The Collapse of the CCP: The Journey from Prediction to Preparation
The discussion of how the world should respond to the potential collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has become a necessary and important topic after a quarter of a century. The director of the Hudson Institute’s China Center, Yu Maochun, published a column titled “Why We Must Prepare for the Collapse of the CCP” in The Washington Times on September 14, 2026. The main point of the article is to urge the U.S. government and its Western allies to break the single assumption of “long-term existence of the CCP” and to develop strategic contingency plans for a potential “post-CCP era” in advance.
This article reflects the core of the special report titled “China After Communism: Preparing for the Post-CCP Era,” released by the Hudson Institute in July of the previous year, led by Yu Maochun.
The core viewpoints and warnings raised by Yu Maochun in the article include: authoritarian regimes are not necessarily invulnerable, seemingly powerful totalitarian systems may collapse in a very short period of time, as seen in the 1989 Eastern European upheavals and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union. Although the CCP is large in scale and has been in power for a long time, this does not mean it is immune to sudden collapse. If central authority of the CCP crumbles, there could be issues such as who will control the vast nuclear arsenal, the military, and security apparatus, the possibility of regional separatism, and economic issues involving state-owned assets and foreign exchange reserves. Efforts should be made to prevent a replay of the “Russian-style transition” involving “oligarchic politics” and nationalist authoritarianism.
Yu Maochun emphasizes that the future should be decided by the Chinese people themselves, and Washington and its allies should also be prepared to create conditions for a peaceful transition and prevent further disasters in times of crisis.
Yu Maochun is not the first American scholar to propose the theory of Chinese collapse. Back in 2001, American lawyer Gordon G. Chang published a book, widely known among Chinese both domestically and overseas, titled “The Coming Collapse of China,” based on his two decades of living in China and Hong Kong. Many doubted his accuracy of prediction as the predicted collapse did not occur, but the issues pointed out by Chang were indeed real.
It is believed that his predictions at the time of publishing the book, around 2011, were accurate, and many within the CCP system shared this view.
Around 2011, there was a sense of pessimism among the CCP leadership. One prominent figure reflecting this was believed to be Liu Yuan, the former Political Commissar of the General Logistics Department of the CCP, where his advisor Zhang Musheng mentioned in an interview that “we are now passing the time bomb around”, stating that “China is at its most dangerous moment.” Here, “China” evidently referred to the CCP regime.
Zhang Musheng also praised Bo Xilai for his “singing red and striking black” campaign in Chongqing, claiming it was a “means of reshaping the legitimacy of the Communist Party,” indicating that he and his affiliated factions also realized that the CCP’s legitimacy was facing a major crisis. Bo Xilai was one of the early CCP officials who recognized that the CCP’s reform and opening up had reached its limits. The development of the private economy, and even raising political demands, posed fundamental challenges to the CCP regime and system.
Bo Xilai’s responses were two-fold: the “singing red” campaign aimed to revisit his father’s, Mao Zedong’s, revolutionary era for legitimacy, while the “striking black” aimed to crackdown on the private sector to prevent demands for political reforms. It was not a personal gamble on Bo Xilai’s part. At that time, from central to provincial-level officials, nearly everyone rushed to Chongqing for enlightenment and worship because they all saw the changing winds, either agreeing with it or fearing being on the wrong side.
When Bo Xilai slapped Wang Lijun and landed himself in the Qincheng prison, Xi Jinping took over Bo Xilai’s unfinished business and pursued a Bo Xilai-style path without Bo himself, which was a logical progression.
When Gordon G. Chang wrote his book, he might have overlooked two critical factors: the massive financial transfusions the CCP received from Western developed countries after joining the WTO, and the CCP’s survival instincts.
Following Chang, in 2015, another heavyweight China expert raised a similar viewpoint.
This was David Shambaugh, a renowned American expert on China, who in March 2015, published a striking commentary in The Wall Street Journal, titled “The Coming Chinese Crackup,” shaking the international sinology and political circles. Despite being classified as a “moderate” in U.S. policy towards China, often known as the “panda hugger,” Shambaugh had always believed in the CCP’s ability to self-adjust. However, in this article, he asserted, “the endgame of CCP rule has begun, and its regression is faster than imagined.”
He listed five “ulcers” within the CCP system that were difficult to heal, including: Chinese elites and wealthy individuals transferring assets and children overseas; intensified political repression and ideological control leading to mental suffocation; pervasive insincerity and lack of loyalty among officials within the system; and facing severe systemic bottlenecks in economic structural transformation.
He believed that the collapse of the CCP is unlikely to be a peaceful, gentle “Soviet-style” coup or event, but rather a long, chaotic, and violent process. He even boldly predicted that the ousting of the top leader or a military coup amid intense power struggles was not out of the realm of possibility.
The “ulcers” listed by Shambaugh eleven years ago have not only eased but have worsened today.
To the extent that authorities have resorted to closing the country’s gates to curb the outflow of elites and wealth, the widespread moral decline due to the party-government’s crackdowns is evident. While economic recovery is relatively easier under normal circumstances, moral recovery is the most difficult.
However, the most challenging aspect is often the most hopeful one. In discussing the future of China after the collapse of the CCP, consideration of the strength of Chinese folk beliefs is essential.
Shambaugh advocates that to truly understand the real, complex China, one must focus on the “outside the Fifth Ring Road.”