Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
China is not the CCP. China is the monolithic bureaucracy that has been running things there for 2,200 years. Ruling dynasties have come and gone, modes of government have risen and fallen, but the heart of China's governance has just carried on.
China is patient.
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Yeah...no. The imperial bureaucracy is long gone. When the Qing dynasty was fully overthrown in 1911 after the Xinhai revolution the bureaucracy was replaced by the Republican government. What bureaucrats that might have survived the fall of the Qing certainly didn't survive the warlord era, Second World War, and Chinese civil war. The CPC didn't oust the K T until 1949, or 38 years after the fall of the Qing. There was simply no continuity of the bureaucracy during that period.
The CPC has made itself into "China". While they love to trot out the image of some sort of millennial continuity when it makes them look good it's just not true. The members of the standing committee, essentially the CPC nobility, are all descendants of cliques of Mao loyalists (or extended family thereof). The CPC defines Chinese patriotism as loyalty to the CPC, not to an independent civil government. The CPC is also in charge of the PLA so even military service isn't service to the country but to the CPC.
The heart of modern China's governance is the CPC and even ten it's really only the opinions of the standing committee that actually matter. There's no deep state of imperial bureaucrats secretly controlling China, just the CPC.