Saturday, March 11, 2023
FullMoon wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 6:51 pm
“If the U.S. does not hit the brake but
continue to speed down the wrong path,
no amount of guardrails can prevent
derailing and there will surely be
conflict and confrontation,” Qin said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/07/chinas- ... efing.html
John, please say something about how
China has been acting during and after
the balloon incident. How much of it is
bluster and how much are they talking to
a foreign vs domestic audience in your
opinion?
There are still many unanswered
questions about the balloon incident,
such as:
* Was this the first Chinese balloon,
or have there been several undetected
balloons in the past?
* If there have been previous
undetected balloons, why were they
undetected? Was it because the radar
needed to be "calibrated," or was it
because they were detected, but not
publicized? (The last balloon was
detected by eyesight by civilians.)
* What data did the balloon collect?
* Was the balloon incident a rogue act
by a faction of the military, as some
analysts have suggested, or was it
approved by Xi Jinping?
* Was the discovery and announcement
of the balloon incident a major
embarrassment to the Chinese
Communists, as some analysts have
suggested based on the confused
flip-flop reactions?
* After the balloon was revealed, why
did the Biden administration allow it
to drift over one military base after
another, traveling all across the
country, collecting information,
without shooting it down? (Some
people, including me, believe that
Biden has been compromised by the
Chinese, and may even be selling out
national security to the Chinese,
allowing the Chinese to infiltrate the
US in many different ways.)
To answer your original question, I
believe that the Chinese Communists are
desperate, because they have so many
problems -- 22 border disputes with
their neighbors (which is insane),
failure of the zero-covid policy,
economy problems (falling GDP), restive
population, aging population, failed
attempts to end one-child policy,
Putin's failed invasion of Ukraine, and
so forth. I consider Xi Jinping's
winning an unprecedented third term to
be a sign of weakness and confusion,
rather than strength. (Nobody has
forgotten that Mao Zedong's dictatorship
was a disaster for Chine, but "this time
it's different.")
Unfortunately, the fact that the Chinese
Communists are very weak right now makes
them very dangerous. They're using
threats of imminent war with Taiwan and
the US to unite the restive population
behind them, but that will only work so
long before they have to do something
more "kinetic."
One thing that's really fascinating
about the current era is that it answers
so many questions about what happened in
the 1930s. People of my age have
wondered all our lives how it was
possible for Hitler have so thoroughly
fooled the British? How could Neville
Chamberlain have visited Hitler and then
announced "peace in our time," at the
same time that Hitler was meeting with
Benito Mussolini to plan the invasions
of France and Britain? How could
Chamberlain have appeased Hitler after
his invasion of Czechoslovakia? Only
Churchill saw what was going on and said
so, and he was universally hated.
Today, the same thing is happening.
Biden keeps touting his close
relationship with Xi, despite Xi's
repeated threats to attack Taiwan and
the US. Only people like Donald Trump
and Tom Cotton see what's going on and
say so, and they are universally hated.
