China Danger?

China is upset about the US Speaker of the House’s visit. Sabers are being rattled. Are we in danger of seeing another war break out?

Normally I’d say it was all posture, but these are not normal times. In my opinion the issues are less about Taiwan than they are about what’s happening internally in China. 

Chinese people have heavily invested in real estate to the point where there are whole “ghost cities” where nobody lives. It’s the most amazing real estate bubble in history. Now that bubble is bursting. The ruling party is doing all they can to suppress the news of investor protests. This bubble alone is enough to take down the government. 

That’s only part of the economic troubles. Manufacturing is fleeing the country. A lot of it is going back to North America. Low cost manufacturing is going to places like Vietnam. China is just not a good place to do business anymore. They’ve become a lot more hostile towards foreigners. 

Demographically the country is in trouble. They have a rapidly aging population and due to their one child policy a much smaller working class coming up to support them. The demographics are even worse when you consider the Chinese preference to having boys rather than girls. 

China can’t feed itself without imports. They import both food and fertilizers. If that stops a lot of people will starve to death. They also import a lot of their energy: coal, oil, and natural gas. 

To make the situation worse the Chinese leadership is basically just Xi. He has no checks and balances. He could make the calculation that losing hundreds of thousands of people to invade Taiwan is worth it if they are going to starve anyway. 

It would not turn out very well for China. Not only does the US have Taiwan’s back, Japan would be in the fight. It seems that China has gone out of its way to antagonize Japan. Who knows why? That’s a mistake as Japan’s military is highly underrated. They keep a low profile, but are actually modern, sizable, and capable. 

So how does this affect your average prepper? First of all, don’t panic. These are the sort of things we prep for. There would be a lot of economic disruptions. If we are lucky it would remain a regional conflict, but these things could always spin out of control. Unless you are high up in a major country’s power circles there’s not really much you can to about it. When the avalanche comes the best you can hope for is to be out of it’s way. You aren’t going to stop it.

-Sixbears