Mao’s famous Cultural Revolution swim across the Yangzi River finally explained
Ramin Mazaheri
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A happy Maomas to all! He would have turned 130 last week, on December 26.
In memoriam I am republishing a chapter from my book on China. This chapter was the only chapter republished by the longest continuously published socialist magazine in the United States, the Monthly Review.
In 1966 Mao swam across the Yangzi (Yangtze) River, producing vast Western consternation and even ridicule, yet inspiring the Cultural Revolution in China.
So far as I know, this article is the only place you can find a plausible explanation for Mao’s swim.
That’s an extremely bold statement, but I contend that Mao’s intellectual peers grasped his symbolism. Read on, but the answer is rooted in the reality that Confucianism hasn’t just made a comeback under Xi - it was already latent under Mao and is probably a permanent feature of Chinese culture.
Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree, and - to make clear - the free republishing of any of my writing is always approved.
Chapter 4: Mao’s legacy defended, and famous swim decoded, for clueless academics
There is a great and hilarious story about Mao during the Cultural Revolution, which is relayed in the Western university-standard textbook, China: A New History by “the West’s doyen on China,” John King Fairbank of Harvard University, who “is credited with building the field of China studies in the United States”.
In late 1965 the rumblings of the Cultural Revolution had begun, due to grumblings over corruption, revisionism (“taking the capitalist road,” the selling out of socialism, etc.), and the snooty technocratism of urbanites. The party, led by Mao, saw these trends as threats to the common good, the revolution, and the Party’s “Heavenly Mandate” — the millennia-old concept that China’s rulers are chosen by Heaven to rule, and that they must actually display this divinity via perfectly moral conduct and leadership — or else revolt is justified.
Mao, being the great progressive leader he was, was against these anti-socialist trends. But there was only so much he could do about it on his own. Mao had launched no less than seven anti-corruption campaigns since 1949, but to no avail: the problem was deeply embedded, and beyond the reach of one man – even if one assumes Mao to be the totalitarian “Mao the Terrible” the West portrays him as.
With decades of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist fighting clearly under threat from domestic reactionaries, in 1966 Mao supervised the Party’s May 16 Directive to state the threat clearly: “…they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Decoded: the corrupt pro-capitalists will turn China into a West European (bourgeois) democracy.
And from a foreign policy perspective in 1966, a crisis was undoubtedly at China’s doorstep: the U.S. was massively invading Vietnam, and the largest communist party in the world not in power was being the victim of a literal genocide in Indonesia, with U.S. support.
Other than making political statements to a Party which contained many cadres who were only concerned about increasing their profits, he had only one other recourse–popular opinion.
That was all preamble. This brings me to that great and hilarious story.
‘Crossing the great river’: to seize the moment you have to first understand the meaning
The retelling of Fairbanks:
“In the second phase of the Cultural Revolution from August 1966 to January 1967 Chairman Mao was a great showman. The dutiful Liu Shaoqi, already doomed for destruction, was orchestrating the anti-revisionist movement among the party faithful. In July 1966 the Chinese public was electrified to learn that Mao had come north, pausing on the way to swim across the Yangzi. Since rural Chinese generally could not swim and few adventurers had ever tried the Yangzi this was like the news that Queen Elizabeth II had swum the Channel. He was obviously a paragon of athleticism capable of superhuman feats. (Photos showing his head on top of the water suggest Mao did not use a crawl, side stroke, backstroke, or breaststroke but swam in his own fashion standing upright in–not on–the water. He was clocked at an unusually fast speed.)”
Hilarious! And written with maximum effort for humour, too! What the heck was Mao doing?! Those inscrutable Chinese – we’ll never figure them out! Mao was just being Mao – a capricious tyrant – but that one takes the cake! Elizabeth II swimming the Channel, LOL – good show!
It’s too bad that Fairbanks – one of the key American shapers of thought on China for decades – had no idea why such a move “electrified” China. Fairbanks implies that Mao’s demonstration was pure self-aggrandisement in the most Western-individualist, election-campaigning of fashions: “I am so superhuman that I can crush all dissent – just watch me doggy-paddle over the Yangzi.
Too bad that makes no sense at all.
Time and again Mao’s swim is reported by Westerners as being “loaded with symbolism for the Chinese people,” but I have never seen the symbolism actually explained.
This was the meaning Fairbanks missed and which many of the People of China did not:
The ethical book of the Chinese is the I Ching, the “Book of Change”, which is the world’s oldest book in the world for a reason: it can be foolishly used as a divination tool – just as opening the Koran to a random page is used to “give advice” to some Muslims – but the I Ching is truly a master guidebook of human- and Heaven-based morality.
Briefly, the I Ching examines 64 ethical, personal and social concepts, conditions and states. One meditates at length on a range of concepts – “Mutual Influence”, “Bringing Together”, “Darkness”, “Proceeding Humbly”, “Not Yet Fulfilled”, etc. – and the book discusses their true meaning, how they progress in stages and how they interrelate with other concepts.
In this book is occasionally a phrase: “Favorable to cross great rivers.”
When the I Ching reads that it is “Favorable to cross great rivers” that means it is the right time to dare the greatest of undertakings. Indeed, this sentence reflects the maximum amount of good and luck possible — it’s the best possible news, and means Heaven above could not look upon you or your plans more favourably.
I Ching judgments can be negative, neutral, slightly favourable, etc. If it reads “Not favourable to cross great rivers”, it means:stop what you are doing and don’t try it.
But nothing is better than “Favorable to cross great rivers.” It means: “take courage, Heaven smiles upon you, you are just, you are in tune with ethics, in tune with the Tao (a Chinese concept very similar to the Holy Spirit), humanity and nature,” etc.
So for Mao to literally cross the great river in July 1966 was to emphatically, physically and religiously tell all the Chinese People: “Join me in daring this great undertaking of the Cultural Revolution. Cross the great river now – in real life.”
When one is thus able to look at Mao’s swim through the eyes of a Chinese person and can fully understand the cultural context, as well as the historical/political context, then we finally see how it could have “electrified” China: For the Chinese, it is truly as if he had re-enacted a scene from the Bible.
The only way I could compare it for Iranians is thusly: In order to defend Iran’s sovereign right to a nuclear energy program Supreme Leader Khamenei travels to Karbala, Iraq, and has a boxing match with Mike Tyson. (If you don’t understand this please don’t pretend to tell me that you know Iran, our religion, and our culture.) I’m sure Iranians are smirking, not because of Khamenei’s advanced age and the absurdity of such a fight, but because they know exactly what I mean: This would be a reenactment of the glorious and assured annihilation – thus the willing martyrdom – of Imam Hossein, which inspires all Shia as much as the suffering of Jesus does for Christians (even more in 2018, I would say, as the annual multi-million pilgrimages to Karbala show and which Western media certainly does NOT want to show).
To explain it to the French: In order to demand the reversal of Brexit, neoliberal Macron goes to Rouen and fields media questions as he’s tied to a stake.
For the Americans: acquiescing to Russophobia, Trump invites Putin over for diplomatic talks, but then personally captains a ship across the Potomac to surprisingly capture the Russian leader, like George Washington.
Did Mao know what he was doing? As the son of a rich farmer he went to school, where he was undoubtedly instructed in the Chinese classics, as education centered around them. Mao also knew that other educated people were similarly instructed in the I Ching. The only question which I cannot definitely answer, as I have never been embedded in Chinese popular culture, is: how likely is it that the average person have been familiar with the sayings of the Chinese classics and the I Ching?
I think we can say with confidence: “At least somewhat familiar,” no? Grow up in the West and you will be familiar with Biblical sayings even if you aren’t Christian. It is universally reported that the swim somehow galvanised the nation, and I doubt it was the view of an old man doing the doggy-paddle. In a perpetual question in semiotics: why this, and not that? I.e., why not climb a mountain to “electrify” the people, or chop down a cherry tree, or save a lamb? You certainly can’t argue with the results – we can only try to explain them.
And yet Fairbank – the China scholar best-known to the U.S. public and academia alike – clearly had no idea of what Mao was doing, what it represented, and why it was inspirational. Fairbank clearly had not even read the I Ching, perhaps the single most important foundation of Chinese culture, despite being Harvard University’s first-ever China “scholar.” That is a recipe for terrible scholarship, terrible teaching and ignorant-but-arrogant students.
It is a scholarship which is typical of the West, and which was debunked so superbly by Edward Said’s Orientalism. It is scholars who don’t go to foreign lands to learn and respect the local culture – they go there to proselytise their own ideas and to return with stories which confirm the standard stereotypes, almost as if they had never been there at all. Just as those who used to be called “Oriental scholars” never read the Koran, I highly doubt that Fairbank’s knowledge of China extended beyond the superficial and beyond what was useful for him as an American.
So there is little wonder, to one who understands the cultural significance, how China did not erupt in delirious, sweet, modern and violent revolution against reactionary forces shortly after the swim. The swim was Mao’s obviously successful attempt to get the People inspired, and to reassure the People that (some of) their leadership was on their side, and on the side of preserving the popular revolution the nation worked so hard to install.
There are other facts and anecdotes of history to relate to defend Mao, but I chose this one because it illustrates how Fairbank and the Westerners who have studied for China, and have given us our “wisdom” of Mao’s alleged tyranny, actually have very little comprehension of the Chinese soul. Their scholarship exists to defend their own ideas, not to understand the amazing qualities of other cultures, and are genuine only in their reactionary anti-socialism, And yet these are the people who inform today’s students, journalists and citizenry in the West.
But new scholars, such as Jeff J. Brown and his superb, factual account of Chinese history since 1949, China is Communist, Dammit, wades unapologetically into the tidal wave of Western disapproval to deliver a history which is actually sympathetic to Chinese people.
I could have continued giving more and more facts and statistics to prove that Mao’s tenure greatly benefitted the average person – how long do you have? – because there are many. Thankfully, unlike when I was growing up, they are now actually available on the internet for all to find.
Instead of using statistics, I thought this anecdote showed just how pathetically lost, how uninterested, how much lack of soul the people informing the West on China really have had. Unlike Brown, establishment scholars on China are not trying at all to learn from, to understand, or to defend the Chinese people – they are trying to conquer it culturally. If that fails — then to conquer it militarily.
To prove my objectivity: A Chinese person is better qualified to verify the relationship between Mao’s swim and the I Ching. But what if they haven’t read the Chinese classics? I have talked to two handfuls of Chinese people I know and none have read them – all are under 40 years old – and therefore they are not qualified to make this verification. This hypothesis thus remains for the Chinese to verify but I say the circumstantial evidence is weighty: just because I have not seen this hypothesis elsewhere, that only confirms that very few people have read the Chinese classics, and analysed them in a political sense, and written about that analysis in a Western language.
Fairbank did not do this, even though it was his charge to do exactly that. Hopefully some Chinese political scholar can confirm my theory but how many of them read English? Such is the slow pace of cultural globalisation / awareness, but the internet is speeding these things up, as this article shows.
Rehabilitating Mao is unlikely—there is no will to change in the West
John Lennon had it right: “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / you ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow.”
Why, because few people in the 1960s in the West were truly political (excepting African-Americans). Obviously nearly none were dedicated revolutionaries because the West had zero revolutions. They looked to minstrels like the Beatles to lead a Revolution – yet their famous song “Revolution” is clearly designed to appropriate the word away from the political sphere: the lyrics are not just apolitical but 100% anti-politics.
Many in the 1960s sure postured like revolutionaries, though. My impression is that their main goal was to “make it” with the opposite sex, and that is really not something revolutionary in human history.
The irony is that if Lennon understood Mao – if Lennon had grasped the goal of the Cultural Revolution, which I related in the previous article of this series – he would have seen that Mao’s 1960s anti-establishment, anti-corrupt “middle aged / old people” view, his slogans like “It Is Right To Rebel”, was incredibly rock and roll!
In his song “God”, Lennon says he believes in nothing, including the I Ching, even listing it before the Bible. He also doesn’t believe in people, ideas or methods: he only believes in himself. “I believe in me/ Yoko and me/ and that’s reality”.
So Lennon believed in individualism and his romantic love — that’s nice, for him.
Lennon concludes by opining that “the dream is over” — and that he, “was the dream weaver”. The literal meaning for Lennon the ‘60s icon seems clear—or perhaps he was giving us a Hindu-inspired “life is a dream” idea. Lennon finishes by saying that, in 1970, “You just have to carry on / the dream is over”. This reminds us today of the slogan “Keep calm and carry on” which swept England doing the 2009 financial crisis, a paean to their wilfully-blind conservatism which will not countenance even the idea of discussing the idea of changing the status quo regardless of any crisis.
So when it comes to Lennon and Mao: whom is the man of the People, the social revolutionary and the ethicist, and whom is merely another self-centred ego-freak? Whom is the man of social change, and whom is the status quo man urging everyone not to even bother trying? The answer is clear, and it is certainly the opposite of the West’s mainstream belief.
Indeed, who would have thought that drug-using minstrels would ultimately get bored by worldly, wonkish, societal issues? Maybe the West can next turn to a heroin-using jazz drummer for advice on urban planning models, hmmm?
Should we defend Mao?
No, it will make us look uncool, and the John Lennons of the world will call us “squares”. The bad news is: you are certainly a square if you have read this far! Seriously: Yes, we should, mainly to humbly acknowledge the superior judgement of the Chinese people on their own history. The Chinese People defend Mao, and that should be enough for leftists worldwide. Popular approval is a nearly infallible judge, no? Castro, Khomeini, Ho Chi Minh, Sankara, Mao – all are universally loved in their home countries. Pol Pot, for example, is a leftist leader who is not revered by Cambodians so it’s not as if all leftists are loved (Pol Pot was a rabid xenophobe, and thus not a true leftist). Libya is a bit split on the legacy of Khadaffi, but his virtues certainly appear clearly in retrospect. I think that Fairbank, even if he actually did talk to average Chinese people about Mao, was never willing to honestly report their opinion. Brown, however, has talked to “thousands” of Chinese people over his decades living there. He says that, while they criticise aspects of the Communist Party: “But through it all, I can safely say that about 98% of the Chinese I’ve talked to like Mao and what he did for China. His image adorns taxi cabs, like an amulet of St. Christopher, to ward off accidents. He is on walls of privately owned offices, businesses, restaurants–these are private, not government. They are citizens who have decided to show their admiration for the man, on their own. He’s everywhere. How can this be in the face of relentless demonization by Western media, educators, historians and politicians?” People will say: it’s because the Chinese government blocks the truth about Mao – oh, if only they could hear our pure Western voices! Such a response, again, inaccurately and arrogantly implies that the West knows Chinese history and culture better than the Chinese themselves. The government has openly stated that Mao was “70% right and 30% wrong”, so it’s not as if there is an all-dominating, state-sponsored cult of personality. Beyond respecting obviously better-informed local opinion–a point which most treat as secondary–I almost refuse to have the “Mao was evil” conversation for more than 15 seconds. I give 15 seconds because I was raised to be polite. To equivocate Mao with Hitler is to equivocate two people who fought against each other — it’s inherently absurd. To claim Mao was as bad as Japanese fascists or American capitalists is also to equivocate groups with sharply different belief systems and goals. In 1978, two years after Mao’s died, China’s Gini coefficient (the most commonly used measurement of inequality) was a sparkling 0.16. The lowest score is currently 0.25 (Finland). It’s fair to say that Mao’s single most-important goal was to create an equal society: he succeeded better than almost anyone, ever. So I’m done with that one, and quickly. The West’s discussion of Mao – along with the Great Leap Forward’s famine and the Cultural Revolution – is based on ignorance, arrogance and the political nihilism of failed “revolutionaries” and hardened reactionaries. To repeat, for hard statistics about the socio-economic improvement for the average Chinese person during Mao’s stewardship (and not just since Deng’s reforms) you can buy Brown’s book. Brown explains how Mao overcame a blockade worse than Iran’s to produce massive growth with equality — Mao clearly had his cake and ate it too, and with his fellow citizens! But, as cynical Lennon shows, it was always difficult for the West to grasp the moral and ethical nation-inspiring and nation-building revolution Mao personified: they took two very different paths. What is so typically Western is that they insist on pulling China onto their toll road, instead of being content to live and let live in mutual peace. Lennon famously said that Elvis died when he joined the army, but that’s not true: Elvis died when he joined Hollywood after his discharge, and was no longer a great musician but just another phony actor. When did Lennon die as a revolutionary? I can’t say for sure, but his dismissal of Mao is a good place to start. No one is going to say Lennon did not succeed wildly in his chosen field, but how long can the judgment of Fairbank and other top Western “scholars” endure when we can so easily prove how they did not respect or understand Chinese culture? Even though it is fundamental for understanding China, nobody cares about Confucianism in the West – all you will hear about is its yin, feminine, passive counterpart – Daoism. Plenty of Daoism books in the local Western bookstore, for sure – how many on Confucianism? I guess yang, masculine, creative, dynamic, propagating Confucianism doesn’t go well with acid trips, or high-intensity pharmaceutical drugs? I’m not surprised that the Communist Party is back to promoting Confucianism – the I Ching is not banned in China – and I’m not surprised they prefer it over Daoism, which says, “Cross the great river? What for? What river? Is this thing even on?” (Clearly I’m even worse scholar of Daoism than I am of Confucianism.) I’m not amazed that the Western media views Mao as “100% wrong”: The West has been an imperialist, extremist, racist culture for 500 years, and a rabidly anti-socialist one for 100 years. But I am surprised that Western leftists don’t defend Mao even 30%. Their main problem is: they have not bought books like Brown’s because books like Brown’s simply did not exist until very, very recently. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a book like Brown’s would have gotten you jailed in the West, or worse. The internet is changing this, and that cannot be stopped—only slowed. Kudos to Brown and eternal kudos to Mao, for being as right and as brave as any of the top politicians of the 20th century. And no apologies if my picture of Chairman Mao ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow. I know it’s gonna be alright. For China, at least. <—>
Mighty Mao was never the West’s to take away, and he’ll never leave
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France's Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West's Best Values. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese. Any reposting or republication of any of my articles is approved and appreciated.
France's Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West's Best Values. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese. Any reposting or republication of any of my articles is approved and appreciated.Print this article
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Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORSTaiwanese separatists are so sino-screwed, one way or another.Be sure to share these materials with friends, kin, and workmates. by Jeff J. BrownTaiwanese separatists are so sino-screwed, one way or another. China rising radio sinoland 181114 ABOVE: This political cartoon from The Economist was published when pro-reunification Ma Ying-Jiou was Taiwan’s President, through 2015, but the fundamental dynamics have not changed since pro-separatist Tsai Ing-Wen took his place: Baba Beijing and the People’s Republic of China hold all the cards.
From liberation of the People’s Republic China (PRC) in 1949 until US President Richard Nixon’s détente with Mao Zedong in 1972, Taiwan (along with Tibet) was used by the West as ground zero to overturn the communist Mainland. Before 1972, the US military and CIA worked with Taiwan’s fascist KMT dictatorship to send hundreds of secret suicide missions into the Mainland, to blow up infrastructure and create havoc, with the brainwashed dupes being sent thinking they could bring down the Communist Party of China (CPC). Yuk-yuk-ha-ha, the bad joke was on them. Starting in 1972, with the US and China now no longer mortal enemies, Uncle Sam backed off being so in-your-face with using Taiwan as a base of subversion. In any case, America was going down in flames in Southeast Asia, which was one of the reasons Nixon pulled off such an amazing diplomatic turnaround, in hopes of getting Mao to stop supplying the communist North Viet Cong with arms and intelligence. As everywhere “pluralistic democracy” exists, Taiwan is a one-party state, run and owned by the elites. Like the United States and elsewhere, it has two “opposing” parties, in reality, the left and right wings of the elite capitalist party. In Taiwan’s case, it is the one-China unification KMT Party and the separatist two-China Democratic People’s Party (DPP), which formed in 1986. Thirty years later, in 2016, the DPP finally won the presidency and a majority of the legislature, with Mrs. Tsai Ing-Wen as the island’s leader. Baba Beijing was not amused and Tsai has toyed with carefully parsed words and pronouncements, to give the independentists in Taiwan the red meat they are looking for. Cross-strait relations have not been this bad since the days when the island was under commie-fearing martial law, until 1986 (http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/15/world/taiwan-ends-4-decades-of-martial-law.html), and Tsai’s government is in sharp contrast to the previous one, where Sino-Taiwanese cooperation reached its zenith, under KMT leader Ma Ying-Jiou.
The Mainland and Taiwan came to an agreement, eventually called the 1992 Consensus, with both sides claiming dominion over the other, as one China, and leaving it at that. What it really was, was a tacit admission by Taiwan that it had better reach some kind of rapprochement with the Motherland, in order to participate in China’s exploding, double digit growth (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1104732/1992-consensus-between-beijing-and-taipei-appears-here-stay). Korea, Japan, Eurangloland and everybody else were seeking gold in China’s dizzying Sino-Eldorado, while the Taiwanese were looking westward across the waters, with drooling envy. The island’s genocidal dictator, Chiang Kai-Shek had been dead since 1975 and it was time to adapt or perish into global economic irrelevance.
As a result of the 1992 Consenus, cross-straits relations, communications and investments continue to mushroom, even with the DPP barking in the background about seceding from the Motherland. Secession will never happen. Since 1949, the Mainland has told the world loudly and clearly that it will reunite Taiwan by force, if the island tries to become an independent country. No wiggle room, no ambiguity, no bullshit. In Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent 19th Communist Party Congress speech, he alluded that the goal is to have all of China reunited by 2049 (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/10/23/xi-jinpings-19th-party-congress-speech-is-a-declaration-of-war-vs-western-capitalism-china-rising-radio-sinoland-171023/). For Hong Kong, that means 2047, by treaty (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/08/26/baba-beijing-is-sick-and-tired-of-the-west-using-hong-kong-to-overthrow-the-cpc-china-rising-radio-sinoland-170821-2/). Then, Macau joins the ranks in 2049, also by treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Declaration_on_the_Question_of_Macau). Since there is no agreed upon timetable for Taiwan, Xi’s wording means that if push comes to shove and Taiwan is still trying to remain separate from the Mainland, then Baba Beijing may have to resort to economic or military force. The year 2049 is iconic for the PRC, since that will be the centennial of its founding, with the CPC at the helm. Baba Beijing’s thinking is that 100 years is patience enough for Taiwan to rejoin the Motherland. By that time, China will have long surpassed the United States and European Union (EU) in gross national product (GNP) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be in full bloom across Asia and into Europe and Africa (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/05/16/chinas-dream-is-changing-your-world-while-the-west-declines-godfree-roberts-on-cr-radio-sinoland/). Taiwan has 23,000,000 citizens, the same population as each of the Chinese cities Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing or Guangzhou. Economically, it is an Asian fly on the rump of the world’s Sino-elephant. Geopolitically, it is about the size of a rat on the same global colossus, only because imperial America is lurking in the background and keeps selling it arms. Baba Beijing has three scenarios to make sure the PRC is made whole by 2049. First, is to continue integrating the two economies, in reality, China subsuming Taiwan, to the point that the island sees the writing on the wall and joins the fold. If that doesn’t work, the Mainland could easily bring this renegade province to its knees, with an economic boycott, kicking out the 1,000,000 Taiwanese living and doing business in China – about 5% of the island’s total population. Since many of them own substantial capital investments here, I suspect after one or two shiploads of refugees being dropped off in Taiwan would be enough. To follow through would mean the chaotic collapse of Taiwan’s economy, leaving it to declare victory and become the last piece of China’s reunification puzzle. The final option is of course the military one. China’s navy is already stronger than what the US can keep in the South China Sea (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2016/09/04/from-may-9th-in-moscow-to-september-3rd-in-beijing-the-anti-west-order-comes-full-circle-reprint/) and it probably explains why Baba Beijing is building its third aircraft carrier in record time (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2126883/china-has-started-building-its-third-aircraft-carrier). Baba Beijing could do it without firing a single bullet. Just put a chain link naval blockade around Taiwan and the island could hold out for a month or so, before declaring victory and signing on the dotted line. If China did have to resort to invading Taiwan, the chances of the United States seriously trying to defend the island are shrinking by the day. In any case, the 1955-1979 (Taiwanese) Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty lost its validity with Jimmy Carter diplomatically recognizing the PRC in that latter year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-American_Mutual_Defense_Treaty). Since then, Uncle Sam is not even bound by treaty to do so and wouldn’t stand a chance of making much of a difference so far from home, except getting its ass kicked. I doubt the US would do anything to seriously help Taiwan being invaded, anyway. America wouldn’t mind seeing thousands or millions of Taiwanese lose their lives, if it meant harming communist China’s global image. All empires are zero sum and racist. Recently, Uncle Sam is dancing dangerously close to the Sino-fire, with the newest version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allowing joint military drills with Taiwan (http://theduran.com/china-threatens-state-war-us-threatens-sovereignty/). For Baba Beijing, that would be a declaration of war, with Senior Chinese diplomat Li Kexin stating, The day that a U.S. Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force. See the above paragraph, final option, for what would happen next. Baba Beijing is patient, very patient, and is happy to keep the status quo going for 30 more years, if it means peaceful reunification. In the interim, if Taiwan’s separatist Democratic People’s Party gets a wild, suicidal hair up its island ass and declares independence from the Motherland, so be it. Each of the three contingencies I described above could be implemented by China tomorrow. Taiwanese are apparently deluded, if this recent survey is accurate, showing that 54% prefer secession (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2099286/most-taiwanese-consider-taiwan-china-separate-countries). Are they willing to fight the Mainland for it? Are they ready to die for their cause? China has 1.4 billion citizens eager to answer the call, untold millions of whom are willing to die for China’s complete reunification. Apparently, Taiwan only has about 12 million citizens who want independence. I know who I’m placing my bets on. One way or another, whether peacefully or push comes to outright invasion, Taiwan’s renegade population is Sino-screwed, stewed and skewered. If you find China Rising Radio Sinoland‘s work useful and appreciate its quality, please consider making a donation. Money is spent to pay for Internet costs, maintenance, the upgrade of our computer network, and development of the site. 
Or better yet, buy one of Jeff’s books offered below. Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History
ABOUT JEFF BROWN
In China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest lectured at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and various international schools and universities. Jeff can be reached at China Rising, je**@br***********.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.
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The Cultural Revolution’s Success. (Part 2)Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
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| Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORSTaiwan opposition has shot itself — and the island — in the footPlease make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
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Excellent column by Alex Lo.
Covers some of the basics of the issue. Good article to send to friends— educational.
The vice president of the pro-secessionist party is more American than anything else. She was raised and educated in the US, and is a darling of the DC hawks. Her office in DC was a sort of salon for US hawks.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3089420/taiwan-appoints-tsai-ing-wen-confidant-hsiao-bi-khim-us-envoy?module=inline&pgtype=article
“Born in Kobe, Japan in 1971 to a Taiwanese father and American mother, Hsiao grew up in the Taiwanese city of Tainan, but moved to the US after leaving junior high school. She earned a master’s degree in political science from Columbia University.
My comment to the column below by Alex Lo:
This goes beyond personal failures (of individual politicians). Ko has said that his decision was influenced by a "call" from the de facto US ambassador to Taiwan Province. And it must be asked whether the US had a hand in the formation of the TPP in the first place since that immediately divided the opposition to the uber-warhawks running the DPP.
Get ready for a false flag that will depict China as carrying out some act of "aggression" to justify US action against China. It will not occur until after the election of Genocide Joe in the US, but it will happen when the US desires it. If necessary it can even be made up like The Gulf of Tonkin Incident that was the excuse for the brutal, criminal, horrific US war on the people of Vietnam.
—John Walsh |
south china morning post
SCMP Columnist
Taiwan opposition has shot itself — and the island — in the foot
Just as there are growing signs of a thaw or at least a temporary truce in the US-Chinese rivalry, a Taiwan administration under Lai and Hsiao will likely work against it by going into overdrive to encourage Washington’s “pivot to Asia”, as in containing the mainland in the Indo-Pacific and confrontation across the Taiwan Strait.
Israel and the US have made the ICC irrelevant
- The International Criminal Court has no real function now other than being a [propaganda] tool of the West
Further down, it claims that “the Court is participating in a global fight to end impunity, and through international criminal justice, the Court aims to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes and to help prevent these crimes from happening again”.
Justice is universal and all must be held to the same standards and accountability. Well, dream on!
Until quite recently, 2022 to be precise, almost everyone who was detained, tried, convicted or charged with a warrant for their arrest, had been tinpot dictators and warlords, from Africa.
The prosecutions of Serb leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic involved the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice, as official bodies of the United Nations distinct from the ICC.
Since last year, a couple more, all Russians, have joined the ICC wanted list for their alleged roles while serving in the government of the Moscow-backed self-declared republic of South Ossetia, stemming from the Russo-Georgian War in 2008.
And then, of course, the Russian strongman himself, Vladimir Putin, and some hapless Moscow politician called Maria Lvova-Belova, were put on the same wanted list in March, for relocating about 6,000 children, out of war zones in Ukraine, to Russia. Some children have since been returned, alive, to Ukraine.
That is roughly the same number of children the Israeli army has killed since the start of its war on Gaza in early October.
But, since Israel has scrupulously followed international law, the laws of war, the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians – with the utmost regards for civilian welfare – there can be no comparison.
The total death toll in Gaza has exceeded 15,000. Roughly one out of 150 Gazans has been killed in little under two months.
There is nothing to concern the wary heads of ICC prosecutors and investigators, despite an appeal by Palestinian human rights groups for the court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior leaders for genocide, incitement to genocide, and the crime of apartheid. There is no business for the ICC. The facts clearly show that, don’t they?
Roughly 10,000 women and children have been reported killed in Gaza. That exceeds the number of total civilians killed during the first full year of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to Iraq Body Count, an independent British research group.
The death toll of women and children also doubles those killed in Ukraine, according to United Nations figures, after almost two years of fighting.
The US claims about 12,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan during almost 20 years of war, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. In 2017, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced she was referring a multi-year investigation into possible war crimes committed by US troops to a pre-trial court. Washington promptly put Bensouda, and some of her senior staff and family members on its international sanctions list.
She was subsequently taken off the list after she was replaced, and the new prosecutor made it clear he was putting the US case on the back burner, presumably for good.
I regret I had never heard of Jadallah until after his death. But then, that’s one good thing about war: you get to know the heroes – some of them anyway – from the villains.
Jadallah was among at least 53 journalists and media staff killed since the start of Israeli military operations, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has described the toll as “the deadliest for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992”.
That’s saying something. Keep in mind the world has had some pretty horrendous conflicts and wars since 1992.
More than 200 healthcare workers have been killed so far, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. But since the ministry has been infiltrated by the terrorist group Hamas, the number must be propaganda, so don’t trust it. But even if those numbers were accurate, Israel cannot be blamed because the deaths could not be avoided as they were an unfortunate side effect of war. Move on, nothing to see here.
Since the start of the Gaza war, the US has been rushing heavy weapons and financial aid to Israel. Unlike the Ukraine war where Washington and its allies, especially Germany, have happily itemised every last tank, missile and bullet for public news consumption, the US has been super-secret about the weapons transferred to Israel, without which the Gaza war could not be sustained. Sense of shame or the Americans just don’t want Hamas to know, unlike letting the Russians know?
According to a Bloomberg expose, some of the US weapons included 2,000 Hellfire missiles for Apache attack helicopters, and an array of mortars and ammo, including 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of M141 bunker-buster munitions and 3,500 night-vision devices.
US special forces are on the ground to advise on urban warfare. We know because US President Joe Biden personally thanked some of those soldiers, presumably before they were sent off to Israel.
Speaking of weapons, human rights groups have long criticised the US for dropping heavy 500-pound (227kg) bombs in urban areas such as Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria. Israel has dropped 2,000-pound (907kg) bombs on Gaza, a tiny strip of land full of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the world. Needless to say, they were all US-made.
Last month, Biden announced the US was committing “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defence” of US$14.3 billion. But that wasn’t enough. “We’re surging additional military assistance,” he added endearingly.
Domestically, in the US, if you supply someone with a murder weapon, you are not only liable to be charged as accessory to murder, but committing the murder itself.
Just saying. American culpability in genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity? No way! If Israel is not guilty, then how can anyone – such as Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, and the most senior members of Congress who supported the weapon and financial transfers – be accused of such heinous crimes for supporting Israel’s war machine? Besides death and taxes, we also know for certain that the ICC will never, ever, go after US and Israeli leaders, who by definition cannot commit those heinous crimes.
Worse, the ICC enables Western governments, led by the US, to sit in judgment on the rest of the world, from a supposedly high moral position, while making themselves immune from its judgment. Since the ICC has never managed to fullfil its “noble” claims of universal justice and accountability, which have been pretty much geographically confined, its very existence and functions are way past their use-by date.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCEAlex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
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| Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORSA critique of the recent article in The New Yorker Magazine by Evan Osnos, “China’s Age of Malaise”Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise. Jeff J. BrownA critique of the recent article in The New Yorker Magazine by Evan Osnos, “China’s Age of Malaise” Pictured above: Time magazine thought it was mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping, by portraying him as Mao Zedong on the inside. The joke is on Evan Osnos and rest of the West. That was the plan all along: Xi was elected to be the Chinese people’s 21st century Great Helmsman. 1. THE A/V Sixteen years on the streets, living and working with the people of China, Jeff. (Downloadable podcast at the bottom of this page, Brighteon, iVoox, RuVid, as well as being syndicated on iTunes, Stitcher Radio and Reason.fm (links below)). Examine Jeff's Brighteon Video Channel: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/jeffjbrown
Also, sign up for my FREE email newsletter… Support, donations and contributions for my work here, any amount, one time or monthly, A to Z support. Please use this special donations page. A critique of the recent article in The New Yorker Magazine by Evan Osnos, China’s Age of Malaise 2. The Text In the China Writers’ Group (CWG, which I founded: www.seektruthfromfacts.org) we exchange a lot of information and articles together. Asking for comments, a member posted the recent article in The New Yorker Magazine by Evan Osnos, which covers China and President Xi Jinping, China’s Age of Malaise (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise).  Evan Osnos and the artwork used in his article. By chance, I remarked on the famous Chinese motto that is included within (https://x.com/44_Days/status/1717917889078989265?s=20). Below right is an image of China’s Politburo Standing Committee on a stage. The two three-character words mid-left are too fuzzy to make out. At 10,000 words, I read it once straight through, without giving it much thought. My comment to CWG was that the people Osnos talks to would not even be known by 99% of the Chinese people, and even if they did know them or anyone else like them, they could not care less what they thought. Then I went back and read it again, studying it more carefully, his analysis of Xi Jinping, as well as his contextualization of China’s future, based on what he heard. A critique of his article was needed. Naturally, to write an article like this, I needed to do research about the author, Mr. Osnos. His biography on www.evanosnos.com does not even mention that he is a Harvard graduate, or where he grew up. Maybe for a reason. What I found is that he comes from a very privileged background that not only 99% of the Chinese people could not relate to, but 99% of the rest of humanity as well. He grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, which I hardly even knew except for the name. I was surprised to learn that, Greenwich, CT is home to two of the wealthiest zip codes in Connecticut, 06830 and 06831, with average adjusted gross incomes of $638,560 and $721,550… The median listing price for a home in the town was $2.3 million in 2021. The coastal neighborhood of Belle Haven, along with Backcountry, have some of the wealthiest single family real estate in the world. In 2014, the highest asking price for a residential property in town was the Copper Beech Estate at $190 million. It later sold for $120 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich,_Connecticut). For comparison, where I grew up in the US state of Oklahoma, the average annual income is $49,657, or about fourteen times less. I like to joke that if it were not for the NBA Oklahoma City Thunder team and the multimillionaire players living there, it would be much less. For $2.3 million, I can buy ten nice, two hundred square-meter (2,000 square-foot) ranch homes in one of the pleasant suburban neighborhoods in Oklahoma City. I have never had a neighbor who had to settle for a measly $120 million to sell their house. I cannot even begin to wrap my head around the idea. Evan comes from a very elite, thoroughbred background. His father went to Brandeis, whose annual cost is $86,242 (https://www.brandeis.edu/student-financial-services/tuition-calculator/tuition.html), as well as Columbia School of Journalism, in Midtown Manhattan, NYC. It costs a cool $126,691 per year (https://journalism.columbia.edu/cost-attendance). Dad was a star journalist and publisher, who rubbed shoulders with many famous people we read about in the media. His mother’s father was a US ambassador. She is chair of the board of CIVIC – the Center for Civilians in Conflict (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Osnos). It receives funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the latter’s President Emeritus is on CIVIC’s board. As well, Charles Koch Institute also contributes to CIVIC. Those of us who are informed about Soros and Koch, with their money and NGOs having fingers deep in so many color revolutions around the world, would run away from them and their money (https://civiliansinconflict.org/). As mentioned, Evan went to Harvard, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Osnos) which costs $88,881 per year to attend (https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/edu/166027/harvard-university/tuition/). His wife studied at Barnard College, again $80,693 per year (https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/new-york/barnard-college/price/). Osnos is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institute. In Appendix I, I list some of its major contributors. Again, most of us would not be caught dead owing our allegiance to much of this roster. Donors do expect the correct outcomes. It focuses The New Yorker magazine’s longtime support for NATO’s genocidal and imperial operations around the world, going back to Iraq’s destruction in 2003, up to today’s Western wars against Russia and the Arab World. It helps explain why his online biographies often do not even mention he graduated from Harvard (magna cum laude), much less all the rest of the above. It would put a dent in his projected, plebeian New Yorker magazine moniker of A Reporter at Large, like he got a journo degree at humble Oklahoma State University, his first job was with a local newspaper, the nearby Muskogee Phoenix, and finally got his big break, by being hired at Channel 8 TV Station in nearby Tulsa. In reality, this is a typical career path for the less privileged, who work in MSM. After learning all this, reading his recent article on China and Xi Jinping makes much more sense. His wealthy, elite, sheltered life is as alien to most of us, as our lives are surely to his. In his essay, China’s Age of Malaise (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise) Osnos interviewed the following people (to my best deduction, “NC” stands for non-Mainland Chinese), 1) Sociologist wife of a famous Chinese author, the latter who got a graduate degree in the US, 2) Chinese cover band playing only American rock, 3) an intellectual, 4) liberal bookstore owner in Shanghai, 5) Rhodium Group rep (NC-US outfit that does its annual China Pathfinder Scorecard for the uber-neocon-Wall Street Atlantic Council), 6) President Emeritus of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (NC), 7) an entrepreneur, 8) prominent Australian historian and translator (NC), 9) Beijing bar owners, 10) a Shanghai man, 11) a Shanghai businessman, 12) a business executive, 13) a microchip engineer, 14) a man in a Beijing bar, 15) a 24-year-old master’s degree student in Linguistics, 16) a financier, 17) a real estate developer, 18) a factory owner in Shanghai, 19) a Chinese investor living overseas, 20) a woman sharing her family’s Covid experience, 21) an entertainer in Shanghai, 22) a respected writer, 23) a woman who injured herself badly by vandalizing public property, 24) an entrepreneur speaking for the top 0.01%, 25) a technologist, 26) a man in Beijing, 27) former lawyer who helps wealthy Chinese leave the country (NC), 28) local Singaporean businessman (NC), 29) a documentary filmmaker, 30) a former dean of Peking University’s School of International Studies, 31) and 32) two China specialists at Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC (NC), 33) a former Party professor who left China, 34) a Chinese diplomat, 35) Chinese economist who fled China to go to Stanford University, 36) Director of MIT’s Security Studies Program (NC), 37) head of a Chinese think tank in Beijing, 38) the US Ambassador to China (NC), and 39) an editor. Talking to émigrés who fled China, to feel the heartbeat of the nation’s people is odd. It reminds me of the funny observation by CWG author-journalist Ramin Mazaheri (https://twitter.com/RaminMazaheri2). He jokes that if you want to know how most citizens feel about Iran’s Islamic socialist revolution, just talk to his grandmother who lives there. Yet, the West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM) invariably consults Gucci-shoed, mink-stole-wearing, Ferrari-driving Iranians in Hollywood, who abandoned their people in 1979. It is safe to say that most of these interviewees can relate to Evan’s privileged status, much more than most of us can. Osnos would be comfortable talking with them and can relate to them. Many of them seem concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai, two cities I love, but are hardly representative of deep China*. Yet, based on these mostly urban, elite Chinese contacts and some other Western sources, Osnos takes a quantum leap in the name of China’s 1.4 billion everyday citizens by claiming, Few citizens believe that China will reach the heights they once expected. “The word I use is ‘grieving,’” one entrepreneur said. Osnos’ contacts remind me of when I was traveling and working in Africa and Middle East, 1980-1990, frequently going to newly liberated Zimbabwe. There was an initial exodus of White Rhodesian farmers, with many fleeing to still-then Apartheid South Africa, and Australia. Locals liked to mock them, dubbing them When-We’s, because all they could talk about was, When we were in Rhodesia… Evan’s contacts strike me as a bunch of Chinese When-We’s, pining for the excesses of the 1980s-1990s. As an apparent neoliberal, Osnos has a nostalgic idealization of what I call the Deng Xiaoping Wild East Buckaroo Days. My wife and I lived and worked in China, 1990-1997, becoming parents of two children**. As I wrote colorfully in The China Trilogy (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/), it was like a Nat King Cole 5-pack-a-day nicotine habit. We knew it was terrible for our health and souls, but the hooks were dug deep into our flesh and every waking hour was like a drug rush. After we left China for France, it took us six months to mentally detoxify from the buzz and the high. Unintended consequences abounded. Everybody was lying, cheating, stealing and swindling everybody else, all to realize the government’s exhortations to get rich quick, regardless of the social and environmental consequences. Violating millennial Confucian principles, there was zero trust among the people and between the government and citizens. Corruption became a cancer in the public, private and military sectors, smoothed over by 10% annual economic growth. Inflation hit over 30% and availability of everyday goods and foodstuffs became chaotic. It was these three socioeconomic pustules that triggered the protests in 1989, not Gene Sharp’s bogus, CIA-contrived freedom and democracy color revolution (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2023/06/02/this-webpage-has-by-far-the-biggest-and-best-library-of-articles-videos-podcasts-and-images-about-1989s-tiananmen-square-protests-something-for-everyone-china-rising-radio-sinoland-continually-u/). Organized gangs came back. Crime among the citizens got so bad that the government recalled all the millions of guns the people had during the Mao Era, for civil defense against possible war with the West. Laws had to be passed reinstating the death penalty for a number of lesser offenses. Tens of thousands of crooks were executed and imprisoned. When I visited Shenzhen, there were hookers, touts and Fast Eddys every ten meters on the sidewalks, hustling and jiving. It was like a dog-eat-dog gold rush town. The Chinese had become a cynical, lawless mob of grifters, shysters and petty criminals. If Evan and his elite interviewees want to idealize that 20 years of street-level warfare, where it felt like being forever high on speed, be my guest. As non-elites living and working in it, family in tow, it offers a completely different perspective. Maybe they miss the endless reruns of American TV shows, like Friends, Dallas and all the other soul-sucking Western tittytainment that flooded the country. Mercifully, when we returned to China 2010-2019, that kind of foreign culture was flushed down the toilet. *** With my life experiences and much more modest upbringing and education, I talk to Chinese with whom I can relate: farmers, factory workers, drivers, cleaners, teachers, repairmen, retirees, small shopkeepers, restaurant owners, waiters, cops, white collar workers, masseuses, TCM doctors, retail workers – in big and small cities, towns and rural villages. Would you care to guess which group of people – the aforementioned 39 – or the socioeconomic level of citizens I talk to, is more representative of the broad opinions and attitudes of the Chinese nation? The vibes and comments I got from traveling to Shenzhen and Zhuhai (in Guangdong Province), Anhui, Hunan and Guangxi Provinces, for two months in May and September/October, are the anti-universe of what Osnos suggests in his essay. Admittedly, I did talk to two Shenzhen factory owners in the technology sector, the parents of Chinese students I teach online. They were very matter-of-fact: Covid was a tough three years, it really cost them, but now they are back in the saddle and extremely optimistic about the future. When I asked one if he was investing in the Chinese stock market, he said he is waiting for now. He said US-Russia tensions needed to play out in Ukraine, so maybe next year will be the right time to dive in. This was of course before the US’s foray into Palestine, so it may be a while. Out of all the scores of work-a-day Chinese I talked with, I got one real crank, a disgruntled taxi driver in Shenzhen, who was pissed off at the world. Most everyone else, with true Confucian-Daoist-Buddhist aplomb, said the three years of Covid lockdowns were tough. Now, it is not the easy pickings it used to be, but they are optimistic about the future. From Shenzhen’s 17 million citizens, to third and fourth tier cities like Zhuhai, Hefei and Huaibei in Anhui, to Hunan’s Province’s incredibly youthful capital, Changsha, to laid back Guilin, down to small towns and villages in Anhui, Hunan and Guangxi Provinces, I saw the Chinese people humping, pumping and jumping – a national beehive of productive forces. Some told me they were making ends meet, others were working to buy a house, pay for their children’s pending marriages or get them through university, usually with a can-do attitude. Western pundits are obsessed with Chinese workers lying flat, i.e., goofing off on the job, to show their dissatisfaction with life. Among all the various kinds of people I met, the only time they have to lie flat is when they sleep. The Chinese people invented the much-bandied Western concept of grit 5,000 years ago. I have a cute t-shirt with a cartoon image of Xi Jinping encouraging the citizens to,  Roll up your shirt sleeves and get to work! I like to wear it, because it is a fantastic way to start conversations with strangers I meet in public. When-We elites can cry in their wonton soup, but China’s 99% are heeding Xi’s message and not looking back. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/890962.shtml). The citizens were sick and tired of foul air, foul water, filth everywhere and the lingering dishonesty and corruption at all levels: public, private and military. To cleanse the country of all that meant the need for new paradigms of governance and civility, and that could not happen with unfettered 10-12% annual growth. What happened is that with Covid, instead of slowly ratcheting down the double-digit growth over a number of years, it was forced upon the country in three. Twenty-twenty-three is projected to have a GDP growth of 5.6% (https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/5443e6bba11cd7fa7c0c678a20edd4dd-0350012023/related/GEP-June-2023-Regional-Highlights-EAP.pdf). This is by far the highest among major economies. North America? One-point-six (1.6%). Western Europe? Zero-point-six (0.6%). Japan? One-point-four (1.4%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate). China’s post-Covid new normal is working. According to the IMF, China’s productive GDP is three times larger than #2 USA (https://jermwarfare.com/conversations/china-is-more-capitalistic-than-the-united-states). No wonder my factory-owning dads are so optimistic.  This is not Chinese information, but straight from the West. Read it and weep. China has more productive GDP than the USA, India, Indonesia and Japan combined. Another bogey bear in his article is that there is a mass exodus of China’s wealthy. First, there are sixty million overseas Chinese living and working in 198 countries and regions. Since the start of the Silk Roads during the Han Dynasty, before the life of Jesus Christ, there has been an endless flow of Chinese leaving the homeland and those returning. https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1752445116351631245&wfr=spider&for=pc). According to Osnos, in 2022, China had a net loss of 10,800 net rich residents, or 0.17% of the total millionaires and 1.3% of its billionaires. My response: yawn. In any case, by 2025, China is expected to organically increase its millionaire club to 10.2 million citizens, so the few who are not in solidarity with the people and leave the country, good riddance (https://www.asianinvestor.net/article/millionaires-in-china-to-nearly-double-by-2025-credit-suisse/470521). https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1681270845225012647&wfr=spider&for=pc). https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/2212324508129149708.html?fr=search&word=2022%E5%B9%B4%E6%9C%89%E5%A4%9A%E5%B0%91%E6%B5%B7%E5%BD%92%E5%9B%9E%E6%9D%A5%E5%9B%BD%E5%AE%B6%E6%9D%A5%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%9A%84%E4%BA%BA). https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/755066107402145572.html?fr=search&word=%E6%AF%8F%E5%B9%B4%E6%B5%B7%E9%BE%9F%E5%9B%9E%E5%9B%BD%E7%9A%84%E5%8D%9A%E5%A3%AB%E6%9C%89%E5%A4%9A%E5%B0%91%E4%BA%BA and https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116221/china-number-of-masters-and-doctors-degrees-awarded/). Osnos wrote, China has all the airports—and railways and factories and skyscrapers—that it can justify. Seriously? China only became a majority urban population in 2014 and now stands at 65% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_China). The USA passed its halfway mark in 1920, a hundred years earlier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States). China will need another 10-15 years to reach its desired level of urbanites of 75-80%. Hundreds of millions of citizens need cities, housing, commercial space, transportation, etc. It is easy to forget that China has 1.4 billion citizens occupying a country the size of Canada or the USA. With these stats, China continues to not have enough infrastructure.
Also, there are still big developmental disparities between the wealthy coastal zones and the poorer western interior (https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3142294/chinas-provincial-gdps-show-widening-gap-between-coastal-and). Baba Beijing does not want more urbanization in the prior, so it is building up the latter, to attract economic activity there, to better balance the country’s population. What I saw in the interior was proof of this vision (see below). Not only that, but even more urban infrastructure will be needed to create five mega-clusters, each with around 150 million citizens (https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/28/1022557/china-city-cluster-urbanization-population-economy-environment/).
 No other country in the world could begin to create mega-cluster cities and only a socialist people can make it happen. Everywhere I traveled in China, from the biggest cities down to the smallest villages in the interior, I saw nothing but wall-to-wall infrastructure going up and out. Westerners cannot think beyond the next quarterly report in three months, to satisfy the venal lust of all the preferred and A-share stockholders, among the officers and board members. Baba Beijing has a vision going out thirty years to improve the lives of all the people (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/03/22/crush-the-streets-kenneth-ameduri-interviews-china-rising-radio-sinolands-jeff-j-brown-170323/). Osnos used as an argument that economically poor Guizhou Province, which is the size of the state of Missouri, USA has eleven airports, thus that is enough. I am not so sure. Guizhou has a population of 38.5 million, to Missouri’s 6.2 million, over six times as many inhabitants. How many airports does Missouri have? Eight (https://www.officialusa.com/travel/airlines/missouri-airports.html). Bloated state-run companies? Eighty-two of the Forbes Global 500 companies are Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), more than half of the 143 Chinese companies that grace this list, the country with the most listed (http://en.sasac.gov.cn/2021/08/03/c_7528.htm). As just one example, the four biggest banks in the world, and they are massive, are Chinese: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications. I wrote an article about them not long ago. SOEs may have been bloated in the 80s-90s, but now they are world beaters (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2022/10/14/chinas-much-maligned-misunderstood-state-owned-enterprises-span-the-globe-and-improve-your-lives-china-rising-radio-sinoland-221014/). Osnos also claims soaring debt. China’s debt is half as large as the USA’s, as a percent of GDP, 68% versus 128%. Per capita? $7,164 versus $88,697 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-national-debt). China’s Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng says the debt level of the Chinese government is at the mid-to-lower level internationally. He just told the Financial Street Forum 2023 in Beijing that small banks exposed to scores of bad loans account for a very small proportion in the financial system. Not to mention that the world’s biggest national financial sector is 99.9% Chinese-citizen-owned – no Wall Street-City of London dictators dictating the terms (https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3240790/chinas-central-bank-hand-support-debt-ridden-local-governments-governor-pan-gongsheng-says). A crackdown on education? About time! The battle for Chinese children’s minds has been ongoing since the tittytainment 80s-90s. Before the Foreign NGO Management Law was passed in 2017 (https://www.icnl.org/wp-content/uploads/China-FAQ-Overseas-NGO-Law.pdf), thousands of them, including George Soros’ many color rev fifth columnists insinuated themselves into China’s education system and textbooks. Citizens began complaining to Baba Beijing about seditious and trashy content in the schoolbooks and it spread all over social media. Parental suggestions poured in. Textbooks got an updated makeover to fully represent traditional Chinese and socialist values. The texts describing the Mao Era were made more objective, especially previous criticism about the Cultural Revolution, all of which I wrote about (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/11/02/the-fight-for-chinas-communist-socialist-soul-rages-on-in-its-textbooks-and-on-all-its-social-media-china-rising-radio-sinoland-201102/). This is due in part to many ranking Chinese leaders, who experienced firsthand the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, such as Xi, Premier Li Keqiang and previous President Hu Jintao, among many others. As Xi likes to say, he left a boy and after the Cultural Revolution came back a man (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/04/14/its-the-cultural-revolution-all-over-again-well-kinda-sorta-china-rising-radio-sinoland-190414/). The other major reform was that all private schools had to become non-profit. Over the years, two classes of Chinese students developed, the vast majority going to local schools, and wealthy families sending their kids to private, international ones, mostly with English and other European language curricula. With investors demanding double-digit returns, quality became secondary to cookie cutter outcomes, with parents assuming their children were getting their money’s worth, costing up to $35,000 per year per child. I know, because when my wife and I returned to China 2010-2019, we were teaching in them. To help equalize this class disparity and take the go-go motive away from greedy investors, all private schools had to become nonprofit in 2021 (https://www.farrer.co.uk/news-and-insights/a-new-regulatory-landscape-for-international-schools-in-china/). One subject I am mostly in agreement with Osnos, is the high youth (16-24 years of age) unemployment rate, last reported as 21.3% in July/August. This is clearly Baba Beijing’s biggest headache and if not resolved, could have longer term and/or unintended consequences. I did not meet anyone in this category, but at one in five, they are out there. This is a topic I will be following attentively in the months to come. Are foreigners suddenly worried about investing in China (https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/06/economy/china-negative-fdi-challenges-hnk-intl/index.html)? Or is Baba Beijing, learning to live without them in the new normal? Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is falling and exports are down in 2023 (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/exports), but is it part of the new normal, war footing plan? Baba Beijing knows that the West will apply sanctions like the ones Russia has been pummeled with, since NATO started to try destroying it via Ukraine in 2022. Russia has done splendidly in its efforts to become self-sufficient since then, but for China, why not prepare now? Again, for the fastest growing major economy in the world and the most productive, it should be much easier for the Chinese than for Russians. Besides falling FDI and exports, war preparations are also seen in Baba Beijing’s feverish promotion to boost domestic consumption. The Chinese are the biggest savers among large economies, with a 45.9% rate (https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/gross-savings-rate). The US is 17.8% and the French 14.2%. Harking back to the Mao Era, China needs to be prepared to be cut off from much of global trade, so domestic consumption will have to take up the export slack. All the many observations Osnos makes about a more hostile reception with foreign businesses, and a tougher anti-espionage law is all more proof that Baba Beijing is preparing for the day when the West has declared hot war, and China will no longer be able to count on FDI and huge exports, just like what the West is trying to do to Russia today. It bears repeating. Baba Beijing’s policies and behavior strongly suggest it is preparing the people for a Mao Era redux to batten down the hatches, be self-sufficient, to hell with the capitalist West and working with reliable, trustworthy partners. Like Mao Zedong, to do this, the people are rallying around their leader, President Xi. This brings us to Taiwan Province and interviewees suggesting to Osnos that El-Supremo Xi could launch an attack on the island, to save his sinking presidency (sic), is another hoot and a holler. Baba Beijing will avoid a hot war at all costs to regain Taiwan Province, because time is on the Mainland’s side. Public speeches state that the PRC will be made whole by 2049, when the people celebrate their centennial liberation. That is a generation from now. In the meantime, a hot war would hamper the nation’s development in infrastructure, technology, environment and on and on. The Mainland will only take the offensive if Taipei declares independence, or NATO strikes first. I always point out that 5% of Taiwan’s people, one million strong, live and work on the Mainland, and they are not washing dishes or driving taxis. They are mostly in the managerial, entrepreneurial, engineering, technology sectors and have billions of dollars invested there. Want to bring Taipei to the negotiating table really fast? All Baba Beijing would have to do is cancel ten or twenty thousand resident/work permits, sending all those owners, managers and their families packing. The loss of all that business activity and the sudden influx of those Taiwanese would collapse the island’s economy, without the PLA needing to fire a shot. The BLPM will never tell you that for China’s leadership, the country has been at war with the West since 4 September 1839, the start of the First Opium War. Baba Beijing, since the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921, always frames the country’s modern era as beginning on that day. China’s textbooks and media talk about the country’s Road to Rejuvenation beginning with this nadir, and the following 110 years are still painfully called the Century of Humiliation, until communist-socialist liberation in 1949. Ridding the country of Western, Japanese and Chinese fascists in 1949 gave the people their liberation and freedom, but Korea 1950-1953 and Southeast Asia, 1955-1975 demonstrated that the West’s war against China never ended. With Deng Xiaoping whispering exactly what the West’s capitalist class wanted to believe, that China would rapidly become a continent-sized resource whore, like Indonesia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, there was a ceasefire from 1980-2011. And let us face it, China got the very long end of the global economic and trade stick during that period (GATT and WTO), thanks to Westerners’ delusional hubris that the entire world is dying to be just like them. What happened in 2011? The BLPM will never tell you this, but the West’s war against China went hot again, with Obama and Hillary announcing NATO’s Pivot to Asia. That is how Baba Beijing still sees it. Why? Since the end of World War II, China is increasingly surrounded by US military bases.  Now you can see why the Chinese people feel under assault. They are surrounded by a NATO Maginot Line, right off their coast. I wrote a satirical piece, creating a mirror map of China surrounding the USA with bases, to empathize with what the Chinese see happening (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/01/01/a-china-rising-radio-sinoland-reality-map-if-china-were-the-usa-china-in-the-americas/). Even before 2011, Baba Beijing was already leery, after the blatant 2003 SARS (plus the 2019 SARS-COV-2) bioweapon attacks by the West (www.bioweapontruth.com and https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/03/07/its-all-here-the-china-rising-radio-sinoland-Covid-19-chemical-and-bioweapon-file-film-and-tape-library/ and https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/02/25/harvard-illegally-collected-dna-samples-in-china-throughout-the-90s-right-up-to-sars-lies-upon-lies-and-many-cover-ups-have-kept-this-criminal-conduct-hidden-in-plain-sight-looks-like-bio-engineere/), By the time Xi was elected president, the Mao Era’s self-sufficiency philosophy, independence from the global capitalist economy and highly successful anti-Western moxie became prerogatives. Enter Xi Jinping, the 21st century Mao Zedong. By chance, President Hu Jintao’s 10 years in office ended in 2012, just a year after NATO’s Pivot to Asia. Of course, the 3,000-member National People’s Congress (NPC), the 300-member Central Committee, the 25-member Standing Committee and the 9-member Politburo Standing Committee had been discussing who to elect as the next president. Xi Jinping had already been a member of the Politburo Standing Committee since 2007 (https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/CLM35AM.pdf). Clearly, from the NPC on up, these leaders had five years to observe Xi in action, including his overseeing the incredibly successful 2008 Beijing Olympics (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2022/12/20/timeless-transcript-buckle-up-world-you-are-entering-the-xi-era-44-days-radio-sinoland-2015-3-29/). Other candidates were surely discussed, but with Obama, Hillary and NATO swarming to Taiwan Province, Japan, Korea and the South China Sea, Xi’s CV made him the obvious choice to get back the much-needed Mao Era visionary backbone to survive and thrive. Living and working in China at the time, I remember reading articles by the BLPM’s China Experts. Former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao continued to seduce Western capitalists with Deng’s reform and opening up sweet nothings, while continuing to hold the Party line to avoid becoming a color revolution vassal – these experts were high-fiving, when it was announced that Xi had been elected president. Why? Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun had been branded as a liberal do-gooder by these so-called Western experts. Why? Mao Zedong tasked Xi Father to negotiate with Xinjiang to be reincorporated into the newly founded People’s Republic. It took several years, and since it was done without firing a shot, Xi Father became a darling of the West, especially since Tibet returned to China, with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marching onto the Plateau. Then in 1978, Deng Xiaoping tasked Xi Zhongxun with tackling Hong Kong and how to stop Shenzheners – at that time a town of 20,000 fishermen and sea salt harvesters – from going to Hong Kong. Xi Zhongxun’s concept was brilliantly simple: make Shenzhen even better than Hong Kong, by turning it into a special economic (SEZ: free trade) zone. He humbly credited his boss with the idea. Deng is everywhere in Shenzhen and there is only one small photo of Xi Zhongxun in the Municipal Museum. Still, Western Sinologists got wind of the story and now Dad was being touted as a free-wheeling, neoliberal capitalist. Well, surely if Xi’s father was a liberal softie and a neoliberal, then Son must be too! That kind of self-congratulatory hubris can cause disappointments. What they failed to consider is that to be commissioned by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, a pair of hardcore communists to their last dying breaths, to take on two extremely sensitive projects, then succeed and win their praise and that of the people, logically means he was not a softie capitalist.  Deng’s statue atop Lianhua Mountain, overlooking Shenzhen, when I was there in October. The group in front is members of the CPC, who were there to learn about Deng’s life and accomplishments. They were from Jiangxi Province. Baba Beijing did not elect Xi Jinping because he was going to be China’s Gorbachev and sellout the people to Wall Street and NATO. They elected him, because they knew he had what it takes to be China’s 21st century Mao, to defeat Uncle Slaughter and its global Wehrmacht. It is almost comical how MSM writers transform in lockstep the West’s enemies’ leaders into cardboard cutouts, Dell Comic fiends. From Lenin to Stalin and Mao to Xi, the descriptions become lurid and fantastic, like lumbering James-Bondesque Frankenstein evildoers hellbent on snuffing out humanity, barking a two-word command, EVERYBODY DIES, then dramatically pressing the blinking red button. Osnos is no different. I will let you read his article to see what I mean, but one passage jumped up and slapped me in the face, “Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse?” he (Xi) asked, according to excerpts that circulated among Party members. One reason, he said, was that the Soviets’ “ideals and beliefs had wavered.” More important, though, “they didn’t have the tools of dictatorship” (emphasis mine). Tools of dictatorship? Xi’s comments about the USSR have been widely circulated since they were spoken in 2012, but this was the first time I ever read the tools of dictatorship line. A search of the web shows that Evan’s article is the only place it is found. I could not access some paywalls, so maybe it is referenced, but what has been published for the last ten years is this, The lessons Xi took from the (Soviet) collapse: retain tight control of the military, do not make reforms that undermine the Party’s power, and make no unforced errors. (https://www.vox.com/world/23403324/xi-jinping-china-worldview-soviet-union-arab-spring). Which is exactly what has happened since then. Nonetheless, to paraphrase these three recommendations as tools of dictatorship, if that is what happened, is dishonest propaganda.
 It may be referenced somewhere else, but Evan’s article is the only place I could find his tools of dictatorship. In any case, the idea that a Chinese leader can be some kind of demonic, strong-man El-Supremo is laughable, including Mao Zedong. With thousands of leaders in the NPC, the Central Committee, politburos, the massive Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_People%27s_Political_Consultative_Conference), not to mention vying regions and provinces, all with egos and expectations, Chinese governance has always been Confucian and consensual, going back millennia. Autocratic, tyrannical emperors, like Qin Shi Huang are few in number, and they are frowned upon by historians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang). A careful study of Xi’s career path clearly shows that his style of leadership is consultative. That characteristic he definitely got from his dad (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2023/09/23/xi-jinpings-ten-commandments-for-the-strict-governance-of-the-party-and-that-goes-for-the-public-and-private-sectors-too-china-rising-radio-sinoland-230923/) Another favorite MSM chestnut is to say that Xi has stocked the Politburo with trusted aides, like it is some evil plot to surround himself with yes men. How many Trump supporters does Biden have on his team? The thought is ludicrous. Any leader worth their salt does the same as Xi: collaborates with people they know and trust. Remember that one of the three lessons Xi learned about the fall of the USSR was to retain tight control of the military. The previous military leader in power was Deng Xiaoping and before him, Mao. Neither President Jiang Zemin nor Hu Jintao were military men, yet Jiang kept tight control over the PLA after leaving office, which really hampered Hu’s administration. This was a big source of corruption in the military and clearly the NPC and Central Committee knew that it could not continue. The fact that Xi and his wife were already PLA officers and had cultivated contacts throughout the military for years, was probably another deciding factor electing him as Party Secretary, President and by default, Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), which is like the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. https://japan-forward.com/china-watch-commanders-expose-reveals-chinese-military-troubled-by-peace-disease/). Of course, he replaced much of the top brass, who were corrupt, with his honest and trustworthy loyalists. What leader in their right mind would put their (corrupt) enemies in positions of power? Xi’s personal army? Ever since Mao Zedong, it has been an ironclad rule that the PLA owes its allegiance to the CPC and the people, the people command the Party, and the CPC is in command of the military. As Party General Secretary and Chairman of the CMC, it is colorful propaganda to call the PLA his personal army, but he is clearly the boss. He has transformed the military in incredibly positive ways, and has brought back high morale among the troops, not seen since the Mao Era. China is ready to go to war when NATO makes that decision. It must be said, Xi does not help himself. He definitely has a low Q-score. He moves slowly, speaks methodically, rarely smiles or laughs. He is all business all the time, but did manage to crack a Cheshire cat grin when asked if he trusts Joe Biden (https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSNaRnQqX/). Mao had more charisma in his little finger than Xi does in his entire body. However, despite Evan’s typical BLPM character assassination, Xi is popular among the people I talk to, especially getting credit for cleaning up corruption across the board. They call him lianjie (廉洁), meaning honest and uncorruptible. He also gets plaudits from bringing Chinese culture back into the mainstream, while jettisoning all that Western tittytainment. (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/01/19/we-decided-that-xi-is-our-president-chinas-participatory-and-petitioning-democracy-succeeds-online-china-rising-radio-sinoland-190119/).  Xi’s wry grin is all you need to know about how much he trusts Joe Biden. Other members of his team on the same translation feed also smiled or looked at Xi to see his reaction. Xi gave no other comment. His silent reaction said it all. Osnos sees evil that Xi launched an “anti-corruption” campaign that grew into a vast machine of arrest and detention, China has investigated and punished 4.089 million people (from 2012-2021). Based on what I heard from the citizens I talked to, they would be happy for another four million crooks to get the same treatment. The lingering hangover of the fetid 1980s-1990s still looms large. This explains why the government’s campaign is still pedal-to-the-metal, with detentions and punishment ongoing. Unlike previous anti-corruption campaigns, which were sporadic and too brief, Xi has promised the people that the fight against corruption, be it private, public or military, will never cease. Proof of its success comes from Dongping Han and Mobo Gao (see below), who do extensive field work in several Chinese provinces. They both say that pre-Xi corruption has been all but wiped out, less some petty local corruption like alcohol, cigarettes and banquets. They say that local government authorities admit they may have been involved in or tolerated corruption around them (bribes), but now they are afraid to even consider or condone it, since oversight is so withering. Fellow CWG members Dongping Han and Mobo Gao grew up during the Mao Era and are now full professors at US and Australian universities, respectively. They have written books about their youth, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which I can highly recommend (https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dongping-Han/author/B001I0PTC0 and https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mobo-C.-F.-Gao/author/B001ITYLN4). Since that time, they continue to do field work in rural China, interviewing hundreds of farmers, rural factory workers, retirees and village government representatives every year. I met Dongping in Hong Kong in May, attending a conference on Chinese labor, and he was going right after that to the Mainland’s boondocks. They both say that Xi Jinping is by far the most popular leader since Mao Zedong, second only to their 50s-70s Great Helmsman. Do not tell that to the West’s BLPM. USSR history author Grover Furr (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/08/18/everything-you-know-about-russia-and-the-ussr-is-a-lie-dr-grover-furr-interviews-on-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180818/) told me that you cannot get published by a major media company, unless you automatically conflate Stalin into an insane, bloodthirsty, psychopathic, genocidal terrorist, regardless of the facts. It is obvious that the same expectations for China’s leaders are no different. Writers like Maurice Meisner and Jonathan Spence admit some of the successes of the Mao Era. Nevertheless, by the time Mao becomes a young adult, instead of teeth, he is portrayed as having mossy covered fangs, his hands are turned into blood-dripping claws, and he spends his days trying to figure out how he can mass murder another million citizens this week. I fell for that propaganda when I wrote the first book of The China Trilogy, but after much research and reading, corrected myself in the next two volumes. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the West’s BLPM. Ninety-nine percent of writers and journalists —careerists all—know their place, what they cannot write and what they must say. They are like trained seals barking tricks and balancing balls on their noses, so they can pay the mortgage, get on TV, receive MSM awards and write for big-name media outlets. Members of CWG often call them factotums and stenographers. James Bradley published four bestselling books (http://www.jamesbradley.com/). A Seek Truth From Facts director, all those years of research put him on a path of seeking truth and justice, even if it meant displeasing the establishment. Our 60+ podcast shows are proof that James is not backing down (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2023/06/05/jb-west-and-jb-east-present-see-you-in-the-hague-our-complete-show-library-continually-updated/). There are a few out there. The Greanville Post (www.greanvillepost.com) is a CWG member. The editor, Patrice Greanville got his graduate degree in economics at a big-name university in New York. Because of his brilliance, even back in the seventies, he was getting six-figure salary offers from Fortune 500 firms. Instead of compromising his principles and taking Easy Street, he worked for pennies helping unions with their books and financing, while immediately jumping into anti-imperial writing and publishing, and has never looked back. Pepe Escobar (https://twitter.com/RealPepeEscobar) is a CWG member who has evolved over the years. Formerly an edgy, more mainstream writer for Asia Times, he has since become one of the of the most powerful anti-imperialist voices in alternative media. With NATO trying to destroy Russia and now the Arab World, his thunderbolts are increasingly speaking hard truths to establishment power. He could have led a comfortable life writing for the BLPM, but gave all that up to fight the good fight for the Global Majority. Paul Craig Roberts was an Assistant Secretary of Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He could be making boatloads on the speaking circuit and getting wined and dined in the MSM. But world events outraged him. He threw all that away and is now a powerful anti-government tyranny author and journalist (https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/). More inspiration comes from Michael Parenti. He got his PhD at Yale, all set up to be an MSM darling, but obviously the deans did not like what he was teaching America’s future imperialists, so over the years he moved from school to school. Twenty books and three hundred articles later, he sacrificed the big bucks to stick to his anti-establishment convictions. A number of his eye-opening lectures are on YouTube. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Parenti). As a Christian minister, Pulitzer prize winner Chris Hedges hewed to his religious convictions. A graduate of Harvard and then working at the New York Times, he refused to perform their seal barking tricks and was forced out. He has since become one of the leading anti-imperial, anti-war authors and journalists in the West (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges). All the aforementioned brave hearts and several others are my inspirational heroes. As for me, I backed into my career as an author-journalist by accident, when I traveled across China and ended up writing 44 Days Backpacking in China. At 69, surviving on a modest retirement income, continuing to teach online to supplement it, and getting extremely limited donations for my journalism, I can maintain my principles and passion, with nothing to lose, not wanting a Faustian pact with the BLPM to ladder climb. As I look out my window and gaze at the D-Day beaches of Normandy (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2022/06/06/dirty-dark-secrets-of-d-day-france-6-june-1944-with-crucial-background-in-world-war-ii-china-and-japan-china-rising-radio-sinoland-220606/), I recall the wonderful French aphorism, A clean conscience makes a soft pillow. I sleep well at night.
*I love the crude Chinese joke about its three most important provinces. Guangdong supplies the brawn, as the manufacturing hub for Planet Earth. Shanghai offers the brains and culture, as the country’s financial center and cosmopolitan face to the rest of the world. And what does Beijing offer? Really BIG testicles, as it has the will and the force to keep the other two provinces under control, and the rest of the country on target! **1990-1997, I was a high-flying businessman for two outfits. For the first one, I was country director for a grain trade office. Highlights included brewing Sino-American beer with Qingdao Brewery and conducting aquaculture trials on the PLA’s farms. Next, I was the general manager of the first Mainland McDonald’s bakery, which I installed, opened and ran. Those were the buckaroo days, all right! Appendix I Brookings Institute Donors FY2022 Banks/Wall Street: Bank of America, Bank Policy Institute, Carnegie Corporation, Citi, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Scotiabank, TD Bank, T Rowe Price, Visa, Wells Fargo. Elite schools: Brandeis, Georgetown, Harvard, University of Chicago, Washington/St. Louis. Energy and mining: BHP, British Petroleum, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Total, Shell. Japan: United States-Japan Foundation. Medicine: Bayer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health (Anthony Fauci), Rockefeller Foundation. Taiwan Province: Taipei Representative. South Korea: Korea Foundation. (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2022-annual-report.pdf ABOUT JEFF BROWN JEFF J. BROWN, Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing
• For Jeff J Brown’s Books, Radio Sinoland & social media outlets be sure to check this page on his special blog CHINA RISING RADIO SINOLAND The battle against the Big Lie killing the world will not be won by you just reading this article. It will be won when you pass it on to at least 2 other people, requesting they do the same.
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