fact that it has no intent to invade Taiwan, as it has been threatening. It might just be saying so, in order to lull everyone into lowering their defenses. But if so, this in itself is a reversal of China’s recent policy, which was to rattle every possible sabre.

The US may be winning the Cold War with China the same way it was won with the Soviet Union. China may have realized that they have now provoked an arms race; and the US has more resources, and is going to bankrupt them if they continue. Accordingly, they are swiftly pulling horns in. They may specifically fear Canada joining the AUKUS pact, as many Canadians have been lobbying for. 

But the key may also be the impending collapse of Evergrande. China may be in dire economic trouble. I think it was rattling sabres in the first place to distract its population from the economic problems they saw coming; and perhaps too, they hoped to keep things going by grabbing Hong Kong, then Taiwanese, assets. 

The CCP now calculates that they need to bail out Evergrande or face a likely general collapse of the Chinese economy. Leading to public unrest that could end in revolution. The Chinese have everything invested in real estate. And perhaps they really do not have the money or assets to do this.

As a result, they may actually need the money from the oil. At the same time, a flood of cheap oil may help the economy in the short term to counter collapse.

At the same time, they cannot afford to provoke any economic or investment boycotts by other countries. The sabres must be put away.

The suddenness of these events, along with recent domestic crackdowns like the banning of foreign tutoring, video gaming, and boy bands makes them look desperate.