By Jeff J. Brown
Pictured above: Taiwanese Li Mingche at his sentencing in September 2017, for subverting China’s communist-socialist way of life. He worked for years to get Chinese citizens to try to overthrow the government. Baba Beijing finally got a bellyful of his Western NGO backed treason and as a result, he is now spending five years in prison. These are the kind of turncoats Baba is worried about, not the untold thousands of social media groups in China, where members are against the government, the Communist Party of China (CPC), different leaders and just about every other niche group you can think of with a gripe.
Downloadable SoundCloud podcast (also at the bottom of this page), as well as being syndicated on iTunes and Stitcher Radio (links below),
So, when my author friend William Engdahl sent me an email to compliment me on my post about Western racism (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/03/01/western-racism-and-hypocrisy-foaming-at-the-mouth-over-chinas-constitutional-changes-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180301/), I was all smiles. William is an outstanding author who has written numerous books. I highly recommend that you subscribe to his free newsletter. He always sends something informative and thought provoking:
http://www.williamengdahl.com/
The start is William’s short email to me. I sat down to write a few lines and seven hours later, voilà. I realized it ended up being a great article, so I emailed William to get his permission to turn it into an “email exchange” between the two of us. He kindly agreed, so enjoy.
From: William Engdahl
Sent: Friday, 2 March, 2018 15:58
To: Jeff J. Brown <je**@br***********.com>
Subject: West going rabid over China’s participatory democracy
Jeff,
Thanks for this. From afar I am of two minds, so this helps. One is an ominous sign of tightening down debate. On the other hand, the Silk Road/BRI is a counter to the entire Anglo-American New World Order, which is so important to steer rough waters ahead and the need for strong leadership, not muddy consensus. Only I see some ominous signs that are not so positive, such as recent deal between Xi Jinping and the Pope in Rome. This could prove very dangerous for China, as is the Syngenta “biotech” venture into GMO.
Any comments are most welcome.
Best, William
(My response)
Hi William,
Thanks for commenting and I’m glad you liked the article. I hope you will sign up for my email alert, so you can stay on top of my work (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/blog-2/, right hand side). I always enjoy getting your emails too.
First, William, I congratulate you for saying, From afar I’m of two minds, so this helps. This shows someone who understands that where they are matters and conflicting ideas and news are healthy.
To be honest with you, the “tightening down debate” has been largely been conducted on known Western fifth columnists. Baba Beijing used its new NGO control law (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2016/04/30/baba-beijing-lowers-the-communist-boom-on-foreign-ngos-china-rising-radio-sinoland-16-4-30/) to go after several hundred unregistered foreign agents. Their social media accounts were (temporarily) shut down, they were brought in for questioning and the like. Many of them could have been arrested for aiding and abetting a foreign country. Some, like Liu Xiaobo and Li Mingche were imprisoned, because their treason was so chronically obvious. But overall, the CPC is amazingly patient and indulgent (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/).
I have an interesting anecdotal story to share with you, William. Over the Chinese New Year holiday, my family and I visited an old employee of mine from the 1990s. His father got caught up in the 1950s Anti-Right Campaign and suffered terribly. Thus, my friend, down to his spleen, viscerally hates the CPC, Mao and every communist in between, up to Xi. He participates in anti-party, anti-Mao, anti-Xi social media forums. There are conservative forums who hate Deng and the all the presidents thereafter, for selling out Mao to capitalist reforms. There are pro-Deng groups who idolize his modernization and pro-Xi groups who love his anti-corruption drive. There are untold thousands of these social media groups, of every niche and persuasion, with hundreds of millions of participants. It is vibrant and very active.
Is there censorship? Of course. If someone starts spreading outright lies and scurrilous rumors, those threads will get cut. But, wanna call Xi an evil monster? Go right ahead. Do it on Wechat, or Weibo and the scores other social media venues Westerners have never heard of. Just don’t do it on a street corner. That is a public loss of face for Baba Beijing and very un-Confucian.
Seeing all the imperial search engine suppression for hundreds of alternative websites, including The Greanville Post and China Rising Radio Sinoland, and all the channels and accounts being shut down in Western social media (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram), I think Eurangloland’s censorship is much more intense and ideologically motivated than in China. A case in point, my StumbleUpon account was frozen over a year ago.
There are 300-500 public protests a day in China. But they have to be for a specific reason: a case of fraud, a corrupt land deal, a rotten party cadre, an injustice, a polluting factory, etc. (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/01/30/60-seconds-over-sinoland-selling-breast-milk-as-public-protest-is-chinese-democracy-in-action-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180131/). You just can’t go out on a public square and vaguely say the that CPC is crap, Xi is corrupt or demand Western democracy. Again, this is a loss of face in Chinese culture and doesn’t better society.
Baba Beijing loves all the development of China’s social media, which is one of the reasons it promotes it so heavily. Go ahead, get on Duban, Doudou, Sogu, Renren, Baidu, Meituan, QQ, UC, Youku, Wechat, Sina, Weibo, etc., and call Xi a criminal or promote Western style elections. The Party knows that all this social media is a powerful pressure release valve for its 1.4 billion citizens to express themselves. It’s not street public, so there is no loss of Confucian face.
Being the world’s largest surveyor and pollster (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2016/05/22/china-has-the-worlds-most-popular-government-for-a-reason-china-rising-radio-sinoland-160522/), all this affords Baba Beijing a myriad pulse on the body politic, as well as all the trends in what the masses are thinking. Given China’s mastery of artificial intelligence and big numbers, the Party can parse all these opinions and trends by socioeconomic group, geographical location, education, profession and on and on, to better respond to the people’s democratic aspirations (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/01/20/headlines-say-it-all-baba-beijings-vision-leads-its-citizens-into-the-21st-century-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180121/ and http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/01/11/chinas-public-social-credit-system-versus-the-wests-secret-panopticon-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180111/).
William, the fact of the matter is that people outside China are brainwashed by 150 years of rabid anti-communism-socialism, especially after Russia’s mighty anti-imperial 1917 Revolution. As well, they are just as brainwashed with deep seated anti-Chinese racism, going back centuries, which I wrote about and referenced in my previous article (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/03/01/western-racism-and-hypocrisy-foaming-at-the-mouth-over-chinas-constitutional-changes-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180301/). But having been on the ground in China for a total of 15 years, since 1990 and seeing its never-before-in-human-history evolution and transformation, while doing thousands of hours of research on pre- and post-liberation China, I can say in no uncertain terms that China has the most open, participatory, responsive and citizen-satisfying democracy in the world. The fact that it is based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought means it’s radically different than the West’s version of electoral democracy (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/10/25/how-can-western-capitalism-beat-this-thats-the-rub-it-cant-china-rising-radio-sinoland-171022/ and http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2016/03/13/why-chinas-centrally-planned-communist-economy-runs-circles-around-capitalism-china-rising-radio-sinoland-16-3-13/).
I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of the Chinese’s response is,
THANK GOODNESS!
As far as Baba Beijing working with Rome to normalize relations and the appointment of bishops, like you, I’m no fan of the imperial Vatican, historically and currently. But there are millions of Chinese in underground churches (which I have witnessed first-hand, as well as gone to public churches) and because of the current Vatican-Beijing impasse, many of them are Catholic. The CPC (nor the people) will never forgive Western churches for their critical role in maintaining China’s century of humiliation, 1839-1949 (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/10/01/chinas-communist-liberation-on-october-1st-1949-changed-the-world-forever-china-rising-radio-sinoland-171001/). But Xi realizes that to bring transparency to China’s religious groups and sects, Baba must normalize relations with the Pope. Xi is not doing this for the Vatican. He’s doing it for his country’s long-term social stability and harmony.
Not to mention, the Holy See would have to renounce recognition of Taiwan as the Vatican’s representative of China, which is long overdue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_See–Taiwan_relations). The Holy See is the lone holdout in Europe to continue to work with Taiwan, so the symbolism is ripe with significance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Entities_with_full_diplomatic_relations_with_Taiwan). Uncle Sam realizes how important it is (https://www.voanews.com/a/china-vatican-talks-threaten-taiwan-with-loss-of-crucial-ally/3662425.html). Simply put, it has got to be done.
I too closely followed ChemChina’s purchase of Syngenta last year, creating one of the biggest agricultural chemical and GMO repositories in the world (http://www.chemchina.com.cn/en/). ChemChina is a state-owned enterprise, ranks in the Forbes Global 500 and is one of the biggest in its sector (http://fortune.com/global500/chemchina/). It had $45 billion in revenue last year and turned a profit, while swallowing up Syngenta, then the world’s #2 agricultural company, after Monsanto.
You and I both distrust GMO and based on our research (which you’ve done a mountain of), we have serious concerns for humanity’s long-term survival, due to their use.
At the same time, Baba Beijing is responsible for feeding and clothing 1.4 billion citizens, almost one-fifth of the world’s people. China has about ten percent of the world’s arable land. The announcement that China Tech has developed saltwater rice is wonderful news (https://www.zmescience.com/science/agriculture-science/saltwater-rice-24102017/). As much as we disagree, Baba has come to the conclusion that these kinds of non-GMO advances will not be enough to realize China’s goals for 2049 (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/10/29/october-18th-2017-is-world-cd-day-when-baba-beijing-declared-war-on-western-capitalism-china-rising-radio-sinoland-171029/) and that to not use GMO is a luxury it cannot afford. Russia is going all non-GMO, but it has even more arable land than China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land) with about one-tenth the population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population).
But, we can enjoy the fact that Syngenta is now a China state owed company, whose CEO, Ren Jianxin is a fire breathing member of the Communist Party of China. Take that capitalist empire!
You and I remind me of a story Godfree Roberts told me. He saw a YouTube video with a professor recounting a funny story at a big Sino-American conference. A Chinese vice president was one of the guests, meaning he was one of the most powerful members of the CPC. A Western human rights type was there, in this VP’s face, ranting about the case of so-and-so and their loss of freedom, civil rights, due process… Being very Confucian, the VP respectfully let this person have their say till the very end. Then, the VP replied (paraphrasing),
Thank you for sharing your views. You know, I must apologize profusely, but I don’t even know who you are talking about. Please understand that every day, I get up and am responsible for the happiness, wellbeing and harmonious stability of 1.4 billion people.
Needless to say, the VP’s reply was end of that discussion.
Thus, from Baba Beijing’s perspective, as sincere and research-supported as they may be, our concerns about GMO rank right down there with the West’s contrived concerns for some Chinese citizens’ supposed loss of human rights. The CPC has a big job on its hands, or if you will pardon my egregious pun, Baba Beijing has much bigger GMO fish to fry!
Always wonderful to hear from you, William.
Best from Jeff in China
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Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History
JEFF J. BROWN, Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing
Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China – The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising – Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). He is also currently penning an historical fiction, Red Letters – The Diaries of Xi Jinping, to be published in late 2018. Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on SoundCloud, YouTube, Stitcher Radio and iTunes.
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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