Great To See You, Chairman!
"This is not the fundamental interest of our two countries and peoples and it's not what the international community expects of us," Xi Jinping, newly coronated, told Joe Biden in Bali on Monday.
The first in-person meeting between the two men since Biden became president had an air of farce. Were it not for the size of the Chinese economy, the heft of its military and the scope of its influence, Xi's consolidation of power last month at the Party's twice-per-decade leadership reshuffle might'v
this is consistent with our ever increasing love of snackable headlines with simplistic explanations of anything complicated – grab a headline, make an inference, self declare intelligence … while all the while the more complex, nuanced (or in your face) understanding takes more effort, so too few try. sadly, macro-economic and geo-political decisions / discussions too oft revolve on that snackable level of understanding … what could go wrong?
Stephen Kotkin is a very good Russia expert . He also has clear things to say about China and his view is similar to yours. There is a podcast called Goodfellows on youtube from the Hoover Institute at Stanford. The latest one is with Stephen. I recommend it.
I don’t know that Marx explains Xi. Outside of a fairly well constructed but trying-too-hard to be scientific criticism of the capitalism of his days, Marx is excessively vaporous. Who knows? If technology really progresses, we may end up in fully automated luxury communism… 🙂
OTOH, I really doubt that Xi is interested in abolishing the state at any point in time. His ideology seems mostly passé-ist small time conservative fascism, on par with Salazar, Franco or Mussolini.
The idea that the US could successfully invade any foreign country is totally laughable. Since Normandy, we have been unable to successfully invade any country except Grenada for a couple of weeks and Panama City, also briefly. Korea ended with a divided country and a rogue state. We fled Vietnam after significant losses and increasingly this Communist country we hoped to crush has become a successful trading partner. We did push Sadam out of Kuwait, and then left quickly. Iraq is now a failed nation-state and the same thing happened to us that happened to Russia in Afghanistan, lots of our boys killed, even more wounded and the Taliban took over just days after we left having spent trillions. Invading China for any reason would be unspeakably stupid in the same way it was for Napoleon invading Russia; the country would absorb and kill us. Thankfully, I suspect the Chinese powers that be say the same thing about invading us. So we wrestle. BTW, remember, Marx was an economist.
The US military is undefeated in conventional wars and winless in asymmetric wars of attrition. That’s the ultimate irony of US military prowess. America was founded in an asymmetric war of attrition. We created and perfected modern asymmetric warfare, then immediately forgot how to do it.
A war with China would be, initially anyway, a conventional war assuming no nukes. The PLA has never been tested. I doubt seriously that Xi wants its first test to be the US military.
That’s like building a great NBA team during the summer of 1997 and saying, “Well, this looks great on paper! And the Bulls are old, after all…”
Xi doesn’t have much of a choice, though.
He wants Taiwan. Either there’s enough of a gap between Taiwan and the US to hope to attack and conquer Taiwan without triggering the US or there isn’t.
In which case, either he puts off the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese People or he takes on the US military.
I agree those are shitty choices but, to be fair, no one asked him to box himself with wanting to conquer Taiwan.
The dream of 1949 still burns brightly in Xi. In his new role, in my opinion, he is the 2022 manifestation of Mao. Given what we know about Xi’s conversations with Putin, prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Xi’s desire is to surpass western military power and obscure the legacy of collective political power and culture realized through the alliances manifested in NATO. But we don’t tend to sit on our hands and just watch as the world falls apart.
To quote Volodymyr Zelensky on Veteran’s Day (Friday last week):
“For almost 250 years the men and women of the United States armed forces have prevailed against tyranny, often against great odds. ?Your example inspires Ukrainians today to fight back against Russian tyranny. Special thanks to the many American veterans who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine, and to the American people for the amazing support you have given Ukraine…”
Xi Jinping, in his role as Premier of the Chinese Communist Party, enables him as an all-powerful tyrant, placing him in the same league as the all-powerful one-man rulers of modern history. I’m thinking Lenin, Stalin, (certainly) Mao, and, of course, Putin. But in the light of the world’s history during the twentieth century, and to the present day, I believe the level of Xi’s power and role – and Putin’s role as well – is quite the anachronism.
The world has certainly changed since Kissinger worked with Mao Zedong, Chou En-Lai, and Deng Xiaoping to shape the “great opening” of China. The Chinese leadership today seems to long fondly for the good old days, not unlike Putin expressed verbally at the time just before the invasion of Ukraine, when he was hoping that the added land mass between Russia and Europe would enable a buffer on their western border.
The dynamic of the Chinese landscape is interesting. If Xi plays his cards too aggressively, as he seems want to do, western countries could well find other interested and capable countries to manufacture goods, as I expect they will. I’ve heard India suggested as an alternative, among other countries.
From the perspective of the west, it will take time to find other partners. But the idea of a totalitarian manufacturing partner will not wash over the long term. My guess is the Chinese will try to create the impression that the so-called “great opening” never closed. But their western partners have already seen otherwise.
A frightening, but largely unreported, Chinese military aggression that has been and continues to occur – is China’s accumulation of over 95 foreign shipping ports, through which 27% of the global commercial container shipping occurs.
Accumulating this network would make it much easier for China to service their naval ships in the occurrence of a global confrontation- let alone wreak havoc with global shipping.