This assessment of China's fissures is interesting coming from a big-time private intelligence outfit like Stratfor:
The concept of developing the interior is rooted in the dynastic struggle to establish and maintain China as a unified power against internal forces of regional competition and disintegration. Those forces arise from and reflect a simple fact: China is in many ways as geographically, culturally, ethnically and economically diverse as Europe. That regional diversity, which breeds inequality and in turn competition, makes unified China an inherently fragile entity. It must constantly balance between the interests of the center and those of regions with distinct and often contradictory economic and political interests.
Good grief, this is something I've mentioned (without claiming to be original in the concept, mind you):
I don't know whether China will emerge in a generation or two as an enemy, a peer competitor to us, or a friend--or even a country at all.
I think Mark Steyn has commented on this, so it is hardly original with me, but I do wonder if China will break apart (not necessarily violently) and become a geographic rather than a political description.
So which entity gets to be the Middle Kingdom?
