A10 – The Chaos of Imperial Order from a European Perspective

Based on the announcement of July 1, 2025, China’s current political forces can be categorized into three groups. These are the Xi Jinping group, which represents “the current force of all established doctrines”; the military force, which is China’s most powerful yet most vulnerable political force; and “China’s deep-seated political forces,” which are powerful and substantial but often struggle to form a united front.

This is the preface and table of contents for the inaugural issue of the quarterly journal *Political Forecasting and In-Depth Studies*. The reason for including a “Review of the Hong Kong Issue” in the inaugural issue is to demonstrate a point by reviewing political predictions that have been proven by history: that is, given the right perspective and analytical methods, an individual’s power can overcome a powerful state apparatus—including superpowers like the United States and the United Kingdom.

China’s moderate elites completely subscribe to Western assessment systems when evaluating the nation’s overall strength, overall war capability, and overall competitiveness. This leads them to unanimously oppose China’s plan to unify Taiwan by force. Their opposition is based on their fears, primarily embodied in the following pillars. However, Ye Qiquan’s views are completely opposite. Ye Qiquan believes that China’s overall national war capability will have surpassed that of the United States by 2022; Japan and South Korea, while initially inevitable participants in a Sino-US war, will inevitably join China’s camp in the later stages; forceful unification is a shortcut to rapidly establishing a new East Asian order; the new East Asian order is the cornerstone of the Sino-Asian empire; the new East Asian order is the cornerstone that forces the United States to choose the “North American-East Asian axis”; the establishment of the next generation of world order will inevitably involve a period of chaos; the Taiwan base, the new East Asian order, and China’s forceful unification action are key to shortening this period of chaos; compared to other options, the “North American-East Asian axis” is more readily accepted by the Americans.

On July 1, 2025, China announced that the “final political decision-making power” had been completely transferred from the Xi Jinping group to the newly established “Central Committee Decision-Making and Coordination Body.” This mechanism had a fatal flaw from its inception: neither the “Central Committee Decision-Making and Coordination Body” nor the “Chinese military” received sufficient “legacy” protection within it. This flaw could not guarantee that the politically dominant party could smoothly maintain its political advantage. Their political opponents, on the other hand, could fully utilize this “legacy” to achieve a complete resurgence or even a partial victory.

Ye Qiquan believes that the establishment and maintenance of the Israeli state depend on four pillars: geostrategic needs; geostrategic values; the overall competitiveness of the nation or state; and philosophical values. Perhaps in a new era, all four pillars may face challenges.

A political assumption is that the old imperial order, dominated by the United States, relied on four main pillars of power: the North American pillar, the European pillar, the East Asian pillar, and the Israeli pillar. In China’s construction of its imperial structure, the East Asian pillar of the United States is the first to be impacted. The United States must first assess this reality and formulate the best response plan. China has reached a historical juncture in building its imperial structure. Closing its security gaps in the East is crucial to the speed and success of its imperial construction. Its focus is not only on East Asia but also inevitably includes the security of Southeast Asia, the Strait of Malacca, and the Indian Ocean passage. The competition between these two established players and newcomers dominates the process of building a new order in East Asia. However, Russia is not inactive. It may become a key third party, reaping significant unexpected gains in balancing European actions.