China 🇨🇳's Struggling Economy

 

Note:

 

This was originally written on Friday September 15, 2023, four days after I wrote that other post about China 🇨🇳 being the world's propaganda factory. This is the second entry in my series on China 🇨🇳 and East Asia. I can't wait until I get that North Korea 🇰🇵 one that I wrote, that one's a banger, let me tell you. Do people still say banger these days? Is that a slang or lingo term that people still use? I don't know. I'll still use from time-to-time, even if it is outdated. I still slang and lingo from the 90s and 2000s. 

Anyway, I wrote this because at the time, I was thinking about China 🇨🇳's economy and how it was struggling, how it was slowing down, and not recovering as quickly as some thought that it would. China 🇨🇳 had some of the harshest COVID restrictions 🦠😷 of any country in the world, and they had a Zero COVID policy 🦠 even going into 2022, when most other country had already wind down their COVID restrictions 🦠😷. But, when they finally opened back up at the end of 2022, some analysts and pundits expected that China 🇨🇳 would quickly recover from having lockdowns for the past three years, and start manufacturing and trading again at the normal rate, because China 🇨🇳 is the second largest economy after all. 

But, that didn't happen. Instead, China 🇨🇳 continued to stagnate, and decline, and didn't really recover, even after all the COVID restrictions 🦠😷 were lifted. This perplexed a lot of experts, analysts, journalists, politicians, you name it, and they couldn't really understand why. In addition to China 🇨🇳's struggling economy, tensions with the West, particularly the United States 🇺🇸, began to ramp up. 

Especially because of China 🇨🇳's support for Russia 🇷🇺 in their invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦, or at least, not criticizing or denouncing Russia 🇷🇺's actions, and the balloon incident in early 2023, where a Chinese spy balloon 🇨🇳 flew into American airspace 🇺🇸, like it was floating above the contiguous United States 🇺🇸 and a lot of Americans 🇺🇸 could see it, and the Biden administration decided to shoot it down. They sent two F-22s, a fighter jet that's been kind of neglected and hasn't really been used that much throughout its service life, to shoot down the balloon, causing the wreckage and debris to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. What was left of that balloon was recovered by the US Navy 🇺🇸, and was examined and analyzed by the FBI.

This incident had worsened the relationship between the US 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳 beyond what it had been in years. Like, we're talking 1950s or 1960s type bad relationship. Like, American and Chinese relations 🇺🇸🇨🇳 hadn't been this bad since the Mao era, which says a lot. People began predicting that this would be the start of a new cold war, you know, Cold War II. I tend to think that we're already kind of in a cold war with China 🇨🇳, but this incident really made a lot of the media and academic community start to fear that a new cold war was on the horizon. Because I don't know if you know, but the original Cold War (Cold War I) wasn't all that great for anybody. There was a lot of war (the Cold War got hot plenty of times), bloodshed 🩸, death 💀, dictatorships, human rights abuses, and there was a constant and ever present fear that the world could end at any moment in a nuclear holocaust ☢️.

But, in the months after that incident, the Biden administration began taking steps to try to stabilize the relationship with China 🇨🇳. Not become friends or allies with China 🇨🇳, but just stabilize the relationship with China 🇨🇳, you know deescalate the situation. Because they did not want things to escalate into a sort of Arms Race-type competition where the US military 🇺🇸 and the Chinese military 🇨🇳 would be trying to build bigger and badder weapons, even ones that could end humanity. They especially feared the prospect that the Chinese 🇨🇳 would begin to increase the size of their nuclear weapon stockpile ☢️ and establish more of a nuclear parity ☢️ with the US 🇺🇸 and Russia 🇷🇺, which they have started doing, and haven't stopped doing as far as I know. 

But, even worse than an Arms Race, they feared the possibility of the tensions escalating into armed conflict, particularly over the South China Sea issue or the Taiwan issue 🇹🇼. Luckily for the Biden administration, the Chinese government 🇨🇳 was a bit willing to sit down with them and talking things out. They met at the APEC summit in San Francisco, and they talked to each other, and talked about things that they could agree on, common interests that they had they could work together on, and the Americans 🇺🇸 demanded the Chinese 🇨🇳 to stop the flow of fentanyl coming in from their borders across the US border 🇺🇸. While, the Chinese 🇨🇳 made it pretty clear to the Americans 🇺🇸 that they will not let the Taiwan issue 🇹🇼 go, that they still see Taiwan 🇹🇼 as part of their own territory, and that they still have every intention of reuniting Taiwan 🇹🇼 with China 🇨🇳 by any means necessary. 

So, while things really didn't change all that APEC meeting, nothing substantially changed, it was largely considered a step in the right direction. Like, right now currently on Sunday February 4, 2024, the relations between the US 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳 are slightly better than they were in the immediate aftermath of the balloon incident. But, China 🇨🇳's economy is still struggling, it's still pretty slow right now, and China 🇨🇳's relations with its neighbors are still getting worse. Particularly, with the Philippines 🇵🇭. 

Relations between China 🇨🇳 and the Philippines 🇵🇭 have gotten just as bad as they have with the US 🇺🇸, Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, and of course, Taiwan 🇹🇼. Throughout 2023, the two countries had a series of clashes over disputed fishing waters, and the Philippines 🇵🇭's territorial waters, such as the part with that old WWII era warship that they have and the Filipino navy 🇵🇭 uses for reconnaissance or whatever. The Filipinos 🇵🇭 and the Chinese 🇨🇳 kept blaming each other whenever these incidents occurred, and the Philippines 🇵🇭 has moved closer to the US 🇺🇸, agreeing to continue hosting American military bases 🇺🇸 on their islands, and agreeing to host new ones. The worsening relationship between China 🇨🇳 and the Philippines 🇵🇭 has led to the improvement of relations between the Philippines 🇵🇭 and the US 🇺🇸. 

Relations between those two countries had worsened during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a right-wing populist politician who was very pro-China 🇨🇳 and pro-Russia 🇷🇺. He was sort of like the Filipino Donald Trump 🇵🇭, like he was that kind of toxic populist demagogue, and was very bad for Filipino democracy 🇵🇭, Filipino freedom of speech and expression 🇵🇭, and Filipino rule of law 🇵🇭. There was an explosion of vigilante extrajudicial killings of drug addicts during Duterte's presidency, and Duterte himself encouraged these killings because he was trying to wage a drug war of his own. He even compared himself to Hitler, and essentially said that he wanted to kill as many drug addicts as Hitler and the Nazis killed Jews ✡️. And of course, he was placating to China 🇨🇳, and appeasing China 🇨🇳, using many of their anti-Western talking points. 

I think the Philippines 🇵🇭 even joined the Belt & Road Initiative during his presidency, which is why there were all these infrastructure projects in the country being done by Chinese companies and Chinese workers 🇨🇳. That's the thing about Belt & Road, is that very rarely do the people in these countries benefit from these infrastructure projects, like they don't really create any new jobs for the people in these countries, since all the work is usually done by Chinese workers 🇨🇳. Duterte also canceled quite a few joint military exercises with the US 🇺🇸, and had signaled that he wanted to end the alliance or special relationship that his country had with the US 🇺🇸 for so many years, and tell them to pack up and leave. 

Some people feared that once Ferdinand Marcos Jr. AKA Bongbong came into office, that it would be more of the same or worse since he's the son of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who was a dictator. And while Marcos Sr. was a right-wing dictator who was cozy with the US 🇺🇸 (this was the Cold War after all), the US 🇺🇸 is no longer fully on board with the idea of dictatorships or autocracies. So, the autocrats and one-party states of today tend to side more with countries like China 🇨🇳, Russia 🇷🇺, North Korea 🇰🇵, Belarus 🇧🇾, Iran 🇮🇷, and Syria 🇸🇾 to a certain extent, despite Syria 🇸🇾 being a war-torn country that isn't exactly unified anymore. Same goes for Myanmar 🇲🇲, which is also a war-torn country that's divided. Myanmar 🇲🇲 was already kind of divided before the coup and the current civil war, but it's even more divided now. Even if these countries all have different types of authoritarian governments, some left-wing and some right-wing, and they don't share a single ideology, they tend to stick together. Authoritarian states stick together just as democratic ones do. 

So, it was feared and predicted that Bongbong would continue down the authoritarian path that Duterte had set for the Philippines 🇵🇭, and might even become a full blown dictator like his father did. But, that didn't happen. Instead, Bongbong proved to be much more moderate and pro-US 🇺🇸 than his predecessor, and he repaired the relationship with the US 🇺🇸, especially once the relationship with China 🇨🇳 got worse, and he undid some of the more unpopular policies that Duterte put in place. Like, the drug war and the extrajudicial killings, and the attacks on the press have largely stopped as far as I know. If you're from the Philippines 🇵🇭 and you're reading this, please let me know what, if anything, has changed from Duterte's presidency to Bongbong's besides the relationship with the US 🇺🇸 and the relationship with China 🇨🇳.

Speaking of Duterte though, I wrote about an alternate history scenario that I came up with involving the Philippines 🇵🇭 during his presidency, where the Philippines 🇵🇭 goes to war with Canada 🇨🇦. You see, there was this growing tension or dispute between the Philippines 🇵🇭 and Canada 🇨🇦, during Duterte's presidency, over Canada 🇨🇦's policy of sending their recycled items ♻️ over to the Philippines 🇵🇭 in what were essentially landfills. Duterte demanded Canada 🇨🇦 to stop this, to stop sending their garbage to his country, and he threatened to go to war with them if they didn't. Luckily, for everybody, that didn't happen, and the issue was resolved peacefully, with Canada 🇨🇦 capitulating to Duterte's demands, and stop sending their recyclables ♻️ over to that country. But, the thing I wrote explores the idea of what would've happened if the issue did spark a war between the two countries. I'll post that at some point in the future.

And speaking of Trump, if you think relations with China 🇨🇳 are bad under Biden, then they'll be even worse under Trump. Like, if Trump somehow gets re-elected as president, which I'm starting to doubt more and more that he will, he'd probably continue a lot of the policies towards China 🇨🇳 that he put in place during his first term, like all of the tariffs. The tariffs as many have pointed out, don't actually work and don't actually hurt China 🇨🇳 that much, and actually hurt Americans 🇺🇸 more than they do the Chinese 🇨🇳. 

But, besides the tariffs, tensions with China 🇨🇳 would likely increase under a second Trump term, and could even lead to military skirmishes or all-out war, depending on whether Trump decides to side with Taiwan 🇹🇼 or not. A lot of experts are doubting that he would actually protect Taiwan 🇹🇼 the way the US 🇺🇸 is supposed to, and he'd probably cut them loose, and abandon them in their time of need, leaving them at China 🇨🇳's mercy, just like he would our other key allies like Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, and Ukraine 🇺🇦. 

This is a man that wants to pull out of NATO, which would completely ruin the entire security situation in Europe, and leave all of Eastern Europe vulnerable to Russian aggression 🇷🇺. Not just Ukraine 🇺🇦, Moldova 🇲🇩 and even Georgia 🇬🇪 (again), but countries like Estonia 🇪🇪, Latvia 🇱🇻, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Poland 🇵🇱, and Romania 🇷🇴. NATO would likely fall apart without the US 🇺🇸 in the organization, and if it didn't completely break apart and dissolve, it would be significantly weaker as most of NATO's military strength comes from the US 🇺🇸. So, NATO's Article 5 would be powerless to stop Putin from rolling tanks into the Baltic states 🇪🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹. Even the Nordic countries like Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 would be at risk without NATO or with a weaker NATO without the US 🇺🇸, and Sweden 🇸🇪's not even in NATO yet. 

Anyway, Trump's stance on China 🇨🇳 is a bit confusing to me. He'll talk in front of his base, and talk about how much he hates China 🇨🇳, and how he would be tough on China 🇨🇳 in order to get them hyped up. But then he'll go and praise Xi Jinping, the leader of the country he supposedly hates, for being a strong leader; sometimes in the same breath. He's on record for praising Deng Xiaoping's response to the Tienanmen Square protests 🪧, the incredibly violent crackdown that most people agree was an atrocity, but not Trump apparently. And of course, he was caught doing shady business deals in China 🇨🇳, and giving favorable treatment to Chinese diplomats 🇨🇳 who stayed at his hotels, while he was president. 

So, which is it? Does he hate China 🇨🇳 or not? You can't say that you hate China 🇨🇳 and you hate everything that it stands for, and then go and praise Xi, the man who's largely responsible for everything bad that China 🇨🇳 has done in the past decade, and say you want to be like him. Trump is a very untrustworthy man. He lies all the time. This is why I won't vote for him in this election, and why I'm voting for Biden. We can't have wannabe dictators or dictator simps in office in America 🇺🇸, sorry. 

Oh, and with the recent presidential election in Taiwan 🇹🇼, the Taiwanese people 🇹🇼 once again rejected Beijing, by electing Lai Ching-te, AKA William Lai, as their next president. He's apart of the Taiwan Progressive Party (TPP), and he won pretty easily, even if a lot of the TPP candidates in the legislative elections lost, meaning that he'll be leading a minority government, with many KMT (Kuomintang) politicians in the Legislative Yuan probably opposing him. 

But, the fact that Lai Ching-te won the election and is the president elect of Taiwan 🇹🇼 sends a pretty strong message to Beijing, showing that the Taiwanese people 🇹🇼 will not be intimidated, they will not capitulate, and they don't want reunification, whether it's peaceful or not. They want the status quo to be maintained, which Lai Ching-te will probably do, despite Beijing and the KMT trying to paint him as a pro-independence or pro-separatist candidate. I am personally glad he won even though I don't live in Taiwan 🇹🇼 obviously because I like the TPP a lot more than the KMT, and I think that Hou Yu-ih (the KMT's candidate) would have led Taiwan 🇹🇼 in a much worse direction than it is. 

He would have cozied up to Beijing, even though he insisted on the campaign trail that he wouldn't, and that he would maintain the status quo and would strengthen the military. Obviously, the Taiwanese voters 🇹🇼 didn't believe him, and thus voted for Lai Ching-te. The 2024 Taiwanese presidential election 🇹🇼 truly was a win for democracy, and I think we should also appreciate that, and use that to give us hope that we can save democracy in our own elections, like here in the US 🇺🇸.

I was actually watching a video yesterday while I was writing the note for my Evangelion 3.0+1.0 review about why China 🇨🇳's economy is still struggling, even after the Chinese government 🇨🇳 has taken more steps to try to repair and stabilize the relationship with the US 🇺🇸. It was on a YouTube channel that I'm currently subscribed to called Taiwan Talks 🇹🇼, and it was interview with this China expert 🇨🇳 named Yasheng Huang. He's a professor at MIT, and he wrote a book 📖 about this subject called The Rise and Fall of the EAST. He is of Chinese descent, and is not some white guy who's never lived in China 🇨🇳 or Asia his entire life. So, he has credibility in that sense.

Basically, what he said in this interview was that the reason why China 🇨🇳's economy is still struggling, and why it hasn't made the kind of recovery that people expected or hoped is that China 🇨🇳 has become too authoritarian, and too closed off, and China 🇨🇳 has also alienated a lot of its neighbors, and some of its key trading partners like the US 🇺🇸, the EU 🇪🇺, Japan 🇯🇵, Vietnam 🇻🇳, the Philippines 🇵🇭, Australia 🇦🇺, and South Korea 🇰🇷. They've also of course worsened tensions with Taiwan 🇹🇼 by threatening to reunify the island and take it with military force.

And Xi's government has generally made doing business in China 🇨🇳 incredibly unattractive for most investors, entrepreneurs, and companies. And unless the Chinese leadership 🇨🇳 decides to loosen up a bit, ease tensions with its neighbors and trading partners, and open back up again like they had during the Deng Xiaoping era and in years before Xi took power, their economy will continue to struggle and get worse. Huang is a pretty smart guy, and he made a lot interesting points that I found myself agreeing with, I highly recommend watching that interview for yourself.

One last thing before I close this out, and let you get on with the meat of the post, I wrote about the current situation in the Middle East in the last post I posted about China 🇨🇳, and I want to give you sort of a general update of where we are currently because there's been some big developments. On Sunday January 28, 2024, there was a drone attack on a US military base 🇺🇸 in Jordan 🇯🇴, specifically, northeastern Jordan 🇯🇴. The base was called Tower 22, and the culprit of the attack was an Iranian-backed Shia militia group 🇮🇷 in Iraq 🇮🇶 that's apart of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which is a blanket term used to various Shia militia groups that operate in Iraq 🇮🇶. One of them is Kata'ib Hezbollah, which is a group that's affiliated with the actual main Hezbollah organization, the one based in Lebanon 🇱🇧, and is the group that the US military 🇺🇸 actually claims is responsible for the attack on Tower 22.

While, there have been plenty of attacks on US bases 🇺🇸 throughout the Middle East, especially ever since the war in Gaza started last year, this one was different because three US service members 🇺🇸 were killed. There had been no deaths in the previous attacks, including the one in December that I've mentioned before in the note of the last Hamas related post I posted on here, but this was the first time in a long time that there were.

This lead to sadness and outrage in the US 🇺🇸 as you can imagine, and many US policymakers 🇺🇸, especially those in the Republican Party, called for retaliatory strikes inside of Iran 🇮🇷 itself because the group that did this was backed by Iran 🇮🇷, and they're under the belief that unless you attack on Iran 🇮🇷 directly, they'll just keep sending their proxies after us. But, the Biden administration didn't do that. Instead, they decided to take a more measured and surgical response, striking Iranian-backed groups 🇮🇷 inside of Iraq 🇮🇶 and Syria 🇸🇾, the ones that have been harassing US forces 🇺🇸 in those two countries, and now in Jordan 🇯🇴. 

They've also been targeting IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) forces 🇮🇷 directly, such as the Quds Forces, the ones that are stationed in these countries (except Jordan 🇯🇴) supporting these groups directly on the ground as well as carrying out their own operations on behalf of the Iranian state 🇮🇷 since they are an official part of the Iranian military 🇮🇷. But, they didn't bother with striking any targets inside Iran 🇮🇷 itself. Why? Because there's no need to strike Iran 🇮🇷 directly.

You can get the message across by removing high-value targets, high-value people from the field, commanders, and removing capability from these groups, such as weapons depots. One of the targets the US 🇺🇸 took out with these recent airstrikes was a warehouse full of these Iranian drones 🇮🇷 that the Shia militias in Iraq 🇮🇶 and Syria 🇸🇾 have been using. The same ones that Kata'ib Hezbollah used to attack Tower 22 in Jordan 🇯🇴, and the Houthis have been using to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea. There's no need to escalate the situation beyond what it already is. You know, the Biden administration doesn't want an Iran War 🇮🇷 anymore than the rest of us do, especially during an election year when Biden's trying to win re-election. The Iranians 🇮🇷 don't want a full-scale war with the US 🇺🇸 either. No body wants a war. 

The only ones who do want a war, who do want a fight, are these militia groups, these non-state actors that Iran 🇮🇷 has propped up and influenced over the years. Oh, and the Republicans of course, but that's more about political theater and trying to make Biden look bad more than anything else. But, still, I do know that a lot of Republicans secretly do want a war with Iran 🇮🇷, including MAGA Republicans. They've wanted one ever since Bush invaded Iraq 🇮🇶 in 2003. Republicans may pretend that they hated the Iraq War 🇮🇶, but we all know they liked it, and many of them still do secretly like it and have no regrets about it, and want to do something similar with Iran 🇮🇷.

So, the Biden administration is doing the best it can to retaliate against these groups for what they did, and deter further attacks, without escalating things into a wider war that just spirals out of control, and destabilizes the Middle East even more than it already is. Even the Iranians 🇮🇷 are trying to get their proxies, the non-state actors, to calm down and deescalate in order to prevent a wider war.

I watched this video by this YouTube channel called Beau of the Fifth Column, talking about how Iran 🇮🇷 is trying to get their proxies to calm down and to deescalate because now, the non-state actors' actions are starting to hurt Iran 🇮🇷's interests, and Iran 🇮🇷 is trying to prevent a full-scale war with the United States 🇺🇸. One example of this is the Houthis in Yemen 🇾🇪. The Houthis have been attacking international commercial shipping in the Red Sea for the last few months, using the war in Gaza as justification for these attacks.

While, the Houthis have largely attacked ships belonging to Western countries, or Western-aligned countries, they've also attacked ships belonging to countries that are close to Iran 🇮🇷. They've attacked several Chinese ships 🇨🇳, and they attacked a Russian oil tanker 🇷🇺. Beau suggested that Iran 🇮🇷 may be trying to talk the Houthis out of doing this because they don't want to piss off the Chinese 🇨🇳 or the Russians 🇷🇺. 

The Russians 🇷🇺 after all are their top customers right now as far as arms exports are concerned because the Iranians 🇮🇷 have selling them drones that they've been using against the Ukrainians 🇺🇦. Again, the same kind of drones that these Shia militia groups have been using against US forces 🇺🇸 in the region and against commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Whether this is true or not, and whether this will actually work or not, I really don't know. Judge it for yourself. Here's another more recent video by Beau that's also about this topic if you want to check it out also.   

I don't mean to make light of this situation because it is quite serious, but it was cool to see the B-1 Lancer back in action again. It's been awhile since the B-1 has been used in service, and all I kept hearing about it is that it was getting retired. A couple or a few of them were taken out of service, and sent to that scrapyard where they send all of these retired aircraft to, to rust in the blistering desert Sun ☀️. It is still going to be retired, it's going to be retired in 2036. So, it was cool to see the US Air Force 🇺🇸 use this neglected bomber for something. 

In fact, the B-1 is the main bomber being used in this operation, in these retaliatory strikes, not the B-52 Stratofortress. It seems they're letting the B-52 take a break, and let the younger B-1 take care of it. The B-1 is the aircraft you usually see on thumbnails of mainstream news media clips on YouTube or in pictures on news articles online or in actual newspapers 📰 (those actually still exist), besides the F/A-18 Super Hornet, which have also been taking part in these strikes, and do look pretty badass taking off from aircraft carriers in the dead of night, what with their afterburners and all. 

Since they've begun striking targets in Iraq 🇮🇶 and Syria 🇸🇾 a couple days ago on Friday February 2, 2024, the US military 🇺🇸 has suggested that they intend to turn their attention towards Yemen 🇾🇪, and start targeting the Houthis yet again. Though, the Defense Department made it clear that the strikes against the Houthis are not in retaliation for what happened in Jordan 🇯🇴, but against what they've been doing in the Red Sea already. Meaning that the new strikes on the Houthis will be apart of Operation Prosperity Guardian rather than be apart of this new operation to respond to the attack in Jordan 🇯🇴. 

And the Houthis have made it clear that they intend to fight back against the US 🇺🇸 once the strikes start happening, if they haven't already started happening. They said, "We will meet escalation with escalation," or something along those lines. I hope these militia groups realize that they drew first blood 🩸, and have no business talking about escalation. Whether the Houthis are actually serious or not, or whether this is just rhetoric, I really don't know. I also don't know how any of this will end up going. We'll just have to see where it goes from here.

But, I am fairly confident that none of this will lead to a full-scale war with Iran 🇮🇷, especially since the CIA has done some intel on Iran 🇮🇷 recently, and has come to conclusion that Iran 🇮🇷 really doesn't have as much control over these groups as they previously thought, and they have been actively trying to get these groups to chill out. Meaning that the US 🇺🇸 and Iran 🇮🇷 have a common interest in stopping these groups, these non-state actors, or at least, removing the more problematic leadership, the leadership that doesn't listen to reason, and is harder to influence.

As for the war in Gaza, I really don't know. I haven't really been following that conflict that closely ever since I wrote my series on Israel 🇮🇱 and Hamas, and especially with all of that other stuff going on in the Middle East right now. But, from what I heard, Israel 🇮🇱 is starting wind down its operations in Gaza, and has even started to declare victory in some areas of Gaza that they cleared of Hamas militants, despite the fact that Hamas reasserted control over those same areas, and have been conducting business as usual, doing the usual governing thing. The war is not over yet, but it seems it's starting to slow down, and that Israel 🇮🇱 should do another hostage/prisoner exchange to get the last remaining hostages out as a way of ending the war.

With most of Gaza in ruins, thousands of Palestinians 🇵🇸 dead, and Hamas no where close to being eradicated, the stage has been set for the cycle of violence to continue. All Israel 🇮🇱 has done with this operation, with this war, is lay the groundwork for another October 7 to occur, and for the violence and hatred to perpetuate for even longer. Israel 🇮🇱 pretty much made all the same mistakes the US 🇺🇸 made after 9/11, during the War on Terror, even going as far to prematurely declare "Mission Accomplished."

The truth of the matter is that the only way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 🇮🇱🇵🇸 will end is through negotiations, through talks, and signing papers. It is not a conflict that can be won through military force, and it's not a conflict that will end with everyone getting everything that they want. Compromises will have to be made in order to achieve peace. The Israelis 🇮🇱 themselves can start by getting rid of Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right faction he created. Alright, with that out of the way, please enjoy this article I wrote about the struggling Chinese economy 🇨🇳. 

—

(This is the flag of the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳, or PRC 🇨🇳 for short.) 

 

As many are no doubt aware at this point, but China 🇨🇳's economy is faltering. Once seen as an economic juggernaut poised to take over the world, China 🇨🇳 is now seen as a weakening economic power, the sick man of Asia you could say, although that may be an exaggeration. But, whether it's the worsening debt crisis, or the decrease in foreign investment, and the decline in manufacturing and exports, China 🇨🇳's economy is certainly on a path of stagnation on par with or even worse than Japan 🇯🇵 in the 1990s, at the very least. And it's becoming clear that China 🇨🇳's economy is not going to overtake the United States 🇺🇸's economy anytime soon as some had predicted in the 2010s.

However, there are apparently those who are convinced that Xi Jinping is letting the economy fail on purpose. I like, I remember I was watching a video on China 🇨🇳's struggling economy on YouTube by a channel called TLDR Global (or was it TLDR Daily 🤔?), and I saw a video in the suggested video section (those videos you see on the side while you're watching a video on YouTube?) from Bloomberg or the Wall Street Journal or some other economic newspaper (I'm pretty sure it was Bloomberg) with a title saying that Xi may be letting the Chinese economy 🇨🇳 fail on purpose. I didn't watch the video, but my guess from seeing the title and the thumbnail is that the host and the guest(s)—because this is a podcast type video—discuss the sad state of the Chinese economy 🇨🇳, and the guest(s) try to argue that Xi is letting the economy fail on purpose, and they all debate and discuss what Xi's master plan might be behind letting the economy of his country stagnate or even collapse.

Look, I'm sorry, but that just sounds really stupid to me. Why would a leader (a head of state) let his or her economy fail on purpose? I mean, leaders around the world mess up their economies by mistake all the time by implementing some policies or reforms that they believe will strengthen their economies and make them better, but end up making them worse because they don't really understand how economics works; whether it's deregulating, raising interest rates, lowering interest rates, raising taxes, adding new taxes, acquiring more debt than you actually pay for, or just printing more money to the point of inflation or hyperinflation (the nightmare scenario for any economy). But, I have never heard of a leader letting their country's economy fail on purpose, whether it's intentional implementing policies that they know will wreck their economy, or doing nothing while the economy crashes around them.

This just seems like post hoc rationalization for why China 🇨🇳's economy is failing or stagnating, and why Xi is seemingly doing nothing about it, or why his attempts to deal with it aren't working. It also seems like an attempt to make Xi seem smarter and more in control than he actually is. Like, why are people trying to make Xi out to be a genius? He's clearly not, not just Zero COVID, but everything he has done since lifting the Zero COVID policies, not to mention the military threats he's made to Taiwan 🇹🇼, as well as other nations in the South China Sea like Vietnam 🇻🇳 and the Philippines 🇵🇭.

It's just like how before he invaded Ukraine 🇺🇦, people were trying to make Vladimir Putin out to be a genius too, and some kind of brilliant strategist who was outmaneuvering the West and always planned ahead and always had some deeper scheme or end goal behind everything he did. But, now we see that Putin isn't a genius, but just another dumb autocrat who made a fatal miscalculation. The same really goes for Xi as well, although not to the same degree as Putin's failure; Putin started a war he cannot win, while Xi hasn't, yet. But, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic 🦠😷, and all the economic policies he may or may not implemented have ruined China 🇨🇳's economy, and have prevented it from making a full recovery.

That was Xi's fatal miscalculation, that and the countless military threats he has made to the countries bordering the South China Sea, and doubling down on his claim over the entire sea, which has contributed to China 🇨🇳's economic woes by contributing to the exodus of foreign businesses out of China 🇨🇳. All of these companies are diversifying, and finding new countries to set up shop in, and get cheap manufacturing from, the main one being Vietnam 🇻🇳.

That, as well as China 🇨🇳's claim over the entire South China Sea as well as several islands within the sea, has lead to the worsening of Chinese and Vietnamese relations 🇨🇳🇻🇳, and the slow rekindling of an old rivalry that has gone back centuries. At least, they aren't going to war with each other like they did in 1979. So, Xi has not only ruined his economy, but has ruined his relationship with his neighbors, who were once friendly with him and his government and willing to do business with his country.

Vietnam 🇻🇳 was actually on good terms with China 🇨🇳 before all this, and their relationship was only growing closer and stronger, but not anymore; certainly the bilateral ties between both countries was lucrative, and Hanoi benefited from maintaining friendly relations with Beijing. Now, Vietnam 🇻🇳 is dumping China 🇨🇳, and pivoting to the US 🇺🇸. All because Xi chose to double down on China 🇨🇳's territory claim over the entire South China Sea.

You cannot convince me that this was all intentional on Xi's part. You cannot convince me that he intentionally ruined China 🇨🇳's relationship with Vietnam 🇻🇳 and the Philippines 🇵🇭 (as well as Japan 🇯🇵 and South Korea 🇰🇷), and he is intentionally letting his economy falter like this. Economics is the source of China 🇨🇳's power, just as nuclear weapons ☢️ are the source of Russia 🇷🇺's power, Xi has to know that. If the economy stagnates or fails, then China 🇨🇳's influence will decrease. Xi intentionally letting his economy crash is tantamount to Putin giving up all his nukes ☢️, he'd stupid to do this.

I just had to write about this because I saw that stupid title and thumbnail from Bloomberg, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Stop making Xi out to be a genius, and just accept the fact that China 🇨🇳's economy is failing, and it's happening against his wishes. He wants the economy to succeed, but it's not, and nothing that he or the Communist Party is doing is helping it succeed. And to be clear, not all of China 🇨🇳's economic problems are the cause of Xi. Some of the causes of China 🇨🇳's economic problems are out of Xi's control, like the One Child Policy.

The One Child Policy has not only had tremendous effects on the economy, but on the society as a whole. What that policy did was create situation where there are more old people in the population, and not enough young people being born to replace them, and partake in the workforce. Certainly, there aren't even that many Chinese 🇨🇳 able to find dates or start relationships, and part of that is there aren't enough females ♀︎ and way too many males ♂︎ in the population, because most Chinese parents 🇨🇳 chose to have a son instead of a daughter when the One Child Policy was put into effect; since a son could join the workforce, or join the military, or do physical labor around the house or the farm, since a lot of Chinese 🇨🇳 are farmers, especially in the rural areas of the country.

 In fact, in some cases, whenever a woman ♀︎ in China 🇨🇳 become pregnant during the One Child Policy era, and it was discovered the fetus was female ♀︎, they would abort it because they felt a girl ♀︎ would not be as useful or as helpful as a boy ♂︎. I know that sounds very cold-hearted, but that's the kind of mindset that the One Child Policy produced in an entire generation of Chinese people 🇨🇳, those were kind of calculations that Chinese families 🇨🇳 were forced to make. Obviously, not all of them did that, some of them did carry their female babies ♀︎ to term; if that there weren't the case, there wouldn't be any women ♀︎ in China 🇨🇳 today, certainly women ♀︎ under the age of 60. But, there are way more men ♂︎ than women ♀︎ in the country after decades of the One Child Policy being in effect, and as you can imagine, that causes huge problems for birth rates and demographics.

While, China 🇨🇳 is certainly not the only country in Asia experiencing the issue of an aging population and a declining birth rate, China 🇨🇳 made it ten times, maybe even a hundred times worse by limiting Chinese families 🇨🇳 to only having one child ☝️ per couple and per household. Sure, the One Child Policy was eventually repealed and replaced with a Two Child Policy and then a Three Child Policy (ooh, how daring), but by the time it was, it was already too late, the damage had already been done. Maybe, if they had repealed the One Child Policy in the 1980s or even 1990s, things could've been salvaged or even reversed, but not in 2015.

Honestly, at this point, I don't know why China 🇨🇳 is still implementing these arbitrary population control laws, when they know that they have a declining population. They should do away with them entirely, and just let people have as many kids as they want; it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, especially at this point, but it'd be better than legally limiting people to just three kids.

Anyway, the One Child Policy was implemented under Deng Xiaoping's leadership, so that was Deng's fatal miscalculation; besides supporting Pol Pot in Cambodia 🇰🇭 from 1975 to 1979, and then invading Vietnam 🇻🇳 in 1979. He unknowingly doomed his country to having an aging and declining population, which has only exasperated the economic crisis that his country is now facing in 2023, 26 years after his death.