I was going to title this post “Ten Predictions for China in the Tens” but I quickly realized that no one calls the group of numbers from 10 to 19 the tens. I’m left with the problem that teens only describes the numbers from 13-19 and that thirteen is unlucky so I will probably be mauled by a bear shortly before inventing time travel and shortly after this post is published. As a bonus a collection of bad photoshops have been added for my amusement.

So without further unrelated preamble, here is what I think is likely to happen over the next decade in the sinosphere.

13. They find those missing animal heads from the summer palace….shoved up Stephen Harper’s ass. Their removal and return prompts a complete thawing of Canadian-Chinese relations and the PM’s frozen scowl.

12. Global climate change (or those damn weather “engineers”) pumps up the already incendiary temperatures in Beijing from “it’s getting hot in herre” to “how about this heat?” During one of the heat waves, the AC down at the mausoleum has a meltdown, causing someone to melt down quite literally.

11. The Ministry of Culture and Information continue their purge of the internets and all that is harmful to the healthy development of the people. Eventually they reach a point where they marvel in their own magnificence and give birth to a kind of digital vortex, blocking themselves from the internet and leading to the collapse of the great firewall. The people quickly clamor for the wall to be restored when all they find on the outside is Facebook, Twitter and clips of monkeys flinging poo on Youtube.

10. In an attempt at re-branding, Gansu province bills itself as “a dusty, hot, polluted, sparsely populated hell on earth that makes Abu Gharib seem like nirvana”. It works, and thousands of survivormen and weekend warriors flow in, trying to prove their machismo. Soon enough the wannabees and hipsters arrive, and before long, the whole province is gentrified to the point of starbucks being endemic and every new housing development having SoHo somewhere in its name.

9. Just when we thought things at Chinese bars couldn’t get any worse. A nationwide change of trends results in eurodance happy hardcore being lost to emo and the bourgeois chivas guzzling patrons replaced by sulking goth poseurs who spend the evening drinking carrot juice and writing haikus about how their lives are so miserable being only children.

8. Shanghai hosts the expo and as expected, nothing happens. With no big show to have novelty sized countdown clocks placed everywhere for, and no platform to scream “look at us, look at how developed and modern we are!!!”, China installs the reigning British monarch (King Harry) as head of state so that it can host the Commonwealth games in 2018.

7. Starcraft 2 is released, Korea gets caught with its pants down, and China takes over. Shortly after, Happy Farm 2 is released, China gets caught with its pants down, and Korea takes over. Shortly after, Diablo 3 gets released, and I stop caring about everything else.

6. Oil peaks out and the price per barrel sky rockets. Chinese food becomes magically more delicious, nutritious and popular overnight.

5. The Ministry of Propaganda finally realizes what it’s name means, and while trying to redeem itself in one of those moves that makes you want to punch yourself in the face with both fists simultaneously, it buys out News Corp. and renames itself 福克斯新闻.

4. The hatchet is finally buried with Japan after the Island nation convinces the Chinese Politburo members to ditch their phony dye jobs and combovers for a retroactive Koizumi hair comeback, thereby ensuring a popularity revival for the party (Japan also includes an unspecified number of sex robots to sweeten the deal).

3. The film industry exhausts every conceivable combination of historical costume drama story it can think up. Still being banned from covering most of the events of the 20th century it is forced to go where no Chinese have gone before…into space! Dragon shaped space ships are launched into the heavens to search out new foreign worlds and new foreign friends. Over Tsingtaos and forced Zhongnanhais they’ll insist to every alien race how they’ll never understand the glories of the past 5000 years of Chinese inventions and culture, then go on to explain it all anyway.

2. After surpassing the USA in the number of vehicles in daily use, it doesn’t take long for the entire road network to make a Walmart parking lot on Black Friday look like a model of peace and order. The central planners decide to do what the USA never had the balls to do, bring the flying car to the masses. Within mere hours of the scheme’s introduction it becomes clear why the States never followed through - people can’t even handle driving in two dimensions, adding a third was pandemonium. After this fiasco, China follows up by going with Europe’s tried and true method, and simply raises the gas taxes and toll fees to the point where only the rich can afford to drive.

1. I become fluent enough in Chinese to convince the masses the country needs it’s own Obama. In a landslide victory I become the first democratically elected foreigner to be paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China on promises of reviving long buried customs, arts and culture. My “Humble Hop Backwards” is unfortunately marred in bureaucratic red tape. I try get things right the second time with my Dawkins inspired followup: the Cult of the Evolution. Stuff starts to go awry sometime after I order all the happy farms to be seized and returned to the urban elite. A revolt ensues, and I’m forced into hiding with the ghost of Yan Xishan, Edison Chen and Tiger Woods. Luckily there’s a couple crates full of Erguotou, which we drink mercilessly into the night. I awake with a hangover but thankful it was all a dream, and firing up my computer to check the news on the net I notice a new photo scandal involving Edison Chen and……goddamn.

Filed under: dragons