LittleGreenMan
Well-Known Member
Xi Sun Tzu has sufficiently softened up the battlefield, having established that fighters, bombers, surveillance drones, small & large Naval vessels, et al can approach Taiwan airspace on a regular basis, night or day, and be deterred by defensive moves by ROC forces. The party of the first part makes a move, the party of the second part goes thru the motions, a predictable outcome occurs, and the norm is maintained. Until is isn’t.
Since the beginning of time military rivals have kept an eye on the enemy and watched the sure sign of an invasion: a massing of assets within striking range. The CCP has had the luxury of accomplishing this buildup at their leisure and feinting strikes every day while nobody pays attention(to my knowledge, -at least publically) to the fact that the entire operation is in accordance with Chinese strategy 2500+ years old. Xi is a lot of things bad, but being a BS-er is not one of them. The CCP has announced they want Taiwan; the Presidency of Taiwan is up for election January 13th. Xi needs an "October Surprise". The CCP has been running the economy on hot air for a long time and is out of breath. Every sort of economic lie can be passed off as current wisdom to True Believers until expansion stops. Refinancing can be had as long as one is operating on an upward curve. As soon as the curve flattens, so do prospects for a little more rope. There are millions of apartments that are partially built by Evergrande & others but won't be completed that were financed by selling them to buy the land and beginning construction, -sort of all over the place-, based upon an expanding economy raising the value of the apartments, on the come. This is as close to a Ponzi scheme as you can get, even in China. It could only work in China because they don't have GAAP accounting. Or official reporting principles of any kind.
The CCP needed housing in cities for the masses as 1/3 of the population moved from the countryside to cities to work in factories that earned foreign exchange. There being no pension system in China, the workers needed investments to do the magic of compounding with their savings. These two needs blended until the scheme ran out of new money. You can imagine the masses that now have a big goose egg for a pension are not pleased. There is simply not enough surplus wealth in China to run its economy. It absolutely needs foreign money to continue expanding. Worse than that, they need foreign money to avoid collapse. Exports are down and getting downer. That translates into unemployment. Collapsing real estate investments + catastrophic savings losses by the masses + shrinking foreign exchange + Increasing unemployment = reasons to blame Xi for everything & dump him. Xi needs a win, and he needs to keep the masses focused on something other than his & the economy's performance. War works.
Xi has softened the battlefield and needs a war to re-direct the masses attention off him as the incompetent and as the Savior of China instead. Taiwan is available and the EU, et al will not fart at him unless and until the US acts. Guess what El Stupido will do in a Chinese crisis? Nothing. He will drag his feet and consult with his bellybutton and keep the ball in the air until it's too late to act. He has already been an excellent buy for Xi, having muddled US foreign policy beyond anybody's guesstimations as what will happen in any event, foreign or domestic. Worse yet, Joe is in such a state that if proceedings were to start to replace him with what's-her-face that would only add to a delay in reaction times. God only knows what she would do, anyway. Send half the fleet to the Mediterranean to get them as far away from usefulness in the orient as possible; use-up our arsenal of materiel in Ukraine without giving them what they need to win; disenchant our military and expel exactly the kinds of patriots that can be counted upon in defending the US; deplete our oil reserves; sow discontent and divide the citizens into as many sub-groups as possible; and admit as many foreign saboteurs over the southern border as possible as quickly as possible so we can be tied into knots at exactly the time we would need to marshal our forces for a response.
The only one, single reason Xi doesn’t attack yet is he needs foreign exchange to keep on keepin’ on. If the US and EU stopped sending money to buy stuff, he’s cooked. His need for a war to keep the masses & competition for his chair as bay just might outweigh that need. If that is the case, the day after Christmas would be el numero una choice to catch us with our pants down. Football may not be the big TV audience day this year. I’d like to be wrong.
Since the beginning of time military rivals have kept an eye on the enemy and watched the sure sign of an invasion: a massing of assets within striking range. The CCP has had the luxury of accomplishing this buildup at their leisure and feinting strikes every day while nobody pays attention(to my knowledge, -at least publically) to the fact that the entire operation is in accordance with Chinese strategy 2500+ years old. Xi is a lot of things bad, but being a BS-er is not one of them. The CCP has announced they want Taiwan; the Presidency of Taiwan is up for election January 13th. Xi needs an "October Surprise". The CCP has been running the economy on hot air for a long time and is out of breath. Every sort of economic lie can be passed off as current wisdom to True Believers until expansion stops. Refinancing can be had as long as one is operating on an upward curve. As soon as the curve flattens, so do prospects for a little more rope. There are millions of apartments that are partially built by Evergrande & others but won't be completed that were financed by selling them to buy the land and beginning construction, -sort of all over the place-, based upon an expanding economy raising the value of the apartments, on the come. This is as close to a Ponzi scheme as you can get, even in China. It could only work in China because they don't have GAAP accounting. Or official reporting principles of any kind.
The CCP needed housing in cities for the masses as 1/3 of the population moved from the countryside to cities to work in factories that earned foreign exchange. There being no pension system in China, the workers needed investments to do the magic of compounding with their savings. These two needs blended until the scheme ran out of new money. You can imagine the masses that now have a big goose egg for a pension are not pleased. There is simply not enough surplus wealth in China to run its economy. It absolutely needs foreign money to continue expanding. Worse than that, they need foreign money to avoid collapse. Exports are down and getting downer. That translates into unemployment. Collapsing real estate investments + catastrophic savings losses by the masses + shrinking foreign exchange + Increasing unemployment = reasons to blame Xi for everything & dump him. Xi needs a win, and he needs to keep the masses focused on something other than his & the economy's performance. War works.
Xi has softened the battlefield and needs a war to re-direct the masses attention off him as the incompetent and as the Savior of China instead. Taiwan is available and the EU, et al will not fart at him unless and until the US acts. Guess what El Stupido will do in a Chinese crisis? Nothing. He will drag his feet and consult with his bellybutton and keep the ball in the air until it's too late to act. He has already been an excellent buy for Xi, having muddled US foreign policy beyond anybody's guesstimations as what will happen in any event, foreign or domestic. Worse yet, Joe is in such a state that if proceedings were to start to replace him with what's-her-face that would only add to a delay in reaction times. God only knows what she would do, anyway. Send half the fleet to the Mediterranean to get them as far away from usefulness in the orient as possible; use-up our arsenal of materiel in Ukraine without giving them what they need to win; disenchant our military and expel exactly the kinds of patriots that can be counted upon in defending the US; deplete our oil reserves; sow discontent and divide the citizens into as many sub-groups as possible; and admit as many foreign saboteurs over the southern border as possible as quickly as possible so we can be tied into knots at exactly the time we would need to marshal our forces for a response.
The only one, single reason Xi doesn’t attack yet is he needs foreign exchange to keep on keepin’ on. If the US and EU stopped sending money to buy stuff, he’s cooked. His need for a war to keep the masses & competition for his chair as bay just might outweigh that need. If that is the case, the day after Christmas would be el numero una choice to catch us with our pants down. Football may not be the big TV audience day this year. I’d like to be wrong.