It’s Friday, and Xi Jinping Still Has a Job

I think well of Gordon Chang, a longtime China expert. I do think Chang’s righteous opposition to the Chinese Communist Party makes him a bit more pessimistic about the future of the Chinese regime than the facts warrant. Way back in 2001, Chang wrote a book entitled The Coming Collapse of China, which predicted that the CCP would fall from power by the year 2011. The following year, he conceded that he had missed the mark with that prediction, but argued that the Chinese regime was still on its way to a darker future: “We will witness either an [economic] crash or, more probably, a Japanese-style multi-decade decline.” China’s economy has definitely had some intense ups and downs since then — Covid, lockdowns, steel overproduction — but it’s still the second-largest economy in the world, when ranked by GDP.

I mention all this because at the beginning of the week, Chang wrote about some abrupt changes in the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, and speculated that Xi Jinping was in serious trouble:

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Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.

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I think well of Gordon Chang, a longtime China expert. I do think Chang’s righteous opposition to the Chinese Communist Party makes him a bit more pessimistic about the future of the Chinese regime than the facts warrant. Way back in 2001, Chang wrote a book entitled The Coming Collapse of China, which predicted that the CCP would fall from power by the year 2011. The following year, he conceded that he had missed the mark with that prediction, but argued that the Chinese regime was still on its way to a darker future: “We will witness either an [economic] crash or, more probably, a Japanese-style multi-decade decline.” China’s economy has definitely had some intense ups and downs since then — Covid, lockdowns, steel overproduction — but it’s still the second-largest economy in the world, when ranked by GDP.

I mention all this because at the beginning of the week, Chang wrote about some abrupt changes in the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, and speculated that Xi Jinping was in serious trouble: