We have to move with the times. We tend to think of war as involving bombs & bullets. Perhaps the Chinese Communist Party has decided that it is better to make subtle economic war. And has been fighting that war for the last 25 years while the West slept.

First, you make the West very heavily dependent on you by attracting all their industry, leaving the short-sighted West with crappy low-paid service jobs and lost tax revenues. Then you use the money the West pays you to buy up their politicians, academics, and media types — undermining Western citizens confidence in their own societies.

Finally, when the time is right, you pull out the rug by ceasing to export the goods on which the West depends. Stand back and watch the West collapse in on itself.

Yes, this is expensive for China. But a whole lot cheaper & better than fighting a nuclear war, with the desired end result that China becomes once again the Middle Kingdom surrounded by weak dependent vassals.

The more you think about this, the more brilliant the CCP approach becomes. Winning without fighting, to quote Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

The movie is remarkable on it’s own in all respects, a masterpiece.

Also made me increase my estimated likelihood that China may go to war with us just to prove a point. The century of humiliation is not forgotten, nor I daresay forgiven.

The ethnic Chinese I’ve known are very practical people, but only in a myopic way. They constantly find creative ways to solve problems that they could have prevented. It’s all ad hoc workarounds. You could call it Agile.

There are worse mindsets. Too many Westerners hallucinate a big picture vision and create problems they can’t solve.

I can’t be the only person who thinks it’s weird when people get romantic about modern China. It’s “dynamic” and “fun”. And everything from buildings to food are touched by fraud and corruption. Stuff just falls down, and they have no joke food counterfeiting about things like cabbage. Plus to all the people who said they would have done something about Hitler’s Germany before the war, now know they wouldn’t do anything.

On a side note, I once visited Hong Kong during the late colonial period. British law and order plus everything but accommodation was astoundingly inexpensive. Stagnant wasn’t the word to describe it.