COLD WAR II: China Is Weaker Than Xi Will Admit.

China’s first weakness is strongman Xi himself. Instead of selling off inefficient state-owned industries and banks, which still make up a significant portion of the Chinese economy, he is trying to recentralize power. He has done away with the improvement of Hu Jintao, his predecessor as Party leader, which set the expectation that CPP leaders would step down after two five-year terms. This was Hu’s attempt to begin to modernize Communist Party governance by trying to regularize changes of leadership. Instead, Xi is trying to return China to the bad old days of succession struggles after a political strongman (now Xi) dies or is incapacitated. In addition, the private economy continuing to carry the burden of sclerotic state-owned “key” industries and banks will slow Chinese economic growth.

Also likely to slow economic growth is China’s demographic crisis. As countries develop and industrialize, they have fewer children because less labor is needed in the agricultural sector and greater numbers of children raise costs to individual families. Thus, many developed countries around the world have declining birthrates. However, China’s problem is much worse because of the Communist Party’s disastrous “one-child policy,” which was revoked only after it had exacerbated the demographic crisis.

Furthermore, China has restive ethnic inhabitants of Xinjiang and Tibet and a politically unruly pro-democracy population in Hong Kong, which China is suppressing in violation of its promise to allow a “One China, Two Systems” approach. Such fractious populations weaken China internally.

Communist China is far more brittle than any U.S. leader other than Donald Trump is willing to admit — or exploit. Our current leadership seems happy to let Beijing hit our weak spots without fear of retaliation.