Post-CCP Breakup of China

These are my long-held thoughts or speculations about post-CCP China.

Generally speaking, the longer the rule of the CCP, the more disintegration of China.

My preferred analogy is a pressure cooker that China resembles and the CCP is its lid. 

The cooker would remain intact if the steam were released constantly. The CCP wants a tight seal (e.g., riding free speech completely), so eventually the cooker will explode.  The longer the seal, the higher the pressure, hence the more fragmented the post-explosion cooker.

It was possible for China to maintain its current territory or even expand (by recovering Outer Manchuria from Russia) until 1989.  Yes, the CCP committed a lot of crimes against minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs, but it did against Hans too. It harmed Hans even more than minorities in some cases. For example, the great famine that killed 40 million Chinese had less impact in minority regions.

In the 1980s, people felt the CCP made a lot of mistakes and it started to acknowledge and correct them. It was possible then for China to have a federation like the US with regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang to have true autonomy. It is economically beneficial for landlocked Tibet and Xinjiang to have free and equal access to the much more developed coast. People across the country had a lot of optimism in the 1980s.

Let's jump to the current situation. The CCP can be finished at any moment.  If the CCP's rule ends tomorrow:

1. The chance of Xinjiang or East Turkistan independence will be almost 100%. The CCP has made it almost impossible to convince the majority of Uyghurs that they can live in harmony with Hans in one country.  However, it will not be as easy as many wish because the CCP has followed Russia's Crimea playbook - population replacement. The Han population is inching toward the majority or has already become the majority in Xinjiang. The official numbers are Han: 42%, Uyghur: 45% (2021). Hans are the overwhelming majority in some areas.
   
   
   
   
2. The chance for Tibet's independence will be 90+%.  Dalai Lama's Middle Way is a strategy to deal with the current CCP.  That strategy will likely become obsolete once the CCP is finished and independence will take its place.
   
   
   
3. Chance for Inner Mongolia to merge with Mongolia: 40%. The overwhelming majority in Inner Mongolia is Han numbering 19M. The Mongol population in Inner Mongolia is 4.3M,  and 3.4M in Mongolia. How to handle the overwhelming majority who may not support the merge? The Soviet Bloc deported 12M Germans after WWII. Can a free democratic Mongolia deport the 19M majority in the 21st century?  
   
   
   
4. Chance for Ningxia to become an independent Muslim country: 40%.  The overwhelming majority is also Han (64%). Huis account for only 35% (2.5M). There have been few Hui independence movements. There are over 11M Huis but they are all over China. Religion is probably the strongest motivation for them to seek independence.
   
   
   
5. Zhuang independence in Guangxi: 30%. Zhuangs account for 31% of the pop while Hans 62%.I have not heard any Zhuang independence movements.
   
   
   
6. Chance of Manchuria independence: 1%. Manchus ruled China for over 300 years (Qing dynasty) but they have largely been assimilated by now. There are 11M Manchus in China. I suspect most of them have more Han blood than Manchu blood and few of them can speak Manchu. They are all over China. Those in the Manchurian region account for probably about 5% of the entire population(100M). Manchurian region is the PRC's Rust Belt. I do not see any high motivation for independence.
   
   
   

There are many relatively small (prefecture or country level) minority-concentrated areas. The typical one is the well-known underdeveloped Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. I can see their strong motivation for cultural autonomy. I do not see any incentives for them to separate themselves economically from surrounding more developed neighbors and have their own army that can defend nothing realistically. They are very similar to Indian tribes in the US. Perhaps the US's tribal nation system will be their post-CCP model.

Again, the longer the CCP rules, the more resentments they will create, hence more post-CCP breakup. For example, the way the middle school dropout drives the PRC economy into the pit will incentivize the post-CCP better-developed coastal areas to sever ties with inland for economic reasons.

BTW, I think Russia will likely share the fate with China.  The longer the KGB thugs rule Russia, the more breakup post-thug-regime Russia will have.  The chance for China to take back Outer Manchuria is not zero.