Robert Kaplan, one of America's most prominent geopolitical thinkers, has called China "a black hole" for outside analysis - a system so opaque that even the world's leading experts cannot agree on what is happening inside it.
As "Hvylya" reports, Kaplan cited a recent example in his interview with Ryan Murdock: when Xi Jinping fired his military chief, expert analyses flooded Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times. "What struck me is that they all disagreed with each other," Kaplan said. "Which to me means they do not know what is going on."
Despite this opacity, Kaplan sees China's trajectory as ultimately following a familiar pattern. Communism, he argued, is "just another Chinese dynasty" - and all dynasties end. Xi is filling the bureaucracy with loyalists, but as he ages, "different tendencies and cliques will come to the fore that could provide a framework for a new and different China to emerge." Kaplan called this "not an odd event" but "a very natural, organic event."
Still, he drew a sharp line between China and Russia. China has strong institutions - a standing committee, established governance structures. If Xi fell ill tomorrow, "China would not collapse." It might experience short-term instability and dramatic changes, but the state itself would hold together. Russia, by contrast, has no such institutional backbone - making its post-leader transition far more dangerous. Former ECB president Mario Draghi has warned that Europe risks becoming "subordinated" to the agendas of both the US and China - a concern that Kaplan's analysis of Beijing's opacity only deepens.
The deeper problem, Kaplan suggested, is that the West's obsession with the present - with Xi personally - prevents serious thinking about what comes after. "Xi is in his seventies. Putin is in his seventies. Trump is not going to be around forever," he said. "The world is going to go through a tremendous transition that in many ways is unpredictable." Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan has similarly argued that current institutional structures are failing to meet the challenges of this moment.