I listened to an interesting interview with Peter Zeihan yesterday, he describes himself as an American geopolitical analyst and he is an author. His Wikipedia page has a warning that it is “written like an advertisement” so it may be more accurate than many other pages there:
His assessment of China is that it is neither militarily nor economically strong enough to take on the rest of the world, as no doubt it would do if it invaded Taiwan. He says the Chinese navy is weak and that China is dependent in particular on agricultural imports of fertilizer because he says the country has poor soil - therefore it could be hit very hard by international sanctions. He says that Japan could go nuclear virtually at the drop of a hat. The Chinese economy would also be generally devastated by international sanctions as their economy is also dependent on exports as well. He says that China is facing a baby bust worse even than is happening in the West (I’ve heard the same from other sources) and that China’s meteoric rise will be followed very swiftly by a fall. He says that power has become very concentrated in the person of Xi Jinping, that people are afraid to question his decisions, and that this has led to some insane policies being enacted. This does seem to possibly explain the insane zero-COVID policies that we’ve been sharing info on here.
(I’m writing all this from memory of the podcast so I may need to double check some details but I think I’ve got the gist about right).
If his assessment is correct then I think the only way that an invasion of Taiwan makes any sense right now is if there has been some sort of international pre-agreement to this (as outlined in my crazy conspiracy theory the other day here). Also the assassination of Shinzo Abe might have been intended to pave the way for an unopposed takeover of the island, that conspiracy theory also fits in with the bigger theory. I must stress that this conspiracy theory is mine, not Zeihan’s theory, I don’t yet know what he thinks about the WEF etc..
Here’s the interview on Youtube if you’re interested:
Also available as a podcast if you don’t want to use Youtube:
https://player.fm/series/modern-wisdom/ep-514-peter-zeihan-the-old-world-order-is-about-to-collapse