buckle up, they are in for a bumpy ride, the only obvious winners are... Taiwan,
Worryingly the Streetwise Professor feels otherwise….
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/breaking-china/
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Add to this Xi’s reading of the history of the Soviet Union. He–not wrongly–attributes the collapse of the USSR to Gorbachev’s attempt to loosen the grip of the state and the party over the economy. Xi is hell-bent on avoiding the same mistake. As a result he is consciously adopting an anti-Gorbachev strategy….
On the other hand, intractable domestic problems can lead a personalist system–and China is clearly that now, in contrast to the more collectivist leadership of the post-Mao, pre-Xi era–to ramp up the foreign adventurism.
This is particularly true when the personalist person is a seventy-something guy who wants to cement his place in history by, say, “liberating” Taiwan.
Prudence and an objective reading of Xi leads me to place greater weight on the latter possibility. Prudence, because it is the alternative that poses the greatest threat to the United States. Objective reading because of the Xi-as-anti-Gorbachev phenomenon discussed above.
Gorbachev’s rapprochement to the United States was driven in large part by his recognition of the strategic and geopolitical ramifications of the USSR’s deep structural economic problems. A player of the Gorbachev Opposite Game–a fair characterization of Xi–would ramp up tension, rather than attempt to ameliorate it….