US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) —
On June 1, 3 days after President Trump‘s statement, a ban on Chinese students and specialists who work for the Chinese government came into force.
Although the resolution concerns only the natives of the Celestial Empire, it can hardly be called a clear-cut example of attacks on China, since it covers on the strength of 3,000 Chinese (at least 360,000 in American universities), mostly graduates of prestigious Chinese scientific and technical universities, which are often called ” the seven sons of national defense.”
Sluggish Protests
Such a step would have caused the wrath of the fighters against racism, of which there are so many in the American university environment. Nevertheless, during the coronavirus period, China’s image of Xi Jinping was so dim (according to a survey conducted in late March, two-thirds of Americans were negative about it) that all this led to only a few lingering protests from the Democrats, especially since the desire to protect campuses is part of the White House response to a future security law that it intends to use in Beijing to gag the opposition in Hong Kong.
It is tempting to imagine this as a withdrawal of the first world power, given that the belief in market superiority goes hand in hand with the transfer of technology, and only in one direction, as for China and the United States since the beginning of globalization. Be that as it may, all this does not even speak of myopia, but of the blindness of those who transfer technology but turn a blind eye to the intentions of their recipients.
With the help of acquired (or stolen, according to Washington’s accusations) technologies, China managed to carry out industrialization in just four decades, which “developed countries took several centuries,” as Xi Jinping proudly stated in November 2018.
Happy globalization applauded the “Chinese miracle”, which brought millions of Chinese out of poverty, although some still whispered that people with a heavy wallet did not necessarily bring freedom to the heart. The imported technologies of the digital age have led to the formation of the “Frankenstein state”, which is no longer content with control over its own people and is trying to launch a counterattack on democracy.
Barbarians
Be that as it may, it is difficult to reproach the Asian giant for hiding his intentions, since the republic founded by Mao openly accepted the strategic concept of geopolitologist Wei Yuan (1794-1857) regarding foreign science: “Adopt high-tech barbarians to better control them” .
This 19th-century Confucian reformer appears in all Chinese school textbooks, although it is little known in the rest of the world. His main work, Illustrated Geography of Maritime States, was published in 1843 at the end of the First Opium War. In it, the thinker advocated the introduction of Western technology to save the dying Qing empire.
His ideas were developed to fight the Western powers and focused on the superiority of China. All Western countries were contemptuously viewed by Wei Yuan as “barbarians.”
To manipulate the history of the country in order to better manage it – Mao’s heirs invariably included Wei Yuan in the school curriculum, regardless of their own political views, although the sage Confucius regularly fell into disgrace: at one time they even wiped his name on his name, although subsequently in his honor she was a network of more than 500 party-funded institutions on five continents has been named (as recognized by the government itself, they are “important elements of propaganda abroad”).
Tempting offers
The ideology of the communist regime seeks to remind Chinese experts, in particular those who work in the field of high technology, that the ultimate goal of their work is to serve their homeland and fight the West. The father of the Chinese space program, Qian Xuesen (1911-2009), appears to be red propaganda as the national hero that America pursued during the days of McCarthyism.
The official press loves to praise the courage of a scientist who preferred his homeland to the golden distances of Uncle Sam. For the past decade and a half, Beijing has sought to return scientists to the country and makes them attractive offers. In particular, the “1,000 Talents” program launched in 2008, which aims to attract high-level specialists, can be noted.
It is curious that this project, which until recently was the pride of Chinese universities (they were happy to get rare pearls studying abroad), became a forbidden topic inside the Golden Shield enclosing Chinese Internet and was removed from search engines. One of the reasons for this sharp turn, apparently, was the interest shown by the FBI in the published names of Chinese talents.
The technical revolution of the 19th century was hardly noticeable to the observer of that time, but the digital revolution of the 21st century makes itself felt, and everyone sees the economic, and with it the political and cultural consequences of technology transfer to countries like China.
Orwell didn’t come up with this.
In such a perspective, the Chinese principle of the 19th century (“adopt the high technologies of the barbarians in order to better control them”) takes on all its meaning. Turning around in its own way Marxist theory, the last large communist country monitors the population with brutal efficiency, which even Orwell could not imagine. All this was made possible thanks to the technologies that came from the West in exchange for a voiced coin.
China Xi Jinping spreads its wings and tries to take full advantage of its totalitarian system in order to better “control” those who provided it with these technologies.
Contempt for international law in territorial disputes in the surrounding seas, violation of the UN embargoes, non-observance of the principle of reciprocity in trade with Europe, deviation from WTO rules, attacks on human rights – “barbarians” guided by real policies were ready to brush aside all this while they came from China coronavirus did not put them on their knees.
Was visa ban for Chinese scientists another sign that Washington is losing soft power? It is unlikely that all of this will greatly concern the American government in the confrontation with the Chinese rival in geopolitical games after covid-19. When brute force is compromised, soft salvation appears to be a vain or even suicidal move.
“A ghost roams Europe – the ghost of communism.” 170 years after these words of Marx, this exported, and then brought, ghost, a ghost with “Chinese features” really wanders on both sides of the Atlantic.
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