EclecticLip

A great piece by John Maudlin, nominally an investment-newsletter writer, on China. It offers a much better perspective on the kinds of challenges the country has faced historically. (And by extension what challenges it will likely face in the future.)

In particular, I didn’t realize that Han China effectively covers the region which receives 40+ cm of rainfall, with the other regions populated by ethnic minorities. And indeed, that the ethnic minority areas form a ring-shaped buffer around Han China (from the south, and moving clockwise: Tibet, Xinjiang (where the similarly-oppressed Uyghurs live), and Inner Mongolia. It’s not unlike the old Soviet / Russian strategy of putting up a series of satellite states as a buffer against Germany.

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Here’s a breakdown of the major areas of China, broken down by linguistic group (effectively, ethnic group)