China is dangerous again: the crisis in this country will affect the rest of the world

China seems to have played enough with the capitalist economy and is again turning into a traditional bureaucratic society, as it has been for the past two thousand years, journalist Ostap Karmody writes in his publication, analyzing the latest statistics:

“This year, a record 1.58 million university graduates have signed up for the national exam to enter the civil service.

This is 53 times more than the number of those who took part in such an exam in 2001, when there were only 30 thousand applicants.

True, the rapid growth began not yesterday, but at the beginning of this century. In 2011, 1.41 million people took part in a similar exam. But after a couple of years, this number began to decline due to the anti-corruption campaign launched by the new President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping. Not that all the applicants wanted to take bribes, just for government officials the likelihood of being jailed on denunciation of ill-wishers has sharply increased.

As a result, in 2019 the number of people who took part in the exam was only 965 thousand people. But last year this figure jumped again to the level of 2011, and now it has grown again.

This is probably because an economic crisis has begun in China, economic growth has slowed sharply even according to Chinese official data, and according to unofficial data, it may already be in recession. Plus, it is possible that more frequent government attacks on large private companies and their owners play a role, some of whom are already in jail, who, like Jack Ma, who knows where, but probably under house arrest. It has become more dangerous to work in business than in the civil service.

Moreover, it has become easier to get into the civil service, because the number of officials has increased - in 2011, 1.41 million applicants applied for 13.5 thousand posts, and now 1.58 million will apply for 25,700 posts.

And that's just the central government apparatus. There are also separate posts in the provincial and municipal bureaucracy, which are also distributed on the basis of an exam. This year, about 9 million people apply for such provincial exams.

They can be understood: the highest average salary in the private sector in China belongs to IT specialists, and the average salary of a beginner IT specialist is just over $ 1,000, and the salary of a novice official in the district (!) Administration of a medium-sized city can reach $ 2,200.

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From my point of view, this news is not very good. The USSR was a bureaucratic backward country and, nevertheless, effectively spoiled life for the whole world for about 70 years.

China has a much larger population, a more efficient economic system and, probably, already a larger backlog of scientific developments - the USSR in this regard could compete with the West in two advanced areas on which all its resources were concentrated: nuclear physics and rocket science, China can now compete with the West in a significantly larger number of areas.

His transition from a capitalist model to a bureaucratic-communist model means that his involvement in international trade chains will decrease, and with it his interest in maintaining good relations with Western countries will decrease. Aggressiveness and a desire to catch up with geopolitical (and military) victories, the lag in the economy will, on the contrary, increase. Nothing good about that.

If the economy fails completely, then riots, civil war and the collapse of China into several parts at war with each other, which happens regularly in its history, will become a very real possibility. In this case, too little will seem to everyone: a civil war in a country with considerable reserves of nuclear and, probably, biological weapons is a bad prospect not only for China, but for the whole world. Not to mention the fact that in the event of a civil war, such a number of refugees will rush from China in all directions that 2016 will seem like child's play by comparison.

There are five possible options for China's development:

1. Economically developed, technologically advanced, totalitarian and aggressive country.
2. Backward poor weak empire, unable to withstand the West (like Qing in the 19th century)
3. Conglomerate of mini-states at war with each other (as from 1912 to 1949, but with probably poorly guarded nuclear and biological weapons and with a much more mobile population)
4. A huge North Korea light with advanced science and a huge technical resource.
5. A successful, liberal and economically advanced country by the world standards of its time, like the Song Empire a thousand years ago.

I would prefer option 5 - the emergence of a second highly developed and liberal (in a good way) competing global center of power would only benefit everyone, and first of all the West itself. But after Xi came to power, this option, unfortunately, became the most unlikely.

All those who write about "good news" are obviously afraid of option 1 and hope for option 2.

I personally think option 1 is not possible. A totalitarian country in the long term cannot be economically and technologically advanced, these things do not go together. It inevitably evolves to stifle economic and scientific freedom, without which no wealth and progress are possible.

In principle, 2 is not a bad option, but I think that options 3 and 4 today, unfortunately, are much more likely. The tightening of the screws that Xi is doing will not lead to quiet stagnation, but either to aggressive militarism or to a social explosion ... "