After the CCP Collapses: Is the Free World Ready? An Autocracy's Fall Does Not Mean Democracy's Arrival [Zhiding Lecture Hall · Enlightenment Forum · Miles Yu] EP272

This video is presented by Miles Yu, exploring whether the free world is prepared if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were to suddenly collapse. By reviewing the 1989 Eastern European revolutions, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the transition experiences of countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia, the article points out that the collapse of an authoritarian regime does not automatically lead to democracy; instead, it could trigger nuclear proliferation, economic collapse, refugee crises, or civil war. The speaker calls on the United States and other democratic nations to establish cross-departmental contingency mechanisms in advance to assist the Chinese people in making full preparations regarding the protection of state assets, transitional justice, and constitutional reconstruction, so as to prevent the emergence of Russian-style oligarchic monopolies and avoid being caught off guard by history again.

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Welcome to the Enlightenment Forum of the Zhiding Lecture Hall, I am Miles Yu. The greatest strategic challenge China poses to the world is perhaps not what will happen if the Chinese Communist Party succeeds, but what the world will face if it suddenly fails and collapses. For decades, Western policy toward China has been built almost entirely on one basic assumption: that the CCP will exist for a long time and become a permanent factor in international politics. Therefore, we study how to contain its military expansion, counter economic coercion, protect critical technologies and supply chains, defend Taiwan, and compete with Beijing for global influence. But we rarely seriously consider another possibility: what if the CCP does not gradually decline, but suddenly collapses? This is a dangerous lack of imagination. History has repeatedly proven that seemingly unbreakable authoritarian regimes often disappear suddenly at an astonishing speed. In 1989, six communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed one after another within a few months, and the Berlin Wall, which symbolized the division of the Cold War, fell almost overnight. Two years later, the once invincible Soviet Union also disappeared from the world map.

As pointed out in a Hudson Institute report titled: "China After the CCP: Preparing for the Post-CCP Era," although the People's Republic of China has survived various crises, the sudden collapse of the world's longest-ruling communist dictatorship and the world's second-largest economy is by no means unimaginable, and its consequences would far exceed China itself. China possesses nuclear weapons, one of the world's largest standing armies, a massive security and intelligence apparatus, advanced biological laboratories, giant state-owned enterprises, critical financial institutions, and supply chains deeply embedded in the global economy. Once central authority suddenly disintegrates, crises involving military, financial, humanitarian, political, and weapons of mass destruction proliferation could erupt simultaneously. Who will control the nuclear arsenal? Who will command the People's Liberation Army? Who will take over the People's Armed Police, the militia, the Ministry of State Security, and the vast domestic surveillance machine? Who will ensure the security of dangerous biological facilities? Who will prevent local military commanders or security chiefs from carving out territories and evolving into warlords? What about the Renminbi? How will China's banks, national debt, state-owned enterprises, foreign exchange reserves, and trillions of dollars in domestic assets be handled?

Political issues are even more thorny. What will happen in Tibet and Xinjiang? Ethnic revenge, or an immediate declaration of independence? Where will Hong Kong go? How will a new government handle the Taiwan issue? How should the nearly 100 million CCP members be dealt with? How should political crimes left over from the era of Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping—such as the Tiananmen crackdown, religious persecution, mass surveillance, forced labor, and other human rights violations—be investigated and held accountable, while avoiding turning justice into revenge? These questions cannot wait until the CCP collapses to be considered; by the time that day arrives, it may be too late to prepare. The most important lesson from most 20th-century regime transitions is that preparation determines success or failure. When Poland entered its transition in 1989, it already possessed a condition that Russia later clearly lacked: a civil society that was organized, capable, and served as an alternative center of political legitimacy. Through years of effort, the Solidarity trade union built a vast network of intellectuals, workers, economists, lawyers, clergy, and political activists. Before the communist regime actually fell, economists associated with Solidarity had already begun serious discussions on monetary stability, property rights, market institutions, and economic transformation. The subsequent Balcerowicz reforms, while rapid and painful, were not cobbled together in a political vacuum, but were built upon organized opposition, social legitimacy, and a relatively clear institutional direction.

Czechoslovakia also had the Charter 77 and a long-standing network of dissidents who had spent years thinking about human rights, politics, responsibility, historical truth, and the moral foundations of government rule. Therefore, when the communist regime collapsed, these networks immediately provided talent, mutual trust, and political legitimacy for President Václav Havel and the Civic Forum. The same was true for East Germany; as the regime began to disintegrate, the opposition and the crumbling old system quickly established a "Central Round Table" to handle free elections, the dissolution of the secret police, democratic transition, and even the drafting of a new constitution. When the first meeting was held on December 7, 1989, a working group was established to draft a new constitution. These transitions were not without pain, but the real lesson is: successful post-totalitarian reconstruction requires that talent, institutions, principles, and plans be prepared before the old system collapses. Russia demonstrated another path: when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia lacked mature democratic institutional design, an independent civil society capable of assuming governance responsibilities, and a system for the privatization of state assets with broad legitimacy or a solid constitutional consensus. As a result, economic reform became entangled with political improvisation, state wealth rapidly fell into the hands of a few oligarchs, state institutions continued to weaken, and it eventually headed toward today's nationalist authoritarian rule. Putin did not restore Soviet communism; he utilized the institutional ruins left behind after the collapse of Soviet communism.

Ukraine similarly inherited corrupt networks, oligarchy, and weak state institutions, and has spent the decades since struggling to build a more democratic and accountable state. These experiences remind us of a most basic fact: the death of an authoritarian regime does not equal the birth of a democratic system. If the same upheaval were to occur in China, the scale and consequences would be far greater. Therefore, the Hudson Institute report views "post-CCP era" planning as a strategic preparation, not a political fantasy. The questions it raises include: how to ensure the security of dangerous facilities and strategic weapons, stabilize the financial system, handle state assets, reorganize the People's Liberation Army and security agencies, protect vulnerable groups, open secret police archives, establish truth and reconciliation mechanisms, and ultimately initiate a new constitutional process. The United States has both a special responsibility and a special capability in this regard. After 1945, the United States did not simply celebrate victory after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan and then walk away. Together with its allies and the people of Germany and Japan, the U.S. dismantled militaristic regimes, rebuilt state institutions, restored economies, established constitutional governments, and ultimately enabled two former militaristic dictatorships to become prosperous democracies and the United States' most important allies. The post-war occupation reforms in Japan, in particular, explicitly aimed at demilitarization and democratization, and assisted in establishing a constitutional order that continues to this day.

Therefore, the United States should begin preparations now. This is not about deciding China's future for it, nor is it about imposing an American-designed government on the Chinese people. China's future can only be decided by the Chinese people themselves; however, the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, South Korea, India, and other democracies have a vital stake in ensuring that once the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) collapses, it does not immediately devolve into civil war, nuclear proliferation, financial meltdown, ethnic vengeance, or the birth of another dictatorship. Washington should establish a permanent, cross-departmental "post-CCP era" contingency planning mechanism, and work together with allies, Chinese pro-democracy advocates, economists, constitutional scholars, dissidents, religious leaders, overseas Chinese communities, and transitional justice experts to contemplate various possible scenarios. Matters that must be prepared for in advance include: securing nuclear and other strategic weapons, maintaining essential public services, stabilizing financial markets, protecting government and secret police archives, preventing mass reprisals, disbanding political police agencies, removing the military from Communist Party control, establishing legal and transparent procedures for the privatization of state-owned assets, recovering embezzled public property, establishing truth and reconciliation mechanisms, and assisting Chinese citizens in building a new constitutional order.

Of particular importance among these is the issue of state-owned assets. Russia's experience proves that privatization without democratic legitimacy can easily transform assets from "owned by all the people" to "owned by the elite." If China's trillions of dollars in state assets are carved up in a political vacuum by party and government elites, military generals, security department chiefs, or vested interest groups, a new oligarchy could quickly form upon the ruins of the old communist system. That would not be the birth of a free China, but merely the beginning of another authoritarian system. Therefore, the goal of post-CCP planning is by no means to design an "American-style China," but rather to create conditions as much as possible for the Chinese people to build a free, peaceful, rule-of-law-abiding, and constitutional China by themselves. During the Cold War, the West spent more than 40 years studying how to contain and defeat Soviet communism, yet surprisingly did very little serious preparation for what to do on the morning after if communism were to suddenly collapse. Our fortune back then lay in the fact that the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Central European countries had already done a tremendous amount of preparation for themselves. Next time, we cannot afford to leave history to luck. The CCP might continue to rule for decades, or it might suddenly collapse—at a speed that almost no expert could predict—just like the Eastern European communist regimes in 1989. We do not know when that day will come, but history does not afford us a second excuse to be caught off guard. Preparing for "China after communism" is not a "regime change" policy, let quite an incitement of chaos; on the contrary, it is about preventing the end of an authoritarian regime from devolving into an even greater disaster. This is a strategic insurance policy purchased in advance by the free world for the most consequential political emergency of the 21st century.

Welcome to the Enlightenment Forum of the Zhiding Lecture Hall. I am Miles Yu. Perhaps the greatest strategic challenge that China poses to the world is not what will happen after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) succeeds, but what the world will face if it suddenly fails and collapses. For decades, Western policy toward China has been almost entirely built on a basic assumption: the CCP will exist for a long time and become a permanent factor in international politics. Therefore, we study how to contain its military expansion, counter economic coercion, protect critical technologies and supply chains, defend Taiwan, and compete with Beijing for global influence. However, we rarely seriously consider another possibility: what if the CCP does not gradually decline, but suddenly collapses? This is a dangerous lack of imagination. History has repeatedly proven that seemingly unbreakable authoritarian regimes often disappear suddenly at an astonishing speed. In 1989, six communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed one after another within a few months. The Berlin Wall, which symbolized the division of the Cold War, fell almost overnight. Two years later, the once-mighty Soviet Union also disappeared from the world map. As pointed out in a Hudson Institute report titled 'China After Communism: Preparing for a Post-CCP Era,' although the People's Republic of China has survived through crises, the sudden collapse of the world's longest-ruling communist dictatorship and the world's second-largest economy is by no means unimaginable, and its consequences will far exceed China itself. China possesses nuclear weapons, one of the world's largest standing armies, massive security and intelligence agencies, advanced biological laboratories, giant state-owned enterprises, important financial institutions, and supply chains deeply embedded in the global economy. Once central power suddenly disintegrates, crises in military, financial, humanitarian, political, and weapons of mass destruction proliferation could erupt simultaneously. Who will control the nuclear arsenal? Who will command the People's Liberation Army, the People's Armed Police, the militia, the Ministry of State Security, and the vast domestic surveillance machine? Who will take over? Who will ensure the safety of dangerous biological facilities? Who will prevent local military commanders or security chiefs from carving out territories and evolving into warlords? What about the Renminbi? How will China's banks, national debt, state-owned enterprises, foreign exchange reserves, and trillions of dollars in domestic assets be disposed of? Political issues are even more thorny. What will happen to Tibet and Xinjiang? Racial revenge or immediate declaration of independence? Where will Hong Kong go? How will the new government handle the Taiwan issue? How will nearly 100 million CCP members be dealt with? How should political crimes left over from the Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping eras—such as the Tiananmen crackdown, religious persecutions, mass surveillance, forced labor, and other human rights violations—be investigated and held accountable while avoiding turning justice into revenge? These questions cannot wait until after the CCP collapses to be considered. By that day, it may be too late to prepare. The most important lesson from the regime transitions of the 20th century is that preparation determines success or failure. When Poland entered its transition in 1989, it already possessed a condition that Russia later clearly lacked: a civil society organized and capable of becoming an alternative center of political legitimacy. After years of hard work, Solidarity built a vast network of intellectuals, workers, economists, lawyers, clergy, and political activists. Before the communist regime actually fell, economists associated with Solidarity had already begun to seriously discuss monetary stability, property rights, market systems, and economic transition. The subsequent Balcerowicz reforms, though swift and painful, were not cobbled together in a political vacuum but were built on organized opposition, social legitimacy, and a relatively clear institutional direction. Czechoslovakia also had Charter 77 and a long-standing network of dissidents. For years, they had been thinking about human rights, political responsibility, historical truth, and the moral foundations of government rule. Therefore, when the communist regime collapsed, these networks immediately provided talent, mutual trust, and political legitimacy for President Václav Havel and the Civic Forum. The same was true for East Germany. When the regime began to disintegrate, the opposition and the crumbling old system quickly established a Central Round Table to handle free elections, dissolve the secret police, manage democratic transition, and even draft a new constitution. When the first meeting was held on December 7, 1989, a working group for drafting a new constitution was established. These transitions were not without pain; the real lesson is that successful post-totalitarian reconstruction requires the preparation of talent, systems, principles, and plans before the old system collapses. Russia demonstrated another path. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had no mature democratic system design, no independent civil society capable of assuming governance responsibilities, and lacked a system for privatizing state assets with broad legitimacy or a solid constitutional consensus. As a result, economic reform became entangled with political improvisation. State wealth quickly fell into the hands of a few oligarchs, the state system continued to weaken, and it eventually moved toward today's nationalist authoritarian rule. Putin did not restore Soviet communism; he utilized the institutional ruins left behind after the collapse of Soviet communism. Ukraine similarly inherited corrupt networks, oligarchy, and weak state institutions, and has struggled for decades to build a more democratic and accountable country. These experiences remind us of a fundamental fact: the death of an authoritarian regime does not equal the birth of a democratic system. Once such a drastic change occurs in China, the scale and consequences will be much greater. Therefore, the Hudson Institute report views post-CCP era planning as a strategic preparation rather than a political fantasy. The questions it raises include how to ensure dangerous

securing facilities and strategic weapons, stabilizing the financial system, handling the restructuring of state-owned assets, managing the People's Liberation Army and security agencies, protecting vulnerable groups, opening secret police archives, establishing truth and reconciliation mechanisms, and ultimately initiating a new constitution-making process. The United States has both a special responsibility and a special capability in this regard. After 1945, the United States did not simply celebrate victory and walk away after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire; instead, together with its allies and the peoples of Germany and Japan, the U.S. dismantled militarist systems, rebuilt national institutions, restored economies, established constitutional governments, and ultimately transformed two former militarist dictatorships into prosperous democracies and America's most important allies. Post-war occupation reforms in Japan, in particular, explicitly aimed at demilitarization and democratization while helping establish a constitutional order that endures to this day. Therefore, the United States should begin preparations now. This is not about deciding China's future for it, nor is it about imposing an American-designed government on the Chinese people—China's future can only be decided by the Chinese people themselves. However, the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, South Korea, India, and other democracies have a vital self-interest in ensuring that the collapse of the rule of the Chinese Communist Party does not immediately devolve into civil war, nuclear proliferation, financial collapse, ethnic revenge, or the birth of another dictatorship. Washington should establish a permanent, interagency post-CCP contingency planning mechanism and work together with allies, Chinese pro-democracy advocates, economists, constitutional scholars, dissidents, religious leaders, overseas Chinese communities, and transitional justice experts to contemplate various potential scenarios. Matters that must be prepared for in advance include securing nuclear and other strategic weapons, maintaining basic public services, stabilizing financial markets, protecting government and secret police archives to prevent massive revenge, disbanding political police agencies, removing the military from Communist Party control, establishing legitimate and transparent state-owned asset privatization procedures, recovering embezzled public property, establishing truth and reconciliation mechanisms, and assisting Chinese citizens in building a new constitutional order. Particularly crucial among these is the issue of state-owned assets. Russia's experience proves that privatization lacking democratic legitimacy can easily transform public ownership into ownership by the privileged elite. If China's trillions of dollars in state assets are carved up in a political vacuum by party elites, military generals, security chiefs, or vested interest groups, a new oligarchic system could rapidly form upon the ruins of the old communist regime. That would not be the birth of a free China, but merely the beginning of another authoritarian system. Therefore, the goal of post-CCP planning is by no means to design an Americanized China, but to create conditions as much as possible for the Chinese people themselves to build a free, peaceful China practicing the rule of law and constitutionalism. During the Cold War, the West spent more than 40 years studying how to contain and defeat Soviet communism, yet surprisingly did little serious preparation for what to do on the morning after if communism were to suddenly collapse. Our fortune back then was that the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Central European countries had already done a tremendous amount of preparation for themselves. Next time, we cannot afford to leave history to luck. The CCP might rule for decades more, or it might suddenly collapse—at a speed that almost no experts can predict—just like the East European communist regimes in 1989. We do not know when that day will come, but history gives us no second excuse to be caught off guard. Preparing for a post-communist China is neither a regime-change policy nor an advocacy for chaos; on the contrary, it is about preventing the end of a dictatorial regime from turning into an even greater disaster. This is a strategic insurance policy purchased in advance by the free world for the 21st century's most consequential political contingency.