02-04 Threats

Every nation faces threats, and in the case of China it is hard to appreciate which are more threatening, the internal threats or the external threats.
During my visit to China in 1985, some internal threats were obvious. The most serious was the environment with coal being burned not just by utilities but by average households. So many people wearing masks.
And we just never drank the water. Just Coke and beer. In most of the quality western hotels bottled water could be purchased in our hotel rooms and most of the people on our tour carried the hotel water with them throughout the day.
The real issue is that quality water and clean air are still serious threats to the population and the ruling Communist Party.
The other threat we noticed back in 1985 was the impact of the one-child policy which was creating a shortage of young girls going through the school system. It was obvious that families that were allowed only one child were aborting their girls.
Now it is illegal for doctors to identify the sex of an unborn child. But today, the tragedy is that young Chinese men cannot find wives.
Well, one solution to this threat is to move to other parts of the world where women are available. Hard to believe that there are about one million Chinese living in Africa. It is the new Chinese empire.
Externally, the current threat is the trade war between China and the US. No one wins here. But it is bound to force China to focus more of its economic activity on improving the lives of its people in terms of things like health care, education, and social welfare.
Although it is the goal of the Chinese leadership to create a nation that is the most powerful in the world, I do not sense any real anti-Americanism in China. The Chinese love American things like Starbucks, American movies and American universities.
And, there are no wealthy Chinese families sending their children to universities in Russia.
And the Chinese have one weapon in their trade war arsenal. They hold close to $1.2 trillion in US treasuries. Selling off this debt would hurt the US economy and hurt China as well. But Communist societies do not have to account to the voters for their actions.
So, anticipate the gradual sell-off of its US holdings. If they can find other places to invest, that is.
Such a huge complex society with the bulk of its population living in the Eastern provinces, and with monster differences in income between rural and urban communities. Not sure this nation would even work as a democracy.