To the editor:

We’re all distracted, but the world still revolves. The current leader of communist China (Xi Jinping) has amassed more power in one man since Mao. The Communist Party of China (like most socialist systems: Nazis, Maduro, Castro, Assad, North Korea, etc.) is willing to sacrifice its own people in the millions to keep itself in power as it deems necessary. (The “Great Leap Forward” all the way up to the recent COVID-19 cover up are some examples.). The Three Gorges Dam is at a danger flood stage due to massive rains and showing early signs of cracks and structural failure. The dam is the single most prestigious land-based achievement the Chinese government has to boast about. The dam is poorly constructed and effectively never had any quality control. The heavy rain season for the Yangzee and Yellow rivers (which feed the dam) have not begun yet; they start this month. If the dam fails due to flooding, it will be a PR catastrophe for the party. China is in direct (but limited for now) military conflict with its No. 1 regional threat: India. There is unrest in China as a result of economics and COVID-19, and large-scale distrust by the “people” of their government.

Given all this, it is possible to predict with some accuracy how a single individual will react to a specific set of stressors.

The following is not implausible: If over the next few months, Xi Jinping receives word from his advisors that the dam is going to fail, he may order it to be blown. Western spy agencies will be able to confirm the dam’s failure due to explosives (but not who did it). This can be his Reichstag fire and Pearl Harbor all in one. He can blame India. Millions of Chinese citizens may die downstream, the damage will be enormous.

A limited conventional war by China and Pakistan will restore Kashmir and Jammu to Pakistan, and China will gobble most of northern India. Ethnic cleansing as they are doing with the Uighur s will be whole-scale. India probably will not go nuclear, but it will certainly lose a conventional fight with China (even without Pakistan’s help).

Of course, this is all just speculation, tinfoil-hat stuff. But the Three Gorges dam in no ordinary dam, and someone with Xi Jinping’s personality must save face, in his mindset. If the dam is going to fail, he may take preemptive action to solve many problems he currently has. Nothing unites a country like a “sneak attack” to rally the people about the current government.

Ira Weinberg

Saranac Lake