Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

To make matters worse, China’s territory does not naturally hold together. The political core and most of the country’s farmland are concentrated on the North China Plain, a flood- and drought-prone area that suffered several millennia of brutal warfare among dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of warlords. Most of China’s freshwater and harbors are located in the south, where they are separated from the rest of the country by thick jungles and rolling highlands. Many major southern coastal cities have had extended periods where they did more business with foreign merchants than with their ostensible compatriots in the north. Finally, the bulk of China’s minerals and the headlands of its major rivers are located in the west, an area that comprises 75 percent of China’s landmass and consists mostly of desert, tundra, or the tallest mountains on earth. In the past, these regions were vectors for invasion and upheaval. To this day, they are full of minorities that do not consider themselves Chinese and resist Beijing’s rule.