Topic: news China’s International Image and Influence: What Foreigners “Really” Think

The Chinese have an idiom that is something like, foreign invasion and internal revolt; it means the end of a dynasty. To think of China in long periods of peace punctuated by conflict and disaster is totally incorrect. Throughout history, China has only had one extended period of peace: The Tang Dynasty. Literally every other time in the history of this country, there were invasions, revolts, wars, diplomatic shuffles, internal squabbling, corruption, ineptitude, famine, flood and regicide. China's enemies are not the Japanese or the Mongols. The only real enemy China has is itself. The Mongol armies killed far fewer than the Song Dynasty's incompetence in governance and diplomacy. More people died under Mao Zedong's leadership than all of World War II combined. What history has proven time and again is that China falls to minor neighboring powers like the Jurchens and the Khitan not because of military superiority, but because failed statehood has been a genuine threat in nearly every Chinese generation. Even now, with monthly, even weekly terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, land grabs by corrupt politicians (who knows how many actually turned up dead by a farmer with nothing to lose), unpopular policies like internet censorship and insanely high taxation, liquidity crunches in the banks so no one but the top 1% can get credit and a housing market that prevents all but the wealthiest among us to buy a home. Politicians can force children into patriotism classes all they want, it still won't prevent the people from throwing them under the bus given the chance for a bigger slice of the pie. Some foreigners fear the tiger, but I think most of us expats in China know its made of paper.