In the forthcoming week there will be lot of focus on the 20th Party congress. It is an important event from many perspectives and also a non event since the outcomes will not hold many surprises. However, there is also a social factor in the evolving dynamics of China. That barely gets noticed. The future of any nation are its youth. The youth in China are quite disillusioned. The indications are on the wall. This is counter to the grandstanding which will be on display during the High Profile 20 Party Congress. In this discussion, Aadi and I delve into this aspect. The discussion is different but will be significant in times to come.
Sir, very interesting discussion as usual. Thinking about the compulsions of demography, it seems to me that the Chinese expansion into Tibet was perhaps inevitably driven by their exploding population and the intersection of the need to keep this population occupied and the availability of ultra-cheap human resource to fuel an expanded lebensraum. Now that this trend has reversed and decelerating ever quicker, would it change the Chinese outlook to shrinking the lebensraum to the core Han areas? Perhaps by the end of the decade they would be amenable to any agreement that would give them a face saving exit out of the economic and human burden of sustaining such a physically inhospitable region.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Building on this:
Deletea. we know that an aging population is less expansive, less aggressive. So China's current aggressive avatar will tone down with time. The questions are how do we hang on till then and leverage this appropriately.
b. It seems they are trying to encourage immigration (looks like the target is Africa, India). But China is not very rich, is a very insular economy and immigrants are usually not welcome (they will especially not be welcome when China goes through it's inevitable downturn) as they are NOT Han Chinese. So either they will NOT get enough immigrants (most likely situation - like Japan) or they'll get the worst of the lot (Pakistan etc.,). If that happens, they will be ingesting (radicalism) poison, making things worse and making immigrants even more unwelcome...
All in all, China will most probably go through a very bad century - unless something really unexpected happens.
Your thoughts on this, Sir.
It is high time that China worries about the way their youth are growing in a Negative environment. They should stop the expansionist policy,and concentrate their energy inward to do better man-management.Even young do not want to be in Armed Forces, and are forced into it, hence lacks motivation . Adv( Col) AshokLeekha
Delete"The Lebensraum" of Retzel was not
Deleteonly about the living space for the population of a nation It was mainly
about natural resources and strategic
advantages that space provided.
Germany had enough space to live
for its own population but Hitler took
the risk of opening a second front
against Russia despite Bismark s
advice a generation earlier.It was
mainly for the resource rich Caspian
region.
China is not going to give up Tibet
or any of the outer regions that it
has conquered even if it's population
is reduced
to half the present population level
Let's take a longer perspective on this (thinking about Shelley's poem: Ozymandias). So many Empires have come and gone. They work they did, the statues they put up are all dust. In Europe: The Roman, the British, the French, the Turks, the Greeks etc., etc., Even India: So many empires who once spread from Persia to Japan: The Cholas, Guptas, etc., etc., are gone...
DeleteI would expect the same thing about China, US, EU etc., The only question is when. In such a case, I can't see China hold on to Tibet... Then the question is: How do we make them losen their control quicker...
Further building on my comment above. The "History and the decline of the Roman Empire" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire is instructive (I reall wish we had a similar level of detail captured for the Cholas, Mauryas, Guptas etc.,).
DeleteCrudely paraphrasing: once the Roman Empire went into "decline", the Barbarians first nibbled at the edges and then advanced into the heart...
Soooo... Why wouldn't (gasp) the "Indian Barbarian" nibble at the edges of the Tibetian plateau and then advance into the heart over the decades as Pooh's empire gently declines and falls? How do we do this?