Listen to a reading of this article:
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They’ll jail you for stealing from your employer but not from your employees. They’ll jail you for whistleblowing on civilian-killing drone strikes but not for killing civilians with drones. They’ll jail you for insider trading unless you’re doing it openly in the US Congress.
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The main difference between Hollywood stories about evil psychopaths trying to conquer the world and real life is that in real life the psychopaths succeeded a long time ago.
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I used be mad that the US is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and slaughtering people by the millions in imperialist wars and destroying any nation which disobeys it but then someone informed me that China is building stuff in Africa which is clearly far worse.
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They just killed a few civilians with a drone. It's not like they did something REALLY bad, like tell the truth about killing civilians with drones. https://t.co/Q7R0N2ZzRQ
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 16, 2021
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“China is going to take over and give me a social credit score” is the new “Muslims are going to take over and impose Sharia law.”
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“Of course there’s a lot of propaganda about China, but it’s still definitely a threat.”
“How do you know that?”
“Oh my god dude, it’s all over the news!”
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I’m comfortable holding my positions on China even when I’m getting hate mobbed for them on Twitter because I already saw all that with Russia and was completely vindicated. It taught me that in a highly propagandized population there’s no correlation between how loud people yell at you and how right they are.
I can tell I’m pushing against a wall of pure propaganda when I write about China because so many of the objections I get from people are empty appeals to emotion. No facts, just vapid, sputtering outrage that I would dare question what the TV told them about a government the US doesn’t like.
Another clue is the repetitive nature of the objections. Everyone’s bleating the same lines, just as they’ve been programmed to.
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I’m not even one of those high-octane commies who defends China because it is communist. It’s just clear to me that a mature and impartial analysis of the actions and power dynamics at play shows the US is the aggressor in these escalations and China is responding defensively to those aggressions.
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This is getting so ugly and it's going to keep getting uglier. https://t.co/Kcha6n8F5n
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 18, 2021
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The only way China invades Taiwan is if it is provoked. The only way it would be provoked is if that provocation was orchestrated by the US. They’re fearmongering about Chinese aggressions in a tense standoff that’s only tense because of US aggression.
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China is not actually a problem that needs to be solved.
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Western media virtually never use the word “detente” in reference to cold war escalations against Russia and China. They go out of their way to avoid informing people that de-escalation is even an option. The decision to plunge into cold war brinkmanship has already been made and fully committed to.
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I’m not “pro-CCP” or “pro-Kremlin”, that’s just what I look like from inside a propaganda-warped reality tunnel when I say things about US aggressions that fall outside the virulently pro-US Overton window that’s been constructed for you throughout your entire life.
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The Biden administration could very easily restore the Iran nuclear deal at zero risk to anyone simply by ending the unilateral US sanctions and coming to the negotiating table with the original agreement. They could have done it many months ago. The JCPOA has not been restored because they chose for it not to be.
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As the US war machine’s pivot to Asia sees it scaling down operations in the Middle East, the mass media are now permitted to do critical reporting on the fact that civilian casualties from US airstrikes are frequent and grossly under-reported. And of course they are. Duh.
We are making public hundreds of the Pentagon’s confidential assessments of reports of civilian casualties resulting from airstrikes. The documents lay bare how flawed intelligence has killed thousands of innocent civilians, many of them children. https://t.co/D1vE9aEDYh
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 18, 2021
The only people to whom these revelations are surprising are those who’ve been assuming you can drop military explosives on inhabited areas without killing civilians. Which is something you only believe because it is comfortable.
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Doing commentary on US warmongering is like being in a hostage situation with a crazed gunman who’s already killed a bunch of hostages, but most of the people in the room act like you’re a weird freak for talking about the gunman all the time instead of focusing on other things.
“Oh my god you only ever criticize that crazed gunman. Enough about the crazed gunman already! One of the other hostages just farted, how come you’re not criticizing her??”
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We still kill people for worshipping the wrong god. It’s just that now our god is a capitalist empire.
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Watching porn to learn how to fuck is like watching pro wrestling to learn how to fight.
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People say “Journalism is not a crime,” but it actually is a crime when those in power say it is. That’s precisely the problem with the Assange case. Many evil things have been legal, and many good things have been illegal. We’re looking at an effort to make critical natsec journalism on the US war machine illegal.
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Extinction is the future’s bouncer. If humanity can’t transcend its maladaptive conditioning and become a species that collaborates with its ecosystem, the bouncer will turn us away at the door like the dinosaurs with a “Sorry man, but you’re not on the list.”
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42 responses to “China Is Not A Problem That Westerners Need To Solve: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
…..thank you robert chin…….i have never consumed history….just learned from READING it from empirically and scholarly based sources….you opened another door for me……
Yeah, 2 billion people not bothering me whose language I don’t speak is not something I ponder over at all. After all, everyone telling folks to be afraid of Black folks for no reason made a lot of people rich who didn’t deserve it.
Stating that the US will do anything to prevent other “dictatorships” rising to the superpower status will inevitably lead to fascism. It also hits at the US itself becoming a form of dictatorship (perhaps military hunta). Semantically, and also because when you oppose any enemy to the very end, at some point you will have to become the very thing you fear and fight so much.
The Wolfowitz doctrine initially stirred up opposition from the press and public, but then became part of the Bush doctrine, and by now we are living with it and its consequences.
Naturally, people fear their fascist government and will comply with their ideology, bcs of realization that they will not stop at anything to defend their preferred “world order”, so our lives are negligible and disposable too.
However, this is not how reality works, and they will inevitably fail, as they (fascists) have always failed. The reality is that there are many more good and loving people in the world, and only a few fascists, so fascism cannot prevail.
Keep it up, Caitlin, somebody has to.
I have some insight into what you face as I have for some time tried to counter the lies and distortions about China printed in some UK media, the few that permit comments. It’s the only time I make comments (well this and Palestine) and it’s a thankless task. When not subject to perempt deletion, such contributions receive kneejerk responses from all the China experts who don’t live in China, have never visited here, and know nothing about China apart from what they glean third or fourth hand from biased sources, and not to mention the tiresome insults – I am sure I don’t have to give examples, you will be well aware of them.
Well, what’s the point? I enjoy my life to the full in this “authoritarian police state”. They don’t know what they are missing and I would not choose to live anywhere else, and neither would any of my foreign friends here. There is not another country in the world currently putting the health and welfare of its citizens first, and long may it remain so, no matter what the New York Times and its acolytes preach. Perhaps it is a secret best kept.
I tried to post on ICH, couldn’t get it to work. Found you here.
so who are we supposed to hate today–China? Russia? Iran? somebody new?
” “China is going to take over and give me a social credit score” is the new “Muslims are going to take over and impose Sharia law.” ”
Frankly I’m still waiting for the Japanese to take over and make me do calisthenics at work.
i saw a bunch of employees being forced to do calisthenics at a Home Depot in Texas, i have no idea why.
A lot of this anti-China stuff said by politicians and pundits was intended mostly for domestic consumption; they need support for their budget priorities and the midterm elections are just months away. Unfortunately, outside of DC that talk has led to an expensive military buildup and brought us to the brink of nuclear war. The basic problem is capitalism, a system that can’t promote peace because selling weapons is so much more profitable.
Capitalism is definitely the problem. Capitalism is about maintaining steep stratification in societies. Money is in complete control of everything (government, military, spys, production, internet, news, academia and schools, police, insurance, church, etc.). One major manifestation of that in recent decades is that consent must be manufactured based on fear. China is just the latest fear device for capitalist war profiteers. Oligarchs have a different priority system based on personal wealth accumulation, at the expense of everyone else. They have done the research and they know that fear is the best motivator. That’s why the news pumps out 24/7 fear. It’s always something, and right now, that something is China.
“Detente” is a word invented by cheese-eating surrender monkeys. No more need be said.
Here is the most important question of all. Just exactly WHAT do people do after they’re all woke up — pick up a gun?; guillotine some VIPs?; march hand in hand down Penn. Ave. forever and demand, demand, demand that the Elite behave better, or else? (or else WHAT?)
Here’s what you are eventually going to HAVE TO DO because
there. is. no. other. way.
If you do not want More Of The Same that you’ve gotten after every election in the past, do not vote for another R or D, ever, no matter what an R or D promises! Jimmy Dore explains EXACTLY why.
What is this “vote” of which you speak?
“Power comes from the barrel of a gun.”
In an otherwise perceptive post (as usual), Caitlin says: “I’m not even one of those high-octane commies who defends China because it is communist.” Surely, Caitlin is not a high-octane communist (though she is a socialist), but, surely also, China is not communist but thoroughly capitalist, albeit, to a certain extent, under centralized control. China has, in this regard, come up with a more efficient model of capitalism, one toward which the U.S. will be forced to move. The world has yet to see a truly communist or socialist country. If you want to imagine what it would be like to live in one, pull up “Looking Backward” and “Equality” by Edward Bellamy, both books being free to read sequentially (as they must be read) on the net.
Simple lesson examples: 1) WMD: As soon as this came out it was easily determined by truth tellers to have been an entire propaganda campaign – already fully concocted and planned well ahead of time. 2) Syria Gas Attacks: As soon as this came out it was easily determined by truth tellers to have been an entire propaganda campaign – already fully concocted and planned well ahead of time. 3) RussiaGate: As soon as this came out it was easily determined by truth tellers…. 4) The Russia Threat: As soon as this came out it was easily determined by truth tellers…. 5 ) The China Threat: As soon as this came out it was easily determined by truth tellers…. It essentially always works the same. As soon as they come out with the next one, it is not that difficult to see that a fully concocted and planned propaganda campaign has begun.
https://seaclearly.com/2021/12/17/sparks-of-the-tempest
The only difference I can see between the NY Times article and the reporting Julian Assage did is “timing”.
If only he had waited until after the pivot!!
Assange, my mistake.
“Of course there’s a lot of propaganda about China, but it’s still definitely a threat.”
“How do you know that?”
“Oh my god dude, it’s all over the news!”
OMG, we’re in the same friend circle!!!
China is not backing down over Taiwan.
Iran is not backing down over the JCPOA. Israel and America are threatening to attack.
Russia has just laid down a red line over The Ukraine, and will not back down.
After the debacle in Afghanistan, the necons in Washington can not afford to look weak, they can not back down. It is curious that all three pots are coming to the boil at the same time.
The American financial system relies on money printed out of thin air and is ready to topple.
The internal division between Republicans and Democrats means the regime is weak.
The EU and UK is a circus run by clowns.
And there is the Virus.
2022 Will be the year everything comes crashing down for about one billion Westerners.
The other seven billion people should be just fine.
I am in general agreement with your observations except for this one: “The American financial system relies on money printed out of thin air and is ready to topple.” THE most liberating concept out there right now, the one that makes possible the building of that better, more beautiful world we dream about, is the post-Gold Standard fact of fiat money. This fact means that the federal government, if the citizens ever reclaimed it, could invest all the money it would require to save both people and planet. The only constraint on such spending, which if exceeded causes inflation, would be the lack of available or readily-obtainable resources to spend fiat money on. To flip upside down your entire understanding of money in about an hour, I respectfully urge you to pull up Stephanie Kelton’s “Angry Birds” YouTube video and watch it with an open mind.
Newton E Finn, America currently has 100 container ships awaiting a berth off the West coast. If China asks for the next 100 ships to be paid for in gold or some other store of wealth, then your magic money tree will wither and die.
America has the dollar as world Reserve Currency, it was not meant to be a free lunch where the rest of the world exchanges real goods for increasingly worthless fiat money.
Any country which tried to avoid this protection racket has been sanctioned or destroyed.
China will continue to feed America’s addiction to free stuff as long as it suits their purpose of hollowing out the industrial and tax base.
But China and Russia and many others are also tired of the endless illegal sanctions, another abuse of Reserve Currency status.
Threatening to exclude Russia from the Swift International payment system is another intolerable abuse of power.
The free lunch is often the most expensive one in the long term.
All those printed dollars will come home and cause Zimbabwe levels of hyper inflation, perhaps in 2022, good luck. UK, the same.
If the US stops large parts of the world from using the dollar, won’t that have some effect on the value of the dollar?
Jonny Conspiraanoid, US imported one $ Trillon more than it exported this year. Every year this figure grows, without Reserve currency USA is broke.
Please watch that Kelton video. Virtually the entire world now operates on fiat money. The Gold Standard went out, worldwide, in 1971.
Adolf Hitler was just so totally misunderstood. Hitler was not a problem the World had to solve.
China is not aggressive. Ask the Tibetans. Ask the Uighurs. The Tibetans in their robes must have so totally provoked them.
Got it, sunshine
John Galt 111, America is not aggressive. Ask the millions killed, injured or displaced.
Those people in their innocence must have so totally provoked them.
Got it sunshine.
Okay, this is probably the most stupid thing to comment upon, but i just got to ask:
How did that porn remark make it into this list?
Was it just so you could point out that someone like me would remark on that instead of the more important issues in those other tweets? (Whith which i completely agree, btw)
I’m afraid many of the comments here actually just underline what CJ is saying. I suspect most of them are from Americans (ie from the USA). And this convinces me that the education system in the USA is so perverted that it warps people’s judgement. Just understand this: it is ‘the west’ that is the problem, not China. And the engine of ‘the west’ is the USA.
I’m a bit ashamed to say: there was a time not long ago when I found myself frustrated that Caitlin didn’t write more about Covid and all its ridiculousness, because so much of my own energy was being consumed by that drama surely everyone else should have been focusing on it too. I’ve finally come around to see quite clearly that Caitlin has simply kept her focus on far more grave threats to humanity while so many of us have let ourselves get swept up by distractions. The farting hostage scene conjured above captures this perfectly. If the world is annihilated, none of the rest matters, does it? Bless you, Caitlin, for continuing to write about what matters most — the survival of our species.
interesting how China and Russia take all the heat when actually the Zionist bankers are the one’s seeking to control the world
What do those who have everything want?
MORE. MORE. MORE.
And they come in all races, sizes, shapes, sexes, religions and isms.
Oh, and most of them wear suits.
And ties! These come particularly handy when you’ve got something to hide, like blood stains on your shirt buttons :o)
China is a major problem we all need to be concerned with at some point. The United States was the last generation’s problem, China will be this generation’s problem.
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But the real problem won’t be China, however, it will be the GPPP and the WEF, which both Bill Gates and Xi Jinping attend and are members of, along with Vladimir Putin and Prince Charles. That is the issue of our time. Once the Global Public Private Partnership and World Economic Forum consolidate control of the nation states of the world, the majority of the World’s population will no longer know what the word freedom means let alone know what it is to demand their right to be free. COVID-19 is being used as the pretext to roll these plans out, Klaus Schaub said this in his book, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution,” and in a video presentation, that we need to use this opportunity that COVID-19 is providing to usher in the fourth industrial revolution. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZyzI7ojsho
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That video was a pro globalization video, but part of the draconian measures being implemented in Australia are a result of global institutions taking over domestic governance. This won’t be about nation states, this will be about global corporations. China has some of the largest global corporation in the world that call China home and they are pushing for globalization just as hard as U.S. corporations. Consider the fact that Apple just signed a 275 billion dollar deal with China. See: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/12/07/apple-made-secret-5-year-275b-deal-with-chinese-government.
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Are you comfortable with the slogan that you will own nothing and be happy?
Actually the Chinese people and the American people should be working together to ensure that their voices continue to be heard going forward. The governments of both countries, however, will make sure that will never happen.
“Extinction is the future’s bouncer. If humanity can’t transcend its maladaptive conditioning and become a species that collaborates with its ecosystem, the bouncer will turn us away at the door like the dinosaurs with a “Sorry man, but you’re not on the list.”
Even if we manage to zigzag another four billion years through threats of artificial extinction, we’ll eventually get bounced because “four billion years from now, the increase in Earth’s surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, creating conditions more extreme than present-day Venus and heating Earth’s surface enough to melt it. By that point, all life on Earth will be extinct.” The future is a lose-lose deal. On the bright side though, only the present is real :o)
That is a very Taoist comment.
It is indeed! Is there anything else? :o)
TheWest is doing what it can to compete with an entity that better manages the only real renewable resource on the planet-humans. The CCP is the model now, at least for theG, and if they fail they will roll in, cash out and write everyone off from a cozy villa with 24/7 servants, daily FedEx delivery, and endless vice. They will be good pets on their way to the churn, which would be a form of justice.
There is no such thing as a ‘good’ empire. Countries develop into empires by forcibly taking over and controlling other countries. That in itself is evil, as it always involves large amounts of death and suffering. The empire does not then sit back and rule benevolently, it keeps up the aggression and creates conflict to justify its actions and the need to maintain a large military complex. It never ends.
The USA, and its ‘colonies’, is such an empire. Its economy would collapse if its enormous military complex were reduced to a normal size.
China is not, even though it has taken over Tibet in recent times, and is considering taking over Taiwan.
Objectively, there is little hard evidence that China is doing anything worse than the USA. Both countries imprison or kill dissidents, both use torture, both spy on their citizens, both brainwash their citizens. Both want their citizens quiet and compliant. The only real differences are the ways in which they do these things.
1) The Historical truth is that China did not take over Tibet in recent times. The Mongols annexed Tibet when it had no government in the 13th Centuries and then brought Tibet into China as a province after they conquered China to start the Yuan Dynasty (1279 to 1368). In 1368 the Mongols were thrown out and that was the start of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1944).
Tibet was headed by the Buddhist Lamas and majority of the people were poor serfs who had nothing. They had no education. About 80% of the grains they produced went to the Lamas. In 1959 the Lamas, under the tutelage of the CIA, wanted to declare Independence but China stood in the way, The wicked Dalai Lama fled to India and then teamed up with the CIA to cause chaos in Tibet since.
Today, Tibet is a beautiful Special Autonomous Region of China. Most of the Tibetans can read and write and there are modern hotels, an Airport, a high speed rail and a University, hospitals and clinics. The Child mortality in Tibet is one of the lowest in Asia.
2) Formosa (Taiwan) was stolen by Japan in 1895 after the First Japan-China War. But the terms of the 1943 Cairo Conference and 1945 Potsdam Declaration, signed by the US, UK and China, called for Japan to returned all stolen territories back to China.
Japan lost WW2 after one each atom bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan declared Unconditional Surrender on 15 August 1945. Japan officials signed the Surrender Document on the deck of the USS Missouri on 12 September 1945.
Formosa (Taiwan), the Pescadores, (plus the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, administered by the Jap Governor in Formosa) and Manchuria were all returned to China on 25 Oct 1945.
In 1949 the Kuomintang Government lost the Civil War in China and it fled to Formosa (Taiwan) after looting China of a few million ancient artifacts (porcelains and ceramics) and Gold treasures, backed by Uncle Sam.
There was Peace across the Taiwan Strait for 76 years until the current govt of Madam President Tsai Ing-wen wanted to declare Independence with the encouragement of Uncle Sam.
This is the Red Line that Madam President Tsai or Uncle Sam must not cross or there will be a nuclear war. Russia backs China on the Taiwan issue.
Erratum:
Ming Dynasty 1368 to 1644.
Robert Chin, very well said. We need more voices like yours.
Thank you. Another Western lie is that China stole Xinjiang. Not true. It was the Manchu warlords who annexed Xinjiang and brought it into China as a province during the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) after the Manchu warlords defeated the Ming Emperor.
Today, Xinjiang is a modern and beautiful Special Autonomous Region of China. It is a must-visit destination.
The accusation of alleged Genocide of the Uighur people was started by Adrian Zenz, a German Far Right Cultist who claimed that God asked him to do battle against China.
This is no Genocide because 1) only the UN can declare a Genocide but it has not done so in Xinjiang and 2) the Uighur population has doubled since the 1970s.
Xinjiang produces 20% of the world’s cotton and another lie by Adrian Zenz is that China uses forced labor to harvest the cotton. How can this be true when the cotton is planted using machines and harvested by a few dozen mechanical harvesters?
The West is spreading lies on Xinjiang because it is that major High Speed Rail center connecting China to Central Asia and onward to Russia and Europe in the multi-trillion Belt and Road Initiatives.
Also China did not annex Manchuria. The Manchu Warlords brought Manchuria into China as a province during the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911)
But Japan stole Manchuria from China in 1931 and named it Manchukuo with Henry Pu Yi, (the last Qing Emperor of China until he was deposed in 1911) as a puppet Emperor. Henry’s brother was married to a Japanese princess so that their elder male child could succeed Henry as the next Emperor of Manchukuo. That evil plan failed.
Why?
Because under the 1943 Cairo Conference and the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, signed by the US, UK and China, Manchuria was returned to China on 25 October 1945 by a defeated Japan in WW2.