Empire's Enigma
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This piece is the fourth entry in the ongoing Badlands Media China series, which started with ‘Taiwan Tipping’ and continued with ‘Tigers and Flies’ and ‘The Two Chinas,’ and is best read following those features.
Enigmatic.
It’s a term we throw around quite a bit in this community, and for good reason.
Whether you’re talking about Donald Trump, whom I describe as a Master of Narrative Warfare in no uncertain terms, Elon Musk and his assault on the Communications platforms of the Media Industrial Complex or Vladimir Putin and his calm, steady and sometimes disconcerting, looming presence on the international game board as the cretins and crows in the EU lope on the edges of his expanding domain and sphere of influence, there is as much Potential as there is Actual on the Fifth-Generation game board—as much illusion as truth.
Attempting to parse which is which and who is whom is one of the great challenges of analyzing modern warfare, and also one of the most satisfying, and while we can be prone to putting players neatly into ‘white hat/black hat’ boxes, sometimes it behooves us to zoom out rather than in, and examine the net effects a given faction or player is visiting on the game board that is the international, ongoing war between Globalism and Sovereignty the world over, and see what we can learn and how we might project the moves ahead.
Perhaps more so than any of the aforementioned figures, the man I find most difficult to read on the current game board is also the feature of today’s piece.
Xi Jinping needs no introduction to audiences in this community and beyond, and yet, he stands as one of the most talked-about and—I would argue—misunderstood leaders on the world stage.
From the furthest Left to the NeoCon Right, Xi is maligned by much of the West, and as I have said in other contexts, the very prospect that we in this community might find ourselves in steady agreement with even the most programmed and ‘asleep’ among us where it concerns Xi is reason enough to reexamine our underlying premises.
After all, you don’t need to read the entire Righteous Russia series (although you should) in order to come away with a reading of the farcical Ukraine money laundering and influence-peddling Op that is more friendly to Russia and the aforementioned Putin than any of your unawakened fellows would, and yet, perhaps prodded along by Trump’s successful and sustained trade war and the very real evils committed by the Chinese Communist Party, there are not many among us who extend the same benefit of the doubt to Xi where it concerns the transition period we seem to be witnessing as the international order changes from one rooted in collectivism to sovereignty and free trade.
That said, as I have argued in previous pieces in this budding series, rather than examining the rhetoric of the leaders themselves in this theater, I like to zoom out and take in a Macro viewpoint, which also includes examining the Narratives the international and Globalist-aligned Media Industrial Complex advance regarding all players and factions on the Game Theory game board.
As we explored last time, the very same media that spent Trump’s entire first term lambasting him as the symbolic return of that infamous leader from Nazi Germany has turned their judging eye and venomous pens to Xi, a figure that they openly defended and excused during the very same term as Trump set about dismantling every deal the Chinese leader had apparently won over to the detriment of Americans, and even to Chinese citizens.
Of course, if you were paying attention during our examination of the stark differences between Xi and the preceding Hu regime in China, you would know that the vast majority of these China-emboldening and U.S.-weakening deals were put in place under previous Administrations, as the American Oligarchy have been on a long, slow and steady march to replace onshore production and thus, economic stimulus with cheap foreign labor. While Americans have borne a heavy cost in the ensuing generations from an economic perspective, the resultant labor crisis in China has been tragic to behold, as the Chinese people have been transformed into a slave class serving foreign iPhone manufacturers in the aftermath of the suffering they endured at the hands of Maoist leaders.
We also examined the unique and long-running structure of Chinese governmental systems, which place a premium on legacy bloodlines and autocratic, region-based rule, where local judges, magistrates, security chiefs and the equivalent of governors have wielded unassailable administrative power over the decades … until recently.
Which brings us to the meat of today’s examination, that being the political origins of the Xi Jinping Administration, which was just elected—or took by political force—an unprecedented third term while publicly humiliating its predecessors and national political enemies.
Taken with the recent context of contentious meetings between Xi and Western Globalist-aligned ‘leaders’ such as Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau—the former sheepishly requesting a dissolution of tensions with the proxy island iPhone nation of Taiwan while the latter was ridiculed in a public forum for comments he made about Xi’s leadership—a closer look at Xi’s rise to power in the East paints a very different picture to what we have been told by American leaders on either side of the proverbial aisle, while providing some tantalizing mirrors into other leaders within the Sovereign Alliance we will explore in greater detail in our next entry in the China Series.
After all, as any who have been following my writing for any length of time will tell you, I am borderline obsessed with Narratives and Psychological Warfare. That said, while I find the Mainstream Media ‘turn’ on Xi and China to be indicative of a larger BRICS-opposed play by Globalists—leading me to believe BRICS is very much in the interest of sovereigns the world over—Actual Events must map onto Potential Events and Narratives in order to hold weight and water.
So, what can we learn when we take a look at some of the Actual Events and data points of Xi’s rise to and solidification of power in China?
Well, how about the prospect that some of the wealthiest business (ie: corruption) magnates in China decided to liquidate their assets and flee in the direct aftermath of Xi’s unprecedented Third Term and public humiliation of Hu and other Globalist leaders? What about his continued appointments of Military and Strategy loyalists within his Politburo Standing Committee as he consolidates power and, more importantly, loyalty before making good on his long-standing promises to join Putin in ushering in a multi-polar international world order to replace the Western Hegemony that has been as damaging to China and Russia as it has been to the American citizen, and starkly opposed to how it has enriched and benefited the oligarchies in all lands?
Taken together with both the recent Media Industrial Complex turn on him and his aims along with the following data points chronicling his rise to power, the picture of Xi Jinping is made refreshingly clear in some respects and tantalizingly obscured in others:
Xi created a Politburo Standing Committee, wherein formerly independent heads of State now report to him on economic issues.
This is one of eight “small groups” that Xi now chairs personally, including the National Security Commission, reversing decades of institutionalized rule and giving the appearance of autocratic rule.
Xi transferred the responsibilities of “internal security” to himself, meaning he heads his own equivalent of the Secret Service.
Xi’s most direct hold is over the central command structure of the Peoples Liberation Army. As Tai Ming Cheung observed, “No other Chinese Communist Party leader, not even Mao Zedong, has controlled the military to the same extent as Xi does today. Mao had to share power with powerful revolutionary-era marshals.” – University of California San Diego, October 2017
For the first time ever, Xi has created a commander-in-chief position in the PLA Joint Battle Command. This designation is typically split among Generals.
The Peoples Armed Police, who ostensibly guard internal security, which used to report to the CCP Central Military Commission and the State Council now report to Xi personally.
Combining the two points above in practical terms, Xi has sole authority over both the Peoples Liberation Army AND the Paramilitary Police. For the first time.
Xi’s time from 2013-17 was spent waging a highly public war against CCP corruption: as such, he officially punished 1.4 million party members, including more than 100 generals and admirals.
His stated goal was to “restore public respect for the Party.” It was a matter of “survival or extinction.”
Xi later expanded the Discipline Commission to seek out corruption and levy punishment against local and government-adjacent officials, including doctors, professors and executives.
Get a load of this take from the Journal of Democracy: “Hu let senior CCP figures govern their own policy domains and build their own patronage networks. Xi Jinping has been systematically demolishing the organizational bases for patronage networks controlled by others.”
Early on in his rule, Xi’s administration removed six party leaders for alleged coup attempts, including security head and Politburo Standing Committee members Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, top Hu aide Ling Jihua and generals Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong, and Sun Zhengcai.
According to the China Media Project, the recruitment of new party members now includes much stricter loyalty parameters and official pledges/oaths to “The Peoples China.”
Whereas local councils have historically appointed judges, Xi transferred that responsibility, again, to internal affairs, meaning he and his loyalists have installed all Chinese judges since 2013.
According to the Journal of Democracy, under former President Hu, “collective leadership was “a system with a division of responsibilities among individual leaders in an effort to prevent arbitrary decision-making by a single top leader.”
While some of these points, such as “arbitrary decision-making by a single top leader” might on the surface reflect Western values and make some semblance of sense, the entire theater takes on a completely new persuasion when taken from the viewpoint that Xi may have been spending the last decade systematically rooting out and wiping out legacy Globalist corruption from the halls of power in China.
From putting together his own council of military advisors and leaders consistent with a National Security Council and Combatant Commanders to wielding a law-and-order approach to purging corruption from the Chinese ranks, it is worth considering the prospect that President Xi Jinping is not at all who the Media Industrial Complex tells us he is … at least literally.
That said, as I often say when discussing the Media and Establishment Politicians’ repeated use of the ‘threat to our Democracy’ refrain, it could be that Xi is exactly who [they] claim him to be and fear him to be where it concerns [their] dark designs, just as Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro are, and by diving into the mirrors between that select group of could-be sovereign leaders, we might better map out the larger game board and see which way the winds are blowing as it concerns a return to sovereignty or a further slide into Globalist collectivism.
Last time around, I said we would explore just what it is about Xi Jinping that makes the western powers that would be fear him so. I hope this piece has shed a little bit of light onto the situation for you, or at least prompted you to look a little more closely into the Chinese theater of the Shadow War beyond what the Narrative Deployments by all factions have to say about it.
I don’t know about you, but the more I learn about who’s who and what’s what in this fascinating war for the future of mankind, the more encouraged I become, no matter how dark things may seem at times.
In our next entry in the ongoing Badlands China Series, we’ll take a look at the mirrors between the rise of Xi, Putin, Trump and Bolsonaro, and see what it tells us about each, and about the world we could be heading into once the Globalist dominoes tumble and fall.
Until next time, stay Positive, stay Based and most importantly … stay Bright.
Continue on to ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ the follow-up to this piece on the Chinese theater in the Shadow War.
Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.
If you enjoyed this contribution to Badlands Media, please consider checking out more of my work for free at Burning Bright, where I focus on Narrative Deployments and Macro Concepts in Fifth-Generation Warfare.
So well written. Remember the picture that James Wood posted of Trump’s alliances with 6 Leaders and it said Trust The Plan?
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Thanks for this; I appreciate the clarity of the broader view and your writings continue to fill in and answer questions that my mind can barely form.