China’s foreign influence operations are causing alarm in Washington

Washington is waking up to the huge scope and scale of Chinese Communist Party influence operations inside the United States, which permeate American institutions of all kinds. China’s overriding goal is, at the least, to defend its authoritarian system from attack and at most to export it to the world at America’s expense.

The foreign influence campaign is part and parcel of China’s larger campaign for global power, which includes military expansion, foreign direct investment, resource hoarding, and influencing international rules and norms. But this part of China’s game plan is the most opaque and least understood. Beijing’s strategy is first to cut off critical discussion of China’s government, then to co-opt American influencers in order to promote China’s narrative.

Putin and Soros may hate each other but they both are equal in the damage they hope to ensue!

This is exactly how Russia wanted it: they don’t care who wins elections! They just want to sow discord and confusion..little did they know that the liberal left in this country would do THEIR bidding for them!

The fact of the matter is: BOTH China and Russia see it in their interest to undermine American freedom and institutions because its the only way their authoritarian regimes stay legitimate! (Lest their own people get carried away with the idea that they too want to be free!)

And they need for us to be weak so they can feel strong. It’s pure playground envy and resentment.

“Is China really communist in the traditional sense?”

To know, you have to understand the fundamental nature of communism - that it is just a sweet sounding story, used to help ruthless people take power. That is all it has ever been - a fraudulent cover story.

Marx was expelled from Germany for his participation in coup planning, long before he concocted his convoluted load of bullcrap, about there being an objective, scientific reason that it is OK to steal other people’s stuff (Better, actually, according to him). Marx deliberately lied and falsified dozens of things in Das Capital, to make his story seem more convincing. Even so, it is still basically just a mind-numbing amount of over-wrought pseudo-intellectual run on sentences, until the reader is just worn down to tentatively accepts his counter-factual, counter-logical and counter-intuitive premises.

People will not voluntarily work hard if they don’t get the rewards - socialism therefor always ultimately relies on (brutal) coercion, and always reduces the total output. It is fundamentally flawed as a descriptive or “positive” economic theory (explanation of how things work). Incentives are obviously reversed. Economists had to coin the term “normative” economic theory (how things SHOULD work - i.e. opinion) to place Marxism among the others.

There never was a real economic rationale for socialism, just a dense fog of political cover for the act of taking peoples’ stuff - everybody’s stuff.

So socialists or communists still employ people to spin long-winded rationales and “narratives”, but it is all pure bull - a force-multiplier that is more convenient/efficient in controlling the masses than mass killing. They are all about making themselves rich and powerful - and that is all it has ever been about. As the wag said, it not so much an ideology you ascribe to, as a conspiracy you enlist in.

All members of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party are billionaires. The average member of the Great Hall of the People’s Deputies (their legislature) has a net worth over $100,000,000.

China has only raised their standard of living, since they cast off socialism in practice after Mao - they don’t need the pretense any more, as they have consolidated dictatorial power through their police state organs of repression. Maintaining socialist practice just costs too much money, and destroys too much wealth to keep it up long after you have seized power, if you seek to pocket as much wealth as possible (which is what the Chinese Communist Kleptocrats are all about).

The Washington Post, the lapdancer news media of the Obama regime, could have written about this subject many times over the past 23 years since the Clinton/Gore Red Chinese cash debacle that was never fully investigated by Congress.

Writers Dr. Roger Canfield and Richard A. Delgaudio, of the private research US Intelligence Council, wrote two small paperback books on the subject of Red Chinese influence in the US re elections, business deals, espionage, etc.

They were: “China Doll: Clinton Gore and the Selling of the U.S. Presidency” (2000) and “Stealth Invasion: Red Chinese Operations in North America” (2002).

Lots of good information in these two small packages. Other authors have begun to write masterful exposes of Red Chinese espionage/penetration operations in the US within the last couple of years but the Obama administration totally ignored what they had exposed.

If the Wash. Post had spent just a little more time looking into both Soviet/Russian and Red Chinese operations, and contacted those who knew about them, they would have won numerous Pulitzer Prizes for it.

However, to do so would have meant exposing the criminal and national security corruption of the Clinton/Gore and Obama/Clinton/Kerry administrations and would have led to impeachments of both presidents and jail time for most of them for corruption and treason.

The WP likes to say that “Democracy dies in darkness”. Well they should know. They’ve been killing “democracy” since the 60’s and are proud of it.

Their coverups for the Communists in Indochina, Red China, the Soviet Union/Russia, Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador, the nutty leftist in Ecuador, the communist leaders of Brazil, and the narco-terrorism (to some degree) in Colombia, as well as Chavez/Maduro’s destruction of Venezuela, should have earned the WP the “Five Rifles Award” for treason many times over.

Tell me about currencies. I’ve been struggling for years now on how to define political systems in terms of the currency that drives them.

Obviously in capitalism it’s wealth, influence and opportunity with a bit of nepotism and corruption. That’s what the individual strives for and where most of our politicians come from.

When I think of Communism I see cronyism, fear, oligarchy and the antithesis of capitalism. An almost Mafia style of government.

Socialism I see as bastardization of Communism, it’s feudal, hierarchical and somewhat of a Plutarchy. It’s an aristocracy with titles like very rich, rich, middle class and so on.

I’m leaning more towards Chinese influence on our government then European globalist’s influence on our country and mainly because the Chinese are opening up and the Europeans are closing up.

The futuristic series known as Firefly shows a heavily influenced culture of western/asian influence. Blade Runner the same.

Still, a huge gap remains between China’s efforts and America’s response. Beijing is emboldened by perceived weaknesses in the democratic world and the Trump administration’s retreat from promotion of U.S. values.

Sort of slipped that in near the end of the article with no elaboration or explanation. Pretty amazing since Trump is the only president to question and criticize the growing influence of China in the US economy and other areas over the past several decades.

Also amazing since the Post/David Ignatous article in another thread this morning leads off with this statement.

A little-noticed passage in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy released last month previewed a new push to combat Chinese influence operations that affect American universities, think tanks, movie studios and news organizations.

Seems like the Post writers are having some trouble coordinating their stories today.

“Tell me about currencies. I’ve been struggling for years now on how to define political systems in terms of the currency that drives them.”

A currency is just a medium of exchange. It is a common unit, that is more convenient to use than bartering, because setting the price for things is hard, so it is much easier when at least the price of one side of the exchange (the currency) is already widely agreed on.

Everybody uses currency today, so the use of currency does not distinguish one political system from another. Nonetheless, a Government that issues a currency has to manage it, because the value of a currency will change in practice, based on supply and demand (just like anything else).

If the Government gets too greedy, and tries printing a lot more money (the common problem), then there will be more dollars (or whatever the currency is) in circulation, chasing the same amount of goods. When people have more dollars, and see things they want (for example, the best fruit in a bunch) they will have to compete with other buyers to get it (start bidding up the price). Those scarce things that many people want will demand more dollars than before - price inflation, which is the flip side of currency devaluation. Supply and demand - the more money their is, the less it is worth.

One of the fundamental flaws of socialism/communism in practice, is the inability to effectively (accurately, meaningfully) set prices without free market mechanisms to do it. Sure a bureaucrat can issue a list of prices, but if people want things more, they will still pay more. But the bureaucrat is driven by covering his butt politically with his boss, not getting the best value (it is not his own money that he is spending after all). So government spending tends to get much further out of touch with reality under attempts at socialism/communism, than in places with free markets (that constantly update prices). Even though greedy, corrupt politicians can undermine their currency anywhere, there is a systematic pricing problem if a country tries to enact socialism/communism in practice.

Free markets are the effect of capitalism. Simply put, “capitalism” just means that people are allowed to own their own property (capital). It is freedom of the individual, in an economic sense, but that is a huge bulk of an individual’s freedom in a political sense as well. If you are wealthy (own) enough to take care of yourself, you can essentially ignore a lot of what politicians try to tell you. But if you depend on the politicians for your next meal, you are essentially their slave.

The essential element of “ownership” is the authority to decide what is done with something. If you own your money, you can decide how much you are willing to pay for something, and if you are selling something, you can decide how much you are willing to take for it. So in “capitalism”, people are free to agree on their own prices. That is the market mechanism that is inherent in “capitalism” - free exchange, between free people.

Eighteenth century economist Adam Smith summed it up by saying that the natural forces of self-interest and competition are what drives the market - in setting prices and in making the most efficient use of resources.

The term “capitalism” was selected as a rhetorical device by the nineteenth century socialist/communists, to confuse people over this basic freedom and right of ownership, to justify taking it. “Capitalism” is just individual freedom - that is all.

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