China Turmoil - Writing on the Wall for the CCP?

 

The turmoil in China has made headlines in all papers the world over. China today is the most controlled society in the world today. There is at least one camera for every seven citizens in public places which AI enabled. The CCP controls everything. There is no leeway for individual enterprise, not even in business as is sometimes wrongly assumed. This current unrest is for human dignity.  

The corona virus originated in Wuhan and till to date China has not shared any information as to its origins. After the pandemic set in, the world then produced vaccines and two years later most of the countries have removed strict covid restrictions, save for cautioning their people. However, Chinese vaccines proved to be ineffective against some of the strains of the corona virus. Thus, China even two years later has had to impose strict lockdowns on its people when most of the world is learning to live with it. Experts say the Chinese government fears the virus may cause a lot of fatalities as the vaccines have not worked.

The CCP is between a rock and a hard place on this. The Chinese vaccines have been quite ineffective. Only strict lockdowns have prevented the virus from spreading. If the authorities relent and lift the restrictions, the current protests become potential super spreader events. If the virus spreads, the Chinese authorities could have several waves of infections on their hands.  

The people however are now beginning to get restless as the lockdowns have affected their livelihoods. The Chinese economy has slowed down considerably since the lockdowns began about three years ago. People have lost jobs and businesses have suffered huge losses.

Experts on China say that the slowdown in the economy is one of the reasons why the people are kept in a lock down. Jobs have evaporated as Chinese economy slowed after three decades of steady growth. If the people come out of the lockdowns and go back to work, many are going to find they have no jobs. This is what the CCP fears the most. Political unrest. They tried to prevent it, but now it is staring them in the face.

People have been demanding a relaxation of the covid curbs, but there also have been demands for freedom and the resignation of the leader Xi Jinping.

Some Chinese people watched the football world cup in Qatar and observed that there were no masks in the stadiums. This prompted many to openly criticize the CCP on its zero-covid policy. People are out on the streets in at least nine cities. Many universities have also reported stirs by students, which shows the protests are more widespread.

A fire in a building in Urumqi in Xinjiang was the trigger for these protests. There, the rescue efforts were hampered by the restrictions imposed under the zero-covid policy, as a result of which ten people died. The people are blaming Xi and the CCP for these deaths, their failure to control covid, and demanding they step down. The simmering anger and frustration of the people has finally boiled over.

As is to be expected from any dictatorship, the military has been deployed in many cities to control the mobs. Whether this proves effective this time around is doubtful. It is rumored that this is a bigger political game. Xi has just won this record third term and may become the Chinese President for life. He has had to purge many senior leaders of the CCP to get to this peak of power. It is said the leaders who were sidelined by Xi have now caused this unprecedented revolt amongst the people. There is as yet no reliable news out of China on this. Some of the top leaders of the PLA could also revolt and switch sides.

Experts are saying that the inner turmoil in China might lead Xi Jinping to create an external issue related to Chinese security as a divergence. It could be with India, Taiwan or even in the South China Sea. 

Will Xi be able to quell the protests by using force? It looks rather difficult. This turmoil has the potential to overturn the rule of the CCP. It is a classic case of concentration of political power. Too much concentration usually brings a fallout, as history teaches us. The more powerful you become, the nearer to the gate you are. The CCP’s control over the social media is also being circumvented by the people by using ingenious ideas. People are using VPNs, dating apps and coded language to get past the CCP’s surveillance. The pot has started to boil.  

It now looks like a straight fight between the people’s will and the absolute power of a dictator. To quote Peter Zeihan ‘a one man state is getting overwhelmed by non-compliance’. This is a policy paralysis typical to dictatorships. If one looks at political history of the world, the answer as to the result need not be a guess.