Three Pathways of Future East Asia（東亞的三條通道）
Translator: JL
Beijing has about a year to make a decision. There are only three options: Pathway A leads to preparation to militarily challenge the world system lead by the US; Pathway B leads to Islamic penetration and conquest, this may happen in many different ways; Pathway C leads to regionalism and disintegration, this can also realize in a number of ways.
Pathway A requires preparation in advance and traces of such preparation cannot be totally hidden. From this moment onwards, the longer China takes to prepare, the more depleted its financial resources will become, and the advantage of a surprise attack and its relatively leading role in the East Asian arms race become weaker. The best hope for Beijing will be the appeasement of the US in east asia (so a nuclear strike can be avoided), and the war would end in a stalemate like the Korean War did, where Taiwan would take the position of North Korea. In this scenario, China will force its people to accept 20 years’ harsh living and declares victory inside closed borders. However if we compare to its history, even with Soviet’s aid, Mao Zedong could not sustain Red China for more than ten years. As for now, the possible continental system which Moscow or the Islamic world could provide to China will never be more sustainable than the Soviet of Stalin’s, not to mention Moscow’s half European identity which has made Moscow inclined to betray the Asians rather than to support. The end of this pathway is to turn China into another North Korea, and yet without the continual aid from a patron that’s 30 times larger than itself. Meanwhile,since the borders between China and Central Asia and South East Asia are much more complicated and permeable than the 38th parallel demilitarized zone and the Yalu and Tumen Rivers of North Korea, stopping Islamic extremist penetration through “Ho Chi Minh trail” is almost impossible. From this point onward, Pathway A converges with Pathway B (Islamic penetration and conquest).
If Beijing would finally retreat before the containment of the US, it also has one year to make this decision. The logic of “hide our capabilities and bide our time” (traditional phrase used by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s) no longer applies now because the whole picture including its economy situation, population, position in the arms race and international relationships all deteriorate against China as time goes by. Such retreat from confrontation will end along two possible routes: -
it may revert to its ingratiation towards the West as it once did and abruptly calls off its Releninization* movements (*meaning constrict internal environment to return to a Lenism country). This will cause reoccurence of regionalism which had stirred during the Hu Jintao era, and this route leads to Pathway C (Regionalism and Disintegration);
another possible evolving route of the above retreat is: although China gives up external extension, it still retains its present substantial practice to “Releninize” in domestic for the need of preventing the tendency of regionalism and separatism. This means Xi will not be able to reduce military and internal security expenditure like Deng Xiaoping did in the 1980s. The Trump administration’s protectionist policies and repatriation of US dollar would leave Beijing no choice but to establish a continental system as a substitute of the American/western market. Beijing will have to stick to its One Belt One Road initiative and combine China’s capital with Islamic labor force. In such an anti-western united front, the relationship between Beijing and the Islamic world is similar to that of Chiang Kai-shek and Stalin during WWII.
Such route of a combination of Releninize and ally with Islamic force, if taken, would only lead China to pathways B or C. If the Neo-Chiang Kai-shek (Xi Jinping) succeeds in his domestic campaigns of Releninization, the whole east Asia would be taken by the Islamic force; if he fails in his attempt, China will be divided up by Islam and regional forces of the South Eastern provinces.
