China and its coming crisis
I do not respect those wide predictions of the
far future like ‘The Next Hundred Years’ by George Friedman, or ‘The end of
History’ by Francis Fukuyama. They are always quickly proven
to be nonsensical. I think near future reality and trying to understand it is so much more interesting.
Now that President Trump is determined to stop the lopsided trade situation with China, an internal Chinese economic crisis seems inevitable. So what can be the internal political consequences?
The US president is not going about it very cleverly and he might still fail. But is he succeeds in stopping China, the worst result could be that Xi Jinping is forced to resign and that China falls into a self-destructing period, even pitting some provinces against each other in a civil war. Such dramatic wishful scenarios exist in the West (Friedman!), but I think the power structure of the dictatorial Communist Party in Beijing is more likely to hold up, with just an internal power struggle and a change of leaders. On the contrary, the expected hatred against President Trump’s action, fuelled by the way it will be reported by the Chinese media, may well unite the whole population.
What is then likely to happen in the mind of the new leaders is a toning down of the hubris, of the extreme wish for global hegemony, of the ‘it is our turn and we will be the masters’ mentality that is now pervasive.
Almost inevitably some heads will roll and it will be fascinating to see what happens then.
If the Trump action will really succeed in ending the misguided Beijing military appropriation of the South China Sea, if it will bring China back to behaving normally like all other nations in the world do that have an ocean coastline, and for world peace that is a prerequisite. But the loss of face for the present leaders will not remain unpunished.
I hope these first few lines can set my readers to think and can make them open their newspaper every day with more pleasure and interest in following on TV and reading in their newspaper what comes next.
Now that President Trump is determined to stop the lopsided trade situation with China, an internal Chinese economic crisis seems inevitable. So what can be the internal political consequences?
The US president is not going about it very cleverly and he might still fail. But is he succeeds in stopping China, the worst result could be that Xi Jinping is forced to resign and that China falls into a self-destructing period, even pitting some provinces against each other in a civil war. Such dramatic wishful scenarios exist in the West (Friedman!), but I think the power structure of the dictatorial Communist Party in Beijing is more likely to hold up, with just an internal power struggle and a change of leaders. On the contrary, the expected hatred against President Trump’s action, fuelled by the way it will be reported by the Chinese media, may well unite the whole population.
What is then likely to happen in the mind of the new leaders is a toning down of the hubris, of the extreme wish for global hegemony, of the ‘it is our turn and we will be the masters’ mentality that is now pervasive.
Almost inevitably some heads will roll and it will be fascinating to see what happens then.
If the Trump action will really succeed in ending the misguided Beijing military appropriation of the South China Sea, if it will bring China back to behaving normally like all other nations in the world do that have an ocean coastline, and for world peace that is a prerequisite. But the loss of face for the present leaders will not remain unpunished.
I hope these first few lines can set my readers to think and can make them open their newspaper every day with more pleasure and interest in following on TV and reading in their newspaper what comes next.
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