jwb

I know people might quibble over whether China actually is communist but when he says communism he's referring to the Soviet influenced form of Marxist Leninist authoritarianism that China has modeled itself after.

Basic gist of the video is that inland China serves as a strategic buffer for the more prosperous coast despite being economically depressed and inhabited by ethnic minorities that the CCP looks down on... They have to subsidize the interior door the sake of national security even though there is nothing else that truly ties those regions to coastal China.

It's a similar dynamic in a way to the reason the Russians/soviets invested in building those cities in eastern Russia along the trans Siberian rail or whatever... A lot of those cities actually cost more than they are worth in terms of getting resources etc all the way out to them. But siberia and eastern Russia serves as a sort of strategic place holder so if the country is invaded from the west they can retract eastward, as they famously did when the Nazis invaded.