Beneath the facade of China's shiny new PLA, Xi Jinping has a problem with his subjects that may cripple his China Dream of a globally dominant China under the Chinese Communist Party's rule.
Limits on Xi Jinping's China Dream:
China looks forward to becoming the largest economy in the world by the end of the decade, and a military superpower a decade after that. Longer term the outlook is less promising. Time is not on China’s side. There are numerous examples of this. There are numerous examples of this. One of the more obvious is the shrinking Chinese work force and population in general. The overall population growth rate peaked in 2016 at 0.59 percent and has been declining ever since. There is a worse problem with the shrinking labor force because of the declining working age population. All this began in 2014 and will continue for decades.
For a long time I was probably on the more extreme end of the China Bear side even as there were so many China Bulls talking about China's future dominance. I was way too optimistic about China.
Xi is presiding over interesting times in China.
UPDATE: We are seeing on our border "the largest wave of illegal border crossings by Chinese immigrants in history[.]" While I'm sure some CCP assets are among them, this shows the China Dream is collapsing, being replaced by the American Dream for a lot of Xi's subjects.
Whether this wave is good for America is a separate issue, of course.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.NOTE: I'm now on Substack, with The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Indeed, I began regular posting on TDR:E today.