The Coming Collapse of China

The Coming Collapse of China

Author	Gordon G. Chang
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	China
Publication date	2001
ISBN	978-0812977561
OCLC	45636911

The Coming Collapse of China is a book by Gordon G. Chang, published in 2001, in which he argues that the Communist Party of China (CPC) is the root cause of many of the People's Republic of China's problems and will cause its collapse in the near future. His book also made specific forecasts on the year that the Communist Party would collapse. Chang insisted that it would occur in year 2011. When 2011 was almost over, Chang admitted that his prediction was wrong but said he was only off by a year. On 29 December 2011, Chang asserted in the Foreign Policy magazine, "Instead of 2011, the mighty Communist Party of China will fall in 2012. Bet on it." Consequently he made Foreign Policy's "10 worst predictions of the year" twice when his prediction proved wrong again.^[1][2][3]

Summary[]

In the introduction of his first edition published in 2001, Gordon G. Chang, an American lawyer, predicted the following scenario:

The end of the modern Chinese state is near. The People's Republic has five years, perhaps ten, before it falls. This book tells why.^[4]

Based on the perceived inefficiency of state-run enterprises and the inability of the CCP to build an open democratic society, Chang argues that the hidden non-performing loans of the "Big Four" Chinese state banks would likely bring down China's financial system and its communist government along with the entire country. He predicts specifically by 2011 as the year the Chinese communist party will have collapsed.^[5]

Reception[]

Dexter Roberts of Bloomberg Businessweek described the book as "Pessimism on a grand scale".^[3]

In 2002, Julia Lovell of The Observer noted that although China's entry to the World Trade Organization could provide Western investors with many new opportunities, Chang's book has "marshalled ample evidence to dampen such expectations".^[6] In 2001, Patrick Tyler of The New York Times wrote:

As Chang discovered, China is a nation of contradictions. Many of its state industries are virtually bankrupt; its banking system sits on a mountain of unrecognized bad debts; its agriculture is primitive; pollution is out of control; and government interference and corruption are killing off a number of new business ventures...

— The New York Times, September 9, 2001^[7]

Updates[]

In 2010, Chang wrote in The Christian Science Monitor that "China could fail soon" predicting an economic crash.^[8] In an article entitled "The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition", published by the Foreign Policy magazine website, Gordon G. Chang admitted that his prediction was wrong, arguing that he was off only by one year: "Instead of 2011, the mighty communist party of China will fall in 2012. Bet on it."^[9] On May 21, 2016, The National Interest published another article by Chang, "China's Coming Revolution." In it, he argued that the ruling class in China was divided and that they couldn't deal with economic problems. Chang says this would lead to a revolution which would overthrow the Communist Party. Differently from his other predictions, he didn't give the exact year these events would take place.^[10]

See also[]

• The Coming War With Japan
• The Coming Conflict with China

References[]