Communist China’s Coming Collapse

Yesterday’s drop in the New York Stock Exchange index should be watched closely. Is this the beginning of a “run” on the stock market or a minor correction.

Much depends on U.S. trade policy toward the People’s Republic of China.

For now, it seems that we’re watching a “tit for tat” exchange between President Trump and Xi Jinping with President Trump betting that the PRC will “cave.”

There’s something to be said for that, if you view riots in Hong Kong as representative of discontent on the Mainland. The Chinese people have been suppressed since 1949 by a 19th century ideology turned totalitarian in the 20th century. The leaders of the United States continued mistaken policies of accommodation starting with Richard Nixon followed by Jimmy Carter through George H. W. Bush and led to a misjudgment of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Deng Xiaoping’s brutal suppression of freedom demonstrators should have led to reversal of the opening of trade with the PRC and confinement of the Communist Party of the PRC to “stew” in its own totalitarian juices.

Sixty years ago, few expected the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a short thirty years, and today we should not forget how quickly “Thousand Year” regimes can implode.

Xi Jinping understands that, and President Trump’s gamble that Xi will “blink” may pay off. In the long term, however, would it not be better to reverse our trade policy with the PRC, absorb what is an inevitable collapse of the stock market and watch as totalitarianism collapses in a last outpost of Marxist dreams?

We will pay a terrible price, if the people in China do not throw off this terrible yoke, and we should prepare now for the inevitable.