For the last three decades or so, we've been bombarded with stories about how China's brilliant leadership is running rings around the United States.
Some of these books and articles have made valid points, but a number have struck me as just the latest incarnation of the Yellow Peril, the inscrutable Menace from the East.
In many ways, China has played the West for saps, but it's now clear that this was because the West allowed it to happen.
It wasn't that China is led by geniuses, the West was simply being run by incompetent sell-outs. Donald Trump's policies are not revolutionary or particularly brilliant, but they are effective.
Indeed, Trump's desire of preserving American manufacturing was once so obvious as to be unremarkable. Both parties understood that a nation incapable of making its own arms and goods would be a helpless target for foreign aggression. It was only in the halcyon and feckless years after the Cold War that elites convinced themselves that war was impossible and selling out to foreigners was the smart play.
China now has three serious crises to contend with.
The first is the lingering rebellion of Hong Kong. China should have taken care of this long ago, and its persistence is proof of the regimes ineptitude. It also serves as a harbinger of worse risings to come.
The trade war has also gone badly for China. When Trump put tariffs on manufacturing goods, China's response of retaliating against imported food was idiotic in the extreme. Of course it failed because people need to eat.
Now we see yet another failure as a deadly disease threatens to kill tens of thousands of people. China's response has been dilatory, opaque and inept. The ostentatious quarantines complete with physical road blocks and frenzied hospital construction are nothing more than photo ops to show the regime is in control.
But it isn't.
One thing I've learned over the years is that traditional Chinese culture is largely gone. Much play is given to the works of Sun Tzu, but it's clear that the ChiComs don't read the old boy any more.
If they did, they would know never to make a trial of strength in a city.
They would know that open confrontation in trade only works if you already have the upper hand, which includes the ability to feed your own people.
Finally, the ChiComs are violating the central tenet of his teachings that one must know oneself and know the enemy.
The Chinese know neither. They lie to themselves all the time and they lie just as much about their enemies. The regime has placed a premium on lying, which is why nothing can be trusted.
This is the great weakness of all totalitarian societies. The leaders only want to hear good news, so that's all they get.
Reality has a way of asserting itself.
For all the mockery of the left and their Never Trump Quisling allies, Trump is an actual practitioner of Sun Tzu's arts. He sees into the very hearts of his enemies and knows himself completely. He plays to his strengths in every instance and will shift ground abruptly if he loses the advantage.
It is hard to imagine China collapsing. It appears so strong, so formidable, but then again, so did the USSR.
In many ways, the question is not whether it will fall, but instead how much longer can the regime hang on?
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