Over the past few years, the United States’ approach to China has taken a hard-line turn, with the balance between cooperation and competition in the U.S.-Chinese relationship tilting sharply toward the latter. Most American policymakers and commentators consider this confrontational new strategy a response to China’s growing assertiveness, embodied especially in the controversial figure of Chinese President Xi Jinping. But ultimately, this ongoing tension—particularly with the added pressures of the new coronavirus outbreak and an economic downturn—is likely to expose the brittleness and insecurity that lie beneath the surface of Xi’s, and Beijing’s, assertions of solidity and strength.
The United States has limited means of influencing China’s closed political system, but the diplomatic, economic, and military pressure that Washington can bring to bear on Beijing will put Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) he leads under enormous strain. Indeed, a prolonged period of strategic confrontation with the United States, such as the one China is currently experiencing, will create conditions that are conducive to dramatic changes...
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If anything, the Chinese Communist Party will bear down on it's own, meaning more repression, more dogmatism, more surveillance, more police, more army, more strict control.
That means where there were re-education camps, there will be concentration camps.
Families were separated, men to the camps, women staying in the home and then there were Chinese Communist enforcers who lived in the homes with the women, staying there overnight as well.
There will be more surveillance, and likely cash will be totally eliminated, and all transactions will be electronic with total Party surveillance. Face recognition everywhere, except maybe some farmer's rice paddy, and I'm not sure there are farmer's rice paddies any more, more likely everything has been collectivized.
There will be more mass demonstrations against the Americans.
Likely, China will turn into a giant N. Korea.
China's international ambitions will likely expand even more. The silk road and necklace initiative.
China's space activities will increase and the military will become even more dominant in society.
It will become even more that Chinese Communist Party that runs everything. There has been an initiative for capitalism with oligarch's but it has been in synchrony with the Chinese Communist Party, and that will remain only as long as the Chinese Communist Party, and Xi at its head, is the chief beneficiary.
We in the US have thought there were hard times, but they may likely get a lot harder.
The Chinese Communist Party, while competing in business for business interests around the world, will likely no longer take that approach, but where possible, will probably intervene militarily with proxy wars to eliminate American friendly governments and install Chinese friendly governments.
There is going to be much, much more pressure on Taiwan and anyone who has friendly relations with Taiwan. That will likely be a signpost for the Chinese Communist Party, a defining category, because the Chinese Communist Party can not tolerate opposition, so expect tanks and Hong Kong and possibly a blockade of Taiwan.
I have lived 6 months in China over the past ten years. Seen dramatic improvements in the lives of the same villagers I have seen during that time in every measure. In many ways they are far feer than we are becoming. No one is being canceled, men can admire women. There is tolerance of sexual differences. They are way ahead of Nancy Pelosi as there are no words for male and female. They have social credt scores in which people are given a solid description of what increases or decreases points. Here they want to destroy people by firing them or impacting their credit scores about their free expression but the rules are not published. No liqour licenses are needed and children may have home made alcohol from toddlerhood. Most police have no guns. They like we do now, cancel accounts of those who mispeak on social media. They are moving to a phone and scan society. We are rapidly moving towards the way they do business, business promoted by our tech giants that made it possible there. I was there when covid hit, they went to wartime mode nationwide, everyone was isolated and we had a difficult time getting out due to road blocks, check points and so forth. No one answered at our state department. Without friends we were screwed. The State Police in Puer put us up in their luxuary hotel, which we paid for, and were were able to make it to Kunming, without a special health pass we had no hope of going to a hotel or getting a cab. We eventually after a night iin seats in the basement were able to board for Shanghai. Everything was dystopian. No people or motion on the streets to speak of. We were barred from flying to the US by the US and had to go to Korea to get home. United Airlines never reimbursed the 4k extra it cost us. We made it home from Seoul. After 2 weeks of quarantine we returned to the freedome of the US. That freedome lasted 2 weeks. Now I live in a variation of China with our own one party state and far more violence then is evident in the China I left. My Chinese experience apart from transit flights from Beiging and Shanghai was exclusively in Yunnan province, the raw source of the covid bats and bat shit used to help create it in Wuhan. We are rapidly heading towards a society that makes it difficult for America to point fingers at any authoritarian states as we are heading into a "Dark Winter"