Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Was China's \"Century of Humiliation\" Inevitable? History of China 1839-1895 Documentary 2/10" video.

@freirete The Chinese government is aware of its problems, but the solutions for it are politically untenable. Continued tolerance of the CPC rests primarily on continuing economic development, which is only getting harder to achieve as requirements rise -- no more simply importing rural workers and providing OJT, the new jobs need more electricity, purer raw resources, and creative workers (itself involving a tolerance for alternative and dissenting thoughts). Censorship is arguably getting worse, with greater hesitancy to express views that are or may one day be construed as criminally "unpatriotic". Within the Party there's struggle on planning the path forward, generally converging on either the elitists who focus on coastal champions and don't tolerate anyone else's ideas, and the populists who are a bit more socially open and desiring to spread China's wealth towards the rural backwaters. But at all levels corruption is endemic, which allows the ruling side to conveniently target members of the opposing faction in "anti-corruption campaigns"; this is how the elitist "princeling" Xi Jinping is consolidating Party power with the coastal corporatists. Infrastructure is often more of a political prop: the uneconomical HKMZ Bridge, the even more unprofitable HSR to Xinjiang, and the various new airports that provide little added benefit in an airspace that's overcrowded with so much of it restricted to military use only. Every new dam just meets increasing controversy, and even grand highway projects into the mountainous south ends up with mixed results. Along with aging, debt, and pollution, the CPC is running out of options to maintain itself as China's only leadership choice, hence why the switch from an almost purely economic strategy to one increasingly involving racial nationalism and acting on irredentist "reclamation". The danger is that this political strategy hasn't worked out so well: ask Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and North Korea.
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A lot of salt is mined from the earth (including today), historically at great expense of labor. Salt from evaporative ponds are slow to produce and take up a lot of valuable coastal space.
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The PRC is almost blatantly maneuvering to gain control of territory from practically all its neighbors, making irredentist claims based on past imperial conquests no matter how tenuous or far back (Eastern Siberia, all of Mongolia, etc). The Nine-Dash Line is historically unusual, as Chinese dynasties tended to draw political borders using water features themselves -- hence why Taiwan remained separate until the Qing, and why Europeans were originally given islands like HK and Shamian instead of sections on the Mainland.
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Chinese themselves regard the Manchus as Chinese, along with the Han, Mongols, Hui/Uyghurs, and Tibetans. Not sure if it's to save face for getting conquered by "lesser" nomadic barbarians, but that's how it is. The early post-Qing ROC symbols used "Five Races Under One Union" as its theme to reflect this sentiment.
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There really should be a fourth video, as there's so much to be said about the CPC's Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution (where a then Party-estranged Mao literally called the people to "bombard the headquarters" in violent uprising), the successful coopting of global recognition, 1989, and the various clashes with Táiwān the whole time 🇨🇳 Not sure if the post-Mainland ROC will even fit, as it has quite a fascinating history of its own: KMT corruption and authoritarianism, evacuation of China's wealth, the invasive retreat and 2/28, the West's dismissal and abandonment of the ROC until the Korean War made Communists a worldwide "threat to democracy", almost 3 decades as America's "permanent aircraft carrier", its loss of status as a "nation", the successful transition to democracy, and the growing distance they have with their Mainland "compatriots" 🇹🇼
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@sunhuatom Divided from the inside isn't necessarily weakness, critics were predicting the downfall of America during the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement. Each time the US came out more united as "Americans" and less localized with their neighborhoods and states. Chances are the current "woke" movement will end up the same way.
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Right, in a few decades the PRC risks shattering under the self-created pressures of aging, household debt, pollution, and officially-promoted paranoia.
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Han Chinese don't have a great record of consolidating and controlling China, hence the breakup of Tang China into dozens of simultaneous dynasties until the Mongols defeated the collection of local rulers and actually reunified China as the Yuan. Then came the Han-ruled Ming who had a decent beginning, but became insular and decadent until they were overrun by the Manchus who established the Qing. Once the Qing got overthrown, the early ROC was little better than a kleptocratic self-stabbing bloodfest getting slowly gobbled up by Japan. It was only after considerable Soviet support to the CPC that the PRC got established, and even then the destruction of China by Han Chinese didn't end until after Mao died and more pragmatic leadership arose. This is probably the calmest few decades a Han-ruled China has seen in history. But it's likely an anomaly that will inevitably break down from the self-created challenges of aging, household debt, pollution, and a not so incorruptible Party that is increasingly paranoid of dissent and revolt by its own subjects.
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