China: Is the CCP Regime on Its Way Out?

I've seen a number of articles online pretty much claiming it is -- on the verge of economic collapse and/or popular uprising. But until Friday, those articles tended to come from neoconservative or neoconservative-adjacent sources. Then Nathan Barton at The Price of Liberty weighed in:

If you believe that China is a financial and economic juggernaut destined to pass the U.S. in total output and eventually rule the world, it’s time to put those ideas aside. ... China is entering the greatest demographic collapse in the history of the world since Noah’s Flood .... China’s current official population is about 1.4 billion, but that number will decline to perhaps 800 million by the year 2090. ... China’s environment is trashed; its rivers are poisoned. Its food production is crashing (even as the sources of imports of food are seeing declining production). While it imprisons millions of its subjects in their own apartments and barracks in its major cities, it’s pursuing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Tibet and Xinjiang. The bizarre revival of Communism of Xi Jinping is rapidly destroying every trace of capitalism might have emerged in the decades since Deng Xiaoping’s reorientation of the Chinese economy in 1979 – and even the "state capitalism" is fallng apart, dissolved by corruption, micromanagement, confidence artists, and a medical tyranny as the frosting on the poisoned cake.

Which, Nathan reasons, "leads to the conclusion that China desperately needs a massive confrontation with Taiwan and the West, to attempt to distract and paper over the yawning cracks in economy, society, and government."

As for my own opinion, it's that the US regime is hoping to bait the Beijing regime into its own "Afghanistan" in Taiwan, for a number of reasons.

First, the Chinese regime continues to advance toward floating a viable blue water navy. In 20-30 years, they might be competitive with the US on the high seas. At the moment, though, they probably aren't. They don't have a lot of troop transports and amphibious craft for transporting large combat forces across the Taiwan Strait ... yet. Their aircraft carrier program is just getting started. From my limited research, their anti-ship missile systems seem to be unreliable. So if there's going to be a war in which the US Navy engages the People's Liberation Army on the seas some time, it may be "the earlier the better from a purely military standpoint."

Secondly, with a long-term occupation project going in Taiwan, the US regime may expect that it can sanction the Beijing regime's "Belt and Road" initiative out of viability, and also (especially if it's sinking Chinese ships) reduce Chinese influence in and trade with e.g. Africa. Lots of resources, especially the "rare earths" used in modern electronics, are coming out of Africa, and DC would presumably like to monopolize those resources.

Speaking of resources and modern electronics, I can't help but notice that even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was jetting off to Taiwan -- the world's foremost source of computer chips -- Congress was passing a massive corporate welfare bill to, among other things, "bring chip manufacture home to America." A China-Taiwan war would certainly promote protectionist policies in two ways: 1) bombed-out competitors aren't competing anymore, and 2) the prospect of those competitors getting bombed out creates a useful "national security concern" regarding the availability of their products.

If Nathan is correct -- that is, if the Chinese Communist Party is looking down from the same ledge after 73 years of rule that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fell off of after about the same amount of time -- I suspect that the CCP regime might, at some point, give in to the temptation to "take the bait" the US regime is waving under its nose, in an effort to remain in power by using a war to "unify" and "discipline" its population.

Same as the old boss, part 1: Foreign policy

My initial intention following the election was to give president-elect Barack Obama the traditional "honeymoon" period -- waiting at least until his inauguration, and possibly even until the usual "first 100 days" agenda had floated or foundered, before starting to slice and dice his approach to the presidency. As it turns out, the transition period is chock full of clues as to what Obama's presidency will look like, especially with respect to foreign policy, so there's no reason not to get started.

Summary: Obama's foreign policy approach will likely come to nothing more or less than a matter of sticking blue helmets and the word "humanitarian" on his immediate predecessor's way of doing things. Or, to put it a different way, his foreign policy will likely feature the Clinton administration's trappings and the Bush administration's ... vigor.

This was fairly predictable from the start. Remember, Obama campaigned for US Senate in 2004 on an anti-war platform, then turned on a dime and voted in the Senate to continue the war every time he was given an opportunity to do so. His presidential campaign once again launched on an anti-war note, but he didn't even make it through the Democratic primaries before discarding that position again.

Even when nominally condemning the war on Iraq, he's never taken a non-interventionist line in any case. He's just promised to to be a better manager of America's bayonet-point outreach programs, while suggesting that he'll try to save the failed occupation of Afghanistan, extend that occupation into Pakistan, and maintain or increase the US belligerence quotient versus Iran and Russia.

If you're surprised to see Obama tap Israel-Firster Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, float Madeline Al ... er, Henry Kissi ... er, Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, or leak the possibility of keeping Robert Gates on at the Pentagon, you haven't been paying attention for the last year or so.

As for Iraq, the Busheviks are already in the process of tying Obama's hands and striking the first major blow of Election 2012 by pushing to conclude their "Status of Forces Agreement" with Baghdad before his inauguration. If they succeed in getting that agreement through Iraq's parliament, he's in a no-win situation: The Republicans take credit for anything good that comes of it, Obama takes the blame for anything bad that happens. Personally I think he'll screw it up SOFA or no SOFA, but I have to give the Republicans credit for a good game of "pin the blame on the Democrat."

The only possible clean path out of the Iraq quagmire for Obama is bold action -- announce an immediate US withdrawal on January 20th, carry out that withdrawal, and hope the civil war in Iraq (inevitable no matter when the US withdraws, but likely worse the longer it stays) plays itself out before his first term ends. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. His cabinet picks indicate that he's already preparing to fold his "change" hand on foreign policy, and his campaign statements on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia indicate that that hand was a garbage bluff in the first place.