Beijing McCafé
R Weiler
The people’s expectations have evolved in general from satisfying basic needs to improving the quality of life, and their demands at different levels and in various areas are becoming more diverse.”
Xi Jinping, The Governance of China, IV (2022)
The demand is voiceless, wordless,
Yet lacks nothing in eloquence
Or precision; needs no translation,
Crosses boundaries of language
And political position;
Contains no threat, holds nothing to fear.
On the contrary, the choice is yours
And the consequences clear:To comply or be refused — entry,
Exit, access, service, the right
To choose not to choose, to refuse
This infrared human scanner,
This gateway in no wall that stands
At every station and museum,
Blocks routes to civic monuments
And the seat of Central Government.And is this communism, comrade?
Is this what a century fought for?
Or did you exchange your vision
For a WeChat conversation?
Swap the Cultural Revolution
For a 60-inch television?
For the right to build department stores
As stupid as those in London?It’s not the soldiers at attention
In the Beijing Subway stations,
Or the policemen on the street
Demanding proof of your ID,
Or the CCTV surveillance
Recording your every movement,
That have stolen your privacy,
Your freedoms and dignity.It’s the latest Huawei smartphone
Cultivating your addiction,
Harvesting your information —
For convenience breeds compliance.
And now, conveniently, you can
Upload your One-Card Metro Pass
Not on your phone but to your hand
(If you can still tell them apart).And is this communism, comrade?
Is this what millions died for?
Or did you abandon your dreams
For the sleepwalk of consumption?
So your mask can fit your face
Closer than the masks in Washington?
For the right to lockdown longer
Than the European Union?Because if you want to order food
From the QR-code on your table,
And if you want to pay your bill
At the touch-screen cashless kiosk,
And if you want advance tickets
For tomorrow’s museum visit,
And if you want to gain entry
To the Great Hall of the People —The Communist Party of China,
Over four floors of exhibits,
Manifestoes, films and relics,
Dioramas, statues, photographs,
Recorded speeches and wall plaques
In Simplified Chinese will show you —
Clearly and definitively — how
You arrived where you are right now.And is this communism, comrade?
Is this why a billion peasants
Were lifted out of poverty
Into relative prosperity?
Why every town is linked by roads
And High-Speed Rail unites the land?
Why every village is connected
To 4G wireless broadband?So the Apple store in Beijing
Is bigger than that in Hong Kong?
So the Grand Hotel limousines
Are longer than those in New York?
So you can eat a Big Mac meal
On the Oriental Plaza,
And every tourist’s arse is washed
By an automated toilet?And is this communism, comrade?
Is this the utopia promised
‘With Chinese characteristics’?
Or did you sell your Five-Year Plans
For a screen that never turns off?
For the Babel of the internet?
For the right to be as happy
And enslaved as we are in the West?
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In 2021, the Communist Party of China announced that all 99 million rural residents in 128,000 villages in the People’s Republic of China who had previously been living below the poverty line according to the definition set by the World Bank had been lifted out of poverty.
Every year since 2012, an average of more than 10 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China. More than 20 million people with health issues have received treatment, and nearly 20 million people impoverished people have received subsistence allowances.
Where conditions have permitted, all towns, townships and villages in China have been connected to paved roads and provided with bus and postal services. An additional 1.1 million kilometres of rural roads have been built or upgraded, and 35,000 kilometres of new rail lines have been built.
Unsafe housing occupied by 7.9 million households, representing almost 26 million poor people, has been renovated in China. 35,000 residential communities and 2.66 million housing units have been built for more than 9.6 million people from poor, isolated and undeveloped places.
Reliability of power grids in impoverished rural areas has reached 99%, while 100% of poor villages on major grids are now connected to three-phase power. 98% of poor villages have been connected to both fibre optics and 4G wireless broadband.
Since the economic reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, a total of 770 million rural poor have escaped poverty in China. In doing so, they have contributed to more than 70% of the reduction in global poverty over this period.
And China has done this after 70 years of colonial occupation by Western powers, 22 years of civil war, 8 years of foreign invasion by the Japanese, and 75 years of ongoing sanctions, trade wars and threats from the USA, which continue to this day.
In contrast, India, with a similar population to China (1.44 billion compared to 1.42 billion), has 80 million people (6.7% of the population) living below the poverty line, and 84% living on less than $6.85 per day. While Africa (1.48 billion), in which 38.3% of the world’s undernourished live, has 35.5% of its population living in extreme poverty.
Whether the unparalleled achievements of China is communism or not, no other nation in the history of the world has been able to lift so many people out of poverty in such a short period of time, in a country whose 1.42 billion inhabitants exceed in number the combined total of all the developed countries.
When Western powers and their ideologues say they are opposed to China, what they mean is they want 99 million Chinese people back in poverty, living in mud huts for homes, with no access to clean water, no electricity, no roads, no education and stuck in grinding poverty. The West ensures that huge swathes of Africa remain that way, as it allows its corporations to extract and use its resources, both natural and human.
Deng Xiaoping said: ‘There’s nothing communist about poverty’. Without communism, or at least what Deng called ‘communism with Chinese characteristics’, China would be Africa. The question is, at what cost to China and its people has this economic miracle been achieved?
Whilst Rishi, Bibi and Biden triomphantly announce how cool it is to bomb consulates and exterminate ancient semites in their Homeland, let’s all elucubrate on the horror of the Chinese Communist regime!
“And is this communism, comrade?”
“Communism means equal incomes or it means nothing” — Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism, 1928,
“You own a lot but you do not own the government” — Xi to Lang.
“Long before children learn the meanings of words by looking them up in a dictionary they have already learnt the meanings of words by joining in the games that adults play when adults use words” — Ludwig Wittgenstein.
To know what is Communism “with Chinese characteristics” you must grow up in China and live in China.
The same applies to Socialism “with Islamic characteristics”: to understand what Socialism means in Iran you must have grown up in Iran and live in Iran.
To understand what Christianity means in Russia you must have grown up like Solzhenitsyn in Soviet Russia and live like Solzhenitsyn in Putin’s Russia.
“None so enslaved as those who believe they are free” — Goethe.
No need to live in China. Just take off the blinkers and understand that fascism is good for everyone who is not a parasite.
The main advantages of China, causing the imperial parasites so much anxiety:
– Proven record of (a) progress (b) punishment of domestic parasites
– Proven lies of foreign parasites whose only achievements are prevalent destitution, environmental destruction and invasions
– No party politics; propaganda is useless
– Currency controlled by government, not local and foreign parasites
– Very low dependence on external trade, contrary to propaganda
– Intelligent, hard-working people
– Low acceptance of “woke” subversion.
Some drawbacks of China:
– Persistent lawless opportunism on a personal basis
– Bullying small neighbouring countries; e.g., South China Sea.
It was not the communist government that created their wealth and prosperity, it was the creatives in the population who were finally allowed to create businesses plus of course, the trillions of investments from external corporations making use of the labour force. Communist China is a experiment initiated by world bankers. Mao went to Harvard FFS!⁶
Communism is not freedom and never will be. Personal responsibility for oneself, one’s family and those people you work with, will help create security and support for one’s own existence NOT the government, not any government.
Something I would expect from Alex Jones or Britbart. Turning point USA
A.I Authors never been to Barcelona or Madria, Hungary
London zone 1 in the last 15 years . what about France near Eiffel tower…? how about most WESTERN city’s.
the above horseshit commi is coming to get you pre selection waffle is standard in conservatives strong holds and is specified in your terms and conditions in operation manual if for like you example wanted to rent something in the main central hub. it is suggested paper less cashless is better. About time we saw some real journalism like calling different estate agents and asking them about leasing venues/shops in the main strip. In stead we have AI degenerated commi coming to get you.
Xi Jinping and his example Mao have one thing WEF globalists don’t like: too Xenophobic. Giving Western capitalists a hard time in their former CC Paradise is lessening old money’s power grip.
Meanwhile in the Brussels: Communism with European characteristics:
“To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism”
The Chinese lost their way when they abandoned Confucianism for Communism.
Living in ones head is no substitute for living through ones heart.
The Chinese never abandoned Confucianism. I learnt that over lunch in Greece from a fellow tourist — a Chinese woman on her way back to the U$A. Learning that I was a South African commuinist she acknowledged the greatness of Mao but added that Mao would never have been as great a leader in Africa because Africa’s people did not have the unifying advantage of thousands of years of Confucianism.
Confucius is one of the stongest strands in Communism “with Chinese characteristics”.
Thanks Nick.
The ruthlessness with which communism was instigated doesn’t read very Confucian.
“Above all it is essential to refer to things by their correct names.
If things are not referred to by their correct names, then our language will not reflect reality.
If our language does not reflect reality, then our actions will not reflect reality, and will be exercises in futility.”
(Confucius, 551-479 BC, Chinese Teacher[22])
And that is exactly what we are doing today. Filling our Western language with buzzwords and all our wars and actions are futile as seen.
Confucius is not that bad.
‘For convenience breeds compliance’ – R Weiler (above)…
Great Quote – i’ll add it to my collection !
(It’s Convenience wot will be the downfall of hoomanity… (anon))
(Convenience is wattle make slaves of youse all… (anon))…
In the lolly aisle of the local supermarket are many
differently coloured packets of lollies, all made from
similar ingredients: water and sugar, and colourings –
mostly…The lollies all taste the same, but different…
Some are labelled ‘capitalist’, or ‘free market’; some
others are labelled ‘communist’…The latter are not
popular… They all rot your teeth..,
(It’s all Marketing.)
Article here:
“Rather we are being fed yet another flavor of color revolution customized to the current ideological environment of narcissistic decay in the United States, one that encourages the projection of internal totalitarianism onto the “other,” onto China.
China is the only place, within the sickly etiolated intellectual discourse of the United States, wherein the enemy techno-fascism can be accurately limned without political risk.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that China is subject to a massive campaign to destroy governance and to create a docile population subject to the whims of faceless powers who hide behind online systems masquerading as “government.”
But that “communist government” turns out to be, if you scratch the surface, private contractors, Israeli, Japanese, American and other IT and intelligence firms, who have set up shop across China at the local level and are seizing control of government by privatizing all functions of government, using COVID-19 as the wedge to force everything online.
This strategy has no precedent in the policy of the Communist Party of China, or in the Communist tradition of Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong. Rather it draws on the strategies private contractors to seize control of local government using the control of IT infrastructure.
That strategy has much in common with the takeover of local government by contractors that has been implemented in Oklahoma (as documented by Julianne Romanello) and in Louisiana.
The know how for contract tracing, facial recognition technology. Geo-fencing, and mandatory daily PCR tests can be traced back to the technology and policy for the control of Palestinians on the West Bank, as well as American research on social manipulation carried out by DARPA, RAND, and other contractors for the Department of Defense and the CIA.
The reader of the media is offered a choice between two flawed interpretations of what is happening in China. On the one hand, there are those who suggest that the techno-fascist policies we see in China are a product of an alien and dangerous Chinese culture that threatens the freedom of the West and its glorious constitutional tradition. This threat is attributed to communism and a docile Chinese civilization stretching back to the antiquity.
On the other hand, there are others who defend China as an emerging alternative civilization, one maligned by the jealous declining Western powers because of its new technological and economic power. But such critics choose to look the other way when it comes to totalitarian governance that Chinese workers face under COVID-19.
Let me illustrate these two perspectives with statements made by two colleagues of mine, men with whom I have had close exchanges in the past.
For an example of China-threat rhetoric, I cite a fellow contributor to Global Research John Whitehead who writes,
“The fate of America is being made in China, our role model for all things dystopian. An economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum. China is a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largess of its corporate elite.”
The dystopian world that Whitehead describes in China, is beyond dispute. But it is most certainly not “made in China.” Rather large parts of Chinese local government (and the enforcement of the COVID regime varies immensely from region to region) have been taken over by private contractors tied to investment banks like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, and private contractors for IT.
The reductive rhetoric used by Whitehouse precludes the most obvious conclusion: that the working people of China and the United States are having their lives, their freedoms, and their health destroyed by multinational corporations and that they should work together to combat this global takeover.
Many American intellectuals feed us a warmed-over “yellow peril” argument such as was advanced in the 19th century, presenting Chinese culture as inherently repressive and corrupting, something that must be stopped from entering the United States at any cost. Such an effort to demonize an alien culture is a classic strategy employed by the rich to deflect a serious discussion of class conflict and of the control of the means of production to a reductionist emotional anger at the foreign.
The alternative view offered in the media is that presented by intellectuals like Martin Jacques, author of the thoughtful study of China’s rise, “When China Rules the World.” Although Jacques offers a more balanced and fair perspective on China than does the “yellow peril” gang, his decision to present China and its civilization as an alternative to a corrupt and decadent West, without mentioning a word about how COVID 19 has been used as an excuse to implement radical social control, deeply undermines his arguments.”
….
https://www.globalresearch.ca/third-opium-war-agenda-behind-covid-19-assault-china/5801796
The Chinese do seem to love being exploited. When masks came to the UK during the Yerunda (Russian for nonsense) the Chinese living here must have felt really at home. Now everybody has discarded masks (apart from those of us who never wore one) but I still see Chinese wearing them together with a few old people.
It must be the big screen that never turns off.
In our house it never goes on.
The Chinese have a higher level of need to be controlled. Not only are they 1,4 billion people, they also have a temper that need to be arranged in some way.
But the good side of it is that China is not a warmonger nation against their neighbours.
They are fully occupied within their big country, and do only interfere overseas for defensive reasons.
By creeping into Western countries they get to know how to pacify their previous aggressive Western enemy who humiliated them for centuries.
I suggest we should take it as their culture, like it or not. They cannot adopt our aggressive style, and we cannot adapt to their ant servility toward the Chinese Emperor.
Clearly you don’t live next to the PR of C.
China velly good at Cunning,
more Cunning than youse ?
Ever heard of Tibet?
Sure. Tibet was run by Dali Lama, an now exiled CIA/MI6 regime change and de-stabilising agent. China interfered and kicked CIA’s agent out.
7 day trip for €700. (no Abu Ghraib, no Guantanamo, no Donbass, no Gaza, no Syria, no Iraq, no Libya, no drone killings, no refugee camps,).
https://windhorsetour.com/tibet-sightseeing-tour/central-tibet-tour
Papa caught you guys on the wrong foot again.
East Asians are no less susceptible to marketing, crowd behaviour and exploitation. The ratio of psychopaths is probably the same as elsewhere. So, public order and safety requires that the enforcers be vigilant. Also, China does not have (a) party politics (b) currency fully controlled by parasites.
Jabbed and delusional? Because I haven’t seen any Chinese people wearing face diapers.
And I travel a lot.
It could be worse. Materialism may be crass in your view but it is also optional and having that choice is a form of freedom. A lot of the world doesn’t have that choice and without China developing the way it has you’d probably be like other parts of Asia which struggle with endemic poverty. (I don’t want to draw too many parallels here but I’m told by people from there that living in Mumbai is no picnic for most of the population, for example.)
One strength that modern China has is relative freedom from debt. We in the West have fallen into the financialization trap, the idea that money exists merely to make money. Now our entire society is built around debt service so that many people are working hard just to stay still. At a national level this makes infrastructure projects difficult and expensive (just building one short high speed rail line….and that’s assuming you can afford to travel on it if and when it gets built). Services that were once taken for granted like health and social security (and affordable utilities, housing and even food) start to become to unattainable luxuries. Societies that don’t adhere to this model become targets for plunder, their resources raw material, their people to be enslaved (often yet again). After all, its only a twist of fate and history — and a lot of sacrifice — that prevented you from becoming members of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”!
All our countries have by design, been undermined over many decades by their membership with two organizations.
When we focus our energy on demanding the rescinding of membership from the private Bank for International Settlements and the United Nations, we will be moving in the right direction.
They want us dissipating our energy and focus over downstream effects, instead of upstream causes.
The spell will be broken when just a critical-mass comprehend & communicate to others the macro trick & deception.
Then watch out for the bombs over your country.
When they went along with the scam demic, I realized that either they are this stupid to fall for a Western who/pharma lead scam or they’re a part of it.
Now I think they’re a part of it because they haven’t pushed back on this who treaty.
It should have been obvious even before Covid that our governments take their marching order not from their voters but from the corporations (owned by the oligarchs); the major corporations or industries (BigPharma, WarBiz, Energy, BigFood, …) all have offices in the respective seats of parliament with representatives of these corporations prancing around there and whispering in our politicians’ ears.
British musical acts/assets played an important role in selling China to the West at the crucial point in the mid-1980s. Wham! were in the vanguard being the first act to tour China and David Bowie soon followed with ‘China Girl’ (with a deliberately “controversial” video to make sure it got plenty of coverage). Even obscure bands like The Shop Assistants pushed songs like ‘Somewhere in China’.
If musical acts aren’t controlled assets, how come so few of them questioned convid and lockdowns? Aren’t they the great rebels? The rock’n’roll rebellion on convid consisted of Ian Brown and Right Said Fred with some backing from Van Morrison and Eric Clapton.
Now China can join the great worldwide mono-culture which consists of Taylor Swift:
https://www.vox.com/culture/24134094/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-album-criticism-praise-pop-music-discourse
They’ll be free to love her or hate her – but they can’t be unaware or indifferent.
It was the common people of China that ended the covid totalitarianism – almost overnight.
OCD
Obsessive Chinese Do- Order?
I just returned to the US from a month long visit to China, mostly Beijing and Shanghai. Most of the observations above are true. But they are not all bad. And yes, the new consumerism and prosperity in China is the result and the goal of the century long struggle of communism. The point is that the people of China now enjoy their lives at levels not seen in other nations, especially the west where most people are depressed. They have the surplus income to really enjoy life.
The over-use of cell phones is annoying but I see it as a temporary fad. It will fade back into some level of normality.
China has built an incredibly strong infrastructure that supports the lives of people. That’s what communism does. In the West, finance capitalism has built huge balloons of investment capital and these do no good at all for people. They only wait for the day when they burst.
Most of the anti-China propaganda is meant to deflect people elsewhere from its progress, and instead hammer the claim of totalitarianism. Not that you need to go there to understand it.
Yes, most anti-China rhetoric is just baseless. It is a lame effort by western capitalism to claim it is superior. While there, I was in some discussions about “democracy” — is it healthier in the west or in China. Hands down, Chinese democracy proved to be much better. China’s governmental system is a bottom up democracy rather than the top down democracy of the West. It begins with community government, elected local officials. They communicate up to city level administrators, then to the provincial level, and then to the central government. At all levels, government is focused on making life better for citizens. This is what communism is — government dedicated to the needs of people.
While there are a lot of police around, mostly their job is to keep things moving and working well. Traffic is a good example. Chinese don’t obey any traffic laws. They drive or park on sidewalks. Scooters zoom in all directions. They don’t keep to their lanes. It is a nightmare, for someone like me who grew up in California where drivers are very well mannered. It is the same with walking.
China is a nation of small business owners.
I was also in some discussions about national wealth. In the US only GDP is ever talked about. In China is it PPP — Purchasing Power Parity. In this measure China is about 10 trillion dollars higher than the US. Clearly from any view inside of China, it is the most wealthy nation on earth. The US is verging on 3rd world status by comparison.
你们能做到的，我们都能做得更好，包括资本主义。我们赢得了第三次世界大战。我们说了算。最好习惯这一点。
Simplified English Translation:
Anything you can do, we can do better, including capitalism. We won WWIII. We decide. Better get used to it.
They are going to have a problem cleaning that ring around the collar, other than that I love the Chinese.
I read the Chinese saved 1 billion hours on sleepy judges and bureaucratic lawyers by presenting them an AI judgement on Court cases, and demand they should show their human ability to do it better than AI.
Those who could not do it better than AI were kicked out to break stones in quarries. Whatever to say about this, it makes in my opinion some logical legal sense.
We are faced with the same choice. If you as human cant do an evaluation of our natural world – reality – better than a stupid machine, why the fock are you then here on this planet.
Lookout!!
AI is now being accused of spreading misinformation:
https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/news-publications/media-releases/misinformationitis
The accuser, Brett Sutton, was part of the Victorian government that imposed some of the harshest Covid laws in the world.
Now he’s a Big pHarmer PR puppet.
Funny, that.
They always need a scape goat, a whipping boy to take the guilt and wrong doing.
Either its the politicians, the muslims, the doos, the laws, the homeless.
Today its ChatGPT or AI who is the guilty person for the crime. If only they would hang both.