Originally Posted by
Big Pistons Forever
Capitalism is always messy, communism always strives to look neat and perfect. In China's case that has involved increasing and heavy handed repression of its citizens to maintain that image of CCP managed perfection. They have screwed the safety valve on the boiler down hard but the heat keeps building. Personally I think China is in much more danger than the US.
The US is IMO a much more resilient society and the entrepreneurial outlook that seems to be baked in to the American psyche will find a way to make lemonade from the the COVID 19 lemons. In China however, all significant decisions are made by a small isolated closed and suspicious cadre of CCP apparatchiks who won't give bad news to the big guy. This I would suggest is not a receipt for effectively dealing with a historic disruption to world trade and intergovernmental relations.
For China a brutal lockdown of the country to flatten the COVID curve plays to the strength of the communist system. Dealing with the domestic economic and foreign relations "so whats" that are being generated by the COVID pandemic, all of which are very resistant to simple top down generated solutions, is going to be much harder for China's leadership to deal with. Their clumsy and tone deaf propaganda campaign linking revoking support support for Taiwan as a condition for receiving medical supplies is one example of policy failure both in conception and execution, and is not an encouraging sign....
The scary part is the standard playbook for a dictatorship dealing with internal strife is a foreign adventure to distract the populace. Personally I think there is a increasing probability China will invade Taiwan in late October. The US will be distracted with the presidential elections so they will not react militarily, and China will use the invasion to rally the people
Taiwan produces about 25% of the world's integrated circuits and rather more of the most sophisticated examples. I think the US would find the election a minor issue compared to losing Taiwan.