chinese colony

CHINESE COLONY


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I really seriously sometimes doubt my fiction writing abilities. I don’t know if it is just because I can only devote a quarter of my mental abilities to it, already being golden chained to my non-fiction daily blog articles, or if it just needs a lot more practice ( when I first started non-fiction it was worse than bad, and now look at my supernova strength brilliance, in all modesty if I do say so myself ). I’m not complaining, it isn’t as if I’m going to starve if I don’t churn out the Bison Blathering ( that is a benefit of still working a regular job ). It is my own doing, not jumping into training myself with practice. There are various reasons for this, such as getting up there in middle age I don’t have much desire to write for ten years as practice and only then being financially compensated after I’m getting too wore down to enjoy it. Also, there is that little nagging feeling that you won’t have grid power or an Internet connection too much longer to read what I have to write. And of course, not having practiced, writing it doesn’t seem natural as does non-fiction. Why do I bring this up? I’d like to revisit my last piece of longish fiction, the black powder army dudes and their connection with Chinese trade ( I think I might have brought this up in my book Life After The Apocalypse, but honestly its been too many years since I wrote it, or read it, to remember correctly ). If I had stayed with that story, I think I could have made a pretty good case for its feasibility. Which, no, I didn’t need to bring up the connection but it killed a lot of blank space.

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When I first wrote that, I worried that I was engaged in a bit of a cop out, a mental short cut. I was giving the characters an easy way out logistically by allowing trade with China, post collapse. But I wonder if it is too fantastic to consider. China has a very long history of centralized control, overpopulation and recovery from collapse. China also has a very long history of overseas trade, conducted by Chinese immigrants with ties to the mainland. Our historical perception of Chinese in discolored by the manual laborers building the railroads and then of communism. I think that this is such an abnormal point of view that it hides their true potential. China has such a human surplus, and probably always had, that even if we perceive that all its immigrants are coolie labor, or even some Triad gangs, the actual fact is probably closer to a huge trader network. The Chinese have two very important assets as traders that will come in very handy very soon. They are their own bankers, and their family connections dictate business organizations.

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While the world financial order is imploding, the Chinese merchants can turn back ( if they ever left it ) to informal family savings and loans. And being family, there is a network of both trust and of connections. In short, the Chinese trader can go back to a decentralized way of business. Since, mostly, the Western world doesn’t have this ability, the Chinese will in very quick order, come to dominate most long distant trade. They will of course pick and choose the most profitable. And you can only hope that your area has something they really want. But if you do, perhaps you will be reconnected to the quasi-modern world as your neighbors descend into darkness. Because I wonder how much of Chinese infrastructure will actually collapse. Yes, trade will need to be downgraded. Perhaps oil will become too precious to burn for ocean crossing cargo. It might be a time before sailing infrastructure is established. But the manufacturing itself might stay intact. The Chinese are not Americans. They might rise up in protest, but there won’t be individual rebellion and anarchy. The Chinese peasants will not have personal arms, as the centralized state ( the Chinese state has always been centralized, communism just being the newest dynasty name ) monopolizes force. I don’t see the level of individually caused destruction over there. And, as all hippies have wet dreams about, China is still largely run with public transportation.

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China is still heavily blessed with coal deposits. This provides most of its needed factory electrical power. Its train system, not deteriorated like ours, can transport feed stocks to the factories. Yes, there are continuous power outages even now. But once the centralized states steps back in to micromanaging the economy, all the surplus electrical need, such as those making strategically unneeded items such as plastic toys included in breakfast cereal boxes, will be shut down and enough power will be available to critical factories. Those factories churning out items soon to be available almost no where else. Shoes and clothing, bicycles, ammunition, solar panels and the like.

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China controls large sections of the world trade NOW. It already has a monopoly on a lot of items. In the future, transporting these items will be a bottleneck, not their manufacture. China can gain control back from the mercantilists ( the company that bribes the local politician prevails ), use its vast train network and its coal, and with its current monopoly it can trade its newly depopulated southern neighbors for rice ( the transition to post collapse will see huge numbers of Chinese population starving, but there is a lot of surplus, and the peasants there still farm old school ). The population crash will benefit China. It has a lock on manufacture and can keep it, and less population means an end to pressure on food supplies. China is vulnerable now to famine, but I don’t think its “farms to factories” policy was shortsighted. The Chinese authorities are shrewdly gambling on using the last of the petroleum surplus to position themselves. Remember that figure on politicians? The US has almost all its politicians drawn from lawyers, the Chinese all from engineers. The Chinese know the realities of Peak Oil as they are realists rather than abstracters. As it stands now, after the crash, after the die-off, most of the world will return to local farming. You can’t monopolize decentralized farming. But you can monopolize modern manufacturing, which China has done. It will still be able to import surplus food, because of its monopoly position. Meanwhile, the US bravely plows ahead with its only monopoly, printing money.

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How does this effect you? Have something a Chinese trader will want ( silver is always good ). And perhaps you should have something that shoots 7.62x39.

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