[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I wouldn’t hold my breath. I would guess a collapse of that regime would begin with a military mutiny led by some warlord that wanted to be dictator. It wouldn’t last long before China entered a “time of troubles”, with all sorts of strongmen vying for power, with economic and social crises.

A few million Chinese would likely be slaughtered in the process, which is the typical fare for that trip. On the plus side, communism would hopefully be discarded as an inefficient waste.

[The Antiyuppie]

It still amazes me that so few people died when the USSR collapsed considering that at the time (or possibly ever) they had arguably the most powerful standing army on the planet. I doubt that this would be the case with China. I’ve got to believe that too many people there would have too much to lose for that to happen. They all know their own history.

[Zhang Fei]

[I wouldn’t hold my breath. I would guess a collapse of that regime would begin with a military mutiny led by some warlord that wanted to be dictator.]

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There’s also the way Deng Xiaoping overthrew his predecessor, Mao’s handpicked successor, by getting a decisive number of generals to back him. Yeltsin, a member of the nomenklatura just like Deng, did something similar, but chose to dismantle the regime and replace it with something new. Whereas Deng kept China’s quasi-monarchical system while dismantling the planned economy in all but name. Chinese government involvement in domestic industry currently resembles the throne’s sponsorship of age-old imperial monopolies more than any Soviet-era counterparts, with elements of industrial policy similar to what the French and the Japanese have done with their major industrial conglomerates.