Xi is using Mao's methodology to brainwash his citizens. The similarity between Xi and Mao is both embrace oppressive governance; the difference is Xi comes closer to embracing Confucius thought (as Xi calls it, socialism with Chinese characteristics) than foolishly embracing communism as Mao did. The results economically are night and day, but increasingly similar when it comes to oppressive governance. Like Mao in the 60s and 70s, Xi is now exporting this model of governance, and the means (IT, AI, etc.) for other nations to implement it. Xi infiltrates economically, then gains control of the various media outlets to the point of controlling country's media may publish, etc. With Huawei, artificial intelligence, facial recognition technology increasingly available, I think it is possible that Xi will gradually assert control over social media in other nations. If you control the information, then you can control the populace.

This thread started with the claim that our NDS is not a strategy. In the traditional sense it is a strategy, but one that clings to outdated Clausewitzian views of power. I'll refer back to a post I made a couple of years ago that is relevant here.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...l=1#post202760

Connectography: Mapping the Future o...y Parag Khanna

I'm quoting reviewer on Amazon below:

The author of this book has done something no one else has done – I say this as the reviewer of over 2,000 non-fiction books at Amazon across 98 categories. For the first time, in one book, we have a very clear map of what is happening where in the way of economic and social development; a startlingly diplomatic but no less crushing indictment of nation-state and militaries; and a truly inspiring game plan for what we should all be demanding from countries, cities, commonwealths, communities, and companies, in the way of future investments guided by a strategy for creating a prosperous world at peace.

This is a nuanced deeply stimulating book that makes it clear that China’s grand strategy of building infrastructure has beaten the US strategy of threatening everyone with a dysfunctional military that crushes hope and destroys wealth everywhere it goes; that connectivity (cell phones, the Internet, roads, high-speed rail, tunnels, bridges, and ferries) is the accelerator for wealth creation by the five billion poor that most Western states and corporations ignore;
Parag makes the following arguments:
- Infrastructure is destiny
- Connectography proves why past is no longer prologue
- Why China’s “One Belt, One Road” project is a winning strategy that outflanks the U.S. rebalance (Go) by integrating all of Eurasia’s economies under China’s auspices.

For those that think proxy wars are the way to compete, he offers a counterview. I am reading more and more thought pieces that propose we revert to Cold War proxy wars to compete, but to what end? It is hard to break from the past when our doctrine clings to it.

a tour of the new geopolitical marketspace in which military superpowers competed for influence in regions strife with instability and divisions. Colonies were once conquered; today countries are bought. Smart states practice a shrewd multi-alignment strategy, friendly with all great powers to extract max benefit without committing to deep alliances.
I think our national leadership has awakened to this fact (there are exceptions of course), but too late and we don't have a strategy to compete effectively for connectivity. We also have a White House that messages it is opposed to connectivity, creating opportunities for China to exploit.

Geopolitical competition is evolving from war over territory to war over connectivity. A tug of war over global supply chains, energy markets, industrial production, and flows of finance, technology, knowledge, and talent. Shifts from a war between systems (communist versus capitalist) to war within one collective supply chain system. Military war is a real threat, while tug of war is a perpetual reality. Won thru master economic planning
.
If the overarching of our national strategy is to advance an international order that facilitates achieving our security and economic objectives, then the following should be considered.

Mega-infrastructure overcame hurdles of pol-physical geography. How we divide the world legally (geo-pol) is giving way to how we organize its functionality versus political space. The lines that connect us supersede the borders that divide us.
Systems only want one thing, connectivity, doesn’t care which power is most connected. Is PRC building the new system?