China need a new geopolitical Doctrine ?

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free_6ix9ine

Junior Member
Registered Member
I would describe myself as a realist, the truth is really somewhere in between an overly optimisitc assessment and an overly pessimistic assessment. I do think China and the US are viewing each other as straight up enemies as opposed to the frenemy relationship where politically both countries saw each other as a geopolitical challenge, but could benefit economically via trade, investment etc.

The frenemy relationship allowed China to grow economically, while helping to maintain the global US dollar based trading system, which greatly benefits the US because it allows the US spend infinite amount of money on military, etc.

However, clearly this relationship has frayed, and China has no reason to continue upholding this global trading system based on US dollars, essentially instead of relying on exporting cheap goods for US dollars, China has to restructure its economic system where it pushes its own currency globally while maintaining competitive of Chinese exports. Hence why there is a massive rush for DCEP by China which bypasses the US financial system entirely.

How this new reality will turnout? I can't answer, but for sure in the short to medium terms there will be disruption to China's economy, but if this transition is complete, then the US would have a lot less leverage over China. But the future has not been written yet, so we can only wait and see.
 

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
I'd like to take a short break from whatever it is that's going on in this thread and discuss some geopolitics for a while. Here's a short piece on the Taiwan issue I wrote entitled "The Strategic Utility of Frozen Conflicts":

I've been giving some thought to the Taiwan issue, its ultimate resolution, and how it fits into China's broader strategic and historical objectives. I'd first like to briefly comment on how I define those objectives: one is China removing the last vestige of the Century of Humiliation and reclaiming its final lost territory, Taiwan, and the other is the military expulsion of the United States from Asia and establishing China as its undisputed hegemon. While those goals overlap, they are logically distinct and thus I initially thought they could be considered in isolation, especially since the former is more readily achievable than the latter in the near future. However, I've come to the realization that separating those goals is erroneous.

To see why, I have to discuss how I thought China would approach war, and I will admit that my previous thoughts on the matter were somewhat naive. I thought that the only arbiter of whether China would go to war would be how it weighed its chances of victory and at what cost victory would come, and while that clearly is a very important consideration, it's far from the whole story. I hadn't considered what one might call the "narrative" part of a war; wars must be, for want of a better term, saleable to history.

Consider the wars America fought after it emerged victorious from the Cold War - every single one was waged against pitifully weak opponents, yet all were accompanied by grandiose narratives that bordered on the comical like "the responsibility to protect." America could have flicked countries like Serbia, Iraq, etc. off the map without regaling us with its paeans to Freedom and Democracy™ and how it was going to save the world from being swallowed up by Milosevic and Saddam.

The point isn't to poke fun at the US's hamfisted lies, it's to point out that the US had to lie. Even against such feeble enemies and at such minimal costs to itself, it still had to sell its wars. There's no reason to believe the same doesn't hold true for China. It's only soulless nationalists like Yours Truly who view war as simply one of many instruments of statecraft and the decision to go to war as reducing to a clinical cost-benefit analysis; most people don't share that sangfroid and that's probably for the best. For most, the decision to support or oppose war is a deeply emotional one based on national honour, culture, pride, fear, anger, righteousness, and what have you. Nobody ever gave "because we can win" as a reason to go to war, even though it's by far and away the best reason. There are always stories and myths involved.

Once again, China is no different - a war to reunify Taiwan would be deeply emotionally resonant in China, whereas a war to expel the US from Japan and South Korea wouldn't be, even though I believe a good argument can be made for the latter being far more strategically important. How to resolve this conundrum? Well, the solution lies in the title of this piece: defer any war with Taiwan until China is powerful enough to broaden the scope of the conflict to one of serving the latter goal (America's expulsion) primarily and the former goal (reunification) secondarily. This would allow China to advance its cold national interest under the umbrella of an emotive "righteous" war.

Following this logic, my previous thinking that China should decisively resolve the Taiwan issue the moment it attains the military capability to do so is a deeply misguided one. China would gain Taiwan, but it would lose the appreciating asset that is the frozen conflict. If after this China pursued its goal to expel the US, that would smack of a war of aggression against Japan and Korea. Even the most sympathetic supporter would be forced to admit that this was a war China chose to fight after it had unified and righted the wrongs inflicted on it. However, an identical campaign waged against Japan and Korea in the context of a reunification war against Taiwan would at the very least be controversial; it would be easy to argue that these steps are necessary to defeat US intervention in support of Taiwanese separatists. That at the end of it the US would be gone from the region, well... that's a bonus.

If the US took China seriously enough to work through a similar analysis, how would it respond? Counterintuitively, the best move would be to push Taiwan into declaring independence and then leaving it high and dry. This would have the twin benefit of nullifying China's future pretexts and give the US a face-saving way out of having to defend Taiwan. If any ally looks at the US in horror, it can simply say "I said I'd help them if they didn't do anything crazy. They did something crazy, so they're on their own." In the best spirit of "be careful what you wish for", we should not want this outcome, or any political settlement with Taiwan, before China is ready to play for all the marbles.

So here's hoping the present situation remains exactly as it is now. No war, no political settlement, no declarations of independence, no resolution of any kind. Just a conflict placed in the freezer as China pumps out warship after warship.
 

Hadoren

Junior Member
Registered Member
I would describe myself as a realist, the truth is really somewhere in between an overly optimisitc assessment and an overly pessimistic assessment. I do think China and the US are viewing each other as straight up enemies as opposed to the frenemy relationship where politically both countries saw each other as a geopolitical challenge, but could benefit economically via trade, investment etc.

The frenemy relationship allowed China to grow economically, while helping to maintain the global US dollar based trading system, which greatly benefits the US because it allows the US spend infinite amount of money on military, etc.

However, clearly this relationship has frayed, and China has no reason to continue upholding this global trading system based on US dollars, essentially instead of relying on exporting cheap goods for US dollars, China has to restructure its economic system where it pushes its own currency globally while maintaining competitive of Chinese exports. Hence why there is a massive rush for DCEP by China which bypasses the US financial system entirely.

How this new reality will turnout? I can't answer, but for sure in the short to medium terms there will be disruption to China's economy, but if this transition is complete, then the US would have a lot less leverage over China. But the future has not been written yet, so we can only wait and see.
It's always nice and obvious to say this, but the great problem is how to do this.

I don't think DCEP will do much as the main problem is the capital controls. With the necessary capital controls it's impossible for the DCEP to do much internationally.

One possible solution is to demand trade in euros rather than dollars. At the very least it should be done for the European Union; it seems most trade with the EU is still in dollars.

But this alone will not get rid of America's ability to cut off banks from SWIFT.
 

Hadoren

Junior Member
Registered Member
The only other thing I can think of is to try to expand WeChat Pay internationally. The infrastructure already exists. The main problem would be to expand it to other currencies.

To do this, you would need to get rid of the capital controls. This would be very dangerous and damage the economy.

Thus I think this should be a last resort, something only to be tried if America attempts to cut off China from SWIFT.
 

free_6ix9ine

Junior Member
Registered Member
It's always nice and obvious to say this, but the great problem is how to do this.

I don't think DCEP will do much as the main problem is the capital controls. With the necessary capital controls it's impossible for the DCEP to do much internationally.

One possible solution is to demand trade in euros rather than dollars. At the very least it should be done for the European Union; it seems most trade with the EU is still in dollars.

But this alone will not get rid of America's ability to cut off banks from SWIFT.

I think the point of DCEP is a backup plan if the US cuts China off from swift. Since DCEP transfers money from user to user directly via bluetooth or any other means of off line communication, as opposed to via SWIFT which is a system that goes thru US banks.

Capital control prevents USD from leaving China which is fair, since China has only a limited amount of USD. But it doesn't prevent China from accepting RMB for payment in trade, etc. Neither does it prevent other countries from exchanging their currency for RMB nor does it prevent RMB from leaving China. Inbound and outbound RMB is not part of capital control and isn't a particular concern for PBOC, because RMB can be created at will by PBOC.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
@gadgetcool5

It's quite easy to increase birth rates, just send China back to the stone age like where India is and naturally people will have more kids.
No need. An overhaul of China's pre-university education system is the key. People in China are choosing to have only 1 child now even though they have never been in a better economic situation because it is prohibitively expensive in a child's early education years due to the culture and corruption in school. Parents vie for the teacher's favor to get their kid preferential treatment on everything from seating to conflict resolution between kids. Teachers run illegal after school prep classes that cost hundreds of RMB in "tips" to attend per session and if you don't attend, your child will fall behind in testing because this is where the most ridiculously difficult test questions will be revealed. If you don't tip enough, your child won't be invited to the next session. The CCP has tried to crack down, explicitly calling these courses illegal and making rules against extra-curricular interaction between students and teachers but due to the culture, parents seek out the instructors themselves, begging for just some extra sit-down time with their kids and tipping graciously each time. This competition among parents to please educators has gotten so out of control (and escalated disproportionately faster than what even China's economic growth will allow) that now large portions of parents disposable income and time goes into buying presents for multiple teacher/principles and sending their kids to illegal prep classes to make sure their kids get into a good school early on and get treated like star pupils. Obviously, you can't treat everyone the best as it's all comparative so the price and the competitions between parents has no limits. Seeing this ordeal, parents decide they just can't handle having 2 kids. This is the key to China's low birth rate.

When I first came to the US, my parents donated generously to the public school I attended every time there was a fundraiser telling me they were afraid I'd get singled out and bullied by the teachers if they didn't. Only when they realized that this is not the culture at all here and that classroom teachers aren't even aware of parent's contributions did they stop.
 
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free_6ix9ine

Junior Member
Registered Member
No need. An overhaul of China's pre-university education system is the key. People in China are choosing to have only 1 child now even though they have never been in a better economic situation because it is prohibitively expensive in a child's early education years due to the culture and corruption in school. Parents vie for the teacher's favor to get their kid preferential treatment on everything from seating to conflict resolution between kids. Teachers run illegal after school prep classes that cost hundreds of RMB in "tips" to attend per session and if you don't attend, your child will fall behind in testing because this is where the most ridiculously difficult test questions will be revealed. If you don't tip enough, your child won't be invited to the next session. The CCP has tried to crack down, explicitly calling these courses illegal and making rules against extra-curricular interaction between students and teachers but due to the culture, parents seek out the instructors themselves, begging for just some extra sit-down time with their kids and tipping graciously each time. This competition among parents to please educators has gotten so out of control (and escalated disproportionately faster than what even China's economic growth will allow) that now large portions of parents disposable income and time goes into buying presents for multiple teacher/principles and sending their kids to illegal prep classes to make sure their kids get into a good school early on and get treated like star pupils. Obviously, you can't treat everyone the best as it's all comparative so the price and the competitions between parents has no limits. Seeing this ordeal, parents decide they just can't handle having 2 kids. This is the key to China's low birth rate.

When I first came to the US, my parents donated generously to the public school I attended every time there was a fundraiser telling me they were afraid I'd get singled out and bullied by the teachers if they didn't. Only when they realized that this is not the culture at all here and that classroom teachers aren't even aware of parent's contributions did they stop.


regardless of what needs to be done, this is a problem that all developed countries suffer from. There are solutions to this problem, its just that some of the solutions would not work in a so-called "democracies". Could the CCP mandate that married couples who do not have children will not receive social benefits when they retire? They could definitely do that. With every problem there is a carrot or a stick solution. Sometimes the carrot solution is not effective, ie. pay subsidies to people to have more children, but sometimes the stick option works much better.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
regardless of what needs to be done, this is a problem that all developed countries suffer from. There are solutions to this problem, its just that some of the solutions would not work in a so-called "democracies". Could the CCP mandate that married couples who do not have children will not receive social benefits when they retire? They could definitely do that. With every problem there is a carrot or a stick solution. Sometimes the carrot solution is not effective, ie. pay subsidies to people to have more children, but sometimes the stick option works much better.
I agree there could and should definitely be a stick component but Chinese people regard having many kids as a wonderful thing and a sign of prosperity so the direction should be to remove the obstacles that stand in their way from doing so. This school culture is one big ugly roadblock that I think should be overhauled by standardized testing (so teachers don't know and cannot give away test questions at prep classes) and extremely high penalties for teachers caught breaking the rules (like a 20 year prison sentence for "knowingly undermining national interest" type of charge that even lawyers are scared to tackle). They should overdo it so heavily at first that teachers become scared to talk to kids outside of school even if they casually meet at the supermarket. They should cover their faces in fear of being recorded, quickly utter, "I don't know, please direct all questions during class hours," and run away for fear of the consequences of anyone reporting their extra-curricular interaction. Anybody who dares continue to run these kinds of illegal programs (which will be no better than regular tutoring classes once they no longer have test questions to reveal) will eventually be outed by somebody who can't keep up the payments and end up in jail. There should be rotating ombudsmen in each school to handle conflicts, and they should rotate very often and by randomly determined mechanism such as lottery draw every few days so no parent knows whom to give red envelopes to to give their kids an advantage. Seating should be done by public lottery draw. I know this sounds crazy and extreme but this problem is so critical to China's future.

But this is under the assumption that China wants the population to expand. If China wants to manage a slow decrease in population down to a certain level in order to attain a leaner population with higher average education and quality of life, then the 2 child policy and some obstacles like this would make more sense.
 
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4Runner

Junior Member
Registered Member
Why doesn't China test 3 and 4 with magnanimity and see what happens? Give some territory away and see their actual reactions. Are they going to attack China with nukes? If they demand more no longer compromise on anything...

The answer is very simple and straightforward. Neither India nor Vietnam is in the top five priorities of China.

China remembers what our ancestors taught us: "The best way to win is to achieve the goal without waging a war". One of the main reasons that China is the only surviving ancient civilization is that China exercise utmost strategic patience to achieve the long goal without letting ego get in the way. Nonetheless, when push comes to shove, India is not in the same league of China, not even close. In all strategic scenarios we are talking about here vis a vis India, India just plays like an internet troll.

So let us get on our lives and get real.
 
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