Last night I indulged one of my peculiar habits in bed - no, no, not that one - behave! I have mentioned before that if I wake up in the middle of the night I stick my ear-piece in my ear and listen to the radio. Last night they had a very interesting discussion on BBC World Service between sundry experts on the subject, more or less, of 'whither China?' Not exactly a comforting, restful subject!
It is now becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Xi 'Smiley' Jinping is just another in a long line of political thugs. In certain respects I do not blame him. It can be no easy matter ruling a turbulent nation like China but, of course, he has no intention of confining his ambition to China. Again, that is understandable. Apart possibly from the Jews, no nation has been treated so abominably in the past few centuries as China, even if many of their wounds were self-inflicted. There is a rich seam of resentment that runs through the nation and a determination to settle a few old scores.
Top of the enemy list, I suspect, is Japan, with sundry old colonial or semi-colonial powers close behind. Britain, perhaps, is now so enfeebled and also so far away that we might escape Chinese attention for a while but America looms, dare I say, 'yuuuuuugely' on the Chinese target list! Apart from settling old scores, China under Xi Jinping is determined to dominate the world. Even an ex-corporal like me can see that it will start with a slow but steady squeeze in the South China Sea aimed at all the various nations that possess a shoreline there. Not all of them will resist, or at least, not for long! I just hope that the American diplomatic and military services are concentrating their minds on this problem and working on a variety of possible scenarios.
There are, it seems to an ignoramus like me, two small crumbs of comfort which might set back Chinese ambitions for a while. First there is the psychotic kid next door in North Korea who seems capable of throwing his toys out of the pram at any time without notice. That would be catastrophic for the region but would also throw China's carefully worked out plans into disarray. The second, is 经济愚蠢, which roughly translates as 'the economy, stupid!' I keep banging on that in my opinion - yeeeeeees, quite! - the Chinese economy has some deep-rooted problems, for example, their out-of-kilter borrowing is colossal. Any major upheaval which results in a sudden drop in living standards for a people who, to quote an old Brit expression, "never had it so good" would soon wipe the smile of Xi Jinping's face.
Anyway, looking on the bright side, the chances are that I will not be around when the chop suey hits the fan!
Happy to note David you're on the job - checked in yesterday and there was
Posted by: JK | Sunday, 22 October 2017 at 18:56