One of my favorite Taiwanese bloggers has basically suggested in a recent  video that Xi may be out soon.  The following is my translation of the video (I don’t think it has English subtitles).

(9:47) The restaurants in Beijing are empty.  People are cooking at home.  Anyone who understands Chinese politics knows that in big cities like Beijing, the most likely reason for such a strange situation is that something “above” is happening [in the upper echelons of government].  In this case it’s not just the tariff war.  It’s also that “those who deploy and command” have big problems.  Recently there have been constant rumors about big problems with Xi’s top position in the party.

We can see from two perspectives something unusual.  Xi as the top party leader has missed some meetings that the top leader should not miss, especially military meetings.  [At 10:45 he underlines these on his whiteboard.] 

(11:04) What is very strange is that the army staff chairman [he marks with a red checkmark] has chaired the meetings Xi has missed.  Xi’s own trusted insider has not shown up. 

(11:24) Bad things have happened to many of Xi’s most trusted people.

(12:00) From China’s history we can see that any coup comes from the barrel of a gun.  As for the party internal power struggle, the leader’s lessening of military power means that somehow he will soon leave the political arena.

(12:20) One foreign relations situation makes it even more convincing that this type of outcome is more likely. Li Xianlong [former leader of Singapore, spelled in English in Taiwan as Lee Hsien Loong] posted in Facebook mocking Xi as the head of the mafia. [At 13:25 he circles the post in red.]

The host says such online posts normally disappear quickly.  But these posts have not.  Li’s wife also made such posts, and those have not disappeared.  Something big is happening.

My interest in Taiwan, Israel, and Ukraine

I’ve always been interested in the situations in Taiwan, Israel, and recently Ukraine.  Living in these countries convinced me that the main reason their neighbors can’t tolerate them is because of the level of freedom their citizens enjoy.  (Ukraine does not have that, but things looked promising when the war started three years ago.)

I still remember the first time I set foot in Israel.  I had flown from Belarus, and the Israeli security people in both Minsk and Tel Aviv held me for two hours (the back room in Tel Aviv had a free hot chocolate machine; I’ve never had such a caffeine high in my life.)  I was escorted to the gate in Tel Aviv on my trip back.  (I joked with the security people that with such personalized service, I’d love to visit more often.  They had no sense of humor.)  Yet I never felt threatened during my trip.  I felt really relaxed in Tel Aviv.

That feeling of freedom and lack of fear is what the leaders of Russia, China, and Israel’s neighbors could never allow their captive populations to experience.

Trump’s main immediate tariff war goal

Trump’s genius in dealing with the rest of the world is undoubtedly having advisers who are true country experts.  Native speakers from the countries of interest.  Those who tell him the kind of things this YouTube blogger says.  The kind of things that everyone knows are true in Taiwan, but you don’t hear about in the USA press.

China, Russia, and Israel’s neighbors are failed countries.  Russia and Israel’s neighbors have oil and gas money propping up the economy and terrorist networks to keep the restless masses who live in poverty in check.  China does not.  China’s source of wealth is its desperate working class that has nowhere else to go.  This massive pool of cheap labor for making goods for export, and the tech that can be stolen from those building the factories that make these goods, is the bedrock of the wealth and stability of China.  The elite of China will never allow the peasantry to freely trade with the rest of the world.  And most of the world is (more or less) just like China.  The ruling class will never give up their VAT (value added tax) and customs duties, all of which ensures that any trade between the peasantry of their own countries and the rest of the world is never free.

Trumps tariffs are the polar opposite.  They are designed not to tax Americans, but to force the rest of the world’s governments to lower their tariffs.  His tariffs will do more to free the rest of the world than all of our NGOs and government organizations ever did.

But his main goal is to stop the war with China.  To get new leadership in China.  They won’t ever really give the peasants freedom, and the West doesn’t care about them anyway.  But they (and those like them throughout the world) will have learned a very good lesson.

Imagine if, in the 20th century, Europe had had leaders like Trump.  There never would have been WW1 or WW2.  But it would come at the cost of freeing the peasants to trade internationally, and maybe even reducing government payrolls.

I really think that the elite of Europe are happy even now that that did not happen.  That’s why they hate Trump and love their tariffs.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.