The Communist dynasty running China are living on borrowed time, and they know it.
Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The whole “China always looks to the next 10/100/1000 years” thing was always BS, as if China were some monolithic entity. Borrowed time is probably the right judgment.
When told a bureaucratic central planning full of sycophants who would never dare think out of the box knows best, I smile. Such a thing has never and will never exist!
I’d like to think so, but cannot manage it.
==
Evidence of proto-civilization can be found in the Yellow River valley which suggests it was present there by about 2000 BC, or 4,000 years ago. China as a political entity emerged around 200 BC, or 2,200 years ago.
==
The Chinese regime seems bound and determined to conquer a state of modest dimensions which is no threat to anyone. The territory of that ‘rebellious province’ has been ruled from the Mainland for all of four years in the last 130. What other country on Earth thinks this way? Russia in some measure. The UNRWA dole recipients in the eastern Mediterranean are another set. (The parody of this mentality is seen in the long running beefs over Gibraltar and over the Falkland Islands).
The Han Dynasty – The First Empire in Flames
The Fall of Civilizations
Paul M.M. Cooper
https://youtu.be/FwEkp4I75OA?si=iT8N5oy0w5Ln5oFy
Yes, I know Mr. Cooper is a flamming liberal, but his “Fall of Civilizations” series is informative for a novice into history like me. And I posted the link above because China has had as many rises and falls as the Middle East and Europe have had. The idea that the current Chinese regime is 5000 years old is ludicrous.
Don, I recall how astounded many in the West were when the USSR collapsed. National Geographic had a front page article “worrying” that Moscow might retake the lead in space. The article was from 1988. Books in the 1970s insisted we would have to deal with the USSR “for decades to come” (and I laughed reading such in library discards in the 1990s). Any Star Trek fan can chuckle at a 1960s Chekov saying “Leningrad” in the 25th century. I don’t think the Dragon dies on Trump’s watch as the Bear did on Reagan’s, but what if…
The dragon is not going to die. What would be agreeable would be an internal reformation in which the dragon abandoned any revanchist notions and lost interest in chowing down on others and lost interest in having its population under 24 hour surveillance. Radical decentralization and the transfer of authority over public policy to elective conciliar bodies would be agreeable for China as well.
The Communist regime will meet its end. It is a question of when. A mass migration of manufacturing out of Red China will facilitate its collapse. Red China is also going over a demographic cliff. There are not one billion Chinese. Young men cannot find young women to marry. It will get ugly
PopulationPyramid.net puts China’s population at 1.42 billion. There is an excess of men over women in various age segments. Ages..
==
40.0 – 44.9: 5.4% excess
35.0 – 39.9: 8.0%
30.0 – 34.9: 11.5%
25.0 – 29.9: 15.0%
20.0 – 24.9: 16.9%
15.0 – 19.9: 17.2%
10.0 – 14.9: 16.3%
5.0 – 9.9: 14.4%
0.0 – 4.9: 11.0%
@Art Deco
I often think of this “Chinese men not being able to find wives” problem. Are there precedents for this at any scale in history (other than the Sabine Women, ha!), I wonder. I suspect that the no-Chinese-wives problem is likely to morph into a problem for the nations around China: rooted in human nature and biology, the marriage and family concern is more powerful and persistent than Godless political regimes.
Not a student of historical demography. Steven Sailer contended in one of his columns that there was a set of female cohorts during the Victorian era in Britain wherein 25% of the women were lifelong spinsters. Don’t know if that’s true. I assume the consequences would be more disorderly than would be the case were 25% of the men perpetual bachelors. (Think the old west). Then again, IIRC the propensity of young people to marry fell by about 25% in this country after 2000 and did so without a cockeyed sex ratio.
Correction: “I assume the consequences would be more disorderly were 25% of the men perpetual bachelors.”
==
As for the consequences in war and diplomacy, not sure. Don’t think I’ve ever heard that France in 1792 or the German states in 1914, or Germany in 1939 had a high ratio of men to women.
The previous succession problem with the Gang of Four was rather quickly handled by the old establishment hands. President Xi is probably quite aware of the process.
[…] Civ Defender. . . Geopolitical Analysis, Punditry, and News:The Communist Dynasty Running China are Living on Borrowed Time – The American […]