From the moment that the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949 to today, the track of the country has followed closely with that of the Soviet Union. From the famines during War Communism and in the Ukraine in the Soviet Union to the famines in China during the Great Leap Forward. From the purges and show trials in the Soviet Union prior to World War II to the catastrophe that was the China’s Cultural Revolution. From the reforms of Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy to the opening up and reforms of Deng Xiaoping. From the near constant restrictions on freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, of due process, in both countries. The similarities between the historical patterns in the two largest Marxist countries in history are many.
These similarities are not lost on the present rulers of China, particularly Xi Jinping, or on outsiders looking in. The former Soviet Union went bankrupt and collapsed for many reasons, the two most important being it’s economy was seemingly based on a fatally flawed Marxist ideology that the people under its yoke had no faith in, and the Soviet Union vastly overreached by trying to outspend their competitors to assert their military dominance. For this reason, the CCP has taken a different route and instead of asserting their dominance militarily has sought to assert themselves economically. The CCP has used their greatest asset, their billion plus workers, to try to out cheap labor the world. The issue is whether or not this is sustainable long term. Xi and those who look at such matters seriously know that it is not and that ultimately, just like the Soviet Union’s vast overreach caused its collapse, the CCP’s overreach will cause China’s collapse.
What will happen, though, with the collapse of the CCP’s dictatorship in China? Looking back at the fall of the Soviet Union is informative. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not mean that the Russian hinterlands did not still contain incredible natural resources. The collapse of the Marxist regime just meant that the control of those resources changed hands. And who did control of those resources ultimately devolve to? The very, very few who where in a position to know where the true wealth of the nation laid and how to gain control over it. The fall of the USSR was the birth of the Russian oligarchs, where party functionaries and apparatchiks in the course of not so many years went from party insiders to being fabulously wealthy. The CCP cannot raise its people domestically when its position in the world is predicated on the Chinese worker being relatively poor.
Xi knows, and many of those doing business with Communist China know, that their Marxist system is unsustainable and bound, whether sooner or later to collapse. The goal now for those in the know is not to maintain China’s Marxist system but to put themselves in a position to pick up the pieces when the inevitable collapse of the CCP’s dictatorship happens. The collapse of the CCP, though, will not be the collapse of the productive capacity of over a billion Chinese workers. But it will entail a crisis that will shake the world, cause untold hardship for millions, if not billions world wide, and present the opportunity of a lifetime for those who wake up in the morning and go to bed at night fixated on gaining more power over others, and more wealth. Outsiders knowing those in the know inside China when the collapse happens is the only way to position themselves for untold riches upon the collapse.
Xi knows his friends are not his friends, his trusted advisors are not to be trusted. The sycophants do not admire Xi’s work at balancing competing forces, they are positioning themselves to grab a few pieces for themselves when his balance fails, as it inevitably will, and it all comes crashing down.
A few related articles on the power grab after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Putin’s wealth and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian oligarchs coming into existence with fall of Soviet Union.
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-russian-oligarch-2013-3