Turning to China, Xi Jinping would be an obvious loser. His close association with Putin would hurt him. But China may be already undergoing a revolution. Most of Xi Jinping’s problems are self-inflicted. He started mismanaging the economy right from the beginning of his rule when he went out of his way to undo Deng Xiaoping’s reformist achievements.
Xi’s Zero Covid policy was his biggest blunder. It imposed enormous hardship on the population and brought them to the verge of open rebellion.
Then, in response to popular pressure, Xi suddenly abandoned the policy without putting anything else in its place. The result was Armageddon.
Without proper inoculations, infections spread like wildfire. Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed and an untold number of people, most of them elderly, died within a very short period of time. The regime stopped providing information, but people could see what was going on when their relatives and friends began to die.
The first, urban wave of infections peaked in January; the second, rural wave is doing so just about now, but it will take another month or so for the health system to start functioning normally.
The chaotic way Xi Jinping exited Zero Covid shook the Chinese people’s trust in the Communist Party under Xi’s leadership. The current situation fulfills all the preconditions for regime change or revolution. But this is only the beginning of an opaque process, whose repercussions will be felt over a longer period of time.
In the short term Xi is likely to remain in power because he is in firm control of all the instruments of repression.
But I am convinced that Xi will not remain in office for life, and while he is in office, China will not become the dominant military and political force that Xi is aiming for.
Fortunately for Xi, he is not personally threatened from abroad because Biden is not interested in regime change in China. All he wants is to reestablish the status quo in Taiwan.
Due to his weak position at home, Xi responded positively to Biden’s offer in Bali to lower temperatures between the United States and China.
But the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon traversing the length of the US soured relations and it is on its way to poisoning them all together.
Preliminary examination of the remains indicate that it was designed to spy military targets, not for meteorological purposes.
In any case, Xi Jinping’s conversion to cooperation would have been only temporary and tactical. He would not be who he is if he could abandon his deeply felt beliefs so easily.
The fact is, we are witnessing a historic process in China whose significance is not widely appreciated.
