[Arutz 7] - The admiration that Western elites have for exotic dictatorships is long and never ending and the Western fascination with communism remains one of the puzzles of our century. Andy Warhol even made Mao a pop icon. It does not matter that everybody knows the Chinese regime’s numerous abuses; our hypnosis remains intact.
That time of romanticism is gone. There is no longer even that in China. Its former slums have become hypermodern giants of steel and glass and the country’s economic growth today is three times that of the United States.
| This assumes that the statistics put out by the ruling Chinese Communist Party are remotely accurate, of course. |
Half of the world's cars, 80 percent of its computers, 90 percent of telephones and basic medicines are now manufactured in China.
No other country has ever achieved such rapid social and economic progress over such a short period of time.
| ... or with so much international investment. What is happening as that continues to taper off? |
China has built the longest highway system in the world, the largest high-speed rail network in the world, and enough homes to move 600 million people from the countryside to the cities.
| So-called “ghost cities”, built on spec and almost entirely uninhabited because nobody wants to live so far away from everything, no matter how nice the kitchen island finishes. |
Beijing dreams of the "overtaking" of the West.
But it wasn't enough - they had to go and play with biological weapons. And, couldn't even keep these under control.
...China is infiltrating the European political class by funding political parties and inviting European politicians to China. President Xi Jinping even donated a statue of Karl Marx, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth, to the German city of Trier.
Beijing has bought and invested in assets worth at least $318 billion over the past decade, 45 percent more than the United States. The Chinese consensus in Europe travels on mega investments, on Xi's ability to present himself as a champion of globalization in the liberal financial coterie of Davos.
European universities are now heavily infiltrated by China, through donations, the Confucius Institute and academic agreements.
| But somewhat less than a month or two ago, after President Trump starting looking into who was being welcomed here, and who is most enthusiastically welcoming. Sunshine is the best medicine. |
China, which boasts the highest prison rate of journalists in the world, has managed to enter into agreements with major European television and news agencies for the broadcast of its propaganda services in foreign countries.
Beijing has been able to penetrate international institutions, starting with the United Nations, presenting itself as the great standard-bearer of that "multilateralism" which has always attracted Westerners in an anti-American key and which allows China to dominate the international scene (just think of the management scandal in WHO during the Covid-19 pandemic).
| I seem to recall President Trump doing something about US involvement in that... |
Xi made it clear to Congress that China will work to promote "a new form of international relations" and build "a community with a shared future for humanity." Seductive formulas, to say the least, for a post-Western Europe.
China has brilliantly studied Western pathologies, such as its "identity politics" and multiculturalism, an authentic civil religion in Europe and now the US, with the result that the least diversified nation in the world that has detention camps for Muslims, Christians, Tibetan monks and Falun Gong, today manages to present itself as the victim of Western racism and xenophobia.
Take what has happened in the last year:
-China crushed the resistance of Hong Kong.
| ...and President Trump started treating Hong Kong as part of China instead of independent... |
-It bears very serious responsibility for Covid.
-It is now threating Taiwan.
| Didn’t we just agree to sell Taiwan more weapons? |
-It promoted a campaign of forced abortions and forced sterilization of the Uighurs, managing to silence Europe’s criticism.
| Silencing European criticism is easy. America is harder. |
-It signed a pact of submission with the Vatican.
2020 will be remembered as the year China defeated the West.
Only if Trump loses in November.
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