章家敦访谈/中国面临崩溃
Gordon Chang "China on the Edge"
http://freebeacon.com/chinese-naval-vessel-tries-to-force-u-s-warship-to-stop-in-international-waters/
China's warship challenges US Navy.
From Kai Chen:
I attended Gordon Chang's speech on China last night. I concur with his point that China is indeed on edge of lashing out/collapse. Something big is happening both in the Chinese regime's power circle and in the Chinese military. The recent aggressive behavior on the part of Chinese military signals a desperate and very shaky political situation in China.
China has never been a nation state. China has always been a despotic dynasty. Today's China is a "communist party dynasty". It does not respect borders. Its territories expands and contracts according to the power strength from the central government. It views surrounding countries not as neighbors, but as subjects of the emperors. Its military owns loyalty not to the state, but to particular persons in the power structure. With the communist party dynasty's last gasps to survive, most likely it will lash out at the neighboring countries and the US, as the signs manifested recently.
China's economy is faltering with only 1-2 % real growth rate (the regime brags about 7-8%). The banks are in the mode of defaulting. The regional governments in the provinces are splitting. The Xi's position in the recent trasition is very shaky to say the least. The military's hard-liners such as General Liu Yazhou is ascending via threatening rhetoric toward the US and Japan and the neighboring countries. With Obama's appeasement policies in the world toward tyrannies, we are approching the situation before WWII. Brace yourself for a perfect storm.
Reference:
Gordon Guthrie Chang (Chinese: 章家敦; pinyin: Zhāng Jiādūn) is a lawyer, author, and television pundit, best known for his book The Coming Collapse of China (2001), in which he argued that the hidden non-performing loans of the "Big Four" Chinese State banks would likely bring down China's financial system and its communist government and China would collapse in 2006. In Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World (2006), Chang suggests that North Korea is most likely to target Japan, not South Korea. Chang suggests that North Korean nuclear ambitions could be forestalled if there was concerted multi-national diplomacy, with some "limits to patience" backed up by threat of an all-out Korean war.
Gordon Chang continues to maintain that China is on the brink of collapse and that the people are one step away from revolution.[2] He also argues that China is a "new dot-com bubble", adding that the rapid growth by China is not supported by various internal factors such as decrease in population growth as well as slowing retail sales.[3] In a separate interview, he remarked that China achieved its 149.2% of its current trade surplus with the United States through "lying, cheating and stealing" and that if China decided to realize its threat that had been expressed since August 2007 to sell its US Treasurys, it would actually hurt its own economy which is reliant on exports to the United States; the economy of the United States would be hurt by a sell off of Treasurys, causing the United States to buy less from China, which would in turn hurt the Chinese economy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://pjmedia.com/blog/assassination-rumors-in-china/
Assassination Rumors in China
A return to “the ruthless era of ancient Chinese palace politics”?
by GORDON G. CHANG
December 10, 2013 - 11:03 pm
For about a week, assassination rumors have been swirling around the Chinese capital. According to reports carried in Hong Kong outlets such as Mingjing News, Zhou Yongkang has been detained for involvement in a plot to kill Xi Jinping, the newish ruler of China. Since then, various sites, especially the U.S.-based Boxun News, have carried articles relaying murderous activities attributed to Zhou, who was the country’s internal security czar until November 2012.
Zhou, 71, has also been accused of using two members of the People’s Armed Police — once under his command — to kill his ex-wife. His two drivers reportedly confessed to their role in the murder and were given terms of 15 to 20 years in prison. According to news articles, they were released after serving just three and four years and given jobs in the state-run petroleum industry, which at the time was controlled by Zhou and his political allies.
These various reports, widely circulated, remain unconfirmed, although it is clear the once mighty Zhou is in political trouble of some sort. In November, state media reported that he offered condolences to the family of an educator, an indication that he was still in good standing in the Party. Nonetheless, it is curious that Zhou has dropped out of view. He was last seen in public on October 1, at the National Day celebrations of the China University of Petroleum.
Moreover, his son, Zhou Bin, is reported to be under a form of house arrest in Beijing and cooperating with authorities. A number of Zhou Yongkang’s associates in the petroleum industry — most notably Jiang Jiemin — have been detained. Also under investigation, according to one source, are Zhou’s secretary, bodyguards, and drivers.
The rumors of last week, although highly sensational, provide a context for events in the past few months that at the time had seemed out-of-place. In August, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that Zhou was under investigation for corruption.
Then, the move against Zhou seemed to be an unprecedented violation of the Communist Party’s unwritten rule that no member of the Politburo Standing Committee can be held accountable (Zhou left the Standing Committee, the apex of Chinese political power, in November 2012). The prosecution, however, becomes more understandable if he in fact plotted to kill Xi Jinping.
It should also be noted that the rumors about Zhou’s coup attempt give credence to the stories that in March of 2012 there was gunfire inside Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party leadership compound in Beijing, and in the surrounding streets, where there were also armored car movements. And the unconfirmed stories add to the speculation that Bo Xilai, once China’s more openly ambitious politician, was trying to either raise a private army or encourage elements of the People’s Liberation Army to support him in subversive endeavors of some sort. Bo and Zhou are believed to have been, if not co-conspirators, then extremely close allies.
