Giving The Inscrutable East A Good Scruting

There's a good many things out there that appear incomprehensible. Some are.

Some are merely veiled.

F'rinstance the name Jiang Jemin may ring a bell. He's the guy who got Red China admitted to the WTO. He's also Shih Jinping's bitter rival and has been orchestrating a number of market crashes inside Red China with the connivance of Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and everybody's favorite last Nazi, currency manipulator, and self-hating Jew, Dr Evil. So it looks like there's a very nasty factional rivalry going on inside Old Cathay.

What makes this intriguing is that Jiang has the internal security apparatus on his side and Shih has the military. As you may have read, Shih is an old-style Maoist and wants to turn the country inward. Trouble is, he's got huge money troubles, crumbling infrastructure, a generation bomb, growing desertification, and his foreign policy provocations only seem to unite his neighbors against him. 

Then there are some problems that are understated. While most Chinese are Hans, many have other ethnic origins - Tibetans, Uighurs, and others who want their homelands independent. Yes, it's not about Islam. We're talking secessionists.

Then Shih connived to steal the US election. Now the Democrats are in bed with him. So we've got the American Left divided between 2 Communist dictators.

This will not end well.

Then there's Iran. While everybody talks about how Shih owns the current clown car over here, there's another player that is often ignored. While the Pushtuns are the major tribe in A-stan, the second largest are the Tajiks and the Taliban have been having a lot of trouble with them.

Shooting trouble.

Someone has come to back up the Tajiks and the people in their homeland of Tajikistan. Russia seems a lot less happy about the current state of affairs than one might think. While making noises about being an honest broker, Putin has been backing the Tajiks to the point of arming them. This is Russia's long-time sphere of influence, or at least desired influence. They can't be happy about Shih building bases at Bagram.

Furthermore, the Russkies and the boys in the Forbidden City have never gotten along and this may well kick new life into an old feud.

And one more little point of interest. There'll be a new movie showing in this country soon that ballyhoos a great victory by the Red Chinese over the US. It's Red Chinese. Presumably to get people  here thinking the Demos and the Reds are unstoppable.

Well, that's the way it's been hyped.

Remember Chosin Reservoir? The Reds contend they sent our guys running like frightened aardvarks. Too bad we regard it as a victory. We were overwhelmed 4 to 1 and yet fought our way out and brought our gear and wounded with us in good order. The Reds OTOH were so poorly supplied to the point they froze like the Krauts before Moscow. The 3rd and 7th Infantry Divisions and 1st Marine Division inflicted 5 times the casualties they sustained.

Does this matter? It does when Shih is talking tough about Formosa . It does when Shih is trying to bring back the bad old days of Chairman Mao. And it does when you keep in mind that the Red Chinese have never been worth much in a fight. 

They played footsie with the Nips for most of WWII. We fought them to a standstill in Korea until they had to settle for an armistice. And Inja has yet to lose a fight with them.

And you may ask why didn't the Reds ever invade Formosa instead of messing around in Korea? Stalin pushed Mao into Korea. Mao wanted to go to Formosa. The elite troops earmarked for it were decimated at Chosin

It's all of a piece.

PS The Lefties must really be mystified. The best they do with all the trolling we've done with Buck Fiden and Brandon is call it the Biden insult. I guess they're not used to having their tactics turned against them.

We're winning.