Manchuria Under Chinese Strategy: The Importance of Independent Energy and Food

The CCP’s current governing logic is difficult to interpret through the lens of traditional “Tower Studies” (online Chinese political slang for power structures) or Western political economy. The counter-intuitive reality is that many of the CCP’s current policies are, to a large extent, self-destructive—acting as if they no longer care about public opinion at all. So, what do they care about?

Based on internal reference books from the 1980s and 90s, the CCP’s logic is actually more akin to that of a “local despot” or “village emperor” (similar to the “State Advances, Private Sector Retreats” described by Ma Siku). It is a crude, binary division between the Party and the commoners—much like a King and his subjects. They don’t care about developing the national economy based on local conditions or actual regional needs. Instead, they are driven by political motives: securing the Party’s survival and maintaining total control. They relentlessly launch “Grand Strategies” to develop specific regions solely to funnel interests back to the Party.

Take the First Grand Strategy as an example: the development of the Northeast during the “Mao Era.” The CCP inherited the industrial foundations left by Manchukuo to satisfy the needs of industrialization. Once those needs were met, they ceased to care whether the region lived or died (the Gao Gang incident was likely a catalyst). They dismantled industrial plants in bulk and moved them to Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan under the guise of the “Third Front Construction” because Mao sensed war was imminent. However, Manchuria’s industrial foundation was so robust that even after the late Mao-era “house-wrecking” and suppression, the Northeast remained ahead.

Then came the Second Grand Strategy: Reform and Opening-up. To grow the economy, they had to integrate into the global market, requiring investment and production. Consequently, the southeast coast—with its massive “human ore” (cheap labor) and long coastline—became the ideal new “blood bag” for the “Deng Era.” To dismantle the political discourse and large state-owned enterprises of the Northeast, they orchestrated the “Great Layoffs,” a disaster-level self-destruction program. Because the CCP found a new blood bag, your existence (in the Northeast) became irrelevant. From then until now, the booming Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) have essentially been “medical kits” and “blood bags” for the CCP, sustained by importing Western liberal capitalism. This is precisely why the Nikan (Manchu term for Han Chinese) in the YRD and PRD harbor such fear of the lands beyond the Pass (Manchuria).

On one hand, the moment the CCP no longer needs you—for instance, if export trade is halved, long-term contraction sets in, or poor capital liquidity leads to mass bankruptcy of private firms—the YRD and PRD will be abandoned at lightning speed. The Party simply does not care. Unlike Manchuria, these two deltas lack natural resources, food security, and low population density. On the other hand, although Manchuria has been bled dry, suppressed, and insulted, it has fundamentally caught its breath from its economic collapse. In the “post-CCP era,” the collapse of the two deltas will be far more painful (simply put, Manchuria’s “thirty lost years” are ending, while theirs haven’t even begun). Their competitiveness may likely fall below that of Manchuria.

The signs are already appearing. The CCP’s next move is the so-called “high-tech industry” strategy focusing on chips and Electric Vehicles (EVs), which will likely end in failure. When these hollow industries collapse, the food and energy self-sufficiency of Manchuria will become critically important. If mass unemployment leads to waves of displaced people, the lackluster production capacity of the two deltas and the Central Plains could lead to a large-scale humanitarian disaster. In such a scenario, it would not be surprising to see people starving to death.