Following up my comment on China, here's a video explaining the CCP's awareness of its chief weakness in geopolitical terms: energy.
This does go a long way to explaining CCP policy and action over the last 12 years, especially since Xi Jinping solidified his grip on power.
It also confirms what Lei's Real Talk and ADV China (now "The China Show") point out regarding the relationship between the Russian and Chinese states as being driven primarily due to geopolitics and political economy rather than anything about ideology, especially as both parties are already quietly fighting over the former Soviet states between the two as well as other states traditionally in one or another's sphere of influence in that buffer region.
Contrary to what the CCP would want you to believe, they are not on the friendliest of terms with its neighbors, and this video explains why; they can, will, and have engaged in the same fuckery of economies and politics that the West has to install friendly regimes in targetted countries (e.g. the Phillipines) and not just using Belt & Road debt-trap scams.
That said, what this video gets wrong is the constraints on the CCP.
The CCP gives no fucks about anything that gets in the way of its excersize of power. What it cannot ignore, it bulldozes as hard and fast as it can; this is how its genocide of Xinjiang goes, and if not for the rampant and endemic corruption--prompted and protected by its Face culture--the Uighers would already be extinct. If it somehow runs into energy or power problems, it has no problems fucking over everything that does not serve its immediate interests because it freely crushes dissent. So long as the PLA and the security services remain loyal to the CCP, the CCP will remain in power no matter what consequences fall upon the country because the CCP will use the military and police to slough off all consequences from itself and on to others.
Don't think so? You already forgot 1989.
This means that there's a very short limit to what soft power can do, all of which is already exhausted. Therefore there is only hard options left. Let me point out the obvious: sever the damned landline connections.
The CCP will cease its maritime faggotry if it has no backups to maritime transit of fuel. For those opposed to Russia's current actions in Ukraine, severing this connection also means damaging Russia's ability to ignore sanctions and taking out its primary backchannel to Western markets.
Note also that if I can see this--a non-professional cripple in a wheelchair--then we can presume that competent professionals are several steps ahead. Remember that this video paints the CCP's position to be like that of Imperial Japan prior to World War 2; even Coach Red Pill (Gonzolo Lira) figured this out, and he's no professional either.
If I were China, watching Pelosi’s plane cross the Pacific, this is what I would be thinking.
— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) July 30, 2022
The Americans want a war with me. They will keep provoking and provoking me until I react.
Therefore, I should strike when the US least expects it — which would be right now.
1/13
It's an entertaining thread, but his conclusion--that D.C. will just sit there and take it--is wrong. This would result in Beijing being glassed. Gonzolo accurately states that the U.S. lacks the immediate capacity to replace the losses, but fails to account for the fact that the U.S. still maintains a massive nuclear weapons stockpile as well as fails to see that a loss of that much seapower in rapid succession leaves D.C. with no other choice but to nuke Beijing (and likely several other Chinese cities) because the failure to do so would be even worse for D.C. specifically and the West generally.
Guess who else sees this as I do? Beijing.
That's why they're not going to take the bait that is Pelosi doing her Far Eastern tour (which is likely to include a Taiwan stop, even though it's not on the schedule).
Gonzolo, along with many others like Vox Day, buy the CCP bullshit about the capability of the Chinese state. None of them watch the China watcher channels run by expats who had years on the ground (The China Show) or by dissidents who defected (Lei) or by people with connections on the ground (most of the rest like China Insights or NTD, an Epoch News front).
Will there be war with China? Yes. Will it be a shitshow? Yes. Will this break the back of the West? NO.
The CCP has committed all of the same errors that Western institutions have, but they did in years what took the West generations to fuckup, so they are far more fragile than they want you to believe--even with their readiness and willingness to repress and control populations--and thus will be the first to collapse when the war hits- especially if the competent few in the West do their jobs and prepare the battlefield beforehand by ensuring that the CCP has no viable options other than to surrender.
As for who to root for? Neither.
The best course of action, if you must be actively involved, is to do all that you can to exhaust all sides. Make the war sufficently costly that all beliigerants negotiate just to prevent total global collapse. This is Thrall-on-Thrall action, folks; the anti-Empire strategy is to bleed them all out. Once exhausted, they will be as fragile as eggshells, and then it's as nothing to make Empire fall.