Tigers and Flies

Shifting Tides in the Chinese Kingdom

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This piece is the second entry in the ongoing Badlands Media China series, which started with ‘Taiwan Tipping,’ and is best read following that intro.

As many of you reading this today can attest, it can be a lonely thing, searching for the truth in this complicated world.

Such a search is rendered even more challenging when it becomes clear to each of us in our own time that this elusive prize, which should be clear as sunlight over a winter field is not obscured by nature, but rather through subversive intent. Through the will of those who would seek to control. To guide nations like others guide ships, and to write and rewrite history like others write stories.

That said, as many of you can ALSO attest, once the veil is lifted from your eyes—no matter how it is lifted and no matter what it concerns—there is no putting that particular genie back in the bottle.

While freeing, this truism in the search for truth brings with it a rather frustrating and disorienting conundrum: while ‘waking’ to the previously-hidden truth of one situation—be it a historical or cultural touchstone event, or even the catalyst and motives behind any given war—results in the dissolution of the previous paradigm prison, said dissolution does not, by definition result in the birth of a new paradigm to take its place.

Thus, when we wake from one lie, we are often more confused than when we started, and can find ourselves chasing leads that lead to nowhere, or following the allure of shining paradigms in waiting that are little more than lies themselves.

And yet, to search for the truth sometimes means striking out for an island barely glimpsed through the mists. One that could hold truthful terrors just as readily as treasures, and one that could resolve into the jagged spikes and spires of paradox rather than the guiding light of discovery.

Many of you have found yourselves here by following a mix of intuition, intelligence and discernment in order to first reject the System of Lies the powers that would be have erected in the societies that raised us before beginning the slow and painful process of putting the pieces back together again in a way that fits better than they did before. From Devolution and Continuity of Government in the wake of the ‘2020 Election That Wasn’t’ to the Media Clown Show that is the collective narrative panic issuing out of the Eastern Front in Ukraine, it behooves one to adopt Bicameral Thinking when attempting to rule your understanding of events on a game board we can only see the faintest edges of, to hunt down contradictions in the narratives that are presented to us and to seek patterns in order to piece together those that fit it better.

Which brings us to the focus of today’s piece—that being the shifting tides along the Taiwan Straight, and the shifting pieces on a game board in China that, while as important as any in such times as these is arguably even more impenetrable than the Russian theater, which I have spent significant time attempting to parse in the ongoing Righteous Russia series.

While I am far from the first writer to propose the possibility that President-in-waiting Donald Trump is working with a Sovereign Alliance that includes but is not limited to Russia and China—at least, sovereign elements within Russia and China—today I would seek to provide some interesting trend lines and data points that could lead you to ask questions not just of the leaders they have propped up before you to sell you an American Doom in the place of an American Dream, but of the enemies they would threaten you with who could be little more than shadows on the wall … and perhaps much more.

Last week, in Taiwan Tipping, my debut for Badlands Media, I explored the idea that Trump’s projections of increasing tensions in the Taiwan Straight and even kinetic action to come—largely reminiscent of Russia’s push into Ukraine—were less warnings for us and more warnings for [them,] represented by the Pretender in the White House and the Globalist elements fighting to keep from being completely encircled by a combination of sovereign leaders moving in unison around them while their own citizenry—us—begin to rise up and rediscover our voices, and our spirits.

Instead of highlighting a potential Chinese offensive against the ‘sovereign’ island nation of Taiwan as a negative thing, I posited that, while I cannot pretend to know all of the Potential Events that could spin out of that Actual Event, I could confidently project a return of escalation narratives in the Taiwan Straight and an opportunity for Trump to codify not just his position as truth-teller in the Collective Mind of American—even world—society, but also as a potential ‘savior’ of sorts who could ride in and broker a predetermined peace with leaders that, while ostensibly linked to him in adversarial terms throughout his tenure, might be much more willing to bargain with him than the charlatans attempting to rule in his stead.

The impact of such a narrative event, to say nothing of its logistical and kinetic complexity would be difficult to fathom, and yet, such a fortuitous turn, if it comes to pass would be nothing Trump himself has not projected and predicted, and confidently so.

Just days later, China held its 20th National Congress, during which President Xi Jinping was elected to a record third term by the delegates in attendance. While Xi proceeded to outline his solidifying vision for Chinese expansion, progression and, yes, reunification—a nasty prospect, according to the talking heads on LED screens throughout the west—such proclamations barely made the headlines spilling out of the event in the wake of the strange scene that transpired in the middle of the political ceremony.

By now you’ve likely seen it—a strange, somewhat disconcerting scene during which Hu Jintao, the immediate presidential predecessor to Xi was quite forcefully ‘helped’ out of his chair by attendants, one of whom brandished a bright red folder. While Hu appeared to protest his removal—both directly to the attendants and to a silent Xi himself—what was even more jarring about the scene was the fact that this was done in full view and in full silence before 2,300 delegates.

(WATCH THE FULL CLIP HERE.)

Of course, ‘official’ media sources in China quickly attempted to pour cold water on the scene in the aftermath, claiming that Hu was led out of the chamber due to health concerns, which is entirely possible based on the reading of the start of the above clip. Still, the optics were inarguably dramatic, even dire in terms of coverage from the international media, who took the opportunity to fear monger about the silent, firm show of control as Xi seeks to usher in his final crushing, dystopian vision for Chinese dominance.

Which marks quite the media turn from their decades of narrative defense run on behalf of Chinese production and American subversion throughout the tenures of previous U.S. Administrations.

To make a comparison, as Patrick Gunnels pointed out in our discussion of this topic on a recent episode of the Devolution Power Hour, this would be the equivalent of watching a feeble and confused Barack Obama being led out of the House Chamber in the US Capitol Building with Donald Trump seated next to him.

Talk about narrative ammunition, and the Media Industrial Complex certainly took notice. The question becomes, for which side?

I would call this timing serendipitous, but that would be giving me far too much credit and the great truth teller of our time too little. After all, as I argued last time around, all I did was pay attention to what Trump told us to pay attention to, while keeping my mind open to the possibility that there is more to President Xi Jinping than meets the eye, which I intend to explore at length in my next feature.

While Donald Trump has not openly positioned himself as a friend to China, he has repeatedly positioned himself as someone with a good ‘working’ relationship with Xi himself. It is my belief that almost nothing Trump does or says is without intent, and that he is more careful with his words than even many of his ardent supporters believe. This narrative approach Trump has taken with Xi provides him with shielding to both the Media apparatus that has been seeking to tear him down for years and to his more narrow-minded supporters, who see anything with a red flag on it as a precursor to a crushing wave of Red Communism.

This approach also comes with a Bicameral paradigm of its own, wherein Trump seems to suggest that there are two Chinas—the one ‘we’ see and the one he sees, just as there are two Americas—the one [they] attempt to show us and the one we choose to embrace.

For now, however, I want to leave you not with a lingering focus on Xi, but rather the narratives being spun out of the Media Industrial Complex, and even by reactionary sectors of the so-called ‘Truth Community’ on behalf of the man who was politically and symbolically deposed in his presence.

The Atlantic wrote that, “This dramatic, mysterious bit of theater only underscored the general theme of the congress—Xi’s ultimate consolidation of power.”

Well. I can’t say I find anything to disagree with in that assessment, at least if you read the whole event with the ‘forceful removal’ filter in place.

Moving on to the BBC, our favorite government-run and taxpayer-funded propaganda outlet in the former motherland was even more direct, positing that this “deliberate piece of political theatre” underscores that, “Unlike Mr. Hu, whose presidency between 2003 and 2013 was seen as a time of opening up to the outside world, Mr. Xi has presided over a country that has become increasingly isolated.”

Now … which media-maligned world leader does that particular narrative projection remind you of?

Even Roger Garside of the sometimes-Based Epoch Times saw the move as “a demonstration to the world that Xi had swept aside all rivals and is now the undisputed ruler of the nation,” while warning that such a move betrays Xi’s intention to give “priority to loyalty to him over experience and competence in government.”

This ‘experience and competence,’ and ‘opening up,’ of the Hu era is characterized by the continuation of Clinton-era trade deals between the U.S. and China that robbed both the American people of manufacturing and technology jobs in some of the largest companies born in their own nation, while sentencing a generation of Chinese laborers to toil for fractions of a petrodollar in order to manufacture the treasures of the west, with no domestic production of their own to speak of.

Hu was a Globalist’s dream, working with George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama alike in order to ‘strengthen’ ties between Globalists the world over while ever weakening the position of sovereigns.

Such narratives have positioned Hu Jintao as a victim of a disrespectful violation of decorum at best and an overt political purge at worst, which is why, at Burning Bright, I very rarely talk about Actual Events any longer than is necessary, and focus much more closely on the narratives (Potential Events) being spun out of them. After all, we can tell much about the players on the board by the way they are positioned in the stories their writers tell.

As I often say in reference to the collective enemy’s constant attempts to mark threats to [their] Democracy … they’re not lying. After all, from The Atlantic to The BBC to The Epoch Times, observations that Xi has consolidated and solidified his grasp on power ring as true as the optics do, whether or not Hu’s removal from the Congressional chamber was some sort of purge or nothing more than an awkwardly-timed health check.

The question is, if these optics are putting both bought and paid Marxist media rags and right-wing doomers on heart monitors, does it hint that there is another angle to take with regards to the Chinese theater, and the Chinese leadership?

Is there more we can glean from looking not just to Xi Jinping’s past, from his rise to power to his seeming war with legacy elements within the Chinese Communist party and even allusions to Presidents Trump in the U.S. and Putin in Russia, and from his present, from his shoring up of the emergent and growing BRICS alliance to his posture toward western globalists?

After all, the very title of this piece, ‘Tigers and Flies,’ is a reference to the name given to the ‘anti-corruption’ campaign that Xi has reportedly been waging from within his own borders since he took office.

But then, I suppose we’ll leave all that to next week. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this broad, not overly bold observation:

Times, they are a-changin.

I’m just not entirely sure they’re changin’ for the worse.

Until next time, stay Positive, stay Based and most importantly … stay Bright.

Continue on to ‘The Two Chinas,’ 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.

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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.