INTERVIEW/China on path to state collapse like in 'Yellow Peril': Chinese dissident

Taipei, May 30 (CNA) China is unlikely to avoid state collapse in the future, as portrayed in the novel "Yellow Peril" (黃禍) which depicts a civil war in China involving Taiwan and having global fallout, prominent Chinese author and dissident Wang Lixiong (王力雄) told CNA in a recent interview.

China's future is not hopeless, but the path to any solution is fraught with obstacles, making a collapse like the one depicted in "Yellow Peril" hard to avoid, the author of the novel said in an interview with CNA in mid-May in Shanghai.

"No one knows what the last straw will be -- it could well be internal power struggles or a wave of recurring mass incidents," said Wang, who has been banned from leaving China since 2015 due to his status as a dissident.

Set amid natural disasters and political strife, the Chinese-language political allegory "Yellow Peril" imagines China's collapse triggering global chaos. Banned in China since its release in 1991, the novel offers a stark look at how civil war and nuclear conflict in China could reshape the world, with Taiwan caught in the crossfire.

Widely circulated among Chinese readers outside China, the book was translated into English in 2008 under the title "China Tidal Wave."

A prediction mocked

Since the release of "Yellow Peril," many have dismissed Wang's prediction of a collapse that would lead to a mass exodus of people, noting that nearly 35 years have passed without China falling apart. Between the late 1990s and early 2010s, the country's economy even experienced rapid growth.

However, the 72-year-old shrugs off those who mock him for the failed prediction, saying that 30 years is just the blink of an eye in history.

"When it comes to history," he said, "there's no point guessing when something will happen -- it's not something we can control."

To Wang, an activist who once promoted his self-devised model of "bottom-up democracy" in China, the country's current political system is doomed to collapse suddenly. "It will be a collapse through abrupt upheaval -- there is no other way," he said.

"It [China] has no ability to recognize its own problems, no framework for gradual reform or change," Wang explained. "There is neither the possibility nor the mechanism for such transformation, and collapse is therefore its destiny."

The "Sandpile Theory"

In his new book "Suracuse and Plato in China" (中國的敘拉古與柏拉圖), released by a Japanese publisher, Wang introduces the "Sandpile Theory," which suggests that a sandpile can collapse at any time -- and while someone may temporarily stabilize it by patting around the edges, that stability cannot last forever.

"The higher it stands, the harder it falls -- and China is no exception," he added.

For him, collapse will come suddenly, maybe in a decade or two, or even after a century. "100 years is just the blink of an eye in history, and it hardly counts for anything," Wang noted.

In Shanghai, an important financial hub in modern China, it is hard to associate the scenes of societal collapse and food shortages depicted in "Yellow Peril" with a city where street-side cafés and restaurants attract customers who leisurely enjoy their time despite recent economic upheaval.

Wang said the key is not how most ordinary citizens live in the country of over 1.4 billion people. "If 10 or 20 million people in China start looting and blocking logistics on the streets and in rural areas, and there are only 2 million troops in the entire country -- what will happen then?" he asked.

Those looters, Wang said, could be people in China who feel abandoned -- such as the unemployed in cities who are not able to return to rural areas, or those who feel resentful and treated unfairly.

A single spark can start a prairie fire

Those abandoned by society may be scattered for now, but a single event could spark collective action, Wang said.

Asked for examples, he cited the mourning-triggered mass protests following the death of former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) in 1976 -- which led to the April 5 Tiananmen Incident -- and that of former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦) in 1989, which sparked a two-month protest that ultimately ended in the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre.

As for grassroots-level officials who are supposed to maintain local order, Wang said they know they are targets of public anger and are well aware of when to abandon their posts rather than try to govern discontented citizens.

Once those officials flee, things will quickly spiral out of control, he said, noting, "If just a few hundred such incidents happen across China, the unrest will spread immediately."

The Chinese authorities' response to the "White Paper Movement" in 2022 -- a series of nationwide protests against strict COVID-19 controls -- by banning cross-province coordination and cracking down on visible dissent reflected their deep anxiety about such instability, Wang added.

With China now facing fiscal strain that may limit what it can spend on maintaining stability and preventing state collapse, Wang said the path toward the scenario depicted in "Yellow Peril" is "extremely clear."

"It is already heading in that direction," he added.