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China Stands Up

August 3, 2022November 10th, 20237 min read

Good morning on the 3rd of August, the day the Earth stood still, as it were. I am writing to you during the calm before the storm because Nancy landed in Taipei 16 hours ago at the time of writing. Despite every warning, the 82 year-old has conjured an international crisis out of nothing, and I cannot stress enough how serious it is. To explain this you have to view recent events from a Chinese perspective. China will not stand idly by – these were the words of Zhao Lijian yesterday, about China’s response if Nancy decided to land, words that should be familiar to everyone familiar with Chinese history. They have been uttered before, exactly once in June of 1950, when the United States entered Korea and put the Republic’s forces under its direct command. 

Mao sent 1.5 million People’s Liberation Army soldiers – including his own son who perished in the conflict – to aid the Korean people, and today 1.4 billion people have been made the enemies of the United States. From the perspective of China you have to see at least hundreds if not a thousand years of history to understand this treachery, which is how Global Times describes this with stunning repetition. 

In every Chinese person’s mind the Century of Humiliation lives as an era they collectively swore will never return to the Middle Kingdom. Under British rule China was once “the sick man of Asia”, her people impoverished, kept docile with a river of opioids flowing in, ruled over by foreign lords. A chronically underdeveloped nation, kept divided by design and and at the first signs of resistance, crushed by foreign forces twice – the Opium Wars by the Brits and the Boxer Rebellion by America. A five thousand year old civilization doesn’t forget such things. 

What kept China poor, other than forced underdevelopment was that it was divided. Hong Kong was Britain, Tibet was a feudal slaveholding Serfdom, and Taiwan was the treacherous KMT stronghold, and when Mao uttered those magnificent words – The Chinese people have stood up – in 1949, the Communist Party of China vowed that the Chinese People will never again suffer such humiliation. One bastion of foreign influence fell after the other and the country slowly unified and rose to incredible heights.

There is no US power in Tibet, Xinjiang or Hong Kong today, and China has become the world’s largest economy ( on a purchasing power parity basis ), manufacturer, merchandise trader, and holder of foreign exchange reserves. It has a space station, produces 14 times more steel than the US, and has built more infrastructure in a year than any other nation in history, over decades. As opposed to silly European stereotypes from the 90s of China being some kind of cheap knock-off factory, it has become the manufacturing hub of the World, every piece of equipment I use to write, and every piece of cloth covering my body were made there. 

And the Island Province of Taiwan, for over four decades was considered – by itself, by China and by the United States – as an indistinguishable part of China, adhering to what is known as the One China principle, in other words agreeing that the only point of contact between any Chinese territory and any other nation is Beijing and only Beijing. Just last week, the Bobblehead reassured Xi Jinping that this was still the case while the State Department quietly removed this principle from its official website, but Xi has doubted his words for months. 

And now that the Ghost of Taipei turned around mid-flight – I watched in real time with dread – US-Chinese relations are not just in doubt, but over. Demolished. Liberals all over twitter have dutifully switched their Ukraine flags for the Taiwanese sun already. The fake left and the fake right all accuse each other of loving China – one believes the democrats ( like Pelosi ) love China because of communism, and leftoids think Trumpers like China because of the lack of pronouns, and evil social credit. In reality, the only people I know who support Xi Jinping and – yes – The Big Bad Vladimir are principled communists.

The response has been swift and unnerving. The PLA navy has encircled Taiwan, its sea and air are under de-facto naval blockade as four US warships rush towards them, and even more seriously, China has used this moment in history to declare that it will not be the one to use Nuclear Weapons first. After decades of “secret” military presence – doubled in 2021 according to VOA, the mouthpiece of the CIA – on the Island, after one arms deal after the other, China stood still. When it surfaced that during the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis the US considered using nuclear weapons against China, China stood still. 

No longer. The moment Nancy landed to tweet American support for Taiwan, the world permanently shifted, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi no longer plans to talk to Blinken at ASEAN. Victoria Nuland in 2014 arrived in Kiev, and the country has been on fire since, and Nancy’s 2022 landing looks eerily similar. The Chinese have vowed that no such visits will be possible in the future, ever. So enjoy your fortunes made over by selling Nvidia stocks, Nancy for as long as they might last. Al Zawahri is dead, three cheers for the US, if you think that matters now. I hate to say it to people in America who might think this is theater : You are now on the brink of war. To quote a Chinese friend : China can make enough drones to black out the sun over Ukraine, so this write up is my final farewell to US power. I just hope it won’t burn the entire world on the way down.

Thank you for reading and have a lovely Wednesday morning, day or evening whatever sky looks down upon you reading these lines.

Peace, Land and Bread

From Facebook Archives : 3 August 2022

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