Originally Posted by
AFNick68
Below is my view on the situation But I wanted to clarify two things first -- reflecting on my prior post probably I portrayed myself as more of an 'expert' than I am. I am simply someone who has read a lot on the topic and thought about it, so I think I have a useful view, but my take may not be the best so I look forward to hearing yours and others as well. Second, I am a freedom loving, capitalist loving, card carrying American, a military veteran - I love the USA. But I think it's important to call balls and strikes as we see them, not as we wish they were. So here goes.
Generally I think we need to distinguish between manageable problems and existential problems. The former are bad, especially when they could lead to turnover in management, but the latter are exceptionally difficult to deal with. I believe China has the former. And if it is manageable than the issue boils down to how well it will be managed which is a function of how capable the management is. In my view, the West has more existential problems, where large swaths of society are at odds with each other over fundamental values.
As regards China, sometimes we view it as one thing, but that is actually wrong. China is a collection of very disparate territories, peoples and ways of living. BUT, they are tied together by a shared heritage, ethnicity, values and of course a strong central government. So there are risks there, no doubt. But Dr Marc Faber, someone who I greatly respect, once posed the following question: if you lined up all the CCP and took their average IQ versus all the US congress/executive branch and took their average IQ, which would be higher? As a US military veteran it pains me to say that the answer is quite obviously the CCP. Consider that if you took the complaints of the average American about how the US has been handled in the past 20 years it would probably boil down to three things; encouragement of special interests and crony nepotism (eg big tech, military industrial complex), complete societal degeneration and debauchery and borderline societal genocide (eg open borders, wokeism), and complete financial mismanagement. China, frankly, for all its faults and foibles (of which I will definitely concede there are many) is trying to address these issues which the West failed to. It may or may not succeed, and I suspect even if it does succeed it would not be without pain.
But if we agree that a) the problems are manageable and b) the management is quite capable, then I think probably Xi will likely handle it well. But as I said of course there are risks. To me the biggest risks given the sprawling nature of managing China are food/energy inflation leading to internal uprisings, loss of or incoherent central authority and finally some sort of external calamity. The second is the big risk given strife within the CCP, and Xi will have to be ruthless to squelch it. The third is improbable given the insane state of the west. The first is a big risk, especially when coupled with China's asset bubble (particularly real estate and debt) problems. It will be interesting to watch unfold. If I had to bet, I think Xi threads the needle for another 10 years, and taking Taiwan would certainly be a feather in the cap, but worse outcomes are most certainly possible.