It has been amusing to peruse all the Western lamestream media blather about Baba Beijing (the Chinese leadership) and its much ballyhooed Third Plenum meeting the weekend of November 9th. This is a Lennie Small (the mentally retarded giant in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men), gin rummy interpretation of an ancient system the West just does not fathom, nor wants to even begin trying to understand. At its peril.

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Why, it's really quite elementary, Mr. Watson

It has been amusing to peruse all the Western lamestream media blather about Baba Beijing (the Chinese leadership) and its much ballyhooed Third Plenum meeting the weekend of November 9^th. 

Chinese plenums are when Baba gets together for a big Sino-powwow to discuss and reach consensus on the strategic vision they want to take their country and its citizens -- 20% of the human race, over the next five years. These masters of the 21^st century's future are led by the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). The current PSC is the 18^th since 1927.¹ It is composed of Baba's most powerful decision makers, typically a group of 7-9 men. It is something akin to a Western leader's cabinet. The PSC oversees these plenums, which include the Central Committee (CC). The CC is composed of 300 or so elite members of the Communist Party.² This two tiered model of governance is what pulls the levers of Sinoland statecraft, and steers the country and its people towards the future.

 

A sexist glass ceiling as thick as a nuclear blast shield

There has never been a woman member in the all-powerful PSC. Not surprising in such an uber-patriarchal, Confucian infused society. The great philosopher-teacher instructed women to obey their fathers and husbands, remain chaste before marriage, remain chaste until death if their spouse dies before them, always remain silent in the presence of men -- and sew. Doris Lessing and Emma Goldman would not approve. 

Like most Communist revolutions, Mao's vendetta's against old thoughts (in this case, very sexist Confucism) opened up many avenues professionally for women (doctors, engineers, managers, etc.), after independence in 1949. Since 1980, when China hopped into the economic cockpit for warp speed take-off, work opportunities for the silent, sewing sex have exploded exponentially. But in the political mosh pit of power and persuasion, a glass ceiling as thick as a bank teller's window on the wrong side of town is still very much in place. These days, there is a score or two of women in the CC, but it all still feels very much like tokenism, considering China's history, modern and ancient.

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: 21^st 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 3^rd 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,

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

They understand in a continent sized country with over a billion souls, across regions of peoples who are just as antagonistic to each other as Northerners and Southerners in other countries, that a half a pie is better than no dessert at all, and tomorrow is a great day to get back in the hell's kitchen of cage fighting politics, to concoct and promote the next dish. Westerners, especially Americans have serious attention deficit disorder when it comes to the weighty issues of the day. It's all about the 24-hour news cycle, today's bond prices and upcoming corporate quarterly reports. Over here in Sinoland, the internal dialogue of Baba Beijing goes something like this,

So, only half of our dreams got realized this go around? No matter, we've got the rest of the 21^st century to keep moving forward, sometimes a step backward or no gain at all, but keep on keeping on, as our Heavenly Mandate dictates.

That's what the West is up against: triathlete technocrats, who are patient politicians, with a strong compass fixated on deep history, and who dream of the future in decade long timescales. Sitting here in Sinoland, gazing East at the rapidly degrading debacle across the Pacific and westward to the tip of the Eurasian continent, which is trying so hard to imitate Uncle Sam, it really seems like an unfair fight to me. Maybe Baba Beijing should fight with one arm tied behind the back, you know, just to make it more entertaining.

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1-       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_makeup_of_the_Politburo_Standing_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China.

2-       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/4/obama-brag-new-book-im-really-good-killing-drones/

3-      http://www.shmoop.com/of-mice-and-men/lennie-small.html Lennie Small was the gigantic and physically powerful, mentally retarded character in John Steinbeck's dramatic masterpiece, Of Mice and Men (1937).

A 44 Days Publication

Beijing Paris New York

Authors Website: http://www.chinarising.puntopress.com

Authors Bio:

Sixteen years on the streets, living and working with the
people of China: Jeff J. Brown is
the author of 44 Days (2013) and Doctor Write Read's Treasure Trove to Great
English (2015). In 2016 Punto Press released China Rising, Capitalist Roads,
Socialist Destinations The Truth behind Asia's Enigmatic Colossus. For Badak
Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! Dawn of the Red Dynasty
(2016). Jeff is a contributing editor with the Greanville Post, Dispatch from
Beijing. where he keeps a column, and is a Global Opinion Leader at 21st
Century. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing
Express. Jeff writes, interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising
Radio Sinoland, which is also available on YouTube, Stitcher Radio, iTunes,
Ivoox and RUvid. Guests have included Ramsey Clark, James Bradley, Moti
Nissani, Godfree Roberts, Hiroyuki Hamada, The Saker and many others. In China,
he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals,
the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on
Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest
lectured at Beijing Academy of Social Sciences (BASS), as well as in various
international schools and universities. He has been a guest on radio and television
programs, like Press TV, The Daily Coin, Truth Jihad, Wall St. for Main St.,
KFCF FM88.1 and Crush the Street. Jeff grew up in the heartland of the United
States, Oklahoma, much of it on a family farm, and graduated from Oklahoma
State University. He went to Brazil while in graduate school at Purdue
University, to seek his fortune, which whet his appetite for traveling the
globe. This helped inspire him to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia in 1980
and he lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe for the
next 21 years. All the while, he mastered Portuguese, Arabic, French and
Mandarin, while traveling to over 85 countries. He then returned to America for
nine years, whereupon he moved back to China in 2010. Jeff is a dual national
French-American, being a member of the Communist Party of France (PCF) and the
International Workers of the World (IWW). Jeff can be reached at China Rising
Radio Sinoland, jeff at brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter, Wechat
(Jeff_Brown-44_Days) and Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.