By many measures, China looks and smells like it's already in the early stages of a major financial crisis and deep recession.[a] Publicly, the ruling party adamantly insists otherwise -- but that's always to be expected from politicians. We ought to consider only the data, not what they say. The data looks and smells really bad.
My biggest hope is that the economic pain will induce soul-searching and push China away from authoritarianism, leading to the country's gradual transition into a modern democracy -- to the detriment of party apparatchiks and their psychophants, whose power and importance depends on maintaining the status quo.
My biggest fear is that party apparatchiks start pushing for policies that can lead only to armed conflict in the hopes of holding on to their power and status -- e.g., they might push for annexing Taiwan by force in the short run, ensuring a confrontation with the West. Few things impede political change as well as armed conflict.
And assume any number they provide to the “outside” is also exaggerated in their favor. So I assume any number provided is at least, a best case figure, or total invention.
Regardless of the political and economic issues, the CCP leadership is well aware that they still lack the amphibious lift capacity to invade Taiwan's main island. It will take a few more years at least to build that capacity. In the mean time if they choose to make a push it will likely be toward some of the smaller islands closer to the mainland.
I mean this would be good for the whole planet, if only we got stop the 10 cent army today instead of 40 years from now when they have poisoned discourse for the whole planet.
Thanks! Actually, it looks like both spellings are acceptable, but "sycophant" is more common. Maybe using the less common spelling was a Freudian slip on my part...?
My biggest hope is that the economic pain will induce soul-searching and push China away from authoritarianism, leading to the country's gradual transition into a modern democracy -- to the detriment of party apparatchiks and their psychophants, whose power and importance depends on maintaining the status quo.
My biggest fear is that party apparatchiks start pushing for policies that can lead only to armed conflict in the hopes of holding on to their power and status -- e.g., they might push for annexing Taiwan by force in the short run, ensuring a confrontation with the West. Few things impede political change as well as armed conflict.
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[a] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101496 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101229 for background.