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The Chairman of the Communist Party of China looked out at the square. He could remember as a young boy the day the Party had used the People's Liberation Army to crush an uprising that threatened the Party, and by extension, so he thought, the people and the nation.
Now the PLA was on the streets again, but this time, they were coming for the Party and its leaders.
He had tried to place a call to the headquarters of the strategic missile forces, there had been no answer. The Peoples' Liberation Army Navy was responsible for this mess, they had hazarded the pride of the nation at sea, in a massive storm, and had lost.
Fujian and all but one of her escorts was lost. The people knew, somehow word had gotten out, and the people were furious. This time the PLA would not be suppressing an uprising in the streets, this time they would be leading it.
He jumped at the sound, then he realized, it was his phone.
"Yes?"
"We have a car for you outside, Comrade. Come quickly, the mob is moving this way."
"Mr. President?" Aspinall stuck his head in, Nakagawa was watching the news feed at his desk.
"What the hell is going on out there, Bill?"
"Our Ambassador sent a message before all communications were lost, cut off apparently. There is rioting in the streets of Beijing and other major cities throughout China."
"But why, why now?"
"You better read this, Sir." Aspinall handed the President a message.
Nakagawa scanned it, "Right. The Chinese government blames us for the loss of Fujian and her escorts. Then, in nearly the same breath, they blame counter-revolutionary elements within their own government. Who's in charge over there? Do we have any idea?"
"No Sir, best guess is that anybody with weapons and troops is trying to cut out a piece of the action for themselves."
"Warlords, in other words."
"Yes Sir, and some of those warlords have nukes."
The Chinese have been ....ah.... Chinese for a long time, add Communism into the mix and well..........Thanks for the rescue of yesterday's comment Sarge.
ReplyDeleteThey are Chinese first, the politics du jour second.
DeleteSilly me. I hadn't expected the loss of almost the entire group. I was thinking that the commander of that carrier had fornicated in a positive Z, or just drawn the short straw.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nylon - the Chinese are Chinese first and have always been somewhat factionable.
Paint a gold E on the side of your word processor.
Will do.
DeleteThis is what you get when you have navigation orders from the Political Officer the defy Mother Nature.
DeleteExactly.
DeleteOh boy...
ReplyDeletedid you know that China keeps worlds record record of bloodiest civil wars?
Yellow Turban Rebellion, 3,000,000–7,000,000 AD 184–205
An Lushan rebellion 13,000,000–36,000,000 AD 755–763
Qing China vs. Ming China vs. peasant rebels like the Shun dynasty (led by Li Zicheng) and Xi dynasty (led by Zhang Xianzhong) vs. Kingdom of Shu (She-An Rebellion) vs. Evenk-Daur federation 25,000,000+ 1616–1683
Taiping Rebellion, 20,000,000–30,000,000. 1850–1864
Communists vs Nationalists , 8,000,000–11,692,000 1927-1949
I kinda knew that. They're very good at killing each other.
DeleteThe Great Dragons live in the Sea (in some of the Chinese stories) and when they fight, the Sea is not a place to be. Somehow, I think this explanation will not satisfy anyone.
ReplyDeleteYesterday's reality events ... bad movie plots,
When the sea is angry, best stay ashore.
Delete(Don McCollor) Indeed. The exception is the Coast Guard. The unofficial motto is that when a distress call comes in whatever the weather, 'the Rules say you have to go out. They don't say you have to come back'...
DeleteBut the idiots who went out force the Coasties to go out as well.
DeleteDon't forget the impact of One Child on their society and culture... Thousands of dead sailors means thousands of families have lost their ONLY child and link to the future. Entire clans may ended that day.
ReplyDeleteGiven the prestige of being on the Fujian I bet a lot of the officers were sons of senior Party members so the pain isn't just for the peasant foot soldiers this time.
That's a really interesting point, and the same thing might happen if they attempt to cross the strait in a future conflict. Those troop transports are sitting ducks.
DeleteNailed it again, Rick.
DeleteTuna has a good point as well.
DeleteAny decent analyst looking at what a One Child policy will do in a culture that only values sons would scream STOP, but defying Mao was a death sentence then and the problems were 20-odd years away..
DeleteToday the CCP has to deal with millions of excess men who cannot have Han wives but cannot be sent off to war to be expended. Every dead unmarried son ends two family lines.
It was an idiotic policy.
Delete"It was an idiotic policy."
DeletePretty much defines Marxism/communism/all flavors of socialism.
Spot on!
DeleteOK, it wasn't Mao's idea, so that is one ocean of blood that isn't on that butcher's hands. If Infogalactic is to be trusted that brain-worm came from the Club of Rome/Limits to Growth idiots in the late 70's and the Chinese ran with it without any real reflection or analysis.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the "elites" deciding what's best for the rest of us.
DeleteChina covers an immense land mass, with multiple diverse ethnic and cultural groups, some pretty much "Chinese" and others not so much. Manchuria, Tibet, Taiwan, Korea, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia may or may not be parts of China, even Japan some might say. The Nationalists, and then the Communists managed to cobble together an inclusive power structure, mainly by force at the end of WW2.
ReplyDeletePrior to that, the warlords pretty much ran their own fiefdoms as they saw fit with no real central government to set national policies. Those were the years from the early-mid 19th century onward with "Treaty Ports" open to foreign traders and missionaries. That's the reason we had U.S. Navy gunboats cruising hundreds of miles into the interior of China, as in "Sand Pebbles." We had regular U.S. Army garrisons (15th Infantry) in Tientsin (near the Pacific terminus of the Great Wall, and seaport serving Peking/Beijing) and U.S. Marines in Peking (4th Regiment of Marines) and also at Camp Holcomb in Tientsin. Most U.S. forces left China when Japan occupied much of China in 1941, but small Marine elements returned for a few years post WW2, in addition to the traditional legation guards.
The Chinese view that Taiwan is part of China is based on their perspective, conveniently disregarding that fact that in the early 1600s it was controlled by the Dutch on the south, and Spain on the northern ends, with indigenous peoples between the foreign colonial outposts. In 1662 the locals kicked out the Dutch, and in 1683 mainland Chinese took control of the whole island. From 1895 to 1945 Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese. Then, the Nationalists fleeing the more powerful Communists took power over Taiwan after the Japanese defeat and expulsion. But, based on 1683-1895 control, the Chinese have good reason to believe Taiwan is part of China.
So, there really is not a massive, unified "China" even today with a long tradition of central governance, but an aggregation of similar people and cultures controlled by whoever has the most power, the current big warlord, named the Communist Party. But, underneath that thin veneer, the Chinese seem to cling to the regional roots and would easily revert to a dozen or more feuding warlords focused inwards instead of continuing the CCP loyalty and outward focus.
But, as long as the CCP is in power, expect them to continue to accrete powerful forces and seek to become a dominant world power. THey are succeeding. Frankly, we are not in any position to challenge them any longer as we are near economic collapse and in danger of fracturing into our own regional, ethnic and tribal entities if the federal government crumbles from internal or external factors.
John Blackshoe
Manchuria, Tibet, Taiwan, Korea, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Japan have all be influenced by Chinese culture, But "part of China" - never, no matter how fervently certain Party members clamor for that.
DeleteActually, their one child policy is coming back to haunt them, their economy falters, and they seek to bully others before their perceived power wanes. As it must. That's how I see things anyway.
China, two things come to mind; recall an older article that focused on Xi’s awareness of people living in the outskirts - toiling in the toolies. Based on having lived his formative years in rural China, phrase used to describe focus of Xi’s subsequent career was; “Happiness is a full rice bowl.” Undoubtedly, less than altruistic in practice, the “rice bowl” as metaphor perhaps served to remind him that even if a facade, public opinion is vital to maintaining power.
ReplyDeleteAnother phrase used in the article is “Chinese people should hold their rice bowls firmly in their own hands, with grains mainly produced by themselves.” Aside from multiple benefits to an economy, it appears to be the practice of what once was good old American self-sufficiency!
Amid breaking rice bowls and sinking fleets, party chairman and admirals in our story may well have ignored lessons learned of previous leadership.
Long ago knew a Taiwanese gent who experienced frustration in his day-to-day work with the inability, if not unwillingness, of native American colleagues to view information through Chinese eyeglasses.
You really do need to see things through their eyes, it explains much.
DeleteAlthough the Chinese Communists have been in charge since 1949, it is but a blink of the dragon’s eye.
ReplyDelete👍
DeleteSo the Warlords return.
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
DeletePeter Zeihan, geo-political analyst and all around gadfly is continually predicting Chinese gov't will cease being unified and will fall w/i 10 years...or less. We may see and hear it, or might not know until the container ships stop coming. Multiple factors. Demographics (one child policy), a totally opaque economy, and central power controlled by Xi. and Xi only. Peter makes interesting points. People rioting from the navy loss would be one more way the house of cards might fall.
ReplyDeleteAlan E.
I get the sense the wheels will come off eventually. It's a house of cards.
DeleteAll empires fall. Sometimes it's from ambition burning too brightly.
DeleteA candle burnt from both ends burns bright..
Yup, it isn't "if," it's "when."
Delete