Veteran China watcher David Shambaugh thinks the political break up of China is inevitable and is now on its way. The iron rule of Communism is unstable and the point of no return has been reached.
I am no China scholar, but I have been watching for this. I have never been to China, but when changing planes in Taipei in 2007 a young woman from Taiwan told us that there are huge problems in China with poverty, pollution and authoritarian government at all levels riding the backs of restless people. So she thought Chins was on its way to a crisis stage. So I have been watching...
Wall Street Journal (requires registration; might be found by a search)
He highlights five signs. The first:
First, China’s economic elites have one foot out the door, and they are ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble. In 2014, Shanghai’s Hurun Research Institute, which studies China’s wealthy, found that 64% of the “high net worth individuals” whom it polled—393 millionaires and billionaires—were either emigrating or planning to do so. Rich Chinese are sending their children to study abroad in record numbers
Second:
Second, since taking office in 2012, Mr. Xi has greatly intensified the political repression that has blanketed China since 2009. The targets include the press, social media, film, arts and literature, religious groups, the Internet, intellectuals, Tibetans and Uighurs, dissidents, lawyers, NGOs, university students and textbooks.
In other words: repression of every means of expression and almost every group.
Read it for the rest.
See also China leadership’s “analysis” of why the Soviet Union broke up. "Of course the problem was not Communism…” WSJ
Pic: Meeting of People’s Congress in Great Hall of the People, Beijing, this week. Wall Street Journal
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