China and Soft Power

centermass556

As the United States continues to exert its Cultural Hegemony around the globe, how long do you think China can keep a lid on things before they implode.

Many of the talking heads think we are on a full on collision course with China, especially after their recent drills that assessed the ability to seize geographic US assets in the Pacific. However, There is no way two of the three biggest kids on the block are going to go toe-to-toe. The fight will be a cold war fought through sphere of economic influence and proxy wars. But, how long can China maintain its class oppression before things become unhinged? Even Tito, before his death, was losing his grip on different factions inside Yugoslavia.

China has the same issues. They have two or three different ethnic/social groups they have kept repressed for the past 90-100 years. As we continue to exert soft power over parts of Asia and Indo China, how long will it be before the people of China stand up and demand their "M-TV", or in modern terms their unfiltered access to Facebook, Twitter, and IG? Do we simply just have to wait them out and continue to use the Carrot? With the Soviets, we used both Hard and Soft power to bring the collapse of the union. I am not sure we can much Hard Power here though.

tennmike

China is a crazy wild card in the SE Asia sphere. The islands they built and have manned and placed military aircraft on are like fixed fortifications, and fixed fortifications are like the Maginot Line. They can be circumvented or destroyed easily nowadays. The people in China have put up with a LOT since the Revolution that has effectively enslaved them to the state. They will either get tired of the censorship and crushing hateful treatment from the government, and revolt eventually, or will just continue to take it on the chin.

The Chinese leaders know full well that open warfare with the U.S. would be a no win situation for either side, so your laying out the proxy war thing is the next logical step, and they are doing that already in the Mideast and Eastern Africa, and to some extent in Cuba and South America.

zorba

No FB in China? My opinion of the place just went up considerably!

earlyagain

Seems like the carrot can be dangled for the Chinese by their heads of state. Giving the masses enough opportunity to consume to insure a compliant populace. Likely a more productive method than brutal subjugation by force.

The manipulation of that market would be a greater scource of power than military weapons and require only a fraction of the investment. Such a market is more easily controlled by China than anyone outside, but it has to be fuelled by trade.

The questions for the future are what will the people seeking access to that market do? There's alot of opportunity to create or fuel instability. Will business be motivated by quarterly profits or a sustainable future? Will the Chinese people looking west see freedom or empire?

BAMAAK

They have been going full anti Christian lately.  They have been consolidating power and squeezing the access to information.  Yet they have a very nationalist population who like to be ruled.  Perhaps younger generations will yearn for freedom but I thought that about Iran as well and they have gone all timid.

tennmike

China took Mao's advice, and so did Iran and lots of other countries. Those that control the guns control the people, and only the people of the party can have firearms along with the military and police. The proletariat must be disarmed lest they get unwise ideas to take their government by force. The guns keep them in line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of_the_barrel_of_a_gun
(Excerpt from the site. The whole thing needs to be read to understand the whole message Mao is putting forth.)

"Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."

Spk

centermass556 said:

As the United States continues to exert its Cultural Hegemony around the globe, how long do you think China can keep a lid on things before they implode.

...

The fight will be a cold war fought through sphere of economic influence and proxy wars. But, how long can China maintain its class oppression before things become unhinged? ...

... With the Soviets, we used both Hard and Soft power to bring the collapse of the union. I am not sure we can much Hard Power here though.

They could be waiting for us to implode.

We have two major issues at home that are very worrisome.

The first is our national debt. China is still the leading holder of our foreign debt. That's not good.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jul/15/us-debt-how-big-who-owns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States

The second is our, soon to be crumbling, power grid. We have many problems as a nation but if the grid goes, we're screwed.

https://www.seeker.com/could-our-power-grid-ever-fail-1768773338.html

Proxy war? Sure why not? But China's doorman is North Korea so heads up.

None of this could ever happen........... Let's hope not!

BAMAAK

China only holds like 5% or about 1 trillion dollars of our debt.  The majority is held by individuals and institutions.

I'm not all that worried about the power grid either.  To many redundicies built in unless we have a big Carrington event which takes out a bunch of our large transformers for which there aren't many spares.  I believe the really big ones are made to order in Taiwan.