What's the plan?
On psychological warfare, China's defunct family-planning policy, and what makes for a real plan worth following
In commerce as well as in statecraft, deterrence can be much cheaper than conflict. Convince your rivals that they don't have the wherewithal to take you on, and you may not have to engage with them at all. One prominent way to advertise plans for deterrence is to talk openly about how much planning has been done or what preparations have already been made.
â– China has long profited from the belief that its government operates according to a 100-year plan. Prominent people have fallen for the myth time and time again, and it's quite the tool of psychological leverage.
â– However useful it may be, the 100-year plan is a false myth, easily disproven by the colossal failure that was China's One Child policy. Introduced in 1979, ruthlessly enforced, relaxed in 2013, repealed in 2015, and then replaced by active encouragement to have children today. It was a policy that defied even basic arithmetic, and one that any team looking just five or ten years ahead could have seen going awry.
â– China's government doesn't have a 100-year plan, it merely has the myth of one. Even if it tried to observe such a plan, the exercise would be for naught. In Dwight Eisenhower's words, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
â– The act of thinking through a course of action is of enormous value, but feedback is what keeps "planning" from becoming a calcified plan. A free market works because pricing is a giant feedback mechanism that tells planners what to change. Democratic voting acts the same way. It's clear those feedback mechanisms are unwelcome under Communist control. There is much good to be said for a long-term perspective, but it's only a mirage if it doesn't open its eyes and ears to respond to reality.
