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For The Record  

FTR#1194 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, Part 1

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FTR #1194 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: With vir­u­lent anti-Chi­nese ide­ol­o­gy dri­ving Amer­i­can for­eign, domes­tic and nati0nal secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy, we begin a long series of pro­grams set­ting forth the his­to­ry of Chi­na dur­ing the last cou­ple of cen­turies.

The anti-Chi­na pathol­o­gy grip­ping the U.S. was con­cise­ly expressed in a New York Times arti­cle a cou­ple of years ago. The Steve Ban­non-led anti-Chi­na effort has now become U.S. doc­trine: ” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. . . .” 

A viable under­stand­ing of Chi­na’s past yields under­stand­ing of its present. 

Aware­ness of key dynam­ics of Chi­nese history–the Opi­um Wars in particular–includes:

  1. The deci­sive role of Euro­pean and Amer­i­can mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic exploita­tion of Chi­na.
  2. The role of the nar­cotics traf­fic in the ero­sion of Chi­nese soci­ety in the 19th cen­tu­ry.
  3. The British-led “Opi­um Wars,” which were the foun­da­tion of the destruc­tion wrought by dope addic­tion in Chi­na.
  4. The Opi­um Wars and their imple­men­ta­tion by “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” of British and Euro­pean ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion in Chi­na.
  5. The piv­otal role of that “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” in the British acqui­si­tion of Hong Kong.
  6. Con­tem­po­rary Chi­nese con­cern with the mil­i­tary safe­ty of their ports, ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters, adja­cent seas and oceans, ship­ping lanes, mer­chant marine traf­fic. This stems in large mea­sure from China’s expe­ri­ence with “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” and the rav­aging of Chi­na by Impe­r­i­al Japan dur­ing the 1930’s and 1940’s.
  7. The intro­duc­tion of West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies into China–American mis­sion­ar­ies, in par­tic­u­lar.
  8. The fos­ter­ing of the “Mis­sion­ary posi­tion” toward Chi­na on the part of the U.S.
  9. Amer­i­can mis­sion­ar­ies’ use of mor­phine to cure Chi­nese opi­um addicts, a prac­tice so preva­lent that the Chi­nese referred to mor­phine as “Jesus opi­um.”
  10. The import­ing of Chi­nese labor­ers to the U.S., and the resul­tant, dead­ly anti-Chi­nese reac­tion by White Amer­i­ca.
  11. The enor­mous opi­um trade in Chi­na as the foun­da­tion for the coa­les­cence and ascent of Shang­hai’s Green Gang and Tu Yueh-Shen: “Big Eared Tu.”
  12. The dom­i­nance of the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-Shek by the Green Gang and Big-Eared Tu.
  13. The fun­da­men­tal reliance of Chi­ang’s gov­ern­ment on the nar­cotics trade.
  14. The dom­i­nant role of Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s regime in the U.S. nar­cotics trade.
  15. The doc­tri­naire fas­cism of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and his oper­a­tional rela­tion­ships with Nazi Ger­many, Mus­solin­i’s Italy and Impe­r­i­al Japan.
  16. The cen­tral role of the Soong fam­i­ly in Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s Kuom­intang; T.V. Soong, his sis­ters Mae-ling (mar­ried to Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-Shek), Ai-ling (mar­ried to H.H. Kung, a key finance min­is­ter of the Kuo­moin­tang), and sev­er­al of T. V.‘s broth­ers, who also shared in the slic­ing of the pie under Chi­ang.
  17. The piv­otal role of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing giant Hen­ry Luce, whose mis­sion­ary back­ground in Chi­na informed and ani­mat­ed his ado­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and Mme. Chi­ang.
  18. The role of the Luce pub­lish­ing empire and the enor­mous finan­cial influ­ence of the con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt Soong fam­i­ly in spawn­ing “The Chi­na Lob­by.”
  19. The deci­sive role of the Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s refusal to fight the Japan­ese invaders, com­bined with the bru­tal repres­sion and civic inep­ti­tude in dri­ving the Chi­nese peo­ple into the arms of Mao Tse-Tung and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

NB: More detailed dis­cus­sion of the Opi­um Wars is pre­sent­ed in the two pro­grams fol­low­ing this one.

The pro­gram sets forth anti-Chi­nese racism past and present.

Peter Thiel–lynchpin of pow­er in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the top dog in Palan­tir (the alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance milieu), a key play­er in Facebook–has dis­sem­i­nat­ed anti-Chi­nese vit­ri­ol about the “yel­low per­il” in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

He has been joined in that effort by Steve Ban­non, a coor­di­na­tor of anti-Chi­na activ­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

” . . . . The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley. These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage. . . .”

Among the out­growths of the Opi­um Wars was an end to the Qing dynasty’s ban on Chi­nese emi­gra­tion and the resul­tant “coolie trade.” 

The Chi­nese have a long-stand­ing and deserved rep­u­ta­tion as good work­ers. The U.S. and British embrace of the “coolie trade” per­mit­ted large num­bers of Chi­nese labor­ers to be import­ed into the U.S., where they were wide­ly employed in the sil­ver min­ing indus­try and the rail­roads.

This led to wide­spread, dead­ly retal­i­a­tion by the white estab­lish­ment against Chi­nese work­ers, encour­aged by the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ments.

Behead­ings, scalp­ing, cas­tra­tion and can­ni­bal­ism were among the dead­ly out­growths of the White Ter­ror against Chi­nese.

The vio­lence was accom­pa­nied by legal restric­tions on the immi­gra­tion by Chi­nese into the U.S.

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

” . . . .When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ous­ly, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cis­co and shot dead the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Hen­ry Liu. . . .”

1a.  Steve Bannon–one of the lumi­nar­ies of the “Alt-Right” and a for­mer key Trump aide, was cen­tral­ly involved in the anti-Chi­na effort. This sug­gests that the pres­ence of Pepe the Frog’s image in the Hong Kong protests might have some­thing to do with the “Alt-Right” after all.

Note Ban­non and com­pa­ny’s net­work­ing with the Falun Gong cult and “Chi­nese Mus­lim Free­dom Fighters”–read “Uighurs.”

The Ban­non-led anti-Chi­na effort has now become U.S. doc­trine: ” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. . . .”

“A New Red Scare Is Reshap­ing Wash­ing­ton” by Ana Swan­son; The New York Times; 7/20/2019.

In a ball­room across from the Capi­tol build­ing, an unlike­ly group of mil­i­tary hawks, pop­ulist cru­saders, Chi­nese Mus­lim free­dom fight­ers [Uighurs–D.E.] and fol­low­ers of the Falun Gong has been meet­ing to warn any­one who will lis­ten that Chi­na pos­es an exis­ten­tial threat to the Unit­ed States that will not end until the Com­mu­nist Par­ty is over­thrown.

If the warn­ings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are. The Com­mit­tee on the Present Dan­ger, a long-defunct group that cam­paigned against the dan­gers of the Sovi­et Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recent­ly been revived with the help of Stephen K. Ban­non, the president’s for­mer chief strate­gist, to warn against the dan­gers of Chi­na.

Once dis­missed as xeno­phobes and fringe ele­ments, the group’s mem­bers are find­ing their views increas­ing­ly embraced in Pres­i­dent Trump’s Wash­ing­ton, where skep­ti­cism and mis­trust of Chi­na have tak­en hold. Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

“These are two sys­tems that are incom­pat­i­ble,” Mr. Ban­non said of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. “One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.” . . . .

1b. There has been much com­men­tary about anti-Asian racism in the U.S. fol­low­ing numer­ous, some­times lethal attacks on Asian-Amer­i­cans in the wake of the pan­dem­ic.

Aside from the full-court press against Chi­na that we have cov­ered extensively–including and espe­cial­ly the dis­turb­ing evi­dence that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic was delib­er­ate­ly engi­neered by the U.S.–this should come as no sur­prise.

Peter Thiel–lynchpin of pow­er in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the top dog in Palan­tir (the alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance milieu), a key play­er in Facebook–has dis­sem­i­nat­ed anti-Chi­nese vit­ri­ol about the “yel­low per­il” in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

He has been joined in that effort by Steve Ban­non, a coor­di­na­tor of anti-Chi­na activ­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

” . . . . The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley. These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage. . . .”

“Peter Thiel and Steve Ban­non fuel a new Yel­low Per­il over Google and Chi­na” by Frank H Wu; The Guardian; 07/17/2019

The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage.

At a Sun­day appear­ance which opened the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton DC fol­lowed by an appear­ance with the Fox TV host Tuck­er Carl­son, Thiel, the founder of the Pay­Pal finan­cial ser­vice, relied on rhetor­i­cal ques­tions. He asked Google who was work­ing on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, whether “senior man­age­ment con­sid­ers itself to have been thor­ough­ly infil­trat­ed” and if the Chi­nese would steal the infor­ma­tion any­way.

Google answered by reit­er­at­ing that “we do not work with the Chi­nese mil­i­tary”.

Thiel left Sil­i­con Val­ley last year in protest over its lib­er­al­ism. He is also behind Palan­tir, the secre­tive sur­veil­lance firm, and has been a sup­port­er of tar­iffs. Google had been report­ed to be devel­op­ing a Chi­na-com­pat­i­ble search engine code­named Drag­on­fly. They stopped due to employ­ee objec­tions.

The open hos­til­i­ty to Chi­nese peo­ple, as dis­tinct from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, vio­lates norms inte­gral to Amer­i­ca itself. On the face of these utter­ances is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty, named by ances­try, as a prob­lem. Last year, the FBI direc­tor, Christo­pher Wray, char­ac­ter­ized it as a “whole of soci­ety” threat to Amer­i­can val­ues.

Guilt by asso­ci­a­tion is not what the Amer­i­can dream has promised to those who have sac­ri­ficed every­thing for that prover­bial oppor­tu­ni­ty. What­ev­er the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment may be up to, their poli­cies should not com­pro­mise the sta­tus of Chi­nese peo­ple, almost all of whom are ordi­nary folks, not spies, “sleep­ers”, agents of influ­ence or oth­er­wise con­spir­a­tors.

Although in this new Yel­low Per­il, a spe­cif­ic eth­nic­i­ty is tar­get­ed as a group, no line is drawn between cit­i­zens and for­eign­ers. The orig­i­nal Yel­low Per­il was the notion, pro­mot­ed by Germany’s Kaiser Wil­helm II in the late 19th cen­tu­ry and by the Amer­i­can author Jack Lon­don, that Asians might con­tend against Euro­peans and white Amer­i­cans in a con­test of racial supe­ri­or­i­ty. Pro­pa­gan­dists such as Lothrop Stod­dard wrote titles that would sum­ma­rize the the­sis: The Ris­ing Tide of Col­or Against White World Suprema­cy was a 1920 best­seller.

Nowa­days as ear­li­er, the peo­ple who fear an Asian takeover of Sil­i­con Val­ley do not both­er to add that Asians who become Amer­i­cans are accept­able. They can­not dis­tin­guish by look­ing at a line­up of ran­dom Asians, whether the one is a vis­it­ing schol­ar “fresh off the boat” in that pejo­ra­tive phrase being reap­pro­pri­at­ed, the oth­er a sixth-gen­er­a­tion Cal­i­forn­ian “banana” (yel­low on the out­side, white on the inside, in anoth­er deroga­to­ry term). If they did clar­i­fy that they meant no dis­par­age­ment of those whose fam­i­lies came before their own, at least they would be pure nativists rather than also racists.

The con­fu­sion of Asians over­seas and “Asian Amer­i­cans” (a con­cept coined dur­ing the social jus­tice move­ments cir­ca 1968) has been a recur­ring theme through­out his­to­ry. Dem­a­gogues suc­ceed­ed in per­suad­ing Con­gress to pass the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882. They argued the “Ori­en­tals” would out­com­pete Occi­den­tal rivals but remain loy­al to a for­eign empire. The pro­hi­bi­tion was then expand­ed to an Asi­at­ic Barred Zone intend­ed to main­tain eth­nic pro­por­tions favor­ing white Anglo-Sax­on Protes­tants in the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion (even Catholics, Jews and Euro­peans too south­ern and east­ern were to be lim­it­ed albeit not as strict­ly). Japan­ese Amer­i­cans were locked up dur­ing the sec­ond world war no mat­ter that they were bona fide Unit­ed States cit­i­zens two gen­er­a­tions removed from Tokyo and base­ball-play­ing Chris­tians.

3. Among the out­growths of the Opi­um Wars was an end to the Qing dynasty’s ban on Chi­nese emi­gra­tion and the resul­tant “coolie trade.” 

The Chi­nese have a long-stand­ing and deserved rep­u­ta­tion as good work­ers. The U.S. and British embrace of the “coolie trade” per­mit­ted large num­bers of Chi­nese labor­ers to be import­ed into the U.S., where they were wide­ly employed in the sil­ver min­ing indus­try and the rail­roads.

This led to wide­spread, dead­ly retal­i­a­tion by the white estab­lish­ment against Chi­nese work­ers, encour­aged by the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ments.

Behead­ings, scalp­ing, cas­tra­tion and can­ni­bal­ism were among the dead­ly out­growths of the White Ter­ror against Chi­nese.

The vio­lence was accom­pa­nied by legal restric­tions on the immi­gra­tion by Chi­nese into the U.S.

The Soong Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Harp­er & Row 1985 [HC]; Copy­right 1985 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; ISBN 0–06-015308–3; pp.43–44.

4. The pro­gram reviews the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. X‑XI.

. . . . Many peo­ple told us this book was his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant and must be published—then warned us that if it were pub­lished, we would be mur­dered. An Aus­tralian econ­o­mist who read it said, ” I hope they let you live.” He did not have to explain who “they” were.

Japan’s loot­ing of Asia, and the hid­ing of this war-gold in Amer­i­can banks, is close­ly linked to the issue of Holo­caust gold hid­den in Swiss banks. Reveal­ing the secrets of either is a dan­ger­ous busi­ness. Jean Ziegler, a Swiss pro­fes­sor and par­lia­men­tar­i­an, did much to expose five decades of offi­cial amne­sia in his book The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead. After pub­lish­ing it and tes­ti­fy­ing in 1998 before the U.S. Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee about Jew­ish assets in Swiss banks, he was charged with ‘trea­son’ by Swiss Fed­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Car­la del Ponte. The charge was brought by twen­ty-one financiers, com­mer­cial lawyers, and politi­cians of the far right, many of them major stock­hold­ers in large Swiss banks. They accused Ziegler of being an accom­plice of Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions who “extort­ed” vast sums of mon­ey from Switzer­land.

Ziegler is only one of many who have been per­se­cut­ed for putting ethics before greed. Christophe Meili, a Union Banque Suisse (UBS) secu­ri­ty guard, was threat­ened with mur­der and the kid­nap­ping of his wife and chil­dren after he tes­ti­fied before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee about doc­u­ments he res­cued from UBS shred­ders. He and his fam­i­ly were giv­en asy­lum in Amer­i­ca.

We have been threat­ened with mur­der before. When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ous­ly, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cis­co and shot dead the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Hen­ry Liu.

When we pub­lished The Mar­cos Dynasty we expect­ed trou­ble from the Mar­cos fam­i­ly and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Wash­ing­ton. Oth­ers had inves­ti­gat­ed Mar­cos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Gov­ern­ment was secret­ly involved with Mar­cos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment and its Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, whose agents made threat­en­ing mid­night phone calls to our elder­ly par­ents. Arriv­ing in New York for an author tour, one of us was inter­cept­ed at JFK air­port, pass­port seized, and held incom­mu­ni­ca­do for three hours. Even­tu­al­ly the pass­port was returned, with­out a word of expla­na­tion. When we ran Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion queries to see what was behind it, we were grudg­ing­ly sent a copy of a telex mes­sage, on which every word was blacked out, includ­ing the date. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en for this cen­sor­ship was the need to pro­tect gov­ern­ment sources, which are above the law.

Dur­ing one harass­ing phone call from a U.S. Trea­sury agent, he said he was sit­ting in his office watch­ing an inter­view we had done for a Japan­ese TV network—an inter­view broad­cast only in Japan­ese, which we had nev­er seen. After pub­lish­ing The Yam­a­to Dynasty, which briefly men­tioned the dis­cov­ery that is the basis for Gold War­riors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a Euro­pean clin­ic briefly for a med­ical pro­ce­dure, the head nurse report­ed that “some­one pos­ing as your Amer­i­can doc­tor” had been on the phone ask­ing ques­tions.

When a brief extract of this book was pub­lished in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post in August 2001, sev­er­al phone calls from the edi­tors were cut off sud­den­ly. Emails from the news­pa­per took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an asso­ciate near­by arrived instant­ly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.

What have we done to pro­voke mur­der? To bor­row a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are “com­bat­ing offi­cial amne­sia.” We live in dan­ger­ous times, like Ger­many in the 1930’s when any­one who makes incon­ve­nient dis­clo­sures about hid­den assets can be brand­ed a “ter­ror­ist” or a “trai­tor. . . .”

Despite the best efforts of the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese gov­ern­ments to destroy, with­hold, or lose doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ed to Gold­en Lily, we have accu­mu­lat­ed thou­sands of doc­u­ments, con­duct­ed thou­sands of hours of inter­views, and we make all of these avail­able to read­ers of this book on two com­pact discs, avail­able from our web­site www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] so they can make up their own minds. We encour­age oth­ers with knowl­edge of these events to come for­ward. When the top is cor­rupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from peo­ple like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decid­ed they had to “do some­thing.” As a pre­cau­tion, should any­thing odd hap­pen, we have arranged for this book and all its doc­u­men­ta­tion to be put up on the Inter­net at a num­ber of sites. If we are mur­dered, read­ers will have no dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out who “they” are. . . .

5. Ster­ling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to Spain–the seat of that orga­ni­za­tion’s pow­er  turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors. 

“Ster­ling Sea­grave, 1937–2017;” versobooks.com; 7/31/2017.

. . . . Sea­grave will be remem­bered warm­ly by Ver­so staff for his live­ly cor­re­spon­dence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that fol­lowed the Span­ish pub­li­ca­tion of Gold War­riors: 

A hired thug tried to mur­der me on the ser­pen­tine road lead­ing up to our iso­lat­ed house on the ridge over­look­ing Banyuls-sur-Mer, and near­ly suc­ceed­ed.  (We’ve had sev­er­al seri­ous death threats because of our books.) The road was very nar­row in places, with tar­mac bare­ly the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christ­mas night, in 2011, after vis­it­ing Peg­gy at a clin­ic in Per­pig­nan, as I turned the final hair­pin, I clear­ly saw a guy sit­ting on a cement block path lead­ing up to a shed for the uphill vine­yard. He was obvi­ous­ly wait­ing for me because we were the only peo­ple liv­ing up there on that moun­tain shoul­der.  He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fab­ric that total­ly blocked the nar­row­est turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not know­ing whether he also had a gun), and my right front dri­ve wheel went off the tar­mac and lost trac­tion in the rub­ble.

The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vine­yard on my right side, rolling and bounc­ing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it final­ly came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seat­belt and air bag, I sur­vived. I don’t know how many con­cus­sions I got on the way down, but I man­aged to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rub­ble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoul­der caved in. (Turned out lat­er that I had frac­tured my right shoul­der, and all the lig­a­ments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained uncon­scious for 14 hours.  After 12 hours, a vigneron dri­ving up the next morn­ing saw my wrecked car and body.

 He called the Gen­darmerie on his portable, and I was hoist­ed out uncon­scious by a chop­per and flown to an old Vic­to­ri­an-era hos­pi­tal in Per­pig­nan where they did noth­ing but keep me doped on mor­phine for two weeks — no X‑rays or seri­ous med­ical care.  Final­ly, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peg­gy) trans­ferred to a clin­ic on the beach there, where Peg­gy and I shared a room while we both recov­ered. I got my right shoul­der lig­a­ments fixed by an excel­lent sur­geon in Per­pig­nan.  (Peg­gy did not know it then but she had an ear­ly stage of can­cer.) I still have a hair­line frac­ture in my right shoul­der.

I attribute the event to stay­ing too long in one place, so the spooks even­tu­al­ly tracked me down.  We had been liv­ing for years on a sail­boat, mov­ing from Hol­land to Britain to Por­tu­gal to Spain and final­ly to France, where we found — in Cat­alo­nia — an ide­al vil­lage at the Mediter­ranean end of the Pyre­nees. In ret­ro­spect, I’m sor­ry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beau­ti­ful 43-foot boat I had  built from a bare hull. It was very com­fort­able, but Peg­gy want­ed a house. We nev­er did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restor­ing a 13th cen­tu­ry Tem­plar ruin on the shoul­der of the moun­tain.  Made me an easy tar­get. Def­i­nite­ly a bad deci­sion. I think it was the Span­ish edi­tion of Gold War­riors that made me the easy tar­get. 

 

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR#1194 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, Part 1”

  1. Here’s an evolv­ing sto­ry com­ing out of Chi­na that will no doubt fuel the ongo­ing cam­paign by Steve Ban­non, Peter Thiel, and oth­er reac­tionar­ies to foment a sense of ‘Yel­low per­il’ in Sil­i­con Val­ley. But it’s also one of those sto­ries that gives us a hint as to why West­ern lead­ers view Chi­na as such a pro­found threat in the future. A com­pet­i­tive pop­ulist threat in the realm of com­pet­ing mod­els of cap­i­tal­ism:

    The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is engaged in a grow­ing crack­down on large tech­nol­o­gy firms oper­at­ing in the coun­try. Not just for­eign tech firms but major domes­tic firms too like Aliba­ba and DiDi. The crack­down is being seen as an attempt to lim­it the explo­sive growth of these firms with an eye on pos­si­ble antitrust mea­sures. Yes, Chi­na is seri­ous­ly look­ing at break­ing up its tech­nol­o­gy giants. It’s an idea that, while like­ly pop­u­lar in the West, is absolute­ly unthink­able in today’s polit­i­cal cli­mate. Just try to imag­ine the US gov­ern­ment break­ing up Google or Face­book on the grounds that they’ve become too big and pow­er­ful and threat to com­pe­ti­tion and future growth. A great idea, right? But utter­ly unthink­able. Face­book, Google, and oth­er large cor­po­ra­tions are the ones telling the US gov­ern­ment what to do, not the oth­er way around. It’s how the fusion of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism ‘works’ in the West: the cap­i­tal­ist buy the democ­ra­cy and take over as monop­o­lists. That’s lit­er­al­ly what’s been hap­pen­ing for decades with no end in sight. That’s what this move to crack­down on Chi­na’s tech giants is so sig­nif­i­cant. The sig­nif­i­cance is found in the jux­ta­po­si­tion of Chi­na’s action to the West­’s chron­ic inac­tion in the fact of ever-grow­ing monop­o­lis­tic and oli­gop­o­lis­tic cap­i­tal.

    And don’t for­get, while the com­pe­ti­tion between the West and Chi­na today is osten­si­bly com­pe­ti­tion between free democ­ra­cies and an author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment, we would have to be play­ing dumb to ignore the real­i­ty that the dom­i­nant forces in the West active­ly want to move those soci­eties into a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic form of gov­ern­ment run by and for pri­vate eco­nom­ic forces. In oth­er words, should the fas­cists in the West suc­ceed in their efforts to effec­tive­ly destroy democ­ra­cy, the future Great Pow­ers con­flict will be between an bru­tal post-demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ist far right author­i­tar­i­an­ism of the West and what­ev­er kind of cap­i­tal­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism ‘with Chi­nese char­ac­ter­is­tics’ that Chi­na comes up with. And that’s the kind of com­pe­ti­tion that’s poten­tial­ly going to leave the ‘Chi­na Mod­el’ look­ing like the ‘less­er of two evils’ for a globe that’s forces to choose sides. That’s what this sto­ry about Chi­na’s crack­down on Big Tech is, in part, part of a much larg­er sto­ry about fun­da­men­tal com­pet­i­tive mod­els for how the world should work:

    Bloomberg

    The Chi­na Mod­el: What the Country’s Tech Crack­down Is Real­ly About

    After spend­ing years emu­lat­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley, the world’s sec­ond-biggest econ­o­my is now offi­cial­ly chart­ing its own course.

    By Austin Carr and Coco Liu
    July 26, 2021, 11:01 PM CDT

    On the fourth floor of a har­bor­side mall on Grand Cay­man, not far from touristy scu­ba-div­ing out­lets and a jerk-chick­en shack, is the off­shored home of ride-hail­ing com­pa­ny DiDi Glob­al Inc., one of China’s biggest tech­nol­o­gy firms. A few doors down are the inter­net com­pa­nies Baidu Inc. and Meitu­an; Aliba­ba Group Hold­ing Ltd. is reg­is­tered at a P.O. box up the street, right across from Singh’s Roti Shop & Bar.

    The Caribbean footholds, essen­tial­ly leased mail­ing address­es, have no oper­a­tional val­ue but have made it eas­i­er for Chi­nese uni­corns to attract Euro­pean and Amer­i­can investors. They’ve been a bridge between East and West, a sun­ny sym­bol of the free­wheel­ing cap­i­tal­ism tol­er­at­ed by the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) as the cost of allow­ing its home­grown jug­ger­nauts to com­pete with their U.S. coun­ter­parts. DiDi’s pres­ence there was need­ed for it to go pub­lic on the New York Stock Exchange on June 30. Chi­nese com­pa­nies saw mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits to gain­ing access to the U.S. When DiDi opened a research cam­pus in Cal­i­for­nia in 2017, founder and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Cheng Wei gushed about the company’s “new home ... along­side the great­est tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies in the world.” Togeth­er, they were embark­ing on a “great jour­ney.”

    But this jour­ney start­ed veer­ing off course in Octo­ber when Aliba­ba co-founder Jack Ma, one of the country’s most vis­i­ble bil­lion­aires, blast­ed Chi­nese reg­u­la­tors for sti­fling inno­va­tion. Pres­i­dent Xi Jinping’s gov­ern­ment respond­ed by squash­ing Ma’s plan to take Alibaba’s fin­tech off­shoot, Ant Group Co., pub­lic and ini­ti­at­ing an antitrust case against Aliba­ba. Ma dis­ap­peared from pub­lic view, his for­tune dwin­dled, and mur­murs began about a broad­er realign­ment in the rela­tion­ship between China’s gov­ern­ment and its biggest com­pa­nies.

    DiDi’s turn came on July 2, just days after its $4.4 bil­lion ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing in the U.S. Reg­u­la­tors ordered a secu­ri­ty review, then demand­ed mobile stores remove DiDi’s apps. “Just because you are a high­ly suc­cess­ful tech com­pa­ny does not mean you are above the CCP,” says Michael Witt, a senior affil­i­ate pro­fes­sor of strat­e­gy and inter­na­tion­al busi­ness at Insead in Sin­ga­pore. “Ant Group and Jack Ma found that out for them­selves last year, and it is sur­pris­ing DiDi did not get the mes­sage.”

    Lat­er in the month, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment announced a sweep­ing new reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the online edu­ca­tion indus­try, which it said had been “hijacked by cap­i­tal,” then said online food plat­forms must ensure work­ers make at least the local min­i­mum income. This gut­ted share prices of deliv­ery giant Meitu­an, which was already fac­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged monop­o­lis­tic behav­ior. In sep­a­rate state­ments in recent months, Aliba­ba, Didi, and Meitu­an have said they’d coop­er­ate with author­i­ties and work to enhance their com­pli­ance sys­tems.

    The government’s clam­p­down sig­nals a new era of harsh­er over­sight that com­pa­nies won’t be able to avoid by reg­is­ter­ing in the Cay­mans or hir­ing in Cal­i­for­nia. The world’s two largest economies seem head­ed down dif­fer­ent paths as they grap­ple with the sprawl­ing pow­er that pri­vate tech com­pa­nies have amassed. The author­i­tar­i­an tinge is a risky piv­ot to some in and around the Chi­nese tech indus­try—and oth­ers see a chance for the coun­try to gain an edge against its main geopo­lit­i­cal rival. “Chi­na is actu­al­ly tak­ing the lead in set­ting some bound­aries around the pow­er of Big Tech,” says Thomas Tsao, co-founder of Gobi Part­ners, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm based in Shang­hai. “Peo­ple are miss­ing the big­ger pic­ture. They’re try­ing a new mod­el.”

    ...

    Just as in the U.S., unfet­tered growth led to increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful tech com­pa­nies and CEOs who, oper­at­ing with sur­pris­ing inde­pen­dence, weren’t afraid to flex their pow­er. China’s biggest tech com­pa­nies peri­od­i­cal­ly forced small­er com­peti­tors to inte­grate with their plat­forms or pres­sured them to sell out. Ma and oth­er titans became cul­tur­al rock stars. He even start­ed dress­ing like a rock star at rau­cous Aliba­ba events, com­plete with a mohawk wig and leather jack­et and gui­tar, and became vocal about soci­etal issues.

    Some see the crack­down on Aliba­ba and DiDi—along with actions against dozens of oth­er tech companies—as long over­due. Andy Tian, who led Google China’s mobile strat­e­gy in the 2000s and is now CEO at Bei­jing social media start­up Asian Inno­va­tions Group, says it will be “pos­i­tive for inno­va­tion” and “com­pe­ti­tion in Chi­na will be fiercer than in the U.S.,” because small­er com­pa­nies will ben­e­fit from poli­cies that rein in the largest com­peti­tors.

    Angela Zhang, direc­tor of Hong Kong University’s Cen­tre for Chi­nese Law and the author of Chi­nese Antitrust Excep­tion­al­ism, says the inter­ven­tion will reshape the tech indus­try in Chi­na faster than it could hap­pen else­where. “The case against Aliba­ba took the Chi­nese antitrust author­i­ty only four months to com­plete, where­as it will take years for U.S. and EU reg­u­la­tors to go after tech firms such as Face­book, Google, and Ama­zon, who are ready to fight tooth and nail,” she says.

    Lil­lian Li, founder of the newslet­ter Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics, deems the dis­rup­tion “a rebal­anc­ing of the dynam­ics, redraw­ing the bound­aries. I don’t think the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is out there to destroy tech giants.” After decades of an any­thing-goes ethos, she says, Chi­na want­ed to remind its tech indus­try “what they can do and can’t do.”

    If Chi­na is aban­don­ing the Sil­i­con Val­ley mod­el, what will it replace it with? Insid­ers sug­gest it will be less founder-dri­ven and more Chi­na-cen­tric. U.S. antitrust action often focus­es on strength­en­ing con­sumer pro­tec­tions, but China’s crack­down is ulti­mate­ly geared toward pro­tect­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Ali­cia Gar­cía-Her­rero, a top econ­o­mist in Hong Kong at invest­ment bank Natix­is, notes that nei­ther Huawei nor ZTE, which togeth­er have a lock on the Chi­nese tele­com net­work­ing mar­ket, have been tar­get­ed so far, like­ly because they main­tain clos­er ties to gov­ern­ment offi­cials. “Full align­ment with China’s lead­er­ship is a must to oper­ate in Chi­na,” she says.

    Pres­i­dent Xi’s gov­ern­ment has out­lined sec­tors it wants to pri­or­i­tize, includ­ing semi­con­duc­tors and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Xi has called the data its tech indus­try col­lects “an essen­tial and strate­gic resource” and has been push­ing to tap into it for years. Fol­low­ing a 2015 man­date, cities from Guiyang to Shang­hai have set up data exchanges that facil­i­tate the trans­fer of anonymized infor­ma­tion between cor­po­ra­tions. This could lead to a nation­al­ized data-shar­ing sys­tem that serves as a kind of dig­i­tal pub­lic infra­struc­ture, putting a mas­sive trove of data into the cen­tral government’s hands..

    The dan­ger with this approach is that it could have a chill­ing effect on inno­va­tion. As one Chi­nese uni­corn founder puts it, this new Chi­na tech mod­el would “help hold back some over­cre­ative ideas.” Although this was meant as approval, it also can be read as a scar­i­ly restric­tive view of inno­va­tion. The war for con­trol over data could also threat­en the Cay­man Islands’ sta­tus as a bridge between the super­pow­ers. William Kir­by, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor who spe­cial­izes in Chi­nese busi­ness stud­ies, notes that Wash­ing­ton has passed leg­is­la­tion that threat­ens to delist the stocks of Chi­nese com­pa­nies that don’t sub­mit doc­u­men­ta­tion for audits, poten­tial­ly expos­ing the data Chi­na wants to keep for itself. Chi­na has already sig­naled it will make it hard­er for Chi­nese com­pa­nies to list on U.S. stock mar­kets, lim­it­ing their abil­i­ty to grow and raise cap­i­tal out­side Asia. “All this is a lose-lose propo­si­tion,” Kir­by says.

    If the crack­down makes it more dif­fi­cult for China’s largest com­pa­nies to expand, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries could be Amer­i­can tech giants. The prospects for reg­u­la­tion in the U.S. remain uncer­tain, and Sil­i­con Valley’s dom­i­nant play­ers could keep buy­ing up future rivals, win­ning at a glob­al scale. Of course, if they do so by smoth­er­ing star­tups that could devel­op into rivals, it could end up depriv­ing the U.S. of use­ful inno­va­tions just because Google or Face­book Inc. find them threat­en­ing.

    The cost of China’s turn on tech is also being borne by its future busi­ness lead­ers, who, after years of look­ing up to the founders of DiDi and Aliba­ba, now have to fig­ure out how to think dif­fer­ent­ly. One Chi­na-based start­up founder, who request­ed anonymi­ty to speak open­ly about a polit­i­cal­ly fraught sub­ject, says tech com­pa­nies will like­ly be more cau­tious in rolling out riski­er prod­ucts, act with more rev­er­ence for CCP pol­i­cy, and may try to avoid grow­ing too huge, lest they draw unwant­ed gov­ern­ment atten­tion.

    Yet anoth­er entre­pre­neur who’s oper­at­ed for years in Chi­na scoffs at this notion. “No one is going to say, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t get too big, because then I run the risk of being shut down by the gov­ern­ment,’ ” says this per­son, who also request­ed anonymi­ty. “If I get to that point, where I’m so big that I’m get­ting shut down by the gov­ern­ment, that’s amaz­ing. That means I won. That means I’m the next Jack Ma.”

    ————-

    “The Chi­na Mod­el: What the Country’s Tech Crack­down Is Real­ly About” By Austin Carr and Coco Liu; Bloomberg; 07/26/2021

    “The government’s clam­p­down sig­nals a new era of harsh­er over­sight that com­pa­nies won’t be able to avoid by reg­is­ter­ing in the Cay­mans or hir­ing in Cal­i­for­nia. The world’s two largest economies seem head­ed down dif­fer­ent paths as they grap­ple with the sprawl­ing pow­er that pri­vate tech com­pa­nies have amassed. The author­i­tar­i­an tinge is a risky piv­ot to some in and around the Chi­nese tech indus­try—and oth­ers see a chance for the coun­try to gain an edge against its main geopo­lit­i­cal rival. “Chi­na is actu­al­ly tak­ing the lead in set­ting some bound­aries around the pow­er of Big Tech,” says Thomas Tsao, co-founder of Gobi Part­ners, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm based in Shang­hai. “Peo­ple are miss­ing the big­ger pic­ture. They’re try­ing a new mod­el.”

    Is Chi­na unjus­ti­fi­ably crack­ing down on free-enter­prise? Or is the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment reign­ing in out-of-con­trol cor­po­rate giants before they become large enough to cap­ture soci­ety? It’s depends on your per­spec­tive. Mak­ing this a bat­tle of per­spec­tives. But unlike the Cold War, which was a bat­tle between com­mu­nist and cap­i­tal­ist per­spec­tives, this is shap­ing up into a bat­tle of cap­i­tal­ist per­spec­tives. The West­ern mod­el where cap­i­tal­ism is man­aged by the cap­i­tal­ist or a Chi­nese mod­el that pri­or­i­tizes gov­ern­ment con­trol and, osten­si­bly, the col­lec­tive good. That’s the big­ger pic­ture here. So we’re going to see: do the Chi­nese peo­ple approve of these anti-trust actions or would they pre­fer peo­ple like Jack Ma just gain more and more pow­er and influ­ence? We’ll find out. That’s part of what this is such a big deal. A very dif­fer­ent trust-bust­ing mod­el of cap­i­tal­ism that has­n’t been seen in West in decades:

    ...
    But this jour­ney start­ed veer­ing off course in Octo­ber when Aliba­ba co-founder Jack Ma, one of the country’s most vis­i­ble bil­lion­aires, blast­ed Chi­nese reg­u­la­tors for sti­fling inno­va­tion. Pres­i­dent Xi Jinping’s gov­ern­ment respond­ed by squash­ing Ma’s plan to take Alibaba’s fin­tech off­shoot, Ant Group Co., pub­lic and ini­ti­at­ing an antitrust case against Aliba­ba. Ma dis­ap­peared from pub­lic view, his for­tune dwin­dled, and mur­murs began about a broad­er realign­ment in the rela­tion­ship between China’s gov­ern­ment and its biggest com­pa­nies.

    ...

    Lat­er in the month, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment announced a sweep­ing new reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the online edu­ca­tion indus­try, which it said had been “hijacked by cap­i­tal,” then said online food plat­forms must ensure work­ers make at least the local min­i­mum income. This gut­ted share prices of deliv­ery giant Meitu­an, which was already fac­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged monop­o­lis­tic behav­ior. In sep­a­rate state­ments in recent months, Aliba­ba, Didi, and Meitu­an have said they’d coop­er­ate with author­i­ties and work to enhance their com­pli­ance sys­tems.

    ...

    Angela Zhang, direc­tor of Hong Kong University’s Cen­tre for Chi­nese Law and the author of Chi­nese Antitrust Excep­tion­al­ism, says the inter­ven­tion will reshape the tech indus­try in Chi­na faster than it could hap­pen else­where. “The case against Aliba­ba took the Chi­nese antitrust author­i­ty only four months to com­plete, where­as it will take years for U.S. and EU reg­u­la­tors to go after tech firms such as Face­book, Google, and Ama­zon, who are ready to fight tooth and nail,” she says.

    Lil­lian Li, founder of the newslet­ter Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics, deems the dis­rup­tion “a rebal­anc­ing of the dynam­ics, redraw­ing the bound­aries. I don’t think the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is out there to destroy tech giants.” After decades of an any­thing-goes ethos, she says, Chi­na want­ed to remind its tech indus­try “what they can do and can’t do.”

    If Chi­na is aban­don­ing the Sil­i­con Val­ley mod­el, what will it replace it with? Insid­ers sug­gest it will be less founder-dri­ven and more Chi­na-cen­tric. U.S. antitrust action often focus­es on strength­en­ing con­sumer pro­tec­tions, but China’s crack­down is ulti­mate­ly geared toward pro­tect­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Ali­cia Gar­cía-Her­rero, a top econ­o­mist in Hong Kong at invest­ment bank Natix­is, notes that nei­ther Huawei nor ZTE, which togeth­er have a lock on the Chi­nese tele­com net­work­ing mar­ket, have been tar­get­ed so far, like­ly because they main­tain clos­er ties to gov­ern­ment offi­cials. “Full align­ment with China’s lead­er­ship is a must to oper­ate in Chi­na,” she says.
    ...

    And note the ways Chi­na’s crack­down on Chi­nese giants is seen as poten­tial­ly ben­e­fit­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley’s giants: If Chi­na makes it hard­er for Chi­nese giants to expand, that could help the US giants grow even larg­er. In oth­er words, one of the con­se­quences of Chi­na’s pol­i­cy could be mak­ing Google and Face­book even more pow­er­ful in the West. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing dynam­ic. Don’t for­get, the whole world is the audi­ence of this com­pe­ti­tion. Watch­ing Chi­na crack down on Jack Ma while cor­po­rate giants con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate US pol­i­cy-mak­ing is going to be part of that glob­al spec­ta­cle:

    ...
    If the crack­down makes it more dif­fi­cult for China’s largest com­pa­nies to expand, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries could be Amer­i­can tech giants. The prospects for reg­u­la­tion in the U.S. remain uncer­tain, and Sil­i­con Valley’s dom­i­nant play­ers could keep buy­ing up future rivals, win­ning at a glob­al scale. Of course, if they do so by smoth­er­ing star­tups that could devel­op into rivals, it could end up depriv­ing the U.S. of use­ful inno­va­tions just because Google or Face­book Inc. find them threat­en­ing.
    ...

    Now, regard­ing fears about the Chi­nese gov­ern­men­t’s plans to set of pub­lic anonymized data-shar­ing infra­struc­ture so cor­po­ra­tions can share the troves of data they col­lect with each oth­er, keep in mind that this sounds A LOT like the EU’s plans to set up pub­lic data-shar­ing infra­struc­ture to facil­i­tate the shar­ing of data between data-rich and data-poor com­pa­nies. This was seen as a means of address the near monop­oly sta­tus inter­net giants like Google and Face­book have with much of the data they col­lect. It will be inter­est­ing to see how close­ly the Chi­nese and EU data-shar­ing infra­struc­ture mod­els fol­low each oth­er as this plays out:

    ...
    Pres­i­dent Xi’s gov­ern­ment has out­lined sec­tors it wants to pri­or­i­tize, includ­ing semi­con­duc­tors and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Xi has called the data its tech indus­try col­lects “an essen­tial and strate­gic resource” and has been push­ing to tap into it for years. Fol­low­ing a 2015 man­date, cities from Guiyang to Shang­hai have set up data exchanges that facil­i­tate the trans­fer of anonymized infor­ma­tion between cor­po­ra­tions. This could lead to a nation­al­ized data-shar­ing sys­tem that serves as a kind of dig­i­tal pub­lic infra­struc­ture, putting a mas­sive trove of data into the cen­tral government’s hands.

    The dan­ger with this approach is that it could have a chill­ing effect on inno­va­tion. As one Chi­nese uni­corn founder puts it, this new Chi­na tech mod­el would “help hold back some over­cre­ative ideas.” Although this was meant as approval, it also can be read as a scar­i­ly restric­tive view of inno­va­tion. The war for con­trol over data could also threat­en the Cay­man Islands’ sta­tus as a bridge between the super­pow­ers. William Kir­by, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor who spe­cial­izes in Chi­nese busi­ness stud­ies, notes that Wash­ing­ton has passed leg­is­la­tion that threat­ens to delist the stocks of Chi­nese com­pa­nies that don’t sub­mit doc­u­men­ta­tion for audits, poten­tial­ly expos­ing the data Chi­na wants to keep for itself. Chi­na has already sig­naled it will make it hard­er for Chi­nese com­pa­nies to list on U.S. stock mar­kets, lim­it­ing their abil­i­ty to grow and raise cap­i­tal out­side Asia. “All this is a lose-lose propo­si­tion,” Kir­by says.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the atti­tude expressed by this anony­mous Chi­nese entre­pre­neur about the prospect of get­ting so big the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment breaks his com­pa­ny up: that’s win­ning in life. Not grow­ing so big you take over the world. Not becom­ing the rich­est per­son alive. Not becom­ing a walk­ing bill­board for greed. Get­ting big enough that the rules of soci­ety say you’re too big and accept­ing the breakup as win­ning. It’s an atti­tude that feels so healthy it’s almost alien to hear. Who knows if this anony­mous per­son gen­uine­ly holds that sen­ti­ment or how wide­spread it is. But giv­en the col­lec­tive gross moral fail­ure of the actu­al cap­i­tal­ist in the West over the last decades — where get­ting as wealthy as pos­si­ble, damn the con­se­quences to every­one else, is cel­e­brat­ed as ‘win­ning’ and almost all of the new wealth has flowed into the hands of the super-rich — it points towards a sig­nif­i­cant strate­gic open­ing for Chi­nese cap­i­tal­ists in this philo­soph­i­cal bat­tle for the future of cap­i­tal­ism: if Chi­na’s wealth­i­est can at least pre­tend to exhib­it a degree of a broad­er social con­science they’ll prob­a­bly win a major pub­lic rela­tions bat­tle with the West:

    ...
    The cost of China’s turn on tech is also being borne by its future busi­ness lead­ers, who, after years of look­ing up to the founders of DiDi and Aliba­ba, now have to fig­ure out how to think dif­fer­ent­ly. One Chi­na-based start­up founder, who request­ed anonymi­ty to speak open­ly about a polit­i­cal­ly fraught sub­ject, says tech com­pa­nies will like­ly be more cau­tious in rolling out riski­er prod­ucts, act with more rev­er­ence for CCP pol­i­cy, and may try to avoid grow­ing too huge, lest they draw unwant­ed gov­ern­ment atten­tion.

    Yet anoth­er entre­pre­neur who’s oper­at­ed for years in Chi­na scoffs at this notion. “No one is going to say, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t get too big, because then I run the risk of being shut down by the gov­ern­ment,’ ” says this per­son, who also request­ed anonymi­ty. “If I get to that point, where I’m so big that I’m get­ting shut down by the gov­ern­ment, that’s amaz­ing. That means I won. That means I’m the next Jack Ma.”
    ...

    Keep in mind that this future bat­tle over cap­i­tal­ism isn’t going to be tak­ing place in today’s envi­ron­ment. Lit­er­al­ly. This foun­da­tion­al bat­tle is going to be tak­ing place in the decrepit dying bios­phere of the future. The col­lapse of the ecosys­tem, dri­ven by human eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, is poised to be the mega-geopo­lit­i­cal issue of the future, bar­ring an event that col­laps­es the glob­al pop­u­la­tion through some oth­er means (like a killer virus). The gross irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the pre­vail­ing par­a­digm is going to be much hard­er to ignore future, espe­cial­ly for the nations most vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change. Human­i­ty is unavoid­ably going to be look­ing for new par­a­digms to replace the one that is cur­rent­ly mass mur­der­ing the future. That’s why moves like this by ‘Com­mu­nist Chi­na’ has the West so freaked out. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has deter­mined that not being Big Tech’s pawn is a com­pet­i­tive edge on the glob­al stage. Good for them. Hope­ful­ly there will be more com­pe­ti­tion in this area.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 5, 2021, 4:56 pm
  2. @Pterrafractyl–

    Good work!

    The notion of Chi­na as A) a mono­lith­ic Com­mu­nist giant just does NOT jibe with real­i­ty.

    I think you hit the nail on the head–China reg­u­lat­ing their Big Tech scares the Fresh Fer­til­iz­er out of the U.S. oli­garchs.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | August 5, 2021, 5:14 pm

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