Could It Happen? China hastens its planned invasion of Siberia to access newly discovered oil and gold fields

The title of this posting is taken from the Wikipedia article describing the Tom Clancy thriller: The Bear and the Dragon. Novelists are known for taking liberties with the facts, but that is all in the nature of fiction writing. In reality, could China be planning an invasion of Siberia in order to take over the massive resources there?

Certainly the Russians have been considering the possibility for several years:

Russian assessments from 1997 suggested that China, not the United States, posed the greatest threat to Russia’s interests and allies. Indeed, leading Russian scholars of international relations such as Alexei Arbatov predicted that over the next five to 20 years, Russia should carefully watch China’s expansionism toward Siberia and the Russian Far East, as well as Central Asia ... _thediplomat

“[Russians are] still worried that China will invade Siberia one day because of the resources,” Dmitry Gorenburg, a senior analyst at military and public sector think tank CNA, said in an interview last month.

“Because from the Russian point of view it’s a very sparsely populated area, hard to defend, very remote from the center of Russia,” he said. _Taipei Times

They have good reason to be concerned. The ethnic Russian population of Siberia is disappearing at the same time that the Chinese population in Siberia -- legal and illegal -- is growing. Russia's population is increasingly crowded to the west of the Urals, making it more difficult for the Russian Bear to keep an eye on its vast and immeasurably wealthy land areas to the west.

And on another level, Russia needs to be concerned about the demographic pressures influencing China's top leaders. Like most of East Asia, China is rapidly ageing -- losing its young workforce at the same time it is gaining large populations of the old and infirm.

Whatever China's leaders are going to do to guarantee China's rightful place in the top rank of world powers, it will need to do before its people turn gray and shrunken.

Russia is struggling with an economy built upon an over-reliance on oil & gas exports -- and very little else. Corrupt -- like most oil dictatorships -- Russia also struggles with a collapsing public health infrastructure, an ongoing brain drain of the best and brightest of its young, and a level of stealth capital flight that officials cannot tally, much less control.

Russia is a nation that shows the world a pretty face, but inside it is rotting from tuberculosis, HIV, alcoholism, and a deep despair that too often results in suicide. And the numbers of ethnic Russians continues to drop -- while the numbers of immigrants from the third world grows, blurring the underlying population trends.

Will China invade Siberia? It has been doing so for over a hundred years. But the pace of invasion does seem to have picked up recently.

It is more than likely that China's leaders are biding their time, scouting the terrain, looking for the best opportunity. In the end, Tom Clancy may have gotten off a lucky shot.

China vs. Russia: Tug of War with Siberia as the Prize

Mirnaya was once a thriving garrison town with a movie theater, a kindergarten and a park. The Soviet army maintained a base here to keep an eye on neighboring China. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the military left. To survive, those who stayed behind gradually dismantled and sold off what was left, piece by piece. First they removed the windows from the prefabricated buildings where the officers had once lived and sold them in Chita. Then they ripped radiators and pipes from the walls and sold them to scrap dealers, who then sold the metal in China. The buildings now stand like skeletons in the steppes, evidence of a ruined country. _Spiegel

SpiegelCompare China's border gate on the left, above, with Russia's gate to the right. You can see yet another load of Russian lumber moving into China. In fact, a lot of raw materials and natural resources have been moving from Russia into China, recently. The Chinese then turn the materials into finished products to sell at a significant markup.

The main thing going into Russia from China is Chinese settlers and investors, building Chinese colonies and outposts inside the very heart of Russia's source of wealth and economic power.

The border between the fallen superpower Russia and the People's Republic, which is gradually becoming a superpower, measures 3,645 kilometers, one of the longest borders in the world. And perhaps this border, where Europe's last offshoots encounter 1.3 billion Chinese, and where Christianity collides with Buddhism and Confucianism, is also one of the most important in the power struggles of the new century.

...Siberia, which covers three-quarters of the landmass of Russia, is home to only a quarter of the country's population: 38 million people. This is the equivalent of the population of Poland, except that Siberia is 40 times the size. It is a situation that many fear could once again spark the eternal rivalry between Russia and China, a rivalry that last produced military clashes in the 1960s.

Chinese investors have already bought a former tank factory in Chita, where they are now producing trucks. They already control the markets in Russian border towns, where they are the richest private business owners. "China invests more in the Russian Far East than our own government does," writes the Moscow newspaper Niezawisimaja Gazieta.

...Years ago Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's eloquent NATO ambassador, said half-jokingly that the Chinese would soon be "crossing the border in small groups of five million." And Vladimir Putin, shortly after being elected president, warned: "Unless we make a serious effort, the Russians in the border regions will have to speak Chinese, Japanese and Korean in a few decades." This hardly seems an exaggeration, given that there are six million Russians living in Eastern Siberia, compared with the 90 million living in China's northern provinces.

...Russian tourists heading to China to buy inexpensive goods are forced to wait up to 12 hours in their cars. These people, who work for distributors and are popularly known as "silk worms" or "camels," travel to China several times a month to bring goods to Russia: jeans and blouses, electric shavers and children's toys, athletic shoes made by a low-wage manufacturer called "Adidos" and chainsaws labeled "Stihl." They are pirated products, and are manufactured in southern China.

... the Chinese aren't just interested in Russian lumber. They also want Russian oil. Some 1,300 kilometers farther to the east, past empty steppes where a driver is likely to encounter no more than three cars an hour, is the small city of Skovorodino. It is the terminal point of the most expensive infrastructure project in the new Russia, a "pipeline with geopolitical significance," as Prime Minister Putin raves.... _Spiegel

Not only does China want Russian timber and Russian oil, they want Russian land and everything on and under the land. Specifically, the Chinese want Eastern Siberia. And since Russia is finding it harder and harder to staff its military with ethnic Russians or to supply its military with state of the art weaponry that actually works, eventually China will have Eastern Siberia. Not that China will be able to hold the land for long. China itself is destined to break up into warring factions sometime in the not so distant future. But Al Fin gamblers are betting that Russia goes down first.

Adapted from a posting at Al Fin Potpourri

Will Putin Risk a Pre-Emptive Strike on China's Megacities?

NextBigFuture
As China's population and infrastructure huddles ever closer together along the eastern rim, and concentrates into a few dense megacities, will the temptation to take out the ages-old southern enemy prove too much for Russian dictator Putin?

The demographic handwriting is on the wall. East Siberia will be ceded to China without a fight, without an invasion. Putin cannot afford to allow the wealth of his corrupt mafiacracy to slip through his fingers, but what can he do? Russians are disappearing at the same time that China is reaching out -- all over the globe -- for resources.

Energy, minerals, timber -- Siberia has it all in abundance. That wealth is the guarantor of Russia's continued existence as an empire, as a world power. The same wealth is a purloined promise to China for a future of superpowerdom.

Why is China making it easy for Russia to target its population centers and infrastructure?

"Laying the foundation year, three years paid off, five major development" is established in Yantai Hi-tech Zone Development Goals. According to the latest master plan introduced to Yantai Hi-tech Zone of the CBD as the leading technology driven, together with efforts to build high-end services, intensive with high-end manufacturing, leisure and tourism with coastal resort, riverside high-end scientific and cultural tourism zone, "as one four with "high-tech zones will hold up the layout of new industrial space; 10 km along the road on both sides of technology, planning and construction of 100 more than the roughly 30 stories about the amount of construction, building skyscrapers, modern style, the magnificent iconic urban landscape Boulevard... _NextBigFuture

Apparently the intent is toward greater industrial and commercial efficiency, and more services and conveniences closer at hand. Of course it will also mean more concentrated effluents of waste and toxic by-products of modern life, concentrated into even smaller spaces. Fortunately, most toxic and nontoxic waste can be disposed of with plasma gasification plants -- perhaps a good investment for the China to come?

China's next decade is not likely to be an unmitigated success, however. There are many things about China's real economy which even CCP economists do not understand -- much less outside western observers. Here are six predictions from one China watcher, Gordon Orr:

1. Inflation in food prices will take longer than expected to control.

Chinese consumption patterns are shifting as people become wealthier—more meat eating requires more cereals to feed the animals. The food supply chain, running at the limit, is close to breaking, and the pressures this problem creates will lead to further food quality crises. A major second- or third-tier Chinese city will see demonstrations over food price rises, unemployment, or both, on a much larger scale than anything that has occurred in recent years.

2. Middle-class bankruptcies will expand dramatically.

All that is needed for a wave of bankruptcies is further interest rate rises (targeting inflation) that result in a blip down in house prices just as mortgage payments rise. We have seen this before across major cities in Asia.

3. Minimum wages will rise, but productivity gains will outstrip labor costs. The profitability of industrial enterprises remained high at the end of 2010—indeed, higher, in many cases, than it had been a year earlier, despite the minimum-wage increases rolled out in 2010—and will probably remain high. Yet a government seeking to enhance its stature with lower-income workers will find that increasing minimum wages, perhaps by 15 to 20 percent, is an easy lever to pull.

4. China’s economic growth will be lower than expected.

5. China will step up its “invest out” program in the new five-year plan. The government may well seek to double the country’s cumulative outbound investment within the next five years.

6. The state will again try to reduce its ownership role in business. If the government relaunches its program to sell off more of its stake in companies, domestic share prices will probably decline or at least remain flat. The program will also soak up much of the liquidity currently supporting Chinese IPOs, thus reducing the ability of entrepreneurs to cash out quickly through them _from_NextBigFuture

Not particularly rosy, but not catastrophic either. But Orr was only looking at the next year, which is much safer than looking a decade or two ahead. China is leaping into a highly complex, even chaotic future, without a guidebook. China -- like Russia -- has strategic alliances, but no genuine friends on any side.

China's fate is inextricably tied to that of its northern neighbor, Russia. The relationship between the two countries has been strained for ages, and often at the brink of open war. Demographic strains and transitions affecting Russia's main source of wealth may prove the breaking point.

Without Siberia, What Will Become of Russia?

With an area of over 3,727,000 square miles, Siberia makes up roughly 75 percent of the total territory of Russia. If Siberia were to secede from Russia, it would be the world's second-largest country, with only Canada being larger. Major geographical zones include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau. _Source

The population of ethnic Russians in Russia has been collapsing in a morass of high death rates and low birth rates. The Nicholas Eberstadt video below goes into much more detail in explaining the what of ethnic Russia's collapse.
Growing numbers of Russian children are being abandoned to the streets, where drugs, violence, alcoholism, TB, and HIV hold sway.

It should be obvious that Russia's time as a grand empire is running out. It is uncertain how long Russia can hold onto the resource rich but relatively unpopulated regions of Siberia -- with a shrinking number of Russians to project power into what are essentially colonies of Moscow.

When will Siberia secede from Russia? Siberian separatism has been simmering below the surface for many years, and the centrifugal forces pulling Siberia away from Moscow can only grow stronger as the number of Russians shrinks.

The recent trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chairman of Yukos Oil, highlights the problem of perennial recurrent Russian autocracy and tyranny -- and much of the reason for a pessimistic view of Russia's economic future. Russia's "one trick pony" reliance on energy to prop up an otherwise crumbling economy, is a fool's game. The stupidity of the strategy will be made painfully clear when Siberia finally does break away from Moscow, taking most of Russia's energy wealth with it.

Who has the most to gain from Siberian secession? Clearly China will be in a dominant position to control Siberia's destiny, assuming China does not collapse or lose its economic shine first. International energy companies will likewise have much to gain from access to Siberia's rich oil and gas fields. The US is also likely to find many opportunities for advantage within a nascent independent Siberia.

In addition, Alaskan and Northern Canadian secessionists would find much to celebrate in a free Siberia. If destructive US central government autocratic policies are not reined in, more and more Alaskans will view separation more positively. Likewise, many Northern Canadians will consider breaking away from Ottawa should the leftists regain control and resume the destructive policies of earlier leftist governments.

Governments can be overthrown very precipitously, as was demonstrated in Eastern Europe of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They can fall like dominoes in a row, should conditions shift in certain directions. Watch and learn.

Get Ready: Russia to Unleash Energy Avalanche

Russia is a corrupt, exhausted, dying nation.  But Russia is full of valuable energy and mineral assets -- enough to make any oil sheikh envious.  For a number of reasons, Russia's energy assets have remained largely undeveloped up until now.  But with enormous discoveries of unconventional natural gas in North America, and with increasing development of Canada's oil sands, Russia is beginning to understand that if it doesn't develop and sell its energy assets now -- it may never have the chance.

As young ethnic Russians disappear from the planet, the ability of Russia to defend its vast mineral wealth is shrinking daily.  And as unconventional fossil fuel use, plus nuclear energy infrastructure, plus bioenergy  development all expand, the world's need for Russia's product is beginning to shrink.  The lesson to Russia: use it or lose it.

Gazprom started coal-bed methane production in Russia after U.S. success in developing unconventional fuel reserves spurred global interest.

Gazprom plans to produce 1.5 billion cubic meters of the gas a year in 2012 at the Taldinskoye field in Siberia’s coal-rich Kuzbass area, the Kremlin press service said Friday in a statement distributed to reporters during President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the region.

Successful extraction of shale gas, another unconventional fuel, has led to what International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol called “a silent revolution” in the United States. The world’s biggest energy consumer, the United States may become self-sufficient in gas through its shale-gas developments. Unconventional fuels had been too complex to develop until new technologies made extraction feasible.

Russia, which holds the largest gas reserves, may have as much as 87 trillion cubic meters of coal-bed methane, according to Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller.

“It’s two Gazproms,” Medvedev said in Omsk, where he met with businesses to discuss innovation in the energy industry, which he said accounts for as much as one third of the country’s gross domestic product.

Coal-bed methane, shale gas and tight gas are the most common unconventional sources of the fuel and currently account for about half of U.S. production, said Valery Nesterov, an analyst with Troika Dialog. Unconventional gas won’t make up more than 0.5 percent of output in Russia in the long term, he said.

“It is more about technology, so as not to fall behind" as we did with liquefied natural gas, he said.

Russia last year started liquefying gas, more than a decade after Qatar, the world’s biggest LNG producer.

The world may see an “acute glut” of gas because unconventional fuel output worldwide is set to rise 71 percent between 2007 and 2030, the IEA said in November.

Unconventional gas competes with coal in thermal power generation and will be displacing the commodity from global markets, Vekselberg said.

Russia may produce as much as 21 billion cubic meters a year of coal-bed methane at Kuzbass, Gazprom said Friday.

“We have made an important step on the path toward a new subindustry in Russia’s fuel and energy complex,” Gazprom’s Miller said in an e-mailed statement.

The company plans to drill 30 wells at Taldinskoye this year, and 28 a year starting in 2011, the Kremlin said.

Russian coal-bed methane resources make up one-third of the country’s potential gas resources, Gazprom said in an e-mailed statement. The Kuzbass area of the Kemerovo region may hold 13 trillion cubic meters of the unconventional gas, the Kremlin said.

The United State’s success in extracting gas from shale has spurred global interest, while also displacing some LNG supplies and lowering spot prices in Europe.

Europe and China are playing catch-up, which could increase competition for LNG, Mark Greenwood, a Sydney-based analyst with JPMorgan Chase, said in a Feb. 9 note.

“U.S. shale gas could grow by 2015 to a similar scale as the entire global LNG market currently,” Greenwood said. “A land-grab has occurred in Europe over the last two years” as international companies such as Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corp. and Statoil seek resources. _MoscowTimes

The rush for development of Gazprom's unconventional gas follows recent Gazprom claims that "shale gas production may be environmentally hazardous." Hint hint, wink wink to US environmental organisations. In other words, Gazprom wants US shale gas to be shut down, and it wants to use US environmental groups as its cats' paws. Nothing new there. In the past it was the KGB doing similar things. The names of organisations change, but the people stay the same.

If the world's fossil fuel resources were freely developed, the resulting glut of energy would take a thousand years or longer to be exhausted. But thanks to a manufactured crisis of climate hysteria, and myriad faux environmental restrictions, we have Political Peak Oil -- man-made energy starvation. Top-down economic devastation, courtesy of the Obama - Pelosi gang.

Russia and the other oil dictatorships have profited from the artificial constraints that western nations have burdened themselves with. But even with all the constraints, private western companies are finding ways to provide the west with energy -- much to Russia's and Obama's chagrin.

Russia will not be able to defend its vast territories in 50 years. It had best wake up, update its technology, and start turning its minerals into more fungible wealth as fast as it can. Before the world no longer needs fossil fuels. It had better hurry.

An expanded version of this article appears at Al Fin Energy

Putin Attempts to Resurrect a Dying Russia Using the Desperate Magic of Nano Technology

Putin is attempting to thrust Russia into the mainstream of world nanotechnology research and production via a desperate crash program of spending. In a typically "Soviet" manner, Putin has chosen a highly centralised approach to Russian nanotech development. Russia accounts for less than one tenth of one per cent of the global nano-industry, so the country has some significant catching up to do. At a time when Russia's population is steadily shrinking, it may seem odd that Putin would spend large amounts of Russia's energy cash on a technology area where Russia has no infrastructure -- academically, commercially, militarily, or in government research labs.

In terms of gross domestic product (GDP), Russia ranks as the eleventh largest economy in the world. But while many smaller countries such as Australia or South Korea, not to mention all of the bigger nations, have invested steadily and broadly in all areas of nanosciences and nanotechnologies for years now, Russia has had no coordinated science policy, no industrial policy, and no commercial industrial base to develop its nanotechnology capabilities. Until last year, that is. In April 2007, the Russian president signed off on a public policy paper that ordered a multi-billion dollar program to develop a world-class Russian nanotechnology industry by 2015.

...It is obvious that Russia has chosen a much more centralized approach to developing a nanotechnology industry than most other industrial nations. While this could be a result of the countries past history of large state monopolies, it could on the other hand be the only realistic way of pulling off the crash development of the Russian nanoindustry...

Time will show if the Russian approach works. With the flurry of deals, projects and cooperations announced over the past few months, not to mention the glitzy Rusnanotech event, they appear to be off to a good start. _Nanowerk

The Russian bear is suffering from a number of problems relating to a rapidly contracting and aging population. Russia is unable to maintain its huge energy infrastructure -- and that is the source of most of Russia's income. Russia's rusting and demoralised military struggled to subdue tiny Georgia, while Russia is helpless to stop Chinese illegal immigration into Eastern Siberia -- a de facto invasion and takeover. Russia's medical infrastructure is unable to cope with rising rates of Tuberculosis, AIDS, alcoholism, and widespread suicidal depression.

The Nano Initiative, coming at this low ebb of Russia's existence, seems like just another Potemkin Village. The question is not whether Russia will be able to compete in Nanotechnology in 15 or 20 years. The question is whether Russia will even exist after that time.

The Secret Struggle for Siberia--The Frozen Treasure

Russia has become a major player in the international energy market. Vladimir Putin's power play--a governmental takeover of the Russian fossil fuels industry--appears to have paid off. A recent gold strike in Eastern Siberia merely adds to the huge underground wealth present in Siberia. Siberia is a huge mineral treasure trove for whoever can harvest its riches. But will that be Russia?

According to Russian calculations, Siberia holds just under 80 percent of Russia's oil resources, about 85 percent of its natural gas, 80 percent of its coal, similar amounts of precious metals and diamonds, and a little over 40 percent of the nation's timber resources. As a result of this rich base, and its exploitation, Siberia is in many respects what geographer David Hooson would call Russia's "effective national territory," or its economic heartland—the region that produces a surplus relative to the size of its population and that essentially supports the rest of the country.

Source

On the surface, Russia's economy appears to be booming. In fact, Putin was able to turn that popular belief into a recent election victory (with a little help from his friends, naturlich). But there are ominous cracks in the facade of a resurgent neo-Imperial Russia.

The Far East constitutes 30 percent of Russia’s total territory, but has less than 5 percent of its population. It has substantial natural resources which could stimulate economic activity and employment, but investors are becoming increasingly reluctant to commit themselves since there is almost no one left to employ there.....we are brought to the conclusion that Russia could eventually have a trade deficit, even with all the natural resources she has in play, and at the rate we are going this point may not be too far away. What we need to bear in mind is that while global oil prices may drop back slightly ..., they are unlikely to continue to rise at the same pace as they have been ...and so since Russian oil capacity is, at best, more-or-less constant ..., Russia cannot continue to rely so heavily on oil exports for continuing growth ...

Source

China has historical claim to a large part of Eastern Siberia. China's voracious appetite for resources to sustain its exuberant growth rate will soon bring it into conflict with its neighbor to the north.

“With a history of conflict along a 2,600 mile border, with ethnic minorities sprawling across it, with a mineral-rich and sparsely populated Siberia facing China’s teeming millions” (Waltz, 2000b: 37-38). Historically, China has never been quite content with Russian expansion towards it boarders and already now massive Chinese immigration into Russia is taking place. Already in the 1990s, Russian Defence Minister Grachev therefore noted that, “the Chinese are in the process of making a peaceful conquest of the Russia Far East” (quoted from Huntington, 1996: 243).

Source

The long Sino-Russian border has had an uneasy history, especially over the past 100-150 years. Now most Russians want out of Siberia, while millions of Chinese and Central Asians want in. With the huge prize of energy resources at stake, chinese workers have steadily been taking over, by default, much of the workforce in Eastern Siberia--both legally and illegally. It is unlikely that the Chinese government has taken any options for increasing its take of the booty off the table. China needs those resources. Russia does not have the human resources to develop them. An interesting dilemma, worth watching.

Hat tip Publius Pundit

Kamchatka Volcano Honours US 4th of July

Kamchatka is so much like Alaska--where I spent part of my childhood--that it takes my breath away at times. The Klyuchevskoy Volcano seems to be reflecting that similarity--providing geologic fireworks in time for the US celebration of the 4th.The Ring of Fire includes portions of Kamchatka as it includes portions of Alaska. Alaska and Kamchatka could almost be mirror images if looked at in a certain way.

When one contemplates the rapidly shrinking ethnic Russian population--and the reasons for the collapse--one cannot help but wonder about the future of the Russian Empire. The future of Siberia in particular, is in question.

For while Russia has a vast and advanced nuclear strike capability, its conventional forces are sadly decrepit, corrupt, and ineffectual. If faced with strong pressure from China to give up large sections of Siberia, as time passes Russia will have less and less deterrent.

How much of Russia's natural wealth resides in Swiss bank accounts registered to ex-KGB bureaucrats and operatives? More every day.

As Russia's muslim population grows, and its ethnic Russian population suicides, emigrates, and shrivels, what good will all those nukes do when China comes demanding? What good will all those billions of dollars in the Swiss accounts of Putin cronies do for the common Russian citizen?

Putin cannot control the periphery of the empire any longer. The days of the empire are numbered.

Stabbed In the Back By Its Own Knife?

Russia has been selling large quantities of sophisticated military equipment, machines, and armament to its neighbor China. A lot of Russian functionaries have made a lot of money from this weapons trade. So what has gone wrong?

Russian sales to China of advanced weapon systems, including ships, fighters, radar and communications gear, have left many in Washington and in the region nervous. But now that relationship appears to heading into an autumn.
Andrei Chang, editor of the Hong Kong-based Kanwa Defense Review, said China is cutting the umbilical cord to Russia.
“As far as Russia-China military aviation cooperation is concerned,” he said, “the spring is already over, and naval cooperation between the two countries is also over.”
Chang said Beijing is moving toward indigenous production of many of the systems it originally bought in mass from Moscow, thanks to reverse engineering.
“Russia has been quite discontented with China’s persistent practice of importing a very small fraction of Russian intact naval systems and then making imitation versions of the equipment,” he said. “Many of the subsystems, like radars and the naval gun for the 054A FFG frigate, have been copied from Russian products, which indicates that the Chinese will simply copy Russian technology to build more domestic vessels.”
Reuben Johnson, a Ukraine-based aerospace and technology analyst and consultant, views Moscow’s open arms policy toward Beijing as a comic tragedy.
“China has sent legions of its own specialists to Russia and Ukraine to study the entire design process of all manner of weapon systems,” he said. “In several cases, Russian design bureaus have developed a piece of kit that is an analog — an analog and not a copy — of an existing Russian system, and presented the blueprints, design documentation and a handful of working models to their Chinese customer.

Source

So the Chinese buy a few models, then copy or imitate them? Where have we heard this story before?



Russia is learning the same lesson about China that the US and the rest of the western world will also have to learn. The Chinese intend to take whatever knowledge and technology it must from the barbarians. Then China will learn to make whatever it needs itself, without dependence on inferiors. Finally, China can take its rightful place in the world.

China intends to grow. First, China intends to re-possess all the lands that were ever considered part of "China." Taiwan, large parts of mineral-rich Siberia, and more. The details of the grand plan may not be fully worked out, but the end is fully in mind.

China is in a race with its own rigidly incompetent style of government. Strong forces are working toward a massive collapse of the Chinese infrastructure. As long as outside investors and "business partners" decide not to notice what the Chinese government plans for the long term, China's expansionists may succeed in their plans.