China: Future Scenarios

Winds has covered China's Growing Nationalist Movement before. That article also offers some in-depth looks at the country's potential futures and the kinds of questions we need to ask as we try to predict what's next.

Now we can beginning adding useful perspectives, questions, and responses to the framework. Area native Simon World responded with some thoughts of his own. See also the foreign policy professionals at The Daily Demarche with their subsequent publication: The China Syndrome - 2015 and Beyond. Together, these resources offer a window into China's various futures, ranging from aggressive neo-fascism (surely American neocons' biggest "I wake up screaming" nightmare) to a Christianization that spreads to the regime's highest levels (surely American liberals' biggest "I wake up screaming" nightmare) and many points in between.

So, how can we take these frameworks and scenarios, and turn them into something useful? By using them to expand our thinking about the big picture, then stepping back to do more detailed analysis.

Doing Analysis: The 3 Interlocking Levels

When looking at future scenarios, it's useful to look at 3 interlocking levels. One level is socio-political; it includes many of the topics Cicero discussed plus a few more. This level helps us identify key drivers, fears, tensions, and limits that stem from within a society.

The next step is usually to look at its geo-political situation, which will be driven by a tripartite combination of national interests, other players' actions, and internal socio-political influences on how it sees itself and its role in the world. Where the socio-political work helps establish intentions and modus operandi, the geo-political scan helps develop context and gives us a sense of realistic options. A nation's past record and policy pronouncements are also useful at this level, as they can help validate the socio-political assessments and offer additional insights.

The third level is the military & intelligence analysis: current capabilities, doctrine, and trends. Whereas the first 2 levels looked at drivers and options, this level looks at capabilities.

Changes at the military level can even drive reassessments and changes at the socio-political and geo-political levels, by changing a country's view of itself. For instance, many analysts believe that Europe's growing passivity and retreat into empty structures and rhetoric - what Cicero terms "aggressive docility" - stems in part from declining military capability and influence. Since that decline is structural given Europe's demographics and finances, argues this analysis, it's easier for them to adopt a different geopolitcal modus operandi and preach at a socio-political level about the virtues of their changed position.

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with this point of view, however, no serious analysis of Europe's role in the world can afford to ignore its current military capabilities, gaps, and trends. The same is true for China.

The methods one ultimately chooses to use are flexible: linear analysis, scenario planning, wargaming exercises, whatever. But the 3 levels are important, because they'll contain many of the key assumptions and data points. As uncertainty about the future increases, key assumptions and data points become even more critical as hypotheses, sources - and even indicators of which way the future may be tipping.

China: Socio-Economics

The good news for China's rulers is that economic growth is high, debt is low, a large domestic market is rising, and foreign investment is pouring in (even though many investors have little to show). Non-enforcement of intellectual property laws also provides Chinese manufacturers with an effective subsidy, as credulous companies invest only to find their technologies appropriated by local Chinese businesses. All this is changing social patterns, and leading to China's economic rise as economic Marxism is gradually abandoned by China's elites.

With money comes power. China's socio-economic base will affect how China sees that power, what kind of power it feels compelled to wield, and when and how it may choose to wield it.

Aside from Cicero's recent piece, and Simon World's ongoing briefings in Winds of Change.NET's China topic section and beyond, my China framework article contains links to a number of socio-economic indicators and trends.

One data point that fixates a lot of people's attention is China's surplus of young males, a statistic that has often been a predictor of war and social instability. This article is an excellent and balanced look at that phenomenon. I especially liked their note that each young Chinese male being responsible for 2 parents and up to 4 grandparents; it's a useful reminder of how cultural & social patterns can change the context of the data we see. "China's Time Bomb" also touches on the less-discussed but equally significant phenomenon of China's rapid aging, as its median age soars from about 32 today to at least 44 in 2040. Hu Angang, an economist at Qinghua University in Beijing, puts it this way: "We will have the social burden of a rich country and the income of a poor country."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Eberstadt adds:

"How will China support its burgeoning elderly population? Not through the country's existing state pension system: That patchwork, covering less than a fifth of the total Chinese workforce, already has unfunded liabilities exceeding China's current GDP."

Social and economic development is a long climb, and there will surely be no shortage of internal stresses on China's polity over the next 30 years. China's mandarins look down, and all they see are a series of quickly spinning treadmills:

• Can they provide enough jobs to keep up with the rural migration to the cities, and avoid creating a volatile tinderbox of the unemployed and disaffected?
• Can they weather the inevitable storms as some of their state-owned companies sink, without creating either massive unemployment shocks or endless draining subsidies? The April 18, 2005 Wall St. Journal has a Page A16 article entitled "China's Workers Vent Anger: Protests Grow Common as Privatizations Shatter Job Security". Jim Landers of the Dallas Morning News recently offered a similar report from Fushun.
• Can they find the energy and resources to keep the economy going? Is that even possible given the eventual scale of the problem and limits of natural resources?
• How will falling water tables and ravenous industrial demand for water be reconciled with the ongoing necessity of China's agrarian needs?
• Can the health system handle the new conditions without allowing devastating epidemics or even pandemics?
• What happens as the "one child" policy begins to produce a large hangover of older people with fewer young people to support them?
• Can the Party maintain its dictatorship without the moral mandate of communist revolution to animate it - and if so, what does it turn to as a source of legitimacy?
• Along those lines, how can it continue to control the other major players in Chinese life, especially the Army?
• And what about the double-edge sword of information technologies - so necessary, but so potentially subversive?
• Etc., etc.

A ruling class that cannot keep up with all of these issues will lose the Mandate of Heaven - and possibly their heads.

Which brings us back to the recent violent anti-Japanese demonstrations, and the government's role in them. Here's first-hand observer Mark Erikson of the Asia Times, in China's fury doesn't wash, but why the froth?:

"But after seeing what I saw in Shenzhen, I know that the Chinese government and/or Communist Party got this thing going and kept it going. Students might do this sort of thing on their own. They certainly did at Tiananmen in 1989. From the looks of it (the TV pictures), students were involved in the Beijing demonstrations. But in Shenzhen there are no students. It's a special economic zone chock full of contract workers from all over China, working in factories or - per chance - in brothels.... The questions remain: why and why now?

To be systematic about it, there seem to be three possibilities: 1) the government wants to divert attention from pressing domestic problems; 2) Communist Party factional issues are fought out in a strange arena; 3) Beijing wants leverage to stoke up nationalist fervor for international gain. Neither 1) nor 2) can be entirely ruled out."

Expect to see more of all 3 in the coming years - and if this is the game being played by the Communist Party, it's an especially dangerous long-term choice.

As we've seen elsewhere, China's careful cultivation of rage is only a harmless distraction for so long. Eventually, people start demanding that you put your weapons where your mouth is - and in a "face" culture, that could easily force the regime into an uncomfortable corner. Winds' coverage of "China's Growing Nationalist Movement" looks more closely at that angle, asking some questions about inflection points and looking at related trends. See also the analysis of China's pattern of go to war decisions in this article's military section.

(Readers, any additional articles or sources that you've found especially helpful or insightful in the socio-economic-cultural area?)

• Nov 15/07: AFP publishes a report by Albert Keidel, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former US Treasury official and World Bank economist, who calculates that China's economy will turn out to be 40% smaller than previously stated.

• Winds reader "Marcus Vitruvius" isn't so sure about the strength of China's economy, and blogs about the effects of U.S. interest rates on investment in China.

• Dave Schuler discusses China's 4 time bombs: environmental, demographic, pension, banking.

• Sean LaFreniere's June 15, 2005 post "The Myth of China Rising" has an excellent set of socio-economic issues and links, and his post links to other useful analyses as well.

• China's biggest problem on the socio-economic front is that its system is not flexible, even as all of these problems demand flexibility and inventiveness. Winds discusses this concept, then adds a second article following up on the potential consequences re: avian flu. China's population, sanitary conditions, lack of flexibility, and inherent incentives toward cover-ups in its governments, means that many experts see China as the most likely place for epidemics and pandemics to start. Add that one to the list of challenges.

• A very primitive sketch of a scenario exercise can be found at ScenarioThinking.org. "Future of China in 2020" is useful mostly for its view into some of the intermediate processes:

China: Geopolitics

A look at China's geopolitics should start with China's race into the global energy market, noted back in Winds' June 2003 article "12 Under-rated Global Trends."

With oil pushing $50/bbl, you'd think it's safe to say that this trend is no longer under-rated. It probably still is, though, because the geopolitical fallout is just beginning. Observers are beginning to note some of the ways in which this is beginning to affect Middle East geopolitics, for instance - not to mention blocking progress re: Darfur's genocide. There's no longer any question among serious observers that oil and resources will be key drivers of China's foreign policy (though most miss the water/food angle, at least so far).

How does this fit into our framework? Various ways. China is blessed with abundant natural resources of its own, but they will not be enough. Its energy appetite is both a potential trigger for geopolitical trouble, and a large strategic weakness to any enemy who can credibly threaten to choke off Chinese access.

A recent report by Laguna Research Partners called "Crisis on the China Rim: An Economic, Crude Oil, and Military Analysis" talks about sensitive issues including the increasing demand for oil from China & India and the United States� involvement in that region. Its forecast of oil prices at $100/bbl within the next 3 years is beyond my ability to evaluate, but indicative of the kinds of pressures analysts see coming out of that region's growing appetite. I liked its 3 step economic, oil, military analysis of the region, and there are some informative gems in it. I also liked their attempt to create 2 tracking indices: The "Energy Security Index" (ESI) measures total military expenditures per barrel of oil consumed in various countries around the region, while the "String of Pearls Index" (SOPI) measures non-core military spending (i.e. above 1.8% of GDP) per barrel of oil imported.

Note, too, that there are other energy sources beyond the Middle East - oil and resource-rich Siberia to China's north, for instance, and Central Asia to its West. Africa's Gulf of Guinea is becoming an increasingly-important oil source, and the continent as a whole is exceedingly rich in industrial minerals. China has not been idle on any of these fronts, though these moves draw little attention.

If you want to understand Chinese diplomacy, start paying attention to its moves in these regions.

China's big geopolitical weakness is, of course, geography. Though it will be dependent on naval lines of supply for many of its future resources, including food, China is ringed by satellite powers that are well positioned to choke its access. Belmont Club's Big Trouble in Little China drives that point home with solid analysis and interesting facts, including this GlobalSecurity.org shipping map.

Japan is a Great Power by achievement and a naval power by military necessity. South Korea is an industrialized economy that could represent competition for Russian resources, and tie down significant Chinese forces besides unless they're neutralized (China's current strategy for that is a 1-2 of triangulation via North Korea, and Finlandization). Taiwan is a semi-hostile, unsinkable aircraft carrier just off of its coast. Vietnam to the south has a long history of friction with China, which spilled out into open warfare once again in the 1980s. Its port in Cam Ranh Bay, perched right against China's African and Middle Eastern resource lifeline, is still an excellent naval location for any of China's opponents (India? Japan? even the USA again?). Of course, China is currently undertaking intense diplomacy to keep Vietnam away from a US-led security strategy.

Beyond Vietnam lies an Australia that is allied with the USA, and looks at key chokepoints like Indonesia with a hard eye. Australia has no desire for overt confrontation with Beijing, but it is wary of Chinese influence in the region. China must consider it as at least potentially hostile.

Beyond Australia, India continues its rise. India, too, has strong expat communities in Africa, and also has deep roots in the Middle East. Its own economic expansion will make it a competitor for resources, and as an incipient naval power its natural interest will involve secondary pre-eminence in the Indian Ocean from the east coast of Africa to the Straits of Malacca (secondary, of necessity, to the USA). Given that this region defines most of China's resource lifeline, the strategic problem for China is obvious. Underneath the feel-good rhetoric from China about "Chinese manufacturing and Indian brains" lies a deep and abiding sense of rivalry and concern. Hence China's hostile meddling involving every one of India's neighbours. Hence, also, China's eyes-deep support for Pakistan, including a major role in its nuclear program.

India will smile at Chinese overtures, therefore, but she is not likely to forget all this - and preparations to strengthen her position are underway with American and Russian support. See "China's Growing Maritime Morass" for more.

As it looks outward over this set of neighbours and competitors, therefore, China's geo-political imperatives are simple to state but difficult to execute. Especially since pursuing some of these goals gets in the way of others:

• Avoid a situation in which hostile coalitions box it in. The Chinese nightmare would be a de facto USA-Japan-India naval coalition, supported by South Korea, Vietnam, and Australia. (Dawn's Early Light blog notes that steps are already being taken toward these ends. More here re: Japan and Australia, followed by Winds' coverage of India's big new naval base INS Kadamba near Karawar, and its new 10-year defense pact with the USA.)

• Become a regionally dominant force that is unquestionably #1 in East Asia, and able to keep any other Great Power out of its sphere of influence.

• Secure access to key resources. An equally bad scenario for China would be a US/Russia division that keeps China out of Central Asia, and/or any form of coalition or happenstance that prevents China from becoming extremely influential in Siberia as Russia's population continues its collapse.

• If you can't control it, at least have the leverage to choke it. If you can't control the sea lanes, for instance, at least have the ability to deny those resources to any enemy in case of hostilities. "He who can destroy a thing, controls it," and all that. This will create a counter-lever that can act as a check on naval powers and strengthen China's negotiating position.

Finally, one must consider an unusual asset available to China: the wide-ranging Chinese expatriate community. This global asset may be rivaled only by India's similar expatriate communities, and by the USA's unique "reverse ties" melting pot. It has certainly played a key role in China's successful creation of strong export industries, thanks to strong family ties that connect many of them back to the mainland.

While the overseas Chinese will continue to represent a bridge and an opportunity, as China becomes more of a regional power they could also represent an entanglement. Ethnic Chinese have often been the targets of violence in Asia as an economically-dominant minority group (vid. Amy Chua's work). Until now, China could offer little in the way of help or support - but as its power projection capabilities grow, that will change. As aggressive nationalism becomes more and more of a socio-cultural force, its willingness to use those forces should a crisis befall Chinese kinfolk abroad may also change.

Taiwan may be worried about China's naval buildup right now, but they may not be the only country with cause to wonder.

Which brings us at last to the military dimension of geopolitics (especially energy geopolitics), and China's military capabilities. If China swerves in a very negative direction, how bad could that be? What kinds of scenarios are possible? And what do China's military efforts tell us about their possible intentions?

China: The Military Dimension

If you really want to understand how geopolitical considerations feed into military planning, which then translates back into new geopolitical options and capabilities, Thomas J. Christensen's "Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China's Rise and the Challenge for American Security" [Google HTML | PDF version] is simply outstanding.

Let me repeat - outstanding. Great sourcing, combined with solid understanding of how international relations works, produces clear-eyed logic that lays out options and what ifs. His explanation of why China doesn't have to achieve parity with the USA is especially worth your attention. When you're done reading him you will be a smarter observer of international relations, with a better understanding of the possible strategies states can pursue, an improved grasp the connections between military capabilities and geo-political power, and a better feel for how the U.S. - China situation could spiral into conflict against their mutual wishes.

Daniel Starr adds a blog post about the Chinese regime's methods & motivations in making go-to-war decisions, and how these may differ from traditional American and European analyses and viewpoints. It's a good complement to Christiensen's work.

On the strictly military side of the equation, here are some additional links you may wish to check out:

eDefense Online's outstanding Flashpoint: Taiwan Straits looks at the military forces available to both sides and the major buildup programs each side has under way. Some quick excerpts:

"...the Chinese are currently embarked on a major shipbuilding program for their navy, a massive buildup where they are currently deploying seven new major ship classes at one time, building up to two of these new ships in each class per year. These include two more Project 956 Sovremennyy-class guided-missile destroyers (DDGs), the Type 52B DDG, the Type 52C Aegis-like DDG, the Type 54 guided-missile frigate, the brand new Yuan-class diesel attack sub (to augment the advanced Kilo-class (Project 636) they purchased from the Russians), the Project 093 nuclear attack sub, and the Type 094 nuclear missile sub."

For those who you who aren't into "defenseology," that is an absolutely huge number of major new programs to manage. Three domestic shipbuilding programs would have been a large number; 7 is off the scale. There are wise cautions to heed against overhype and the effects of running too many major projects at once, but one can also see promising success factors in the Chinese effort.

For instance, note that many Chinese programs start from existing blueprints of proven weapons from other countries, or involve foreign buys with technology transfers and limited local manufacturing. This is an intelligent approach, and one that they've taken in other fields as well: Hummers built under license, SU-30 fighters built under license, FC-1/J-17 program with Pakistan for a quasi-F-16, the J-10 fighter program using Israel's Lavi as a starting point and then modifying very heavily, Type 52C "AEGIS-like" destroyers using radar systems from the Ukraine, etc. Contrast this with India's "all domestic" approaches, which have usually ended in delivery of substandard equipment or even outright program failures.

Richard D. Fisher, Jr.'s 2004 testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission remains the best one-stop source I've found re: China's military modernization programs, how its management of those programs has changed, and the role of various foreign suppliers. It's a good way to get context on the roles played to date by the Russians, Europeans, Israelis, and American companies.

China is working on modernizing its defense industry, with some success thanks to expertise it has gained in the electronics sector et. al. Of course, some reported components require a certain depth of both native expertise and industrial base experience to pull off. Even given China's massive industrial espionage operations and buys of Soviet R&D, for instance, I'll believe a Chinese AEGIS-equivalent destroyer when I see some evidence that it can perform as advertised. It takes more than just having a phased array radar.

Even so, the sheer variety of programs underway makes one wonder about the real cost of all this. And the real intent.

To that end, one may read a November 2001 article by Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets & Dr. Thomas J. Tordathat discusses many of China's military programs and doctrinal changes - including some that eDefense Online missed. Or an April 2005 DefenseTech.org article that offers a useful run-through of some recent controversies concerning China's military power, and includes excerpts from Jane's:

"Blasko estimates that around a quarter of all PLA manoeuvre units, which number around 20 divisions or brigades, plus supporting artillery and air-defence units, have participated in training exercises for amphibious operations...

[Meanwhile] The PLA Navy (PLAN) is rapidly transforming itself from a coastal force into a blue water naval power with a force modernisation drive that is unprecedented in the post-Cold War era. "The range and number of warships the Chinese navy is acquiring can be compared to the Soviet Union's race to become an ocean-going navy to rival the US in the 1970s," said a China-based foreign naval attach�."

That's scale. Now take this recent Defense Industry Daily news item, which noted:

"China is likely to announce yet another year of double-digit growth in its defense budget in the next week, with expectations hovering in the 10-12% range. Officially, defense spending grew about 11 percent last year over 2003, hitting CNY 211.7 billion ($25.6 billion). Still, many experts believe that China's real defense expenditures are two to four times higher than official figures, as items like arms procurement and military R&D are often placed in other budgets."

That would certainly fit the familiar pattern some of us recall from the Soviet era, and given the range of expensive programs I'm seeing a 4x estimate of over $100 billion wouldn't surprise me at all. Contrast with India's current military budget of $19 billion, without the same ability to hide expenditures because it is a democracy.

There's also a cost to maintaining their existing military, conscript army or no. As eDefense reports, that force includes:

"The PLA Ground Force has 1.9 million men, 14,000 tanks, 14,500 artillery pieces, and 450 helicopters. The PLA Air Force has 470,000 airmen, 2,550 jet fighters, and 400 ground-attack jets. The PLA Navy has 250,000 sailors, more than 70 submarines of all ages and conditions, including the Han nuclear attack and Xia ballistic missile boats; 20 destroyers; 35 frigates; and numerous other craft. There are also the Second Artillery Force (Strategic Missile Force) and the Peoples Armed Police."

In fairness, some of those totals will shrink as older weapons like the J-7 (essentially a Chinese MiG-21) are retired and replaced by newer equipment. There's also a question of military performance wherein new gear on the plus side is set against a face-based culture with no democratic performance audits, all under a dictatorial regime whose prime concerns are control of the military and maintaining its power in society rather than military effectiveness. In The Myth of Chinese Air Power, for instance, Trent Telenko made some very trenchant observations about the PLAF and the way in which the structure and priorities of Third World Power Regimes affect their military choices and effectiveness. USAF 1LT Nathan Alexander had a fine follow-up with Chinese Airpower Revisited, which took a more Chinese-centric approach. I'd encourage our readers to peruse both articles, because their observations stretch far beyond the air dimension.

Still, the scale of the modernization underway in China must give one pause. An SU-30 fighter is an instrument of power projection in a way that a MiG-21 isn't. Even trying to produce an AEGIS-class ship makes no sense unless they're intended to protect expeditionary forces that are too far away for support from the mainland. Advanced attack submarines carry an obvious message, as does training significant portions of the world's largest army in amphibious exercises. Doing all of these things at once... well, that gestalt sends a message too.

Now put this in context of Chinese military doctrine - the Federation of American Scientists has an excellent compilation of articles on the subject. Pay special attention to the work of PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, whose document "Unrestricted Warfare" [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4] has stirred intense study across the ocean.

If you want to keep up with individual Chinese defense programs and news, Chinese Defense Today is probably the best web site for reference and ongoing information. The Pentagon also published Chinese Military Power 2004 recently, which may offer the most comprehensive overview but only comes in PDF form.

"Chinese Military Power" also dips its toe into the geopolitics that flow from these efforts. So, too, does Belmont Club's Big Trouble in Little China 2, which links to a Seapower Magazine article by former U.S. Navy Attache to China Capt. Brad Kaplan. In China's Navy Today: Paper Tiger... Or Storm Clouds on the Horizon? he writes of the People's Liberation Army Navy:

"The PLAN's evolving strategy has been described in terms of two distinct phases. The strategy's first phase is for the PLAN to develop a "green water active defense strategy" capability. This "green water" generally is described as being encompassed within an arc swung from Vladivostok to the north, to the Strait of Malacca to the south, and out to the "first island chain" (Aleutians, Kuriles, Ryukyus, Taiwan, Philippines, and Greater Sunda islands) to the east. Analysts have assessed that the PLAN is likely to attain this green water capability early in the 21st century. Open-source writings also suggest that the PLAN intends to develop a capability to operate in the "second island chain" (Bonins, Guam, Marianas, and Palau islands) by the mid-21st century. In the future, the PLAN also may expand its operations to bases in Myanmar, Burma. These bases will provide the PLAN with direct access to the Strait of Malacca and the Bay of Bengal."

As Belmont Club's article notes, in seeking to become a regional powerhouse, methods matter. The more aggressively China pursues this goal, the more it will alarm exactly those "barrier nations" that it seeks to neutralize:

"The devil in the proposition is that as long as China is seen as representing a threat to Japan, any attempts to reach out to "the first island chain" (which includes the Aleutians) and the "second island chain" (which includes the Bonins, which is Japanese territory) will bring a reaction from Nippon. Like the Anglo-German Naval Race of the 1900s, any serious maritime rivalry will be fraught will grave consequences. One interesting thing about these developments is that for the first time in 500 years Europe is absent from the maritime strategic equation."

Indeed.

China: Next?

China is rising on the world stage. There are no two ways about that. Even so, I'm not a fan of the analysts who foolishly project endless compounding growth for China using straight-line trend projections. There are so many socio-economic and geopolitical issues in the way - and governance matters. China will be able to grow for a while from its current base, but as Cicero's articles bring home, there will be some adjustments too. Advanced economies have important requirements, and many of them conflict with China's current system. Getting there won't be easy.

Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace looks at history, and thinks the idea of 'managing' China's rise is a comfortable fiction. What if he's right? Could those stresses and difficulties result in military aggression against external enemies, as part of China's effort to rise geopolitically and diver attention from its socio-economic problems? How could that happen? What could the consequences be? What else should we look for as we search for clues to future intentions and capabilities?

Taiwan is widely considered to be a target, probably between the 2008 Olympic Games and 2010. The danger is that failure would probably lead to the collapse of the Chinese regime. As we've noted earlier, however, new military capabilities often lead to new geopolitical moves. So, if you're looking for clues, look inside, surely - but look outside, too, and think beyond Taiwan.

Why? Because of an old truth. A military force may be effective, or not - but in many cases, one doesn't find out for sure until it's used on the battlefield. As we say in baseball, "the game ain't played on paper".

One way around this problem is to take a prudent approach and starts with small-scale actions (vid. Italy in Ethiopia, Germany & Russia in the Spanish Civil War) that reveal lessons but cannot really fail. The Chinese have always struck me as prudent, and there are ways to get this kind of assurance without creating trouble.

Sending a substantial force to help out in the Congo might do nicely, for instance. Or Sudan, for that matter.

Consider the irony - and also the larger lesson. Though the internal character of the regime strongly influences the way in which it conducts itself abroad, there are forces afoot in China that could change the character of its regime. The same military that could serve as local bully-boys and modern janissaries propping up dictators around the world and making those countries safe for Chinese colonialism, could also play a much more positive role if China's government wanted them to.

IF. The key is to remain clear-eyed about the realities and possibilities before us, rather than letting our wishes do our thinking for us. China's early moves in the mideast, Sudan, et. al. do not suggest positive futures. But that isn't to say a stronger Chinese military is bad under all circumstances, which is why we must pay close attention to that factor without fixating on it.

We have come full circle at last, back to our scenarios.

It's pretty clear to outside observers that major forces are building in China. Demographic forces. Economic forces. Internal tensions. Now add the military forces and capabilities described above on top of this cauldron, and throw in some enablers via Russia's semi-desperate search for deals and the EU's typically unhelpful (and see here) form of aggressive docility.

All of these forces are building as we watch. To what end? That is surely the correct question. But as China's military capabilities grow along with its internal stresses, the number of answers grows, too.

Always in motion, the future is.