China's Emergence as a Superpower (2015 onwards)

[flagg]

It is already used a population control mechanism. It is amazing how dominate it is throughout the parts of China I visited. I know futurists envision a cashless society, which is a way to empower state control over the individual. Arguably the CPC wages two wars, one internal against the perceived enemies of the party, and one external against Taiwan, Japan, and numerous Southeast Asian nations.

WeChat is absolutely dominant in people's lives within China.

As well as having an estimated external user base of 100-200 million.

I believe (One Belt One Road)OBOR will continue virtually unimpeded for the following reasons:

1)US retrenchment into Fortress America combined with declining social and financial capacity(and national WILL) to fund a long term integrated strategic diplomatic effort.

2)EU distractions of BREXIT and increasing political fractures

3)Russia lacks the financial capacity to realistically compete

4)India may be able to compete in the future as it's GDP expands, but weighed against internal development.

I see that leaving China to execute debt/trade deals to shape global users onto the WeChat platform.

One Platform, One Network(OPON).

I don't see it as a single global platform/network default standard

But I definitely see it as one of several global platforms/networks of globally strategic importance.

Despite artificial barriers such as Great Firewall and aligned western opposition to Huawei, ultimately Metcalfe's Law and Zipf's Law will come into effect in a global battle between competing platforms.

My initial thoughts are:

We see growing geopolitical friction between competing "superplatforms" and their superpower sponsors

We see increasing recognition that it's not just the means of exchange that matters, but the platform on which the exchange occurs as well as the network participants using it.

We see developing world "land grabs" for increasing platform/network "lock in".

We see increasing political/regulatory friction between nations when trans-national and global superplatform potential is recognised.

We see WeChat's superplatform better positioned for strategic advantage due to:

1)Single 100% integrated platform/network

2)Government integration

3)Mobile DNA

The incumbent Western superplatform is a FAANG patchwork in comparison and at frequent odds against government.

So in comparison, while the western superplatform has greater global reach it is neither operationally nor politically integrated to maximise geopolitical expansion, influence, and long-term future exploitation.

When you look at future focused efforts such as Estonian e-residency, it's not a stretch of the imagination to see digital residency features and benefits only available to "locked in" users of full integrated superplatforms becoming a natural progression.

WeChat platform lock-in within China is nearly universal and increasingly difficult to exist without for a domestic user base of 1 billion monthly active users.

With 100-200 million users outside of China, the expansion of a fully integrated superplatform has very real potential and represents a considerable threat to the status quo.

The Cold War was a battle between ideologies.

Perhaps Cold War Redux will be a non kinetic battle between competing sovereign integrated platforms?

If I was asked to make a binary choice between:
A)global reserve currency
B)superplatform global standard

I would pick "B", because "B" could subvert "A", but "A" would not necessarily be able to subvert "B".

Do you think a quiet "One Platform, One Network" doctrine as a shadow under One Belt, One Road is worthy of further exploration?

Same with Superplatform(fully integrated with government) as the new Superpower.

Thoughts?

[Bill Moore]

I missed this article when it was posted to SWJ earlier, but just finished reading it in the Winter 2018 issue of "The Drop," the Special Forces Association magazine.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/ar...engagement-hoa

On the Horns of a Dilemma – Addressing Chinese Security Engagement in the HOA
Doug Livermore

Overall well balanced and insightful until you get to the last section on U.S. opportunities. I found that section overly optimistic. Looking at the world through rose-colored glasses if you will. Win-win solutions are not what the Chinese pursue, they seek leverage for exploitation through insidious means such as creating debt traps. Instead of socialism with Chinese characteristics, a more accurate description would be neo-colonialism with Chinese characteristics.

[Bill Moore]

Huawei, like many Chinese companies, they stole their innovation from other countries, and then seek to penetrate their markets with their knockoff technology.

https://www.theamericanconservative....global-menace/

How Chinese Theft Becomes a Global Menace
Huawei, accused many times over of stealing secrets, is poised to control next-gen cellular technology worldwide.

Huawei is trying harder to take tech than develop it, maintains Anne Stevenson-Yang of Beijing-based J Capital Research. “Virtually the entire Chinese bureaucratic apparatus has been mobilized to support Huawei,” she writes in a research note issued this month. “And, given the way top Huawei executives have dissembled in order to support a cut-and-dried theft of IP, one begins to wonder whether the company’s whole mission might be to acquire foreign technologies under the cover of an independent global conglomerate.”

Let their be no doubt that not only did China steal the technology that underpins Huawei, they will use Huawei technology to increase their ability to steal more secrets from other countries and support totalitarian governments use technology to more effectively suppress their people. It isn't just wireless technology, it is a means and ways to achieve nefarious ends.

The fifth generation of wireless communications will exponentially increase data carried—and the power of those who supply network equipment. The State Department’s Rob Strayer has been warning U.S. partners that China, if it ends up controlling 5G, could steal “trillions” of dollars of intellectual property, insert malware, and shut down networks.

Anxiety about Huawei equipment is not theoretical. Beijing for five years, from 2012 to 2017, secretly took data using “backdoors” in Huawei equipment installed in the new African Union headquarters, which China donated to the organization.

[davidbfpo]

From the UK website an interesting overview. Here is one passage:

One thing is clear though, the Gulf is no longer going to be an exclusively Western pond to operate in. There will be long term challenges about how to respond to the Chinese presence, both in the region, and realistically in time in the Med too. For the first time ever, we are on the cusp of an out of region power establishing a credible and sustainable military presence close to our strategic areas of interest.

Link:https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot....-maritime.html

I am aware that Oman's younger generation are less inclined to be pro-Western and PRC has made investments there that dwarf the UK's traditional role.

[Bill Moore]

From the UK website an interesting overview. Here is one passage:
Link:https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot....-maritime.html

I am aware that Oman's younger generation is less inclined to be pro-Western and PRC has made investments there that dwarf the UK's traditional role.

They have also made investments in Greece, Italy, and Spain. I think the region would and should welcome the investment if it didn't have insidious intentionality. Unfortunately, little good comes from Chinese investment. Countries that agree to it are basically agreeing to surrender some degree of their sovereignty.

[Bill Moore]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...istory/154946/

Beyond South China Sea tensions, part two: The CCP vision and the future of Chinese history (link to part 1 available at the site)

This is the second part of a two-part series of interviews on China in Defense One. If you're interested in China then both are worth reading or listening to (podcasts).

These interviews cover a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from how China is building the world's most extensive global commercial empire via its latticework of infrastructure project ranging from dams, railroads, to telecommunications systems. Part 1 provides a historical overview of the CCP's One Belt, One Road strategy, and their nine-dash line claim in the SCS. I focused on part 2, because of the growing interest in how CCP is not only increasingly implementing ever greater oppressive control over its own population via techno-authoritarianism, it is exporting this technology to other countries. Also of interest, is how the CCP leverages surveillance technology, artificial intelligence, and data collected via its Confucious Centers to monitor for negative trends in those societies that could impact CCP interests. The bottom line is this technology is becoming more pervasive globally and will have significant implications across multiple dimensions.

The experts provide an interesting overview on how Xi is trying to replicate Mao's Mass Line that led to the cultural revolution resulting in the deaths of over a million Chinese. Xi is more subtle, he is using a combination of surveillance technology to spy on his own citizens and provide social scores to influence their behavior. This is reinforced via the impact of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that focuses on "cultural security" by promoting a totalitarian view of political correctness via fantasy history and other methods.

Hoffman: “There’s a concept that a lot of what the Party’s doing right now is based on is called social management. But it’s ultimately about the Party’s political control. So it’s a process that is both co-opting people and coercing people to participate, in the Party’s language, in their own management so that they uphold the Party’s political power. It’s a process that’s aimed at Party state security.

Reference the term techno-authoritarianism

Hoffman: “It’s a pretty good term. I think I prefer to refer to what the Chinese Communist Party is doing as technology-enhanced or technology-augmented authoritarianism — because you’re talking about the processes the Chinese Communist Party has been engaged in for decades being augmented through technology.”

Reference using surveillance technology and artificial intelligence overseas in support of their OBOR projects.

Hoffman: “Yeah. Dual use to inform, say, a rail project or a port project or something like that would also be used to inform political decision-making because they talk about, for instance, using data from Confucius Institutes. Or data collected using automatic translation technologies to improve their understanding of Turkic languages and then understanding the political risk in the region in order to be able to shape how people think about what the CCP is doing.

[Bill Moore]

Another China expert accepts the unpleasant truth of China's trajectory towards deepening totalitarianism at home and abroad. The author goes into sufficient detail to show the clear linkage of how Xi's ideology deliberately aligns with Stalin, and why Xi thinks deviating from it would pose an existential threat the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The language in the previous posts describe how Xi leverages technology to revitalize Mao's Mass Line concept, and condition people to think along party lines. As the author in the article points out, ideology is the critical component of Mao's, and now Xi's totalitarianism.

Mao’s discursive advantage was Marxist-Leninist ideology. Language was not just a tool of moral judgment. It was an instrument for shaping acceptable behaviour and a weapon for distinguishing enemies and friends. This is the subtext of Mao’s most famous poem, Snow. Communist ideology enabled him to “weaponise” culture in a way his imperial predecessors had never managed.

https://nb.sinocism.com/p/engineers-...ul-ideology-in

Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping's China by John Garnaut

Some now say he has become a China hawk, but I see it as more the evolution of a sophisticated China watcher who believes in seeking truth from facts, no matter how difficult it may be to accept the reality of the direction Xi and the CCP appear to be taking China. This is a trajectory I have found myself on, along with many of the most experienced foreign China watchers I know.

Stalin described artists and authors as "engineers of the human soul." They simply served for promoting the party and its views. In other words, art and writing was purely propaganda intended to as means to facilitate cultural and ideological security.

Xi uses the same ideological template to describe the role of “media workers”. And school teachers. And university scholars. They are all engineers of ideological conformity and cogs in the revolutionary machine.

Among the many things that China’s modern leaders did – including overseeing the greatest burst of market liberalisation and poverty alleviation the world has ever seen – those who won the internal political battles have retained the totalitarian aspiration of engineering the human soul in order to lead them towards the ever-receding and ever-changing utopian destination.

Combine the findings in this article, with the insights from the previous article, "The CCP Vision and Future of Chinese History," you'll gain a greater appreciation of incidious threat the CCP poses.