STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
China and the West: One and the Same?
By Staff News & Analysis - June 28, 2011

Wen Jiabao is the Premier of China. This is an edited version of his speech to the Royal Society in London yesterday, after receiving the King Charles II Medal. … China is building a better future for all …The world will gain from the country's growing prosperity and openness, says Wen Jiabao. Since the process of reform and opening-up began in China, people outside the country have seen the development and changes there in different ways. There is also an intense interest in our visit to London, I wish to take the opportunity to address this subject. Tomorrow's China will be an economically advanced country, with its people enjoying prosperity. Indeed, to pursue economic development and improve people's lives has always been the top government. We will stick to scientific development, work hard to shift the model of economic development, and achieve green, low-carbon and sustainable growth. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: China, a democratic leader among the countries of the world, shall march into a glorious future shoulder-to-shoulder with the West.

Free-Market Analysis: Wen Jiabao came to Britain and Europe recently and he has been making news with his comments and actions. Chinese procurers just purchased 600 Saab autos and allowed that company to make its payroll. He announced that China's government bankers would continue to buy the bonds of various bankrupt European countries; the headlines blared that China was saving Greece.

From Jiabao's actions, we begin again to have some of our questions about China answered. For us, the issue is always whether China has been co-opted by Western elites, or whether its leaders and the inevitable powerful people and groups BEHIND the leaders are essentially independent of Western power structures.

We've written several articles speculating that China's elites are participative in the upcoming "new world order" and this speech of Jiabao's (excerpted above) does nothing to dissuade us. He made the speech after being awarded the Royal Society King Charles II Medal, which is bestowed on foreign Heads of State or Government who have made an outstanding contribution to furthering scientific research in their country.

We're not sure why he was awarded a scientific medal (given that there are many others who could potentially have received it) nor are we quite sure how his speech reflected the medal's scientific orientation, nonetheless, its content was interesting because it was directly centered around modern, Western, sociopolitical thought.

It is in fact startling. Gone are the days when there was a great philosophical divide between East and West, or between the West's so-called democracies and "communism." Jiabao's speech could have been given by any functionary of the (hopefully tottering) European Union. Or even have been delivered by someone from the US State Department.

It tends to confirm once more the idea that the powers-that-be are working hard to smooth out differences between major powers. The rhetoric, philosophical overtones and ambitions are statist, but couched in the rhetoric of the marketplace. The idea is that the state sets parameters for capitalism, which then functions within that defined space.

It is a kind of soft fascism, though one is never supposed to use the word "fascism." Additionally, in practice, it is not necessarily soft at all. The state is actually in charge of almost every facet of life and corporations, also artificial, statist entities, are merely the receptacles of state power and deliver it to "consumers."

Increasingly, in terms of rhetoric anyway, China is closing the gap between East and West, even as the West is too. One can surely observe, as we did yesterday in our article "Greatest Criminals Ever Seen?" that in the 20th century, communism and capitalism were implemented deliberately to create the Hegelian thesis and antithesis that would eventually lead to a synthesis.

We seem to be living through the synthesis. On the surface anyway, the differences between China, Europe and America are diminishing considerable. On paper, Jiabao is one of the most powerful man in China, and his speech reflects a view of China that is from our point of view distinctly European.

His vision of a "green, low-carbon, sustainable growth economy" is especially noteworthy. This is simply not an Eastern concept. The Green economy was likely developed like so much else of the elite's dominant social themes in the Tavistock Institute. It is an all-encompassing promotion that gives Anglosphere elites the ability to regulate every face of human life.

In a green economy, monitored by "Smart Grids," each part of a person's existence will be diagrammed. The state, via its great energy companies, will know every part its "citizens'" activities and will be easily able to modify them. The whole idea behind the phony demonizing of carbon dioxide – as important a gas as oxygen – is to monetize a building block of life. This is what the Western power elite conspiracy has sought to do in the past 100 years.

Oil (energy) has been increasingly monetized and controlled along with food and water. The fourth building block of life is oxygen/carbon dioxide, and it is no coincidence that this, too, has now come under attack. The idea is to make each of these necessities scarce. The ultimate goal is CONTROL. If one can control the essentials of life, then the monetizing and securitizing of these essential fundamentals of living is not difficult.

Jiabao doesn't put this program in those terms but his rhetoric is right in line with what is occurring. Even at the beginning of his speech, he is signaling that China's goals are aligned with those of Western elites. "We will expand domestic demand, particularly consumer demand, fully tap into the potential for consumption by the urban and rural population, and make consumption the fundamental driver," he says in the transcript provided by the Telegraph.

"The key to this prosperity and sustainable development is science and technology," he adds "… The world is seeing the advent of a new revolution in science and technology and a new Industrial Revolution … The revolution in science and technology will thus bring about a fundamental change in the development of human society in the 21st century …" Here are some additional noteworthy excerpts in our view:

Tomorrow's China will be a country that fully achieves democracy, the rule of law, fairness and justice. In the course of human history, struggles against feudal autocracy gave birth to the concepts rule of law, freedom, equality and human rights. …

Tomorrow's China will be a more open, inclusive, culturally advanced and harmonious country. We should continue to open up not only in the economic, scientific and technological fields, but learning from others in promoting cultural progress and social management. …

Tomorrow's China will be a country committed to peaceful development and ready to shoulder its responsibilities. To the rest of the world, China's peaceful development is an opportunity, rather has become an engine driving global economic growth, having contributed more than 20 per cent of world economic growth in each of the past five years …

The 21st century should be a century of co-operation, rather than conflict and rivalry. China is committed to upholding world peace. To build socialism with distinctive Chinese features has been the solemn choice made by the country's 1.3 billion people.

Reform and opening-up will be carried out throughout the entire process. To stall or reverse course is not an option. We must move on with confidence. Only by doing so can China turn itself into a prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious socialist country, and can the Chinese people enjoy a happy, dignified life in a more extensive way and at a higher level.

Jiabao's speech is right in line with the rest of the new and enlightened world order that elites are increasingly organizing for the citizens of the West. It indicates to us that there is not much difference at this point between Western ideas of sociopolitical and economic development and China's.

We find it surprising, in fact, that Jiabao's speech has already been criticized as not representing the reality of China. Posts have appeared on the Internet explaining the speech was merely an attempt to set up aspirational parameters for other Chinese leaders who believe in more brutal and old-fashioned ways of running the country.

This interpretation does not ring true to us. Jiabao's speech seems to enunciate where China is headed, or where it ought to head. He put into his own words the methodologies Western elites have used with good effect. Each element of social control is to be elaborately justified as a necessary positive for fairness and civic comity, even as it provides another bar in the increasingly formidable prison of Western regulatory democracy.

China and the West both operate central banks; both are heavily regulated societies; China increasingly encourages consumerism and is building a massively urbanized environment in which it citizens will live and work. None of this has much to do with freedom. Decentralized republics, like Switzerland, tend to have different qualities. When power flows up from the citizenry, one may find a certain level of rural agrarianism. Towns are many; large cities are fewer. Bigness is not valued over uniqueness.

If we listen to Jiabao, we hear that China intends to build the kind of society that Western power elites prefer. They are centralized, controlled, authoritarian, often urban environments masquerading as something else. Even the building blocks of life are to be regulated and rationed. The delivery mechanism of choice is the large corporation, operating under the watchful eye of the state.

For free market thinkers, such systems are impractical and impossible to maintain. They can only be sustained by massive price fixing, and over time price-fixing entirely degrades the economy by degrading the pricing mechanism itself. This is already happening in China; what has been built up in the past 40 or so years seems increasingly on the verge of breaking down. The country's seemingly out-of-control price inflation is doubtless behind much of the increasing civil unrest.

Perhaps reversing course "is not an option;" but the systems the ChiComs have created will suffer from the same problems the West is currently experiencing, and in fact we have argued they already are.

After Thoughts

Western regulatory democracy inevitably embraces its own destruction. When the difficulties inherent to the system erode what is left of the current Chinese civil consensus, we expect there may be dramatic results. Jiabao obviously hopes his vision of China will win out. Free-market thinking tells us otherwise.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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