In Beijing, Trump Meets a Man Who Just Quietly Achieves

By NSS staff

Imagine being lost somewhere and not even knowing what country you are in. Pretty scary, wouldn’t you say?

And yet that is precisely where most of us Westerners are in our world with regard to where we stand, to the unseen powers holding sway over us and to the powers in the East that oppose the Western elites. Most imagine that Washington (or Brussels) is the centre of the power that protects us and that the US dollar (or euro) pays for this protection and always will. As for the world of ideas, we imagine that there is this thing called “Western values” and it is the centre of our intellectual and moral universe, the collection of all those things we hold dear and are prepared to defend against their enemies – as long as no blood is shed.

We generally believe that there is this thing called freedom of speech, and yet if a Western pastor dared to say from the sanctuary of his pulpit that marriage is designed by God solely as a union between a man and a woman, he would soon be challenged, gingerly at first perhaps but shortly a group of defenders of Western values would likely descend on him and his family demanding that he cease and desist from preaching this obsolete truth and would make it clear in no uncertain terms that they are not kidding. There is no longer debate, just “settled truths.” But the people are not the ones doing the settling.

Thus, paradoxically, while “Western values” includes the concept of free speech, this only applies to speech confined to the narrowing realm of “Western values,” which, under a law that is unwritten but strictly enforced by radical members of the populace, some speech is in fact unavailable to ordinary people.

And this is because the entire West is locked into an ideology, which New Silk Strategies has, in a reference paper, posted in the following 3 parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

To recap, the West dances to the tune of the radical school of the Enlightenment, which in the real world of past centuries turned out to be anything but enlightened. It led in fact to the bloody French Revolution and indirectly to Bonaparte’s bloody romp across Europe and Russia. It is an ideology that could be aptly called Benighted Enlightenment or to coin a neologism, Benightenment.

The ideas represented in this benighted enlightenment deny common sense, traditions – Christianity and traditional family in particular – traditional manufacturing-based economics, morality, decency and human kindness and sentiment, and promote a foreign policy that is devoid of any palpable diplomacy, being designed to punish countries that resist “Western values” and to avenge the West of any who dare defy its sacrosanct systems, particularly the banking system, or sully any of numerous economic, political or military interests of the US.
The problem for the “Belightened” Ones is that, while in their tiny make-believe world, all traditions must go, there still persist in their ambiance nuisance countries that nurture traditions, including the most offensive, ie, Christian faith and a traditional definition of marriage and family. Not because traditional methods fail to solve problems – because in fact, they work – but because they see these as hangovers of a Christian world that must be destroyed at all costs because Christianity was peopled by people and not saints, proving that God had failed them. It was a baby to be discarded with the bath water because the bath water is dirty, so the baby must be not clean but defective.

Unlike traditional governments, the US defends its economy not so much through economic development and growth but more by attempting to impoverish others in a zero-sum game based on the belief that wealth is finite, so that there can only be winners and losers and no such thing as a win-win situation. Thus for the US, competition from other countries is more of a declaration of war than a challenge to be met with improvements and growth in the US economy. There’s only room for one of us in this town.

The biggest offenders at this time are Russia and China, who reject this aggressive US ethnocentrism and treat competitors, even those like the US that seek conflict, with respect, calling them partners.

It was in this context that Donald Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon told the Economist in an interview shortly after his dismissal (or resignation, depending on whose version you believe): “Let’s go screw up One Belt One Road.” (Bannon apparently did not know that the latest designation was Belt and Road Initiative, BRI). Briefly, the BRI is a massive Chinese infrastructure project designed in part to lift both China and Africa, for example, out of poverty.

Bannon’s statement can be understood and interpreted only in the context briefly described above. It was not just a reflection of his personal ideology but in fact is perfectly in line with the West’s irrational benighted “enlightenment” ideology.

This is the Western world where you are now, a world where hate holds sway over love and profound ignorance over knowledge and wisdom.

But there is a new sheriff and deputy in town.

In the context of Trump’s upcoming visit to China, CNN posted an article on Chinese President Xi Jinping which declared that almost nothing is known about the man. Of course they said that not only because they are ignorant of the East, but also because if they had told the truth about Xi it would present an embarrassing contrast between an Easterner, a truly enlightened man who is challenging the zero-sum US economics with a deeply held belief in a win-win for everyone, and a West that seems not to comprehend this. This simple idea is explained in Xi’s book “Up and Out of Poverty,” which no one in the West seems to have read and no one has meaningfully reviewed. Which is perhaps why CNN thought nothing was known about Xi. The book, written in 1992 and later translated into English and French, tells of Xi’s experience as a social worker in Ningde in Shaanxi Province where he was sent as a youth by the government in a program along the lines of a domestic Peace Corps.

Xi, the son of a Chinese functionary from a relatively well-off city, was shocked at the grinding poverty he found in this town but immediately set about to change this situation. In short, thanks to his efforts, that town, which once had an annual average income of 198 USD, wound up with an average income of 8000 USD last year – virtually unheard of for rural China. Xi thinks he has reason to believe this miracle can be duplicated elsewhere.

Xi has stated in public that the poor concern him more than anything else. But unlike Western politicians, he was not just flapping his jaws.

A Chinese site reported:

“A total of 55.64 million Chinese rural residents were lifted out of poverty from 2013 to 2016 and at least another 10 million will shake off poverty this year, which means the number of rural Chinese lifted out of poverty in five years will exceed 65 million – roughly the population of a major European country such as Britain, France or Italy.”

While CNN admits it knows nothing about this, Xi’s dream is a nightmare to the West, where a Steve Bannon can get away with saying they want to screw up Xi’s dream to raise Africa out of poverty through his Belt and Road Initiative. Bannon was in fact saying to hell with the African poor, probably without even realizing it (the Western narrative is that the BRI is just a way of allowing China to rule the world like a despot, the way the US does now). Even worse, Bannon admitted he wants to destroy Xi’s chances of helping them. These thoughtless statements stick around in the history books. Let them eat cake?

But if the West ignores, wittingly or not, that Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative is aimed at raising Africa and other nations out of poverty, Africa is keenly aware of this and anxiously awaits its culmination.

In June of 2017, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi gave a keynote address to a meeting at the opening ceremony of the High-Level Dialogue on Poverty Reduction and Development held at the African Union Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, and said that China’s goal is to simultaneously lift the poor in both China and Africa out of poverty. Wang also delivered an inspiring talk about Xi’s book on his experiences working with the poor in Ningde. So unlike US media, the Africans are aware that much is known about President Xi and that Xi is a veteran in battling poverty, with success. Can you name an American president who has successfully lifted anyone out of poverty in the last half-century? Lyndon Johnson birthed welfare, but the ghettos grew in proportion to the money paid out because no attempt was made to allow the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. Xi, however, says that is what he did in Ningde and what he intends to do in the future. He also uses the expression “win-win” often in his speeches, as if to rebuke the West for its zero-sum nonsense.

The US is the leader of the World Bank and the IMF, organizations that have been involved in Africa for decades, issuing loans but not making a dent in African poverty. The reason for their failure is perhaps best summed up in the book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins, the CEO for a CIA front company working for the World Bank whose trainer at the beginning of his career bluntly told him the goal of his company was to bankrupt Third World nations, making them dependent on these banks for more and more loans. Thus the West’s policy was self-defeating because — as Xi knows — banks make more money off of rich customers than poor ones. And this is the secret behind China’s policy: I make you rich, you make me richer.

A brief explanation of how the IMF and World Bank keep Africans poor is found here. This is consistent with our report on Iraq: Part 1 and  Part 2.

By contrast, Xi’s China has lifted millions out of poverty from 2013 to 2016. The English-language Chinese site CGTN reports:

“A total of 55.64 million Chinese rural residents were lifted out of poverty from 2013 to 2016 and at least another 10 million will shake off poverty this year, which means the number of rural Chinese lifted out of poverty in five years will exceed 65 million – roughly the population of a major European country such as Britain, France or Italy.”

So when Trump goes to Beijing, a man who boasted about making America great again will meet a man who, without a word of boasting, simply made China a better place to live – and hopes to replicate that experience elsewhere.

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