An ancient Chinese stratagem advises military leaders: “Loot a burning house.” The trick is easy and self-explanatory — attack when your opponent is most vulnerable. China has given, this and many other hideous ancient wisdom, paramount importance in the quest for ‘Pax Sinica’.
After the 2008-09 financial crisis, Chinese firms ventured out to procure discounted bargains worldwide, especially those with strategic utility: iron & nickel ore, oil, and innumerable other commodities that the Chinese economy became dependent on. Thanks to the debacle in Afghanistan, China has successfully deflected the COVID-19 blame and taken a head start in manufacturing. They also have a mouthwatering proposition to exploit the vulnerable situations in Afghanistan.
But despite the world presenting such opportunities, China is staring at stagnant population growth, tumbling business models, and failed ‘Common Prosperity’ program. Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communists Party (CCP) have nothing to show to ordinary citizens before Party Congress in 2022. Is the world heading for another China-created crisis? After all, China loves Milton Friedman’s disaster capitalism.
Read my latest and highly acclaimed article on dangerous Chinese designs which will affect our lives shortly, on India’s leading Think-Tank organization ‘Chanakya Forum’:
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Thank you so much for teaching us about China, Sandomina. “Loot a burning house.” America and the whole world does seem like a burning house right now, doesn’t it? And Chinese dictators are always ready to pounce.
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You are so correct, Judy. On my regular visits to Europe, I could see slow and steady dangerous changes coming to Europe. However, they were so complacent that they couldn’t see what I observed as an outsider. I was aghast to see in Paris that every day-to-day product was made in China. There was nothing original left in that country. The same was the case with Italy, Belgium, Spain, and many other countries, barring Germany. It was bound to happen.
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Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.
Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao’s Great Famine recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened:
Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.
A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine….
What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later. The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool – punishment for digging up a potato.
The basic facts of the Great Leap Forward have long been known to scholars. Dikötter’s work is noteworthy for demonstrating that the number of victims may have been even greater than previously thought, and that the mass murder was more clearly intentional on Mao’s part, and included large numbers of victims who were executed or tortured, as opposed to “merely” starved to death. Even the previously standard estimates of 30 million or more, would still make this the greatest mass murder in history.
While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had only a modest cultural impact. When Westerners think of the great evils of world history, they rarely think of this one. In contrast to the numerous books, movies, museums, and and remembrance days dedicated to the Holocaust, we make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward, or to make sure that society has learned its lessons. When we vow “never again,” we don’t often recall that it should apply to this type of atrocity, as well as those motivated by racism or anti-semitism.
The fact that Mao’s atrocities resulted in many more deaths than those of Hitler does not necessarily mean he was the more evil of the two. The greater death toll is partly the result of the fact that Mao ruled over a much larger population for a much longer time. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no wish to diminish its significance. But the vast scale of Chinese communist atrocities puts them in the same general ballpark. At the very least, they deserve far more recognition than they currently receive.
But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to right-wing authoritarians.
Unlike in the days of Mao, today very few western intellectuals actually sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was, fearful – perhaps – that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association.
A museum commemorates modern China’s painful past as the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution.
In China, the regime has in recent years admitted that Mao made “mistakes” and allowed some degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the mass murder was intentional and continues to occasionally suppress and persecute dissidents who point out the truth.
This reluctance is an obvious indication that the Communist Party still rules China.
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Any time a leader has desires to be great, citizens of that country should brace for it. In their lust for greatness, this leader would do anything, just about anything. Xi Jinping shows that extreme desire from the time he took the helm of affairs of China.
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Apologize for the longevity of this post, but couldn’t edit it. In any case, history tells us that China truly is the Evil Empire and gets by because it is such a closed society.
In many respects, Hitler was a piker.
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You need not apologize!
45 million, wow. I am accustomed to thinking Mao killed 8M people. And THAT was enough to make me
laugh ‘n’ laugh at people who said oh no,,the Flu Manchu couldn’t be from China,they wouldn’t kill their own people!
The FUCK they wouldn’t.!
The awful mass murders of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward.. yes, they dwarf even the Holocaust.
I don’t know what to say. Because they’ve won. Because we in the West will not, we are ashamed to, stand up and assert the superiority of our own culture.
Y’know they call us”foreign devils”, right?
And yet we , ah… “kowtow” to them?
Our civilization has lost its will to live.
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Because we have been “a nation at war” since 9/11. We are exhausted.
They above is pure sarcasm in case you didn’t get that already.
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History is full of such atrocities. During WW2 Churchill diverted the food grain of Bengal in India to Europe. Over 12 million Bengalis starved to death. But no one even blinked an eyelid. These were not war casualties but palpable mismanagement and apathy.
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“Our civilization has lost its will to live.”
I don’t mind admitting I am thoroughly bewildered. At first, regarding Biden, I believed it was dementia overcome by his left wing radical ‘handlers.’
After reading one of your earlier comments, I think you’ve got it right. Biden is our most corrupt president (worse than Warren G. Harding who was at least a fiscal conservative) and reaping huge financial gains from destroying this country by cooperating with the CCP. I only wonder why he so callously disregards the future of his own grandchildren unless they, too, are being groomed to take his place?
I’m bristling as I write this because I am so ashamed …
And a little tired of playing defense.
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Reblogged this on Muunyayo .
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“… China loves Milton Friedman’s disaster capitalism.”
I think I am ignorant of Friedman’s disaster capitalism. Can someone help a brother out?
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There is one great book ‘Shockwave’, I suppose. I read that a long time ago. That inspired me to write this article.
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China believes that some man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through such unpopular policies in their wake and refers to Friedman’s neo liberal free markets as encouraging this.
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Thank you very much for the clarification. Much appreciated.
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