The CCP has lost its competitive edge under the middle school dropout

Let me use a few historical facts to make the point that the CCP under the middle school dropout (a.k.a. General Secretary Xi) has lost its competitive edge.

It is an indisputable fact that the CCP has beaten its opponents multiple times. For example, it beat the KMT and took over China. It has been beating the US in most aspects for the past few decades.

IMHO, its success can be attributed to two factors:

1.  They do not play by rules or respect contracts/agreements while their competitors do.
2.   Pragmatism at a few critical points.

Examples for #1:

They agreed and promised everyone that they would fight the Imperial Japanese Army but instead, they colluded with the IJA and backstabbed the KMT which troops were making extraordinary sacrifices to fight the invaders. 

They promised a lot of things while trying to join the WTO by fooling the US but largely ignored them. The CCP does not even bother to abide by the very constitution devised by themselves. To the CCP, only fools follow rules in a competition.

Examples of #2:

The CCP was almost wiped out by the KMT when they strictly followed the guidelines of the Communist International controlled by the USSR. For survival, they gave the power to the despised Mao who directed the Red Army with no constraint of any ideology. The Red Army was turned into bandits doing whatever benefits them including growing and trading opium.

The most renowned CCP pragmatist is Deng who once said “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” His decision to restore the extremely popular merit-based college admission in the middle of an academic year is a classic case of his pragmatism.

The CCP touts the United Front Work as its #1 magic wand for their victories. It is unrelated to Marxism or Leninism. The UFW essentially means any cat that is useful should be used regardless of its ideology or class. You can say the UFW is institutionalized pragmatism.

Under the MSD, the CCP has maintained #1 – disregarding rules or agreements. However, this is not nearly as effective as it used to be because many countries have realized this and lost their faith in the CCP’s promises. I understand some countries still trust the CCP and the current US administration still values useless dialogs with the CCP but the general trend favors distrust of the CCP. People are increasingly leery of the UFWD.

The MSD has largely made the CCP free of pragmatism. To be pragmatic, one needs to have some capability of induction – figure out effective unorthodox ways that work based on observation or data. The MSD lacks it. 

For example, his wolf-warrior foreign policy doctrine has been counterproductive repeatedly. He seems to be unable to make a simple induction based on mountains of evidence. Instead, he doubles down on it.

We are witnessing the unfolding of another disaster resulting from his lack of induction capability – his zero-tolerance idiocy is creating mass tragedies in one place after another.

Mao and Deng acknowledged the danger of following communist doctrines dogmatically. The MSD has made dogmatism much worse by creating his own idiotic doctrines and made his entire party stick to it strictly.

In summary, the CCP has largely lost its main competitive edge under the MSD. Their best hope now is some delusional or corrupt Western politicians, soulless multinationals and capitalists continuing their engagement with the CCP mafia.