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The pace of events in the breakdown of the Middle Kingdom is accelerating. I do not believe that there is anything that the CCP can do to hold on to power long term. What remains to be seen is who replaces them, the the timing. and the body count.
As I said to our awesome MoD last night, "My Spidey Senses are screaming at me again." If I had to put money on the thing that brings down the CCP I would have a long list to choose from. Ultimately, I think it will be the immorality of the Communist system Mao and the CCP imposed on China. All else flows from that. This will take several posts to explain.
Part One:
The more immediate cause for the demise of the CCP involves their breaking of the Social (economic) Compact with the people. In China it is referred to as the 'Mandate of Heaven'. When the ruling dynasty becomes immoral and fails to protect or actively harms the people they are said to have lost the 'Mandate of Heaven'. It is then acceptable to rise up and replace them. Every time this has happened the ruling dynasty has been replaced. And make no mistake, the CCP is just another dynasty to the Chinese people.
Tightly coupled with that is the demographic collapse brought on by a combination of rapid industrialization and the 'One Child Policy'. If the CCP had relaxed the OCP after only about ten years they might have survived. That they didn't has turned a hard squall into the Perfect Storm.
The next bit is going to be a bit heavy on Economics. I apologize for that. There is a reason Economics is called the 'the Dismal Science'. The moniker is well earned.
Once a nation begins to industrialize there are three paths they can take. The early industrializers, Britain, the US, France, & Germany (pre-WW2) took the Demand (consumption) Driven path. People need or want stuff so production gets built to provide it. This is about 70% of the US economy. Growth is slow and societal problems work themselves out with minimal impact.
The second path is Export Driven. You build stuff and sell it to someone else in another country. This is represented by Japan, Germany (post-WW2), and South Korea. This is all well and good until the people you are selling to either don't want or can't pay for what you are making. An alternative Export Driven path is resource extraction. You mine or pump a resource, sell it and then buy what you need. Think Russia (USSR), Africa, and the Arab Middle East. This path is made possible only by the Bretton Woods System brought to you by the United States and the US Navy after WW2. Without world-wide freedom of navigation enforced by the only Navy in the world with a global reach, this choice is just not possible.
The third path is investment driven. Here you borrow money to build stuff. Exactly what doesn't matter that much. Jobs are created, your people get their stuff and you can hopefully sell the excess to recoup some of what you borrowed. This is what the CCP, and more broadly other east-Asian countries, chose because it is FAST. It also gives the government at least some control. Control is what the CCP is all about. The government directs the economy into things they think should be built, roads, rail, bridges, ports, etc. Do this too much and you distort the economy. Britain industrialized over seven generations, the US five, Germany and Japan three. China did it in less than one. I was already out of college when the CCP began its industrialization in earnest.
Do this long enough and you get empty cities, roads & bridges to nowhere, etc. You also get rapidly diminishing returns. It takes more and more investment to get the same or even less Yin for the Yuan. It also means that you are out of options when it stops working.
The CCP can't shift to a demand driven economy. It lacks the people. Worse, it now lacks the people to grow the people to shift to a demand driven economy twenty-five years from now. The crisis is here NOW. It can't shift to an export driven economy. Most of the countries they would sell to are having their own demographic issues. China is no longer competitive from a low-cost wage perspective and they are too far down the value added sector to follow Japan or South Korea.
So where do they go from here? Stand by for Part Deux.
WWG1WGA
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)