China's Great Oppressor Reality Subverts Its Great Power Aspirations

Chinese President Xi Jinping boasts his nation will return to great power status before 2049. By great power Xi means return to unrivaled world power status, which his ethnic Han-centered reading of history assumes the Middle Kingdom enjoyed during its imperial golden age. By the way, it is no coincidence that 2049 will mark 100 years of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorial rule in mainland China.

2019's Hong Kong protests, however, have exposed Xi's reviving China as a great oppressor operating as an authoritarian, corrupt and brutal political system few human beings would willingly emulate. China's senior communists can boast, but deep down they know their police state is politically brittle, which is why they employ hi-tech surveillance to monitor their citizens and Tiananmen Square-type slaughter if undeterred citizens challenge the CCP's domestic power.

The Trump administration's trade war has caught politically challenged China in an awkward economic moment. China's economy no longer roars. Economic growth has stalled.

According to the latest Jamestown Foundation China brief, China's moribund economy presents Xi and the entire CCP with "immense difficulties." The report cites two telling examples. Chinese information technology companies "are having trouble obtaining core components" from the U.S. and Western countries. Consumer spending is listless due to "unprecedented levels of household debt, which is estimated at 52 percent of GDP."

Fair guess "core components" means quality core components. China still has difficulties with manufacturing quality control that decades of stealing equipment plans, filching software and reverse engineering technology have not solved.

Why? Jamestown refers to the abominable Maoist Cultural Revolution's execrable credo "Politics takes command."

China has no independent legal system. The CCP is supreme in legal matters, which means that the CCP's China, no matter how far reaching it appears to be, is ruled by whim, not law.

In retrospect, China's economy appears to have been less robust in the last three to four years than official government data suggested. Did Beijing massage the data for propaganda purposes?

When "politics takes command," why not lie? After all, China's dictatorship hawked its economic prowess as indicative of the superiority of authoritarianism with "Chinese characteristics." Superior to what other system? The system China's propagandists call the U.S.-led Liberal International Order (LIEO).

They still contend the CCP's authoritarian governance model works and China's economic success proves it works. The economic "immense difficulties" of 2018 and 2019, and the Hong Kong demonstrations, challenge the propagandists' certainties.

Fake data problems plague every country, but ultimately, liars get caught. For several years, Greek governments lied about their annual deficits in order to meet Eurozone requirements. I'm not alleging Xi's China is Greece 2012. I am speculating about sources of China's economic listlessness that precede its economic clash with the Trump administration. Corruption coupled with systemic lack of accountability -- to include personal accountability, where managers and workers let lackadaisical and lazy work practices slide -- eventually produces financial turmoil.

In 2011, Suisheng Zhao wrote a prescient essay for EastAsiaForum.org. 2011 was the year of Arab Spring. Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution in particular frightened the CCP because "social and political tensions caused by rising inequality, injustice, and corruption" haunt China."

Zhao wrote that the "dramatically rising costs of maintaining internal control have raised questions about the sustainability of the China model, which is based on the wrong assumption that economic growth trumps all else. If the government takes care of economic growth the assumption is, people will be willing to give up all moral and other demands."

China's economic slowdown alone questions that assumption; economic stagnation may expose it as authoritarian arrogance. Hong Kong's weeks of demonstrations may or may not be indicative the restlessness and resentment in the rest of mainland China. However, Hong Kong's demands for liberal freedoms and distrust of Beijing have international narrative resonance. And it appears the Trump administration's trade war has just begun.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. His latest book, "Cocktails from Hell: Five Wars Shaping the 21st Century" (Bombardier Books), is available now.

"Politics takes command."

That one brings back some memories, none of them good. That's an easy conclusion to draw when you've defined the truth out of existence and history down to narrative. It masquerades as postmodern philosophy but in fact it's insensate nihilism. And where it leads is:

When "politics takes command," why not lie?

Why not indeed, if there is no truth? IF. If there is, however, and that truth is that there is no food, starvation is not merely a matter of narrative, and it's true in economics as well - if the narrative is that "we're doing better than ever" and in fact you're not, you find quickly that you can neither eat, wear, nor shelter under narrative. The advantage to being in command politically is that when that happens, it happens to somebody else.

[Chinese President Xi Jinping boasts his nation will return to great power status before 2049. By great power Xi means return to unrivaled world power status, which his ethnic Han-centered reading of history assumes the Middle Kingdom enjoyed during its imperial golden age.]

This allusion to “Han-centered” is perhaps an attempt to call the Communist Party of China Nazis. Which is the furthest thing from their actual ideology. So what is that ideology?

There is none, except for a renewal of the principle that what the ruler (or emperor, in practical terms) decides, is law. Mao made it up as he went along. His manual wasn’t Das Kapital - it was the Water Margin and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, two of the Four Great (Chinese) Classic Novels, on the the intrigues necessary to fight your way to power and then hold on to it. What Mao instituted was basically imperial rule without hereditary succession, although the non-hereditary part may have been making a virtue out of necessity*.

Over thousands of years of Chinese history, the state ideology was fairly similar to that of every other kingdom since the beginning of time. The idea was that the ruler of China was king of kings, and that his domain would eventually incorporate all under heaven. That domain would be limited only by the power and reach of the imperial armies, and capacity of the imperial treasury to finance their military expeditions. What the emperor sought, most of all, was to cover himself with glory, such that his name would be more prominent than those of his predecessors. This is, again, not very different from what Ramesses II (aka Ozymandias), Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Saladin and numberless rulers wanted for themselves.

Emperors don’t care about race and ethnicity. All subjects under his rule are equal. The most loyal subjects are more equal than the rest, i.e. they are showered with appointments, because their loyalty is the fundamental underpinning of the survival of imperial rule. The Uighurs aren’t being *discriminated* against. They are being converted into “Han”, the definition of which is fairly similar to its Roman equivalent, meaning that from the ruler’s standpoint, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion, their primary allegiances should be to the sovereign and the state, in that order, and their language and customs should be those of the Han, to prevent any internal revolts based on these differences. The idea is that “raw barbarians” should have their traditional language and customs stripped away, in favor of the Han language and customs, to turn them into “cooked barbarians”. There have been many large scale revolts and power struggles within the Chinese state that have resulted in the spilling of oceans of blood, but only a small minority have turned upon sectarian differences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian#China

* Mao’s sole surviving non-defective son was abruptly introduced to the effects of napalm for the first and last time by a USAF airstrike during the Korean War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Anying

[The drift to freedom is not going to be stopped by the wujing this time, as the world is watching and we have a president who would stop all trade with China if they intervene in Hong Kong militarily.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Armed_Police

Wasn’t it regular troops from Manchuria that put down the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, not the People’s Armed Police? I fully expect politically-unreliable (i.e. not inclined to follow orders that involve killing unarmed civilians) elements of the Hong Kong Police to be recalled to China for consultations before armed repression finally gets rolling. You gotta wonder if the Hong Kong Police will resist or assist the Chinese government, if Xi orders the use of live ammo.

“Fair guess “core components” means quality core components. China still has difficulties with manufacturing quality control that decades of stealing equipment plans, filching software and reverse engineering technology have not solved.”

That problem is ENDEMIC to their manufacture of weapons. And explains why they cannot field a quality jet engine even after the Russians gave them all the engineering docs AND process docs.

Those who fear the Chinese Dragon fear a chimera.

And it’s why we DO NOT see China’s military seriously challenge any modern nation on any front.

They can’t. And deep down inside they know it.

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