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mschuster91 a day ago

China wants but China won't. They lack the military capability of force projection that is the basis of the US dollar dominance, their currency cannot be used as a reserve/trading currency due to capital transfer controls (that have no sign of ever going away because otherwise everyone who has money in China will move it immediately out of the reach of the CCP), foreign investors have gotten very skeptical over the years regarding IP theft on one side and supply chain law issues (e.g. underage labor, 996 and modern slavery, environmental concerns) on the other, and on top of that China is getting rocked hard by the inevitable consequences of the one-child policy that is driving up labor costs, further reducing the attractivity for foreign investors.

bborud a day ago | parent [-]

China doesn’t need to project force. Economics might is sufficient.

Yes, they want Taiwan, but that’s a silly national pride thing. It would not really benefit them to take it by force.

ulfw 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And the US wants Greenland, Canada, random other countries here or there...

mschuster91 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Yes, they want Taiwan, but that’s a silly national pride thing. It would not really benefit them to take it by force.

We thought the same about Putin, and yet he went and invaded Ukraine.

We thought the same about Trump, and yet he went and abducted the president of a sovereign country.

Never underestimate nationalist BS or outright mental deficiency.

bborud 18 hours ago | parent [-]

The difference is desperation. Putin was facing instability and was afraid of ending up like Khadafi. He needed a war.

Xi is not facing those challenges. He wants Taiwan, but the Chinese play long games so he can wait.

i2km 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> but the Chinese play long games

And yet they got themselves into a demographic death spiral

mschuster91 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Xi is not facing those challenges.

He is facing other challenges, a lot of chickens are coming home to roost - chiefly the demographic collapse, the inevitable result of the one-child policy, but also the rise of wages leading other countries to be the outsourcing target, decades of selling out nature / the environment, a crashing real estate sector, brain drain...

bborud 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You have to look at the likelihood of these problems leading to a violent regime change. The reasons why Xi is much more safe than Putin are structural.

Xi controls the politburo standing committee which is packed with loyalists. Loyalty is centralized and based in ideology. The state, functions as the embodiment of Xi’s ideology. There exists no independent power base. Military or otherwise. And this is the most important reason Xi is pretty safe. China’s elite is deeply invested in the system (wealth, family, careers). They lose everything if the party fractures. So the choice for those who don’t like Xi is between Xi and chaos.

In Russia power is split. Between oligarchs, security services, military and regional elites. All of which represent a threat to Putin’s power. Just look at Prigozhin’s mutiny: armed forces hesitated, elites stood back to see who would win, system didn’t close ranks. Institutions are hollowed out with no clear loyalty. And loyalty itself is highly transactional. Never ideological. There is zero cohesion in the elite. Zero.

It is also important to look at the histories of China and Russia respectively. In Russia power has _always_ been fragmented. Even under Stalin, considerable power was in the hands of criminal organizations and the communist regime had to co-exist with the criminal classes. In fact, during Stalin, they actually got a worse as the harsh political climate forced them to become more resilient.