Posted on 12/08/2019 4:26:24 PM PST by Zhang Fei
The Chinese communist regime is heading towards disintegration and the West needs to be prepared to manage the fallout, according to a leading China scholar.
Arthur Waldron, China historian and Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, made the remarks in a recent interview on The Epoch Times American Thought Leaders. He shared his views on the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) imminent collapse, U.S. foreign policy on China, and the relentless Hong Kong protests that have posed a major challenge to Beijings rule. CCPs Disintegration
The CCP has started on a path of decline and is headed towards a similar fate as the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991, the professor said.
I believe that China is in this stage of disintegration or jie ti (解體), and its something that you dont see immediately, said Waldron.
The Chinese regimes practice of forced organ harvestingwhich results in an estimated tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience killed every year to supply its organ transplant marketand its treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, made it the most evil regime since the Nazi Germany, Waldron said.
He recalled a conversation with an unidentified person, who is a close advisor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
He said to me, Arthur, what the hell are we going to do? Everybody knows that this [political] system doesnt work. We have reached a si hu tong (死胡同), said Waldron said, explaining that the Chinese phrase means a dead-end street.
The advisor continued: But what we dont know is what is the next step to take because
there are mines everywhere and if we take a step, we may set off a terrible explosion.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
Every one knows the Communist system doesn’t work, except Thomas Friedman.
Waldron has always seemed the sharpest Sinologist I’ve read.
“Xi Jinping is essentially part of the Deng period, which began after Dengs successful coup against Maos hand-picked successor, Hua Guofeng.”
I think Xi is the first post-Deng leader in that Deng did not annoint him as he did Jiang and Hu.
This is why it is unstable or potentially so.
Ultimately the PRC is a banana republic and whoever the military backs is the civilian leader.
“One of the most notoriously wrong expert is Gordon Chang who actually lived in Shanghai and Hong Kong.”
Chang is king of the wishful thinkers.
Arthur Waldron is not Gordon Chang.
“IMHO, this qualifies as Fake News...”
It’s clearly an opinion, not news.
......but regime changes are fairly common.
........
Lol. Time period of 100+ years, the Great British empire has shrunk to a little Britain.
Your wishful thinking is even more mysterious than indian rain dance!
It was a combination of Reagan and Chernobyl that sunk the old USSR.”
Some have argued that it was the collapse in oil prices, that drained the hard currency finances, which had kept their sham economy operating. The Soviet Union got the great bulk of its foreign (that is to say, real) currency from one source - oil/gas exports.
China gets its necessary foreign exchange, from exporting manufactured goods.
Perhaps if the foreign exchange needed for essential imports into China of oil, food and raw materials would suddenly dry up from the loss of their export of manufactured goods; then their sham economy might experience a harsh re-valuation as well. Maybe a debt crisis, banking crisis, stock and real estate market crashes and a currency collapse - which could wipe out a huge chunk of the net worth for their population.
“the regime can defend itself from internal threats by launching nukes”
Will they nuke their own cities, like a rebellious Hong Kong? No.
Would mobs raging against a domestic economic crisis believe, or even care about, Government rhetoric about foreign war? Not if economic conditions get bad enough.
Would the regime survive a nuclear exchange? Doubtful.
“He recalled a conversation with an unidentified person, who is a close advisor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
He said to me, Arthur, what the hell are we going to do? .....”
>
Seems like a charlatan & a liar.
Under Communist Party rule, mainland China is, at best, an opaque society. We do not know, nor can we know if the regime’s control is solid, or is it a solid looking, but brittle shell.
At the beginning of 1989, the USSR looked to us to be a solid superpower, with some problems, but the Communist government was able to manage them.
In retrospect, the USSR was riven with ethnic, regional, political, and economic cleavages. Party leaders in the hinterlands chaffed at central control, ethnic hatreds and old resentments simmered. The Party was losing its ability to retain control, but no one, inside or outside the Party realized just how bad the situation was getting.
Castro in Cuba, had fewer problems and enough distance and isolation to head off the revolutions that toppled the eastern European Communists.
In China, to me, General Secretary Xi’s personality cult building and the Party’s focus on nationalism and external expansion could well be designed to distract people from internal problems the Party is struggling to deal with. But we can only speculate, as hard accurate information is difficult to find.
[The PLA itself is not a monolith, correct?]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Tuo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cao_Cao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sima_Yi
There’s a tendency to see the Chinese as a bunch of robots who just take orders. In reality, the show of obsequiousness is just that, a show. It’s not for nothing that Sun Yat-sen, the man to whom the collapse of the last de jure Chinese dynasty is credited, said that the Chinese were like a sheet of loose sand. By that, he meant that they looked to the interests of self, blood kin and clan first and foremost, whereas the state was an abstraction.
Within the party itself, Lin Biao, Mao’s right hand man for a time, was alleged to have mounted an abortive coup against him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_571 Similarly, Bo Xilai, the Party aristocrat who was arrested for alleged corruption years ago, was said to have been in the initial stages of mounting a coup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Xilai The most well-known coup is, of course, the one that succeeded, which removed Hua Guofeng from power in favor of Deng Xiaoping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng#Ousting_and_death
The divisions are, IMO, not so much a matter of ideology as a matter of individual ambition. But ideology will be seized upon as a rallying point, if only to give their supporters something other than “more of the same” on which to hang their hats.
Bookmark
Seems plausible. China has been dependent on a massive export market, which is not as available as it was.
I haten to remind you that Waldron himself RECOMMENDED Chang’s book when it was published.
“I haten to remind you that Waldron himself RECOMMENDED Changs book when it was published.”
Most books on China were saying how China was changing and it’s leaders were reformers, moving toward more freedom and openness.
Chang was a lot more right than most of the dross coming out about China from the academic swamp.
Limited, sure - but it can apply. Ask Gaddhadi. Foreign influence is often a factor in regime change.
Also consider the huge spy apparatus China has. Quite extraordinary!
It’s important to study history because people don’t change.
However the circumstances they act in can.
Feudal systems with modern defenses are not changed as easily as before.
Great read that!
So what happens now?
Democratic erections?
Thanks for the detailed reply. Interesting stuff!
One of my own recollections (from reading some time back) was that at Tiananmen Square, the local PLA Corps(?) was NOT inclined to attack the protesters and may have even to some degree tried to shield them, but was pushed out of the way by more powerful units brought in from outside to crush the protests. Is that correct?
[One of my own recollections (from reading some time back) was that at Tiananmen Square, the local PLA Corps(?) was NOT inclined to attack the protesters and may have even to some degree tried to shield them, but was pushed out of the way by more powerful units brought in from outside to crush the protests. Is that correct?]
If Hu Yaobang or Zhao Ziyang had moved decisively to corral support from key military figures, it’s possible Deng and his supporters could have been removed from power. The problem for Hu and Zhao is that they would need to have cultivated those ties long before the Tiananmen Square incident. And it’s possible that Deng picked* them both for their positions precisely because of their lack of relationships with high-ranking military leaders. All successful dictators are very conscious of these relationships and the possibilities for mutiny.
However, in the overall scheme of Chinese history, the massacre at Tiananmen was a blip. Compared to 100m (1/4 of the population at the time) dead in multiple revolts aimed at toppling the Qing dynasty during the 19th century, a few thousand students is small beer.
Note that the material I mentioned in my response, re pre-modern palace intrigues, is not obscure. It’s constantly on television in China. Two of China’s 4 great classics, The Water Margin and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, are about peasant revolts. Not Disneyfied accounts, but gory narratives involving people who wouldn’t be considered paragons of virtue in the modern era. The foreword to one English translation has the following (translated) epigram: “The young should not read Water Margin, and the old should not read Three Kingdoms.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms#Cultural_impact
You won’t have time for this, but a Chinese TV series (about a fictional kingdom) recommended by a Freeper captures the flavor of Chinese intrigues:
https://www.viki.com/videos/1152611v-nirvana-in-fire-english-dubbed-version-episode-1?locale=en
I found it entertaining despite being very confused during the first few episodes.
* Oddly-enough, Jiang Zemin promoted Xi Jinping in the late 90’s, because he thought Xi lacked ambition. As soon as Xi became head honcho though, he started purging all of Jiang’s other proteges. So much for Jiang’s judgment. The fact is that the one skill all Chinese schemers must master is the appearance of obsequiousness and lack of ambition.
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