Cadence of Conflict: Asia, May 11, 2020

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.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, March 30, 2020

Blame! Both general theories about where this virus originated fail to do two things: They don’t acquit anyone and they don’t tell us how to treat it. The theories no longer seem to matter since fear has taken over the world.

Initially, we had a theory that the virus passed from wildlife to humans at a kind of so-called exotic meat market in Wuhan, a city in China. Then, a Chinese government official—later seen as a lone wolf not speaking for the pack—blamed the US Army specifically, as opposed to the US Military or CIA as the usual conspiracy theory suspects go. We’ll look at the Army’s place in Chinese politics later.

Upon review, there is a convincing case that the 2019-nCoV had its origin at a military laboratory and got out into the American public last summer before the CDC shut down that laboratory. But, this still doesn’t explain how it would have gotten to Wuhan. And, both China and the US still face scorn for coverups and delayed response.

Then, we have China’s negative PR campaign, two actually. Blaming the US “Army” feeds Chinese kook theory because the Chinese military is called the “Army”. Even China’s Navy is called the “People’s Liberation Army Navy”. It seemed from the outset as intended to tip Chinese cultural sentiment against America, not intending to be based in fact. Now, a few weeks later, the Chinese people fear “foreigners” (Westerners and ‘Black People’). Old Chinese superstition still lingers, that Black People are cursed by the gods or by nature because black is the bad color in their culture.

As anti-foreign sentiment grows in China, the world grows more irritated with China. And, as the WHO digs its heels in on keeping Taiwan out, the world sees China controlling too much of the world through its deep pockets—a concern the international finance community had brought up from an article from Harvard Business Review, How Much Money Does the World Owe China?. When a WHO official hung up on an interview twice, we see that Harvard’s curiosity wasn’t irrelevant.

The world is responding in hatred toward China with such venom, people beat up Asians of any nationality, even those without any connection to China. Yes, the world propped up China for a grand fall into global disfavor. But, China still hasn’t done anything to help itself. One little virus, no matter where it came from, was all it took to push the world over the brink.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, March 16, 2020

News around the world has blacked out. Everything is about this new virus that should be called the “pneumoniavirus”, also known as Wuhan’s 2019-nCoV, everything—the news, the politics, the economy, the maps, organ harvesting. But, that wasn’t the only Western bad news on China. Canada had a brilliant solution to the Huawei controversy: go public. So far that hasn’t happened. But, Indonesia is buying American F-35s.

As the world goes into panic mode over a glorified common cold, death by economy will be greater than death by disease. People are afraid because people are afraid. Once they freak-out to full-freak capacity, they will look for someone to blame for all their fear. That takes us to China.

China doesn’t like being the villain of the world. The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like looking bad. Who does? Most of that bad image throughout the world—including among the Chinese people themselves—comes from unedited videos of what the Chinese Communist government is doing to its own citizens. Other than uncut videos, people are irritated by reports of signs of organ harvesting along with appointing Communist Party bosses to new leadership positions also hurts China’s image, both foreign and domestic.

Then, China blames the US Army—not the military, not the Marines, Navy, Air Force, nor Space Force, and not something more sensible like CIA. A Chinese official said that the US Army took the virus to China. A video is going viral in East Asia of Congressman Harley Rouda at a House Oversight Committee hearing questioning CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, “So, we could have people in the United States dying from what appears to be influenza, when in fact it could be the coronavirus or COVOID-19?” to which the director responds, “Some cases have been actually diagnosed that way in the United States to date.” And, this is being used in China, and even among the Taiwanese, to argue that the pneumoniavirus existed in the United States long ago, wasn’t noticed because it was misdiagnosed long ago, but the US Army then took the virus to China. Chinese speakers easily misunderstand because they don’t know how democracy works. They believe this proves the pneumoniavirus originated in the US, even though there haven’t been any epidemics of death-by-pneumonia in the US since the bacterial pneumonia epidemic of 1918.

As things progress, China is being pushed to the point of acting on an ancient psychotic belief that all of China’s problems exist because China doesn’t control Taiwan. If the Chinese PLA military attacks Taiwan, however, they won’t be strong enough to deal with their own dissent at home. If China doesn’t invade Taiwan, it is because the Communist Party has been rendered catatonic, not knowing what to do. Read More

Encore of Revival: America, March 16, 2020

There is more likely to be death in America from the shortages caused by hoarding than from what should be called the “pneumoniavirus”. Americans have too often harbored a love for drama. They don’t want to listen when told to wash their hands or wear a mask to the supermarket when they feel sick, but when they actually realize that they can’t ignore a thing, it’s time to turn every home into a survival bunker. There’s little sense for calm and order.

That was the deeper weakness in the societal immune system of America. Love for bad news will be the undoing of many Americans. Once this is over, the toilet paper hoarders will become known to their friends, scorned by their friends, then feel foolish. Theatrics and drama are far from over.

The economy is taking a hit—everyone is taking a hit. People will have to forgive those who overreacted, otherwise they will be the ones who overreact next.

The economic problem in America has roots deeper than the virus, but in society. And, society’s problem is rooted in the spiritual. Like Lincoln during the Civil War, Trump called a day for nation-wide prayer. Anyone who so chooses will come through this better off. Read More

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, March 9, 2020

Things are fairing worse and worse for China, but better and better for Taiwan.

The KMT-Nationalist party is abandoning its long-standing agreement to cooperate with the Chinese Communists, much how the American Democratic party is abandoning socialism within its ranks. Taiwan’s handling of the 2019-nCoV Wuhan virus is top notch, possibly the best in the world. The irony is that Taiwan is not a member of the WHO, for mere reasons of political pressure from China. The world will interpret Taiwan’s absence from the WHO through the poor response to the virus from WHO members. And the world will, accordingly, blame China not only for the virus, but for the lack of Taiwan’s valued input in the WHO.

This week, when things seemed as though they couldn’t get worse in China, a hotel collapsed, which housed many people being observed for the virus. Not all had been diagnosed, but at least 10 are dead from the collapse.

Interestingly, this does not fair well for Taiwan. The more respect Taiwan earns from the international community, and the more spite China earns from the international community, the more envy will boil and bubble as China froths with rage against Taiwan. China’s government is not functioning with any trace of sobriety. Recent events are pushing the Chinese government over the edge in their ancient desire to invade Taiwan. While that would leave them vulnerable at home and hated even more throughout the world, such things never stopped them before and certainly aren’t stopping them now. Read More

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, March 2, 2020

Wuhan 2019-nCoV will not end the world. But, it is throwing the world into panic. The long-time NIAID director steps out of lock with the president and gives a sobering warning about how viruses actually spread. Bad as the truth is, the stock market is drastically overreacting and Trump is trying to prevent a panic—or that’s at least what we’re all supposed to think. We can’t have the truth of both bad and good news told to a public that dwells on the bad and ignores the good. Presidents know that, disease directors not so much. So, the director should get the muzzle, right?

That will cause more panic. Where panic and fear of China weren’t enough to keep Americans from making China rich at Walmart for decades, fear of China’s virus spreading at Walmart is making up for lost panic.

This is the perfect storm for those who chose not to prepare. The virus won’t kill the world, but the world is panicking and will carry a grudge for what a Chinese virus did to the stock market. Once the virus passes, the world will have time to clean house. China will be blamed, as it should for it’s mismatched priorities, then the world will cut China down to the size it never should have been allowed to grow past.

But in the meantime, the Chinese people are re-evaluating their own priorities, deciding whether their president has his own priorities in order. We could be looking at more killing fields, where citizens who fell for the games of self-censorship and spreading Communist propaganda are executed as cowards. Hopefully it won’t come to that. But, China will face the enemies that it made on the inside while it also faces the enemies that made it big from the outside.

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