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The thing about Pearl Harbor was that the move was made because Japanese leadership saw no possibility of better odds ahead. Japan was, in their view, in the best position vis a vis the USA et al that it would ever be. So it was time to gamble it all on one big stroke, and either secure the resources and defensive perimeter they needed to hold out, and they'd win at once or they'd lose. A month or two after Pearl Harbor many in the IJN knew they had lost.
I don't know the answer to whether China will attack or not, but the question to ask is does China's leadership believe that this is the best odds China will ever have, or do they believe that their odds will improve in the future? Sub questions:
How much has China lied about its population and economic statistics?
Pearl Harbor was launched when it was largely, to pinpoint one commodity, because of oil stocks. Japan needed to gain control of sufficient oil resources to fuel a modern war machine, or the war was unwinnable. Oil was the most important commodity, and Japan was running out. Today the limiting commodity for wars, especially in Asia, is people. Young Men. Without soldiers a war is unlaunchable, let alone unwinnable.
It's been whispered or assumed without comment for years, decades, that China fakes economic numbers. I've also seen persuasive and interesting conjecture that they've been faking population numbers for some times, with population peaking as early as 2004 and landing hundreds of millions lower than reported. No one has ever been able to prove anything, try collecting independent statistics on a population three times the size of the USA with no free press. It's assumed that provincial functionaries might fake the numbers to their superiors, to try to curry favor, so it might not even be clear within China what is true and what isn't. And if they've been faking growth numbers for decades, then the percentages will compound over time, who knows where they are now? Lying about a 2% increase one year is a 2% difference, lying about it every year for twenty years is closer to 50%.
If CCP leadership thinks that the population is actually much smaller, much older, and much deeper into demographic spiral than we think. So maybe they're shrinking rapidly, and need to do this before they lose their shot, maybe forever. But then, that depends on...
How does the CCP assess the future of the USA?
Does the CCP buy into HBD? Do they think that with the Passing of the Great Race, the USA is demographically doomed? If so, the CCP would be foolish to launch the war while there are still a significant number of whites on hand.
The belief is logically necessary for the CCP to launch the war now, regardless of the factual nature of the proposition. This isn't a debate on the truth value of HBD, it just matters whether the CCP believes it or not. Leaving aside China's demographics, the demographics of the USA will change. The USA would be shrinking at a pace just behind China without immigration, but the immigration is going to be different stock than the current citizenry. China will only launch the war now if they assess that the future America will have a military-age population as or more capable in the future.
At the same time, what of the million-and-one predictions of imminent American cultural, economic and governmental collapse? China must be bullish on the USA fixing its problems and reaching a new era of strength and unity if they think it's a good idea to launch the war today, and not wait another five years.
Right now China's Navy is growing faster than the American Navy, China will only launch war if they don't think that trend will continue. The USSR Navy was at one point a legitimate threat to the US Navy, today it's too far apart to even consider, it's beneath notice. China's leadership, if they believe in their project, and doubt America's, they will expect to outstrip the US Navy by more and more, not by less and less. We should expect those who dedicate their lives to rising to the top of the CCP project, to be true believers and to be confident in their project.
How Does the CCP Expect History to Turn Out?
Marxism is the science of history. It's immanentizing the Eschaton in the form of a really boring book. The CCP leadership has studied Marx, they have at least put a lot of effort into faking believing in it. Do they think Capitalism will collapse under its contradictions.
China might also believe that they have a once-in-a-generation chance to use a major crisis to break America's assabiyah, which would push towards a Taiwan invasion in October.
Pieces of evidence they'd use to support that idea-
-Escalating internal tensions in the US. We know Chinese internal press, the ones for their literati, took a lot of notice of the Texas border square-off(which might be flaring up again). Provincial governors telling the federal government to pound sand and getting away with it is, most frequently, the death knell of state capacity(which the Chinese likely don't distinguish from cohesion). Of course Texas isn't a province and has always been a touch more jealous of on-paper states' rights that in other cases get ignored, but China has identified conservative-American resentment towards liberal policies pushed or enabled by the federal government as a major seam to break open American societal cohesion since the 80s, with America Against America. The Trump conviction will likely strengthen the idea among senior CCP analysts that liberal-conservative tensions in American society represent a major weakness which can be exploited to neutralize their main rival.
-The Ukraine war is controversial in American society, and the CCP might identify the unpopularity of helping Ukraine- and partisan split- as a key indicator that invading Taiwan is something they can get away with, and which would worsen American society's internal tensions rather than causing a rally around the flag effect.
-The best time this year for red China to attack Taiwan is, quite literally, a few weeks before the general election. This is a major political factor with unpredictable effects on the American response; if the CCP thinks they can sail around an aircraft carrier without engaging directly(and we can assume the PLAN has sufficient discipline to avoid starting a firefight with even very annoying American forces that aren't engaged in hostilities), then they probably anticipate being able to use the election to gum up any potential US response until Chinese troops have captured Taipei.
-Taiwan semiconductors is 1000% the most valuable thing on that island. Gaining control of it before America manages to establish its own alternative version gives China a crucial edge for however long it takes America to build its own version, and might be worth Japan's building a nuke.
But still, within that observation, China must then believe that this is the nadir of USA unity, that post-2024 election things are going to turn around. That Ukraine is gonna hold out and provide a few thousand bored veterans to fight wherever there's dollars, NATO is gonna gel-together around successful leadership under old-man-Biden.
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I agree with your observations of internal tensions in the US, but think that they admit the exact opposite interpretation. Sometimes governments welcome a war because it rallies their country behind them and allows them to crack down on internal dissent. The classic example is the 1871 unification of Germany. As Wikipedia puts it
The prominent example for British and Argentinians is the invasion of the Falklands. Again, Wikipedia offers a blistering quote
The idea that a successful foreign war can rescue a flailing regime or unify a fragmented county, is common. Chinese war planners may actively decide against throwing a lifeline to a failing US by gifting them a foreign war. Much wiser to wait patiently for the US to self destruct to the point that they lose interest in Taiwan. Without US protection, Taiwan may be persuaded to give up without a fight.
Totally in agreement that a China war could also rescue the USA from our internal tensions. Starting a fight with Taiwan is, from the Chinese perspective, a high risk maneuver. But until the USS George Washington sinks, will such a war have a rally around the flag effect? China might be banking on the opposite- that initial US reactions will be some kind of controversial halfway option, and China can avoid escalating to a full blown war. See Ukraine.
In depends on what Chinese intelligence says about American planning for response to a Taiwan invasion, I’d guess.
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Xi is openly a Marxist-Leninist. Deng acknowledged what many ML economists had already done (and even what Lenin had with the aborted NEP), which was that the ‘capitalist stage’ had to be fully completed in order to drive down the marginal cost of production before ‘full socialism’ could be implemented from each according to ability to each according to need. There was no fundamental reason why one revolutionary party could not guide and indeed manage the entire transition from feudalism or early stage, largely agricultural capitalism to communism, including through the majority of the capitalist state, provided it avoided corruption and remained steadfast in its belief that - once capitalism had done its job - communism would be faithfully implemented in service of the people.
This is the genuine majority view among senior cadres in the CCP.
The extent to which the Chinese believe in HBD is hard to gauge. Certainly ethnic stereotypes of all kinds are common. Nevertheless, the CCP is anti racist, party cadres are taught what is effectively blank-statism in school, research into related evo-psych topics is largely suppressed, even if it is not as immediately cancellable as it is in the US. For 30 years Very Smart Western midwits have pushed the idea that “nah, these guys aren’t really Marxists, they’re mercenaries, they believe in China but not some ideology that a German Jewish journalist came up with 170 years ago, they don’t really believe”. No, they really, really do.
That would make the best time to strike, presumably, the very point at which the contradictions of capitalism become most elevated. Perhaps AI related mass unemployment, who knows? At that point, the US and Western capitalist countries would struggle for an ideology, a path, would be wracked by ideological violence and division. The CCP would simply calmly and peacefully execute the transition they’ve been preparing for all along. Do they believe it will be soon, though? After all, the CCP might not be LW-type singularity believers. Xi did say ten generations, and he’s the fifth generation of party leadership, so that suggests quite a few more.
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Everyone in the West sort of assumes that Chinese numbers are fake. There are Chinese companies trading on the NYSE where the net cash on the balance sheet is more than 2x the market cap of the company. If people believed the numbers, this would be almost impossible.
I think the numbers are mostly real. Go to Walmart. Everything is made in China. This is not so easy to fake. And if you look at international trade (also mostly impossible to fake) you will see China dominates the imports of nearly every other country.
https://www.trademap.org/Index.aspx
Not impossible. The price of shares is the expected value to the shareholder of holding the shares. The assumption is that the CCP won't let that cash be paid out to Western shareholders, not necessarily that they don't have the cash.
The CCP has no issues with Chinese companies paying dividends, even substantial ones, to Western shareholders. They’re more suspicious and much more reluctant around actual acquisitions of Chinese companies.
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Do you have a specific example you could point to?
Here's one, although the price went up a little so it has slightly less than 2x net cash/market cap right now.
https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/DQ/balance-sheet
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