Schrödinger’s China

China is both a threat to world peace — and on the verge of collapse.

It’s the China Uncertainty Principle. A Quantum Theory of China. It’s NOT that China is rising, it’s NOT that China is collapsing, it’s NOT that China is first rising and then collapsing — it is in fact doing BOTH simultaneously.

Just as light is both a particle and a wave simultaneously, China is both rising and collapsing at the same time. When China is observed (or “watched”) by a ‘China Watcher’, it’s two states will coalesce, and China will assume the position that most suits the person’s argument.

• Schrödinger’s China: China is both a threat to world peace — and on the verge of collapse.
• Schrödinger’s Economy: The Chinese economy both has unsustainable levels of debt and risks a hard landing and is going to collapse any time now — and is also on track to overtake the US and become the largest economy in the world any time now.
• Schrödinger’s Chinese people, Part I: Chinese people are both completely brainwashed by propaganda and brainless automatons who can’t think independently — and are also so smart and intelligent that they’re taking away our jobs, our science and tech leadership, and our global dominance.
• Schrödinger’s Chinese people, Part II: Chinese people are both innocent, saintly people being crushed under the yoke of the brutal Communist regime who deserve our solidarity and sympathy — and are also dirty, filthy, unhygienic people who spread diseases and can’t be trusted
• Schrödinger’s Crisis: Every crisis in China is both subject to heavy state censorship where dissent is severely crushed — and is also “the biggest threat to the Party’s rule since Tiananmen”
• Schrödinger’s R&D: China both steals Intellectual Property — and is also investing massively in science and technology and is a threat to western tech dominance
• Schrödinger’s response to COVID-19: China’s response is both delayed and riddled with missteps — and is also an over-reaction, massive in scale, and ruthlessly effective
• Schrödinger’s Socialism: Socialism is both a bankrupt ideology that never works and has failed wherever it has been tried — and is also so powerful and dangerous that it requires massive wars, the killing of millions, and endless propaganda to prevent it from spreading
• Schrödinger’s North Korea: North Korea is both so weak and poor that it can’t even feed its people — and is also so powerful that it can hack the IT systems of the most powerful country in the world
• Schrödinger’s Xi Jinping: Xi Jinping is both “Chairman of Everything” and China’s “most authoritarian leader in decades” — and is also always facing heavy criticisms and threats to his rule
• Schrödinger’s Chinese diplomacy: China is both pushing nations away with aggressive “wolf warrior diplomacy” and coercive, arm-twisting tactics — and also increasing its influence among other nations and international organizations at the expense of the US
• Schrödinger’s Diplomat: Chinese diplomats and mandarins both think strategically 100 years ahead and play 6-dimensional chess — and are also bungling up China’s rise and stupidly picking up useless fights with other countries
• Schrödinger’s Chinese influence abroad: China is both garnering support from other nations and institutions by using economic ties as bait and coercive tactics — and is also losing allies and harming it’s international reputation due to its arm-twisting and coercive tactics
• Schrödinger’s Nationalism: China both picks up fights with neighbors and revises its history to encourage nationalism in Chinese people and distract from domestic troubles — and it is also undemocratic, authoritarian, unresponsive and doesn’t care what people think
• Schrödinger’s Chinese data: Chinese government data is both fake and cannot be trusted — and can be entirely trusted when it reveals information about “forced labour” or “re-education centers”
• Schrödinger’s East Asian Man: The East Asian Man is both emasculated, weak, subdued, geeky, nerdy, and “feminine” — and is also an insidious, threatening, cruel, evil mastermind, a Fu Manchu-style threat and a Yellow Peril that threatens our women, our jobs, and our “freedoms”
• Schrödinger’s East Asian Woman: The East Asian Woman is both submissive, docile, obedient, exotic, a China Doll and a Geisha Girl — and is also cold, domineering, ferocious, a hypersexual dominatrix, a femme fatale, a “Dragon Lady”, or a strict, disciplinary “Tiger Mother”
• Schrödinger’s Infrastructure: China’s Belt and Road Initiative is both an epic failure and riddled with debt traps — and is also a threat to the US-led global order, akin to the Marshall plan
• Schrödinger’s High-Speed Railway: China’s high-speed trains are both a waste of money, under heavy debt and white-elephant, loss-making projects — and are also a symbol of China’s breakneck progress, its undemocratic land-acquisitions and ruthless, authoritarian development model
• Schrödinger’s Education: China’s education system both encourages rote learning and stifles creativity — and is also creating future skilled workers, scientists, and engineers that are stealing our jobs and technology dominance
• Schrödinger’s Soft Power: China’s soft power is both centralized and top-down and draconian and ineffective and a waste of money — and is also a threat to academic freedom and freedom of speech
• Schrödinger’s Hong Kong: Hong Kong is both reeling under the CCP’s authoritarian, communist rule which doesn’t let it embrace western ideals and concepts — and is also riddled with extreme capitalism and utmost income inequality
• Schrödinger’s Police Brutality: Hong Kong is both a city where protestors can burn people alive, beat them, destroy and set fire to property, try to murder policemen and STILL not get killed — and also a city that suffers from massive police brutality against peaceful protestors
• Schrödinger’s Quarantines: China’s quarantine’s measures are both draconian and ineffective and an over-reaction and won’t work in democracies — and also the only way to prevent the spread of the disease and flatten the curve
• Schrödinger’s Huawei: Huawei is both a company that steals IP and is linked to the PLA and receives massive state support and is a threat to western technology — and it also wins contracts only because its products are cheap and competitive pricing, not because of quality
• Schrödinger’s Chinese Students in the US: Chinese students in the US are both spies working for China — and also relieved of finally being free from China’s authoritarian clutches, and thankful for the academic freedom and free speech in the US
• Schrödinger’s Loss of Face: China is both worried about its international reputation and “loss of face” — and it also bullies other countries and doesn’t care what the word thinks and wants to be “feared, not admired”
• Schrödinger’s Population Control: China is both concerned about an aging population and wants women to have more babies — and is also sterilizing women and preventing them from having more babies
• Schrödinger’s Genocide: China is both committing genocide against Uyghurs and wants to eradicate Uyghur culture — and is also encouraging inter-marriage between Hans and Uyghurs
• Schrödinger’s Journalists and Sinophobia: Western China correspondents and think tank analysts both spread Sinophobia — and are also surprised and shocked when Sinophobia occurs
• Schrödinger’s CCP: The CCP is both an all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent entity that governs every aspect of life in China — and is also a crumbling, weakening party being destroyed from within by dissent and pushback against the Party elite and increasing corruption
• Schrödinger’s Global Times: Global Times is both a nationalistic tabloid which nobody takes seriously — and is also to be taken extremely seriously and for its word when it threatens Taiwan or India
• Schrödinger’s Russia: Russia is both “upper Volta with missiles” with a smaller economy than Italy and a weak nation that Obama called a “regional power” — and is also an existential threat to US democracy and powerful enough to influence the outcome of US elections
• Schrödinger’s Pandemic in Xinjiang: China is both committing genocide on Uyghurs and wants to exterminate them — and is also so concerned about their lives that it overreacted and tested 4.7 million people in two (2) days after discovering one (1) asymptomatic case
• Schrödinger’s Chinese vaccines: China’s COVID vaccines are both useless and untrustworthy and are pushed through with accelerated clinical trials by cutting corners — and are also a dangerous threat to US influence and are filling a geopolitical vacuum with “vaccine diplomacy”
• Schrödinger’s RCEP: The RCEP is both a victory for China and a blow to US influence in Asia and the largest trade deal in the world — and is also largely symbolic, unambitious, patchy, overdrawn, ineffectual, and is ASEAN-led and not China-led, and is no victory for China

Original Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/MaitreyaBhakal/status/1278417596535025664