The balloon fiasco launched by The Center of Everything (“China” in English) is turning into a monster embarrassment for Xi Jinping. He was clearly caught off guard by The Center’s military which launched the balloon, and apparently many others, without synching up with him.
The U.S. knew way more. It tracked the balloon from its launch on Hainan Island on January 20th. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was to visit China two weeks later on February 3-5 to meet with Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Xi himself, in an attempt to diffuse rising tensions between the two countries. The Party hierarchy, apparently ignorant of the balloon, kept planning for the meeting.
On January 24th, nine days before the Qin-Blinken meeting, climate change forced the balloon off course. And on course to traverse North America. The U.S. knew immediately.
The Center had plenty of time to deal with this coming crisis and save face. For example, it could have called U.S. authorities on the hot line, warned them of the misplaced balloon and even asked for help in redirecting it, if possible.
Instead, The People’s Liberation Army Airforce, which launched the balloon, decided to keep quiet, sending Xi and his team into a trap and the monster embarrassment that came with it. Or, perhaps worse, the PLA does not have the technology to track its intelligence balloons and did not know the risks it was taking. Management collapse on a massive scale and a clear demonstration—rather like Putin in Ukraine—of The Party’s limitations and incapacity. Leaving Xi to pay the price.
The balloon entered U.S. airspace off Alaska on January 28th, a week before the Blinken-Qin meeting. Still no face-saving moves by The Center.
On February 1st, it was spotted over Montana by civilians, no NORAD detection required. Xi and his cohorts were clearly stunned and humiliated by this discovery. On February 3, Blinken cancelled his trip to The Center, pushing Xi further off the center of the world stage. An immense loss of face from which he may never recover.
This staggering ineptitude on the part of Center leadership adds to what we have seen in the Covid and property development crises there. Party leadership is confused, uncertain and mismanaged. As Publius warned seven years ago, it is not up to even the smallest task.
Why? The Center’s economy has long ago outrun the ability of The Party’s early 20th century Mussolini system to manage it.
A perfect example is ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence engine that Microsoft plans to embed in all its products worldwide. ChatGPT happily spews out detailed criticism of Xi’s Uighur and Covid policies on request. It can never be allowed in The Center. But how can The Center proceed without ChatGPT and its AI progeny?
The balloon embarrassment shows that The Party at the center of The Center cannot see the way forward, understands nothing of the dynamics of modern information flows.
We may be seeing the end of Xi.
To save himself, he will invade Taiwan. Layer the balloon mismanagement fiasco onto this war and you can see what lies ahead.
For us all.
Only 6 days after this was published, Colin Kohl, U.S. under secretary of defense for policy agreed 100% with Publius' thinking and conclusions. Amazing!