Posted on 08/31/2014 8:05:08 PM PDT by marktwain
I am a Chinese working as a China analyst at a think tank. It is becoming more and more apparent to many people, that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows it is on its last straw of survival.
The party is facing severe and endlessly increasing systematic stress on all fronts:
1. Increasing external oppositions from all other countries in the world including all of China's neighbours. They are forming more and more alliances and becoming more outspoken with rising strengths against China, in addition to increasing anti-China sentiment from people in all other countries. Many countries including Canada and Australia have tightened their immigration policy to prevent Chinese from entering their countries. Even on these casual internet message boards, when you look past the paid Chinese propaganda professional commenters, you notice rising general anti-China feelings from all over the world.
2. Increasing internal severe and massive violent social unrest and anti-CCP mutiny from people of all Chinese living places. To beat down internal dissent in mainland China, the CCP every year is forced to spend even more money than on its massive military budget. All the semi-external places (Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, Macau) are fighting harder and harder to break free from China. Taiwan is for all practical purposes already a separate democratic country, and anti-China sentiment there (especially among younger Taiwanese generation) is at all-time high after seeing how China violently suppress Hong Kong as an example of "reunification". This whole situation is continuously worsened by the free flow of information, with Chinese people knowing more and more from travelling abroad and learning about truths from jumping beyond the "Great Fire Wall" on the internet.
3. Its own economy and social condition never able to advance to higher level beyond mass skill-less manufacturing, due to complete absence of law and common morals. High technology and innovations and scientific development all require many citizens working together voluntarily contributing long term in a system they trust, with things like rule of law, no censorship on knowledge, no restrictions on speech and expression, copyrights, patents, common morals when collaborating and trading with each other etc. These qualities are all destroyed in modern China by the CCP. When was the last time you heard an announcement of technology development or innovations or scientific breakthrough coming from a Chinese organization / company / university? You haven't because there ain't any. Unlike mass manufacturing factory work, these high level human developments cannot be forced on or bought with a dictator's central planning. The only way modern China gets these things is from stealing and spying from all other countries, but that has become much more difficult since the whole world has caught on to their act.
This systematic fatal weakness is why you do not see even one Chinese brand or company that can compete in the international market in any industry of the human race. For example Lenovo, who is already one of the few Chinese brands some people may have heard of, cannot make either the chips that power their computers or the operating system that run them, so it is just one of many plain vanilla boxmakers without any competitive advantage. Another example Huawei is blacklisted by many countries and international customers because everyone knows Huawei's products send all communication data back to the CCP. No rule of law in China also means no people or businesses, both Chinese and foreign, ever invest in China long-term or on a large scale because everything frequently change on a whim along with the political climate. No one trusts any contract or agreement in China because they are always broken by the Chinese and there is no legal protection whatsoever, meaning China can never advance to a knowledge economy or service economy. No rule of law also ensures Shanghai fail to become a financial city despite the CCP dumping huge resources into it for 30 years.
4. China's mass skill-less manufacturing itself is going away to other countries due to sharply increasing costs and openly hostile and unfair business environment full of frauds and sanctioned protectionism and government robberies. The labor force is endlessly more demanding both in wages and benefits expectations and working conditions, especially since all of today's Chinese workers are single child used to coddling and indulgement by their own family. It is further worsened by the rise of robotic automatic manufacturing and 3D printing. This situation is a death knock to the "growth-based legitimacy" of the CCP, which is the only thing CCP can rely on for continuing ruling power. For sure Chinese people tolerate the CCP when the economy seemingly explodes, but when one day it crashes and the country's hopeless bad shape hit them in the face the people's "support" for the CCP will turn on a dime.
Since six months ago, all the major economic indicators for China have gone on a continuing nosedive - including manufacturing orders, export volume, commercial investments, graduate employment rate, corporate credits, foreign capital inflow, domestic consumptions, real estate prices, consumer spendings, luxury goods demand, HSBC Service PMI, survey of business sentiments etc. Suddenly all the rich Chinese tourists gobbling up luxury goods at different world cities seem to have disappeared altogether. The CCP is on its last resort of printing literally trillions of worthless renminbi to dump into the economy, causing way more long-term harm than short-term help, and when that is over there is nothing else the CCP can do to prop up the failing economy. China currently ranks 82nd on GDP per capita and that is the highest it can go before falling sharply in the coming near future.
5. Fierce unstoppable purges and mutually-destructive infighting among different factions within the party, who are imprisoning and killing each other every day. This power grab goes on under the laughable thin guise of "anti-corruption drive" when everyone knows all officials in china are corrupted. No work to manage the country or guide the ship is being done while this is going on.
6. Its many previously-suppressed fatal problems have all grown too big to be contained all catching up to the CCP e.g.
- severe carcinogenic poisonous pollution everywhere in air and water and soil and their own food etc, with the WHO issuing multiple warnings on Chinese population having the fastest cancer growth rate in the whole world - skyrocketing unrepayable bad debts of all kinds everywhere, its true scope no one on Earth knows because all data from China are faked - biggest housing bubble in human history, in addition to innumerous crumbling "ghost cities" and shoddily-built vanity project infrastructure that cannot and will not be used - rapidly aging demographics with a 140:100 male:female ratio (from one child policy, culture of "leftover women", and many Chinese families killing their own daughters so as to chase boys) - world's no.1 wealth inequality, with a Gini coefficient rivaling 18th century France just before the French revolution - complete absence of soft power / cultural influence / social attraction, partly due to CCP censorship. One result of which is minimal and sharply dwindling number of foreign professionals and tourists and students going to China. It also means the CCP only has force as the only tool to use on the international stage - all Chinese chasing foreign-brand goods and services while ditching low-quality Chinese-brands, who have a well known history of poisoning their own food and their own baby formula so as to make more money. This dashs CCP's hope to build indigenous industries and a domestic consumption economy - corruptions and fraud throughout the whole rotten core of a system - desperate mass exodus at all levels of Chinese society to escape the country using emigration or buying houses / study abroad or marriage to foreigners or plain old human smuggling, resulting in all able Chinese leaving taking huge amounts of talents and money out of the country - the law of large numbers, "middle-income trap" and "Minsky moment" all work against the growth-based legitimacy CCP desperately needs for its survival
Most importantly, the CCP knows that if 1.4 billion Chinese learn about basic human qualities such as morals, truth, justice, human rights, rule of law, fairness, freedom, universal values etc the CCP will be toppled very quickly. Therefore its state-controlled brainwashing education and propaganda machinations ensure a complete lack of morals and regard for laws in all Chinese growing up and beyond. This results in failure in all basic aspects of human interactions with every modern Chinese, whether it is business trading / personal dealings / technology development / creating innovations / human communications / scientific research / artistic expressions / teamwork collaborations / academic exchange etc. Another propaganda brainwashing technique used by the CCP is to make all Chinese people pathologically nationalistic and very emotional on this issue, so the CCP can always create and point to some "foreign enemies" so as to hide all the domestic crises and government robberies going on. This attention-diverting technique is the same trick magicians have used for more than a thousand years to fool their audience.
An interesting example would be the Chinese reaction to this report - they are expected to dismiss this report as total rubbish, accuse the author "unpatriotic" for saying the truth, shout China will only become richer and stronger than all other countries, yet they will give no counter-arguments and they will make no acknowledgement to the horrible factual conditions and complete lack of basic human qualities listed above in modern China. Ironically, the longer Chinese people deny or refuse to acknowledge the CCP problem, the longer they are only digging themselves into the hole and hurting themselves for any chance of recovery, causing the chinese economy to crash even further. Consider the example of Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Youtube, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram etc - these services are all completely blocked in China while at the same time the rest of the planet are on these services every second communicating ideas with each other, making friends, exchanging knowledge, doing business, working together, improving science and technology and arts, and advancing humanity.
Some people say China economically developed a lot in past 30 years, but the truth is this "development" is actually debt borrowed against the future. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of their own students, in order to survive and hang on to power, the CCP was forced to pursue short-term explosive economic growth that sacrifice everything else, including a foundation or potential for long-term economic and social development. This "scorched earth" policy is like winning the lottery for corrupted CCP officials who can rob a lot of money from the country in the short-term before escaping to America. The only entity left to suffer is China's future from this point on, a country that has been turned by the CCP into a place with no law, no morals, no system for future scientific or economic or social development, no spiritual support apart from money, no trust or cooperation among Chinese, no trust or goodwill from foreigners, no other country as friends, all resources sold away cheaply, entire environment and air and water and soil and food fatally polluted, only social recognition is to make a lot of money for "face", no creativity or personal development for Chinese young people, a populus not allowed to know the truths and not allowed to say the truths.
The end result is that majority wealth of this "debt borrowed against the future" has gone to the 0.00000001% elite ruling class "princeling" CCP families (about 250 of them) who have already smuggled trillions of dollars abroad along with their U.S. passports and their own children (all Chinese elites and Politburo members hold foreign passports, with U.S. and U.K. being the most sought after choice). For the CCP in 1989, 1.4 billion people is great central-planning asset when the country start from nothing and you order them to do backbreaking mass manufacturing repetitive factory work 20 hours a day without workers protection of any kind. But in the 2014 borderless knowledge economy when that no longer works, 1.4 billion immoral and uncooperative and selfish and undeveloped and angry Chinese contained in a lawless system without any hopes of growth is very, very dangerous liability for the CCP.
All debts against the future have to be paid back - China is no exception. That moment may arrive a bit later than expected but it surely will come, as it has on 100% of occasions in human history. In normal countries bad conditions correct themselves with short periods of market ups and downs, but in China the CCP suppress all problems and criticisms until inevitable system meltdown. For China the moment has arrived to suffer the consequences for all its own chosen actions in past 30 years. All the festering fundamental systematic problems listed above and much more, are only getting worse and worse everyday until one day when the system can suddenly no longer bear.
Think USSR in 1989.
( Cliff notes summary for the smartphone generation with Attention-Deficit-Disorder:
- The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chose a path of no return to pursue miraculous economic growth - Miraculous economic growth has been achieved, now China has hit the wall and the bad things have caught up - CCP cannot go on externally, it cannot go on internally, no more economic growth is possible, many fatal cancers and huge structural problems from the past now overwhelming the country - Something has to break, what happens is anyone's guess, guranteed to greatly impact China and the world )
I’m not an economist, but I thought this would happen some time ago. I fear they won’t go quietly. I think a war with China is inevitable.
He certainly has spammed that same message across the web. He could fill in as a columnist at the epoch times.
A war with China may not be inevitable. If it’s collapse within is severe, China may choose to turn inward as it has during much of its history.
We may simply see China become mysterious again.
Obama is hoping to collapse America first.
Remember, China has always excelled at the long game.
This may be true, it might be propaganda.
“Therefore its state-controlled brainwashing education and propaganda machinations ensure a complete lack of morals and regard for laws in all Chinese growing up and beyond.”
bingo. if you didn’t know why they let our education system rot in the gutter, you should now.
No worries, China can always sell its US Treasury Bonds.
Went to China two years ago. A lot of the modernization that that is going on there is substandard to say the least. Saw a university campus that was less than 5 years old that was already falling apart. You see new [largely empty] apartment buildings next to hovels. And the pollution is out of control. They have a lot more problems than is being advertised.
and do not forget that it is also the most polluted place on Earth
Hope it’s true. China is funding so much of our debt that so if we can get a new regime in there perhaps they’ll forgive a big chunk of it.
Gee, if communism collapses in China does that make the Obama White House the largest communist power left?
ping
I like the analysis and the writing.
It’s all true, except the most important thing. It’s unfortunately wishful thinking that we will soon see the demise of the CCP ruled China.
The trouble now is they’ve had that one child policy for so long that they now have a large population of young men with no prospect of marriage. China doesn’t want them to become unruly, they will use them as canon fodder.
Oh no! Where would we buy our cheap Blue-ray players?!
China has a rapidly aging population and a very materialist one at that. They aren’t prepared to overturn the government - not even close. The fact they are losing low-wage, low skill jobs is the same process the US has gone through. Economic development and a declining work-force mean typical farming families rural provinces now doesn’t need to send their children 500 miles away for a job making sneakers for Americans. Economic development makes people more content, not the other way around.
I can’t argue that China has built up a huge amount of domestic debt, and also that there is massive government corruption, based on government and political involvement in all aspects of the economy (the same way the US is heading).
But China is not Bolivia, Argentina or some other toy of Wall Street. They print their own currency, hold their own debt. They hold a lot of foreign debt too. So, the Chinese Government is beholden to no one. They have a lot more leverage over others, than others have over them.
You picked up my sarcasm!
To keep the US FEDERAL ENTITLEMENT WELFARE PLANTATION going at full tilt, Obama might be flexible enough to trade Guam and a few other US Military Protectorates to China if China would just promise not to sell any of their USTBonds until February 1, 2017.
“Remember, China has always excelled at the long game.”
They did ok when change moved very slowly.
They were conquered by “barbarians” at least twice. They gave up on developing significant technologies such as printing and gunpowder weapons to avoid the destabilizing force of change. They pulled back from exploring decades before the Europeans used it to conquer the world. They fell into warlordism, then into Communism.
I do not think their “long game” is so great.
Red China's ascension to Number One super economic and all around everything super-super power like none seen before or ever again, scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon (about tea time), has been delayed.
'Apears that the days of free-tradin' our technology and knowhow away for cheap labor are over. In fact Deng's version of Lenin's New Economic Policy has only the confiscation of the useful idiots' holdings left to do.
I am not an expert but every great leap forward onto the backs of millions of citizens killing them was a contemporaneous event for me.. every one beginning with Mao's "agrarian reformers" taking over.
Even in the 1940s before Mao my Grandmother insisted that China would be the world's greatest power. Even as a child I did not think so.
Mao destroyed Chinese culture and replaced it with terror and uncertainty. He was not interested in the future and his successors have shown no inclination for change. The “modernization” of China has not given the majority of people any benefit—in fact it has continued Mao’s destruction of the agrarian people.
Long term planning was a Confucian ideal—the five year plan is the Communist way.
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