Chateau Lloyd

The other day I saw a report that Xi Jinping's daughter is a Harvard grad who now lives in Massachusetts.

Given the current friction between the two nations, this is somewhat remarkable, and I think it points to the fact that for a great many mainland Chinese, the US (and Canada) are being viewed as sanctuaries as well as geopolitical rivals.

It is extremely difficult to get reliable news out of China.  When I was working on Walls of Men, I deliberately avoided doing any kind of detailed analysis of Communist China's equipment or capabilities because these are simply unknown.  The recent aerial combat between Pakistan and India generated more smoke than light.  We know aircraft were downed, but not how many or how.  There are competing versions all over the place.

Similarly, the Chinese government has been increasingly evasive with official numbers, to the point that its total population is now in dispute.  Economic measures like GDP, unemployment, industrial output, are all increasingly vague.

What we do know is that the mainland faces strong headwinds, both politically and economically.  China's government bases its legitimacy on economic development, and plants being relocated to the US greatly weakens that.  After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP has been openly embracing traditional culture and the greatness of past Emperors, and the Mandate of Heaven is once more in play.  Should China's export-driven economy start to come apart, the strain may be too much.

The death of Pope Francis also brings additional challenges, since the shameful concordat engineered by Cardinal Parolin will likely not be renewed.  At that point China will have double down on repressing Catholic converts, which will result in protests and disruptions.

There are veteran China experts who have been predicting collapse for decades, but just because the time frame is off doesn't mean they were wrong.  The Soviet Union was assumed to be permanent right before it collapsed, proving all the alleged experts wrong.

Clearly the ideological divide is not as great as it was in the Cold War.  There is also far greater economic integration, but that is clearly fading.  Much is made about how China's industrial might now surpasses that of the US, but this can (and is) being slowly reversed.  In the mean time, how will Chinese factory towns adapt to the coming Rust Belt?