Today is the 75th Anniversary of the Communist Takeover of China. Last night, Xi gave a speech to a few thousand party members in which he praised China's advancement and warned of some rough seas ahead.

Xi, head of China’s ruling CCP, said “no difficulties can stop the Chinese people from moving forward” but called on the population to be “vigilant”, prepare for danger, and rely on the party and its army ahead of tough times.

“The road ahead will not be smooth, there will definitely be difficulties and obstacles, and we may encounter major tests such as high winds and rough seas, or even stormy waves,” said Xi, who has tightened control over the CCP and Chinese people during his rule.

It wasn't clear which danger Xi was talking about but one obvious possibility is his intention to seize control of Taiwan, which he once again vowed to do.

“It’s an irreversible trend, a cause of righteousness and the common aspiration of the people. No one can stop the march of history,” he told the thousands in attendance at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as its own, despite having never controlled it, and has vowed to “reunify” with the self-governing democracy, by force if necessary...

“Taiwan is China’s sacred territory. Blood is thicker than water, and people on both sides of the strait are connected by blood,” Xi told the banquet attended by more than 3,000 people, including officials, retired party leaders and foreign dignitaries.

The other rough seas Xi might have been referring to is the country's struggling economy. China recently announced some stimulus money to jump start the economy. The stock market has responded but relatively few Chinese people invest in the stock market. Many more were invested in real estate and there the picture remains gloomy.

In the months leading up to the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on Tuesday, the mood was encapsulated by a new buzz phrase: “the garbage time of history.” Like the final minutes of a basketball game with one team trailing so far behind that all efforts to win seem futile, some Chinese believe their country is trapped in a similarly bleak period with little hope for a turnaround.

It's going to be difficult to fill all of those empty apartments sold to Chinese buyers when the country's population has just started on a decades-long slide. The one-child policy is at least partly to blame for accelerating the trend.

The country could have as many as 90 million empty housing units, according to a tally of economists’ estimates. Assuming three people per household, that’s enough for the entire population of Brazil. 

Filling those homes would be hard enough even if China’s population were growing, but it’s not. Because of the country’s one-child policy, it is expected to fall by 204 million people over the next 30 years. 

“Fundamentally, there are not enough people to fill the homes,” said Tianlei Huang, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics...

“I don’t think the housing oversupply problem has a solution, really,” said Huang, of the Peterson Institute. “Fundamentally, it’s the problem of declining demographics. Ghost cities will remain ghostly.”

And there is some fresh evidence that, despite the stimulus money and the stock market bump, the wider economy is still in deep trouble.

The Caixin purchasing managers survey showed new manufacturing orders fell at the fastest pace in two years in September.

“Operating conditions in China’s manufacturing sector deteriorated in September after improving during August,” the report said. “Furthermore, firms lowered their hiring and purchasing activity.”

An official survey released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed a less drastic decline but it marked a fifth straight month of contraction.

Meanwhile, the Economist reports that Xi Jinping is kept awake at night by the specter of a Soviet style collapse. In China the buzzword is "nihilism" which in practice seems to mean allowing any rational criticism of the state.

At the end of 2021, around the 30th anniversary of the Soviet collapse, party officials began convening internal meetings around the country to air a five-part documentary about it. The series railed against “historical nihilism”, party-speak for criticism of the horrors of Stalinism and Maoism. It accused the Soviet leader, Nikita Khruschev, of setting the trend with his “secret speech” of 1956 denouncing Stalin’s personality cult. This “ignited the fire of nihilism”, intoned the narrator. From then on, the documentary implied, the Soviet party was living on borrowed time. The viewings continued for weeks at government offices, state-owned firms and on campuses.

In October 2022, at a five-yearly party congress, Mr Xi hinted at the anxiety that the Soviet collapse still causes among China’s elite. “We must always stay alert,” he told the gathering, “and determined to tackle the special challenges that a large party like ours faces so as to maintain the people’s support and consolidate our position as the long-term governing party”.

The phrase “special challenges of a large party” has since become a leitmotif of party propaganda, much of it referring to the experience of the Soviet party, the only other big one that China truly cares about. Since the party congress numerous books have been published with those words on the cover, including at least three this year. Academics have churned out papers on the topic. In July state television broadcast a two-part documentary on avoiding collapse, with part one on the special-challenges theme. Once again, grassroots officials organised viewings for party members.

The communist behemoth is celebrating 75 years in power in the midst of an economic crisis brought on by the party's own social meddling. Here's hoping the party doesn't see an 85th anniversary.