The big fear is that an incident such as South China Sea freedom of navigation will cause the Chinese to overreact and start shooting. The rest of the world could starve China if they acted together. If China and Russia fell out that could jeopardise their supply of oil, gas and uranium. Debt entrapment seems to be backfiring in the Maldives and the Pacific islands.

China is also shooting itself in the foot. Cyberattacks and jailings won't help them sell Huawei products. Every Chinese student in the West brings home a taste for free speech. Barring an incident I think the China threat could be contained.

China is already in the beginning of the same downfall as the West, the interesting part is as to who can do it faster !

I ran across this topical piece from Stan Grant posted yesterday:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-20/china-knows-its-place-in-the-world-can-australia-live-with-it/12672740

Very encouraging. Here's to the downfall of China, and the return of self-respect to the West.

The PRC government (namely what we call China) is a concern to all free thinking people, but I fear the author and some who have commented on the piece so far are partaking in a bit of delusional wishful thinking. Don't you think that the strategists in Beijing have run and rerun multiple scenarios of their plan to 2049?

China is on track and with recent skirmishes that include trade wars, cyber attack , Covid19, 'Belt n Road' ploys and the S China Sea infrastructure. As for potential internal instability.... it would be a brave revolutionary movement that tried that approach in China.

Yes a united world could stop China (perhaps some believe the UN is the leadership for that one?!).... but does it want to?... I fear short-term politics and greed leads me to believe NO, they don't!

The pandemic is the elephant in the room for China. It has resulted in closed borders/a realisation just how much of everything we import from China.

The industrialisation has as rightly pointed out, come at a cost to food security. Security they thought they coud secure here by buying agricultural land holdings here, given some sad sack Aussies would even sell their Grandma or Grandkids' heritage for a couple of quid?

Then there is the bully bboy tatics, which have proved so counterproductive. And the realisation just how much we have given away as an industrialised nation that once built motor vehicles and wait for it, planes and ships.

We've always had an element of very short sighted bean counters, who invaribly dismiss the usual economic flow on factors from making, producing, value-adding and manufacturing our own stuff here.

And are now forced by the pandemic to retool as rapidly as posible.
China could assist with that retooling as opposed to continuing to shoot herself in the economic foot with BS tarrifs that force us to abandon her as a market we can count on to honour long standing commercial agreements.

And who among ou now has an appetite to travel to China to see or do anyhng there? And Trump could stil win another term and keep applying pressure for a revalued Yuan.

AS for us? We need to abando our own self imposed probhibition on nuclear enery abd some nuclear capability. I meam, even Turkey has fifty on loan!

And possibly the only thing that may prevent a premature strike by a new military power, who could call on the North Koreans with a standing army of around a million, to do most the, on the ground grunt work for them?

How would we hold back a million hungry, fanatical fighters, intent on removing us from every part of this land? Live on the land, in holes in the ground and resist? Burn, loot and plunder until one by one, caught and eliminated? And only because of an asinine, self-imposedd, prohibition on nuclear power/nuclear weapons!
Alan B.