John, good analysis on your comment dated Tue Nov 19, 2019 2:02 pm. Worse case scenario, it would be like Budapest in 1956 before the UN would try to declare a ceasefire for evacuation of foreigners.
This is just my opinion, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pretty vulnerable to fail due to more internal than external forces. I would like to state that the CCP is the latest version of the Mandarins that has ruled China for the past thousands of years. Only 6 to 7 per cent of the Chinese population are members of the CCP. This segment of China will fight tooth and nail for the CCP.
One of the more telling facts is the amount of money and energy is spent to control its population versus spent on the People’s Liberation Army for external defense. It has an army of occupation (The People’s Armed Police), information control (Great Fire Wall) and surveillance and coordination apparatus (Ministry of State Security) with its neighborhood dragnet, digitized “social credit” systems and other enforcement systems. The mass detention system is getting its first run with the Uighurs and I would bet soon other ethnic minorities such as the Mongols, Tibetans, Tajik, Korean…… will get their turn unfortunately.
A significant inflection point will be the breakdown of the information control system. It is crumbling already due to the lack of trust, creditability and cynicism. Chinese people are trying to move money out of China or move out completely. I have seen this personally.
Personally, I think there will be war, but not between the US and PRC. The general US population is war adverse and a civil war in China will not be an existential threat to the US if contained within the borders of China. The only action with the US military will be the conduct of a Non-combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) from Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dalian and other major cities with concentrations of Americans and Westerners.
John you stated in your book that the odds are tilting to a PRC versus Japan knife fight, but I think a warmup will be easier for the PRC to go after Taiwan or Vietnam. It would be easier for the PLA, PLAF and PLAN to get operational experience. Japan would be bloody and you said and I agree, the US would stand behind Japan. It would be less like for a USA/PRC conflict over Taiwan and/or Vietnam.
You might find this interesting:
https://twitter.com/GregPoling/status/1 ... 1458026496
I would bet a Sam Adams winter lager that this has been war-gamed by PACOM already.