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Comment by taiwanboy | Hacker News Reader

I think if you are a businessman/woman that have significant assets in China, you must be aware that the current Chinese government is fighting 4 wars right now:

1.) political conflict between xi jing Ping the new guards, and the old guards that control the state owned firms

2.) internal conflicts in xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong

3.) near neighbor conflicts with Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Australia

4.) trade war with US and its allies (Japan, EU, Canada, Mexico, etc)

And the Chinese government doesn’t have the financial or the political assets to fight any of these wars, let alone all 4 at once. IMO it is losing all of them right now.

So if you were a businessman, it is probably safe to move out of such a risky place for your assets

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It’s certainly more comforting to imagine that Xi is losing all four wars. But I do not see effective opposition anywhere. The party has lost, hence the removal of term limits. There is no effective protest in Xinjiang or Tibet. HK will soon follow once pan-democrats can be extradited and executed. China has the advantage in the South China Sea in that it has the equivalent of several aircraft carriers in the islands it controls under the status quo. It is only the trade war that might go awry for Xi, and rare earths are a relatively credible threat.

I would however withdraw money, because loss on those fronts isn’t necessary to cause unhelpful instability.

So for the political conflict, it’s loss for xi for the moment because the trade deal was rejected by the old guards. For the internal conflicts, Hong Kong is a wildcard and I wouldn’t count out how powerful a shutdown of the Hong Kong economy is. For the neighbor conflicts, Philippines and Australia used to be somewhat on the Chinese side but that has completely flipped the last year or two. Philippines just slammed China today for sinking Philippines fishing boat and called them ‘cowardly’. And the pro China members were voted out in Australia governments. As for Taiwan, it has got bolstered support from US, new arms deal, and its top presidential candidates have distanced themselves from China

In a Vox doc I just saw about HK they mention it is only 3% of China's economy.

That's massive

Government said it would fight at 'all cost'. And we the people are the cost.

BTW, I put my bet on that PBSC member Han Zheng, who is in charge of Hong Kong affairs, would be scolded for mismanagement of on-going situation some day near future.

Han is a bloke in my opinion.

One of the quietest senior government figures, who was very likely given a high post just for that.

In line of premiership, the only person with political credentials is the last in line, fourth vice premier — Liu, and all others are pretty much "seat fillers"

Take a note, Liu is the only somewhat senior bureaucrat other than Wang with a personal connection to Xi, but even he was given no access to real executive power.

Is that unusual for a superpower?

For example, the US government is fighting wars in the Middle East, the aforementioned trade war, internal conflicts between the increasingly radicalized left&right, and to say there's political conflict is a bit of an understatement.

> Is that unusual for a superpower?

China is a regional power, not a superpower. (Its long-range force projection capabilities are limited.)

China’s battles are all closer to home and more existential than America’s. (At least right now.) There is also the policy entrenchment that comes with Xi being a dictator.

There's roughly three levels of "superpower" as I see it

1) You can do what you want in your region and mostly tell the rest of the world to shove it (e.g. Monroe doctrine, annexation of Crimea, etc.)

2) You can do what you want worldwide but can't do it without consent of the local superpowers (e.g. The British getting tacit US permission to whack Argentina in the 80s)

3) You can do whatever the heck you want, where you want and it's up to everyone else to deal. (e.g. the USSR starting the Cuban missile crisis, the US invading Iraq).

China is a 1 right now but all the pieces are there for them to jump to a 2 or 3 quickly. They aren't lacking manpower, money, internal political cohesion or tech. They just need to practice and get good and they could be a 2 or 3. Obviously this has a lot of people in the west worried because we haven't had to deal an authoritarian regime that was a superpower on the world stage since the USSR fell apart.

What's your definition of superpower that it doesn't apply to all three out of USA, Russia and China? China is very much a superpower, just look at the "Made in ..." labels on the things you are using.

5.) Currency war featuring declining FX reserves and RMB devaluation.

6.) Economic war evidenced by domestic economic slowdown across most sectors, most recently autos.

7.) Influence war whereby increasing numbers of Asian and African countries are questioning China investment and loan agreements.

That said, displacing China's preeminent role as the world's manufacturer and low cost supplier (still) for many products doesn't disappear overnight. They have plenty of standing and resources to wait out the remainder of Trump's administration and - they hope - to encounter China friendly leadership post-Trump.

Good pickups on the other wars. I would actually say China is the midst of its own Great Depression right now.

I think their strategies to wait out trump is misguided. By the time he leaves office, most of the manufacturing will have already moved out. For example, a recent poll for Japanese business have said 60% of them have already left or are leaving within the year.

What's the evidence for #7? I know there's been some grumbling in the US about belt-and-road initiatives, but always figured it could be a sour grapes type situation being pushed domestically.

#3 you forgot India, Bhutan and Japan

Can you share anything on (1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...

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