Peter Mattis, a fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, wrote an astonishing article in The National Interest on Monday. Titled Doomsday: Preparing for China's Collapse, this article says "the mindset for dealing with China must include the ability to imagine a China without the CCP [Party] and how that outcome might develop." The author asked the US government to take precautions.

Sporadically raised, the collapse of China has become a clichéd topical issue in the Western public discourse, which takes it much less seriously. Therefore, this article, which talks about the issue in such a serious manner and even suggests the US should prepare for it, seems exceptionally odd.

Such a serious exploration of a frivolous scenario makes some Americans look like they have lost their minds. It also shows that the inevitability of China's collapse has become a fundamental idea in their philosophy. Be they well-groomed political commentators or high-ranking government officials, an obsession with this illusion has deprived them of rational and critical thinking.

There is no country which is immune from collapse. Samuel Huntington even said the US and UK were at the risk of collapse, which could happen under certain conditions.

Irrational remarks like Mattis' may not be a bad thing. The Chinese can have a glimpse of how some Westerners are longing for China's collapse. And some of them are not satisfied by just imaging China as a paralyzed and divided nation, they would probably do something which could put China's national interests in peril.

Now we have a better understanding that if China is in trouble someday, some Westerners, who care about China's human rights issues every day, will probably only think about how to reap profits from China's collapse. Mattis' article mentions nothing about how the Chinese will suffer if the nation collapses; it only cares about how the US should take advantage of the disaster and realize its own benefits.

The US academic environment has been eroded by stereotyped bigotry in ideology and values. Wonks like Gordon G. Chang, best known for his book The Coming Collapse of China, who keeps delaying his time frame for China's apocalypse, can still survive in the US academic field.

The coming days will see China's legislature and political advisory bodies holding their annual meetings, in which there is abundant information about China's future. For those who are whimsical about China's collapse, it is time for them to rehabilitate their minds by paying attention to the meetings. But if they want to continue being paranoid about China's collapse, and find pleasure from it, let them be.