[hinckley buzzard]

Even in the best of times, China’s vaunted economic growth was a Potemkin illusion. Has been for a couple decades. Trump is calling them out, making them show their cards, and it turns out they are bluffing all along.

[Bigtigermike]

Trump basically out flanked them and you’re right he called their bluff.

[Zhang Fei]

[Even in the best of times, China’s vaunted economic growth was a Potemkin illusion.]

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It’s real. If it were illusory, there’d be no need for sanctions. They need to be slapped down, hard.

My fondest hope is for Chinese civil war, kicked off by all the factions opposed to Xi. The perfect end state for such a war would be a devolution into multiple independent countries with, at most, Russia-sized populations. They’d be strong enough to defend themselves, but not strong enough to overwhelm their neighbors.

If such a scenario came to fruition, it would not be the first time this has happened in the territory in which China exists today. But it would be the first time in which large and powerful neighboring and distant powers were able to offer substantial help to the newly-independent states that were under threat from irredentists looking to re-annex these states to reconstitute the ancien regime.