In the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, some Western pundits suggested that army factions might rebel against China’s central government. Living in Taiwan, where emotions were at a pitch, I felt this outcome to be plausible, perhaps even desirable. Over the decades since, I’ve watched commentators, many on my own conservative side of the spectrum, offer cheery dreams of the imminent collapse of communist power, or at least hopes that the facade would drop off a few storefronts of the Potemkin village. While I was living in South-Central China a few years back, a friend cited one such source from North America, and informed me that the “peasants” in inland China were desperate and half-starving. I replied that I’d walked past a “peasant” home that very afternoon, and found the family out washing the car and having a water fight. Over time, I have grown jaded in the face of flamboyantly expressed doubts that China can survive in its current political form. Joel Kotkin’s recent Quillette essay, China’s Looming Class Struggle, may …