An Unfriendly Assessment of China Today

Austin Bay guest blogs at Instapundit, often on military issues. Today, he looks at the mostly non-military problems facing China today. He concludes they are darn big and tough, probably insoluble by the CCP.

The CCP cannot answer this question: How long can the prosperous tyranny continue to survive trading smartphones and quality American pork for political subservience by the roughly 400 million people in China's quasi-middle class? Don't get hung up on an exact figure. It's huge. But so are the 200 to 300 million in the murky stratum of workers who left home in central and western China to work in coastal China's factories. Many lack basic legal protections.

In 2019, the CCP accepted President Donald Trump's administration's demands for trade adjustments and planned for economic retrenchments. However, the Wuhan virus accelerated economic "decoupling" with the U.S. and the rest of North America.

Recent economic news suggests China is teetering. A China-EU investment and trade deal has snagged. Bloomberg reported defaults "in all sectors" of China's offshore bond market have exceeded $4 billion, double that during the same period of 2019. First-quarter 2020 percentage profits, capital expenditures and retail sales may be the lowest since the 1990s.

Big Picture: The goodie-producing economic engine that braces the CCP's domestic political strategy needs international markets. China's domestic economy can't sustain it. CCP international aggression magnifies the vulnerabilities.

Magnifies vulnerabilities because it irritates countries whose good will they need.