The Rise of the Dragon

The Chinese government is old.  I am not talking about their ideologies only, they are literally old in age.

First I need to digress.  People love to say that China has over 5,ooo years of history compared to only a couple hundred years for the US.  But remember that China as we know it and their current form of communist government has only been in power for a little over 50 years.  On top of that I would argue that their “real” current form of government/economic system has only been around since 1976, so 30+ years.

Back to old China:  A lot of China is not old.  To this part of China capitalist communism is all they have known.  The emphasis being on “capitalist.”  A certain part of this group really has the Chinese government scared, their own kids.  Young aristocratic Chinese are wealthy, educated (often times in the West) and are more inclined to democracy than their parents would like.

Now before I state my case (trust me, I have one) I need to digress a little more.

A big problem with Chinese capitalist communism (those words together sound strange) is that it only works when the economy is good, like throughout the past three decades.  What happens to capitalist communism when the economy struggles?  No one knows because it hasn’t happened before.  However, we know from historical experience that the more people have, the more they want, and the Chinese people have more in the ways of affluence and freedoms than they have ever had.  (Well at least in the past 70 years or more.)  People will surrender freedom (i.e democratic choice) for security.  Security they currently feel that they have, but could lose in the event of an economic collapse.  (Or even prolonged down-turn.)

So now to tie the title of this post in with everything I have written so far.

China is gorging the economy with whatever it takes as far as financial stimulus because they know what they have to lose.  My argument is that they literally have “power over their country” to lose.  Political unrest is at astronomical highs in China right now.  What will happen when unemployment jumps, wages drop and government benefits decrease?  Those same people who were willing to surrender their freedoms for the “better life” the communist government was giving them will want change, and they will get it.

I am not trying to prophesy what is or will happen to the government in China, only saying what I think could happen.  I guess we will have to wait and see.