The West and China just won’t back down from each other. China will no longer try to work through former Mayor Han of Kaohsiung to reunite Taiwan against the will of 23 million people. America wants to put new missiles in China’s back yard and every ally has turned down the offer except Taiwan, who hasn’t had the chance. Australia is putting out the word on China, it’s not the best place to study and coercion won’t work. Now, North Korea is selling sand—illegally, of course, since selling anything has been deemed “illegal” by the West.
The sad part about the predictability of this conflict is how many were surprised by it. China never wanted to Westernize, otherwise it wouldn’t have injected so many “Confucian” centers to indoctrinate other countries with their ancient Chinese ideals. All those students and propagandists from China were welcomed to teach Chinese or learn from the West, but when their Confucian-Communist colors shown, it all unraveled in a flash. Both professors and businesses that received Chinese money are sent packing.
But, we were always headed here. When ideological differences spread too broad, irreconcilable differences are destined to break whatever scaffolding temporarily binds us together. To those who saw it, they haven’t been affected by the divide. For the rest, the damage hurts to much not to blame and rage. And, that will only build.
China must brace itself for war. Regardless of any plot from America being true or false, how Beijing handled Wuhan—or rather mishandled—will not be overlooked by the free world. Regardless of how different governments handled the outbreak, the West will see an outbreak that wouldn’t have happened if China had followed the same forthright standards that the West does. The West thought China was on its way to following standards. But, Confucian Communism knows no standard except its own authoritarianism.
How did China get this far? There is so much in China to be desired, including the Bible-based government Dr. Sun Yat-Sen started over a century ago. Chinese medicine addresses many matters of health that elude Western pharmacy. Politeness, indirection, family, and respect—these are virtues the West could have learned from China. Except, just look at what’s happening now.
The term kowtow came from Hong Kong Cantonese. Bowing and placating the bully emboldens the bully. For all their virtues, China was crushed by its Confucian insistence of monolithic thinking—that there is only one idea: the idea you are told to have—that hypotheticals do not exist because everyone only considers the idea we are all told to promote. When a people are beaten down and trained to beat each other down to train each other so, that people’s leaders will think they can get away with anything. China was even placated by Western trade and tech. Christian pastors in China who wouldn’t drop their Confucianism were placated by Western seminaries. The West emboldened the dragon. Lo, Beijing today!
War follows a schedule of logistics. The West doesn’t want China’s military to get any bigger. Taxpayers in the West are learning about the “plandemic” roots of the virus China neglected into going global. Public rage against China won’t build forever. The great Western provocation must happen before the people lose interest. That is China’s greatest threat: time.
China’s in trouble—deep trouble. America pauses with the same hush of silence that swept the country from the outskirts of Washington to New Orleans in 1812, gathering around the radio in 1941, or staring at the same TV images on repeat in 2001. While America pauses and reflects, China accuses, taunts, and threatens, as if the world wasn’t already angry enough about the jobs lost to a Communist country that promotes leaders for party loyalty rather than governing competence.
There is no PR campaign, no cooperation, no compensation that can buy back decades of ill will. That ill will against China was only fueled by governments and leaders who allowed themselves to be trodden on, quite an evil thing the West did to set China up for such embarrassment. But, the Communist Chinese do themselves no service by fitting the stereotype handed to them.
While China faces Western scorn, Taiwan shines like Venus at twilight. They have the breakout under control almost as much as they have public panic on mute. The Taiwanese premier jokes about everyone having only one butt hole, then encourages everyone to buy, buy, buy—it helps the economy, after all, and there is plenty of supply. While Taiwan clips right along, clamping down as needed, China’s jealousy only simmers and froths. The Communists across the Straight want the results of capitalism and competence, without any of the actions or guiding virtues.
When scorn and jealousy mix and reach a critical boiling point, like fudge, China will start to harden. If these are the days when China invades Taiwan, a roused and ready America won’t be the only thing stopping them. Taiwanese are already well-stocked at home from a virus that China perceivedly caused. They can stay at home. They have the defenses and pantries to hold out for America, who is alive and well and hungry to kick someone’s butt.
Hong Kong has presented the world with the ethical question of confronting bullies. Say there is a bully at school who quietly eats whosever lunch he wants, stealing anyone’s homework he wants, until one day someone says something and the bully gets violent. In theory, most people agree that the bully started it. But in practice, when it comes time to stand up to the bullies of life, even the biggest Braveheart fans place the blame for the fight on the one who had the conscience to stand up to the bully. So, are Hong Kong protestors to blame for not going along to get along while China quietly violates its treaty with the UK, denies human rights, and refuses to regulate police conduct?
China says restoring social order in Hong Kong is the “most pressing issue”, but obviously not as important as destroying anything that stands in the way of Chinese Communist hegemony.
In a double-standard, Taiwan is having to adjust its laws to deal with Chinese interference. The CCP is paying news outlets to spread its propaganda in Taiwan. It got caught having a fake news site and is now resorting to outsourcing. The Taiwanese don’t think that publishing what China tells someone to publish is “free speech”.
Xi Jinping’s decision to keep Carrie Lam as CEO of Hong Kong only makes sense, notwithstanding it proves interference by pure definition. The Chinese Communist Party would never dispose of such an efficient creator of chaos. Chaos is always the first phase of the CCP taking over a resistant people; the second phase is to send in the military and—well, do what China’s military does so well. While the Western press explains keeping Carrie as a way to avoid opening a can of worms, the Chinese have much more sinister intentions as history proves.
More crud hit the fan this week, over and over, again and again, evermore. A college student not connected with a nearby protest tried to escape a parking lot just after police fired tear gas, then fell to his death. As expected, police denied any wrongdoing.
A woman rumored to be only 16 years old passed a police station Tsuen Wan where she claims to have been ordered inside, then gang raped by four masked men. Meeting some of the criteria of a rape victim, she found she was pregnant a few weeks after the incident, the young woman was reportedly suffering from depression, and had an abortion last Thursday. The investigation is ongoing, but, in the current atmosphere, police have done little elsewhere to stop such stories from being believable.
Over the weekend, police arrested six lawmakers who effectively filibustered Carrie Lam’s annual report back in May. Six reporters wore Chinese letters on hardhats at a police press conference, spelling a Cantonese request to investigate police. This was in response to two reporters having been arrested. The police department sent formal objection letters to the six reporters’ press agencies. Lawmakers and journalists should be immune to such arrests in order to prevent political interference. But, Hong Kong police no longer wear ID tags on their uniforms, and China says the unrest in Hong Kong started because police don’t have enough power.
Western foreigners visiting Hong Kong have started to join protests. It’s arguably bad form, though it indicates that the world feels a sense of solidarity in standing up to China’s bullying anywhere and everywhere it happens. China sees it as proof of interference while the West sees it as successful marketing from the Hong Kong protesters. The problem with China’s “interference proof” argument is that foreign attendees after the fact do not prove any causality before the fact. But, when being a mouthpiece rather than a think tank has been the habit for so long, Chinese wouldn’t understand the difference.
Hong Kong has declared independence! On Friday, October 4, thousands peacefully gathered in Ma On Shan at New Hong Kong City Centre and read aloud a manifesto. This manifesto included basic arguments similar to the US Declaration of Independence, along with basic steps for a provisional government until the new government takes over. In the eyes of China, this will be treason, just as the US Declaration of Independence was treason in the eyes of Britain.
There has been no bigger news in almost 200 years. No nation has stood up to a world superpower so great since the American Colonies defied the world-dominating British Empire in 1776. Suspiciously, mainstream news agencies were utterly silent about this all weekend.
The next question is whether Hong Kong will be able to resist China’s military. That question can only be answered by historians who have studied asymmetric warfare, such as the First War of Scottish Independence in 1270, the American Revolutionary War of 1775, or Vietnam’s August Revolution of 1945.
Britain would be wise to help because that might allow the Crown to hold Hong Kong among the Commonwealth afterward. The UN is calling for an investigation into how China has handled the four months of protest, so it would seem that the world is on Hong Kong’s side. But, investigations always follow long after a crime, even against Human Rights, while the people are left to defend themselves until help arrives. Can Hong Kong join the successful revolutionaries of history?
The string of anti-extradition protests began March 31, this year, 190 days ago. The protests have been in a state of ongoing outbreak since June 9. Hong Kongers have lived and fought in unrest in their own home for 120 days straight. They have overpowered a 32,000 troupe police force the entire time. Hong Kongers have thus become formidable and battle-tested with inferior weaponry. The impossible odds—fighting with bamboo sticks against guns—make the typical Jackie Chan movie prophetic. If China’s PLA soldiers think they will have an easy time suppressing Hong Kong, they have news in store. It’s not impossible. Only history will tell.
Unrest turned to turmoil on October 2, when China held its 70th Anniversary parade for the Communist Party. America will soon join Hong Kong’s objection to China in its own way.
In Beijing, showing off the old-news, well-known DF-41 hypersonic, “can-hit-America-in-30-minutes” 10-nuke-warhead missiles was a miscalculation. America is not afraid because we don’t expose the limits of our tech in parades. Most of our most-advanced military tech isn’t known to the general public, which is somewhat how the American people want it to be, kind of. Seeing this flagrant, open threat will motivate the inventors and businesses in the wealthier, higher-tech America to neutralize China’s open threats ASAP. Some are calling it a “Sputnik moment”.
China is a nation that thinks itself to be stronger than it actually is. If it rises to even a quarter of the world domination it hopes, it would be the first time a superpower rose from a nation so ancient. Since Persia, all world superpowers of history rose from new nations built on the encouragement of new ideas, legal limits of government, and rights for citizens. China is not on a quest to defy the world; it is on a quest to defy history. Hong Kong has history on its side.
