Written on May 16, 2019, this essay, based on remarks by Edward Luttwak published in the monthly magazine HANADA, discusses the strengthening of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship, the South China Sea issue, the decline of pro-China “panda huggers,” and the hardening stance toward China among military, technology, diplomatic, and human-rights circles in the United States, reading these as signs of the coming collapse of the Chinese regime.

2019-05-16
Americans can endure being kicked and insulted to a certain extent, but they cannot forgive being lied to or having promises broken.
The chapter I published on 2018-11-05 under the title, “Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs too was probably half panda huggers,” has entered the real-time top ten.
The following is a continuation of the piece published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine HANADA under the title, “China Will Without Question Collapse as a Regime,” by E. Luttwak, Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, interviewed and structured by Shinji Okuyama.
Xi Jinping’s “Worst Decision”
First, the military lobby, instead of pursuing obscure terrorists with names like Abdullah and Mohammed in the remote mountains of Africa, people no one cared about, began to target China.
Then the technology lobby joined in, and then the diplomatic lobby as well.
The lineup was complete.
As of ten years ago, 70 to 80 percent of the diplomatic lobby were the pro-China group known as “panda huggers.”
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs too was probably half panda huggers.
They believed that “if China achieved economic growth, it would democratize, and its foreign policy too would begin to pursue international cooperation,” and therefore, as Japan’s policy as well, “there is no need to be harsh with China, and it is enough to support it so that it moves in the right direction.”
But now, there is no one who believes that anymore.
In China, internal repression has become harsher.
A typical sign of this can also be seen in the Politburo Standing Committee.
In the past, at least in principle, all nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee were equal.
Each of them could freely hear opinions from advisers such as professors from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, but under the current seven-man system of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship, the only one able to do this is Wang Huning, the theorist who is close to Xi.
China’s conduct has also worsened on the diplomatic front, and the typical example of this is the matter of the South China Sea.
In 2015, Xi Jinping flatly told Susan Rice, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and a representative American panda hugger, that “China will not militarize the South China Sea,” but this was the worst possible decision.
Americans can endure being kicked and insulted to a certain extent, but they cannot forgive being lied to or having promises broken.
Recent cases, such as that of a Chinese intellectual close to the Beijing government who visited Washington, D.C. and was stopped by FBI agents at the airport just before departure and ordered to report all the people he had met and the dates of those meetings, show that the tightening of the U.S. government toward China has begun.
Furthermore, the human-rights lobby joins this as well.
In fact, their influence on foreign policy is almost nonexistent, but even if incidents that alarm the military and technology lobbies were not happening every day, in China human-rights problems continue daily, including in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet, and the detention of lawyers.
They regard these matters as serious problems.
This essay will continue.