CCP Will Collapse in 2-3 Years: Elmer Yuen

The communist power in Beijing will collapse in two to three years, according to the estimate of Elmer Yuen, a Hong Kong entrepreneur who is now wanted for HK$ 1 million ($127,600) in the city.

The 74-year-old industrialist is now touring around the world campaigning for a Hong Kong parliament that can take over the former British colony after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) falls.

Mr. Yuen, now living in the United States, was one of the first three Hong Kong businessmen the CCP chose to enter mainland China in the 1970s. His watch business, Tele-Art, is the first Hong Kong-owned company to list in the United States. The company also once gave a watch factory to China's Guangdong Province as a gift.

Yuen gained more reputation in the 2019-2020 Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, which saw millions of people stand out to oppose the CCP’s erasure of Hong Kong’s self-rule, leading to the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong authorities imposing “National Security Law” on the city in 2020—essentially extending the political repression in mainland China to Hong Kong.

Beijing Has Huge Debts Building

The main contributor to the CCP’s fall is its financial debts, according to Mr. Yuen.

“We must look at China in this big picture. The big picture is the whole country is bankrupt. If China is one company, it’s bankrupt,” he said.

The former businessman explained that his definition of bankrupt is failing to pay the debt.

“My definition of bankruptcy, for example, is you owe a lot of money to the bank, you cannot pay the interest, and you cannot pay the principal back; that’s basically bankrupt. This is the situation in China.”

China’s external debt was about $2.45 trillion in December 2022, according to CEIC Data.

Mr. Yuen doesn’t buy that number. He says the figure is much higher.

“I would say they have roughly today about six trillion US dollars of debt; they only have 3 trillion of US dollars.”

China's GDP is another point of concern.

“Their GDP is a total lie… my estimate of their GDP is roughly maybe about 40 percent of what they claim,” said Yuen. “They claim their GDP is about 18 trillion US dollars. I think their GDP should be around six to seven trillion.”

Low Population and High Unemployment

The lack of population is another factor contributing to the regime’s collapse, Mr. Yuen argued.

“They claim [they have] 1.4 billion people. My estimate is they have less than one [billion],” he said. “You need people to work to pay off the debt. Right?”

What makes things worse is unemployment.

In contrast to China’s National Bureau of Statistics figure of 21 percent, one Beijing scholar has published her youth unemployment finding of 46.5 percent, which has triggered strong public concern.

“My number is 500 million people unemployed,” said Mr. Yuen. “Because they consider everybody working in the rural area as farming… in the rural area, I believe [there’re] about 300 million [unemployed people] and in the urban area [it’s] 200 million.

“So now with all these problems, not enough population, so much unemployment, higher debt, and lower GDP, all these things adding up, they’ll be uncomfortable.”

The industrialist believes that by the winter of 2023, there will be people starving and freezing to death.

“That’s why it won’t last for two to three years.”

Diverse Opinions Among Sydney Scholars

The dire prediction of the regime’s longevity has triggered different opinions from China experts based in Sydney.

“I’m sceptical about an imminent collapse in the CCP’s hold on power,” James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

“It’s one of those things that cannot, of course, be entirely discounted, but I’m seeing very little hard evidence pointing in that direction right now.”

Mr. Laurenceson said similar predictions before have failed to come true.

“The track record of previous predictions along these lines has been dismal.”

‘CCP May Collapse Anytime’: Former History Professor

However, Li Yuanhua, an associate professor in history education at Beijing’s Capital Normal University, who now resides in Sydney, believes that it may not even take that long for the CCP to end.

“It can collapse anytime,” he told The Epoch Times on Aug. 11. “It acts like a bully.”

Mr. Li referred to the massive flooding overflow in Beijing this month. The surge has been blamed for submerging Zhuozhou, a city bordering Beijing in the southwest, as local officials vowed to safeguard the capital and the new political hub of Xiong’an from the floodwaters.

“It is nonsense to say that this rain is the worst in a hundred years. It’s not that much rain at all,” he said, referring to the domestic news report in China.

Other than the economic depression, low population, and high unemployment mentioned, Mr. Li also pointed to the real estate industry, which has seen Country Garden, one of China’s largest property developers, in hot water.

“Same thing for Evergrande... In fact, these real estate [projects] have long been about to go bankrupt, but the authorities are afraid of too big a chain reaction, so they have been letting them hang on there,” he said.

Regarding the military, the former professor who lived in Beijing said that nearly all officers in the CCP military have now bought their posts.

“They want to make money after buying the official positions… It’s not like they want to defend the motherland,” he said.

“That’s why Xi Jinping doesn’t have anyone he can trust… If someone else gives him more money, he can betray you… It’s all different interest groups… It’s corrupted to the top.”

Li concluded that being unable to function correctly, the current Chinese society is living in a suspended state.

“Any incident. Either wind or rain comes, and [the country] could be paralyzed.”