Symbols and Oblique Phrases
Symbolism among their leaders is carefully scrutinized by the Chinese people, along with omens, signals, oblique phrases, and arguments over which Chinese character was used and why not this or that variant synonym instead. Like Ronald Reagan, they all dye their hair pitch black and invariably wear spiffy, Western, coal black suits, with China-flag-red silk ties.
Western pundits snivel with acid sarcasm about what they see in this as Orwellian Newspeak. What they forget is that Barak "I'm really good at killing people" Obama has to wear a flag pin on his Whitehouse pajamas, in order to not be called a traitor.
For Baba Beijing, it's simple symbolism: unity, harmony and concord. Speaking of Ronnie, the thought of a grade B actor, no matter how much "The Great Communicator", leading a country worthy of the name, is beyond the pale in Sinoland. These men have spent their entire lives working up through the ranks, managing billions of yuan and governing millions of their citizens, at the local, regional and national level. They are often highly educated, trained engineers, city planners, business managers of huge state owned enterprises and the like, technocrats all, who understand processes and systems.
Sorry to say, but yahoos like George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Francois Hollande and David Cameron would last about a Nanjing nanosecond over here, with their family jewels left twitching on the slaughterhouse floor. Bill Clinton might last an hour, max, just because he's such a brilliant bullshitter. If he got his triangulation tango going, he might make it a day or two, then, fffffffffffffftt.
Plenums past and present
Each new leadership team gets five years to run this greatest show on Earth: 21st century China, renewable one time. When they meet, they are called plenums. Third ones have a bit of an aura about them and are considered fortuitous. This is because of the 1978 Third Plenum, when Deng Xiaoping was brought back from political oblivion, after being purged by the Gang of Four in 1976, following the death of Mao. It was at this plenum that Deng took control of China's levers of power, became the (unofficial) paramount leader of the country and pushed through what were then radical rural and policy reforms, the ones that helped launch China into economic hyperdrive starting in the 80s. A meeting like 1978 is a hard act to follow. Baba Beijing is obsessed with historical precedents on the timeline of previous leaders and lose sleep fretting over their legacy in the pantheon of the Heavenly Mandate.
China's President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have boldly promised major reforms in this 3rd Plenum and continue to be on a full national PR campaign with their citizens, pitching support for the possible. It's been all over the media for weeks now and continues to be so. Many other past plenums have promised much, but the follow through petered out. Since Baba is much attuned to historical references and their Heavenly Mandate, they have a lot riding on what happens in the next few months.
Analyzing a chess match using the rules of gin rummy
Watching the Western media, which Paul Craig Roberts deliciously calls presstitutes, trying to fathom all of this through their monochromatic prism of economic reforms and pluralistic democracy, is something akin to a bunch of people watching a grandmaster chess match and the only game they know is gin rummy. Or a roomful of Steinbeckian Lenny Smalls listening to a discourse by Socrates.3 They don't follow much of it. As explained in a recent Oped column, the Chinese have 3,000 years of continuous history sans one iota of democracy, not even a feeble attempt. Given the downfall of Western corporate-democracy-for-the-1% that we are witnessing around the world, I don't think Baba Beijing is losing any sleep over it, or feels terribly left out. No, they are in fact offering the world's other 191 countries a decidedly different way to run a country and govern its people. It is like nothing what Caucasian people having going on these days, with their pointless, Potemkin, pharaonic elections between MBA Tweedledee and CEO Tweedledum, both Pinocchio-nosed puppets of the Corporate Party. This model, my Western friends, is getting to be a harder and harder sell these days, to any leaders with a conscience, looking to amend or start anew with their countries' constitutions.
In Sinoland, it's all about building consensus - from the top down
There is the West's Washington/London/Paris consensus, that continues to bully, bludgeon and bomb the world's dark skinned peoples, especially of the Muslim stripe. This 500 years of pain and persecution foisted on The Other is fleshed out in a recent Oped column. Then there is the Beijing consensus, which is a whole other wok full of stir fried. It is not to project external power, intimidation and domination. It is to project persuasion internally, among the country's decision makers and on down to the most distant peasants in the hinterlands. It is unabashedly un-pluralistic from Westerners' paradigm, thus it drives them to political psychosis, especially since Baba has been kicking the crap out of Occidental bahookie for the last 30 years, with no topside in sight. In China, the tiny but powerful PSC sets the vision, almost a mission statement for where they see the country going and the goals that can be realized with it over the next five years. Once the course has been decided, these powerhouse politicians, in spite of often different approaches and philosophies, dye their hair black and put on identical tailored, coal black suits, sporting red silk ties, and go to the Central Committee as unified as they can be, to sell their plan to this next level of power and persuasion. From there, they continue to work and massage the message down through the Party ranks, all the while drumming up support among their 1,300,000,000 citizens. Is there horse trading, bare knuckled bullying, a la LBJ and some corruption on down the line? Of course. But one only has to look at America's corporate rubber stamp Congress, Senate and Whitehouse these days to see that the West's mythical, idealized pluralistic democracy is just that: mythical -- and corrupt. While it is still somewhat better in Europe, their democracies are also slowly being crushed and brought under the iron fist of the 1%. At the end of the day, choosing a form of government anywhere on Earth is always going to be a Faustian tradeoff.
A half a pie is better than no dessert at all
Western talking heads love to chortle with their Caucasian air of superiority at this political process. Especially since as Baba's vision is promoted down to lower and wider levels, the directives are oftentimes ignored and not fully implemented; these Max Headrooms chest thump that this is prima facie evidence of a failed system, which is unresponsive to the people's needs. As explained recently, this is a Lennie Small, gin rummy interpretation of an ancient system the West just does not fathom, nor wants to even begin trying to understand. If the plenum's mission statement is not pegged as being too tepid and lacking punch, then the Western spinmeisters go to the other extreme by pronouncing the platform as overly ambitious or unrealistic. But from Baba Beijing's perspective, they use the old W. Clement Stone adage,
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