Excellent analysis. I have spent some time in China. A couple of years ago I was in Beijing and had dinner with two experienced State Department personnel. Both were getting ready to transfer and both said it couldn’t come soon enough for them; the country was ready to boil over. The stunning economic disparity was turning the have-nots against the haves and the rank and file of the PLA are the children of the have-nots, and when it comes down to it, blood is thicker than water. Both of my friends expect increasing strife eventually leading to civil war.
What do tyrants do when social problems boil over at home? Unite their people around patriotic themes, and send their armies abroad on adventures.
In the case of China there is a new twist, tens of millions of “barren branches,” namely the excess males due to the one-child policy coupled with ultrasound and abortion.
China might, for example, invade Taiwan and other places with the hope that the young men never return home. They can die for China, or live abroad as settlers, it won’t matter as long as they don’t return.
Projecting forward a century, there could be as many Chinese as Africans living in Africa. And I would not feel very secure in Borneo, the P.I., the Russian Far East, Australia, New Zealand etc.
“You want a wife? You want land? Find them in the Philippines, serving with the glorious PLA!” (Just don’t come home.)
They know the score. Data out of China continues to get worse regarding their economy. The normal proxies like electricity consumption are getting jiggered with companies running the power like crazy while producing nothing. Most economic analysts in country actually have on the ground spies checking shipments and matching them to sales and production, etc.
Think of how inefficient an economy built on lies is.