I was playing Bananagrams with a British guy and he said someone's got to take over the world after America and I said why? Just because there have been multiple reincarnations of White Empire doesn't mean we can't have multiple civilizations like the rest of history. Even the idea of China replacing America as hegemon is an American idea that needs to replacing. The idea that someone must sit astride history yelling stop, like Francis Fukuyama did. If you read China directly, they just don't think like this and never did. Anyways, the guy beat me at Bananagrams. Stupid English language.

The Chinese Perspective

China, par exemple, had better naval technology in the 1600s and just stopped using it. China came to Sri Lanka, gave us stuff, and then fucked off because they weren't interested. Maintaining a naval empire was a pain in the ass and expensive and they didn't need it. Broke-ass Europe, however, was already a pain in the ass to itself, and needed new places to extort for the solar energy (leading to racism, if you'd like a digression). It's important to remember Europeans were looking for India and China. Because that's where the wealth was. We weren't looking for them, nor were we colonizing each other. The world is simply returning to this mean, which petty Europeans still cannot conceive. Just minding your own damn business.

As Zhou Bo (Tsinghua University) said in a recent interview (shout out Karl Sanchez for his great and diverse sourcing),

Zhou Bo: if you simply define the "world order" as a so-called "liberal international order", it is actually a kind of historical myopia. Because if you really look at it that way, it's a bit like living in a Francis Fukuyama-esque world – the world where "history ends."

Geraldine: So you mean, it's actually a Western-imposed worldview, right?

Zhou Bo: Yes, the so-called "liberal international order" only looked like that at best, during the period when the Soviet Union collapsed and China had not yet fully emerged. But if you really believe in that order, it's easy to fall into narcissism; as soon as you find that you are no longer strong, you will start looking for "enemies". This is actually very dangerous. But if you believe that this world order is a collection of civilizations, then you ask yourself: How do I coexist with others? Yes, the so-called "liberal international order" only looked like that at best, during the period when the Soviet Union collapsed and China had not yet fully emerged. But if you really believe in that order, it's easy to fall into narcissism; as soon as you find that you are no longer strong, you will start looking for "enemies". This is actually very dangerous. But if you believe that this world order is a collection of civilizations, then you ask yourself: How do I coexist with others?

His Australian interlocutors simply could not get this. Some dude named Hamish said, “China wants to be a major global power, so why not exert influence in its relationship with Russia to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine?” Zhou responded “That's because you're looking at this issue from a European perspective. And when China looks at this relationship, it must first look at it from a bilateral perspective.” Zhou went onto relate Russia's very real security concerns about NATO, going back to the end of history, but the Australians are still stuck there. They don't know when to begin. So the ham-fisted Hamish said, “I don't think we can resolve this difference of opinion in this episode,” because they simply cannot understand differences of opinion. They think everyone must be like them or they're just wrong. As Zhou said, it's “easy to fall into narcissism,” and westerners are literally drowning in their own reflection.

Oriental Despots

I was talking to someone else in the comments here and they said China, Russia, and Iran are autocracies where people can't speak freely. This dissection of the world into democracies and autocracies was always nastily narcissistic (they hate us for our freedom) and now it's just nasty. There's a whole-ass genocide going on, and you want me to believe people talking out their asses? As a great Iraqi said, if Satan came and was fighting America I would be with Satan, because America is the Great Satan! I can travel to China, Russia, and Iran freely, but would be arrested in America (I'm a big Hamas supporter). Just note that supporting the resistance against genocide is banned in the West, whereas the group is not proscribed in most of the world. That's free speech for you, on the most important subject that matters.

Westerners think they know other countries because they hear their names a lot, but they rarely (if ever) read them directly. Their self-aggrandizing and propagandizing media constantly repeats names and memes about other countries and never lets other people speak for themselves. They're really just sniffing their own brain farts and, as the saying goes, he who smelt it dealt it. Westerners casually deny the most basic pre-condition for conversation, which is respect. They don't even talk to the rest of the world, they just talk about.

If you treat China, Russia, and Iran as civilizations—that is, with civility—you can actually learn something. Vladimir Putin and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are historical figures with deep historical knowledge, they're worth engaging with especially if you consider them enemies. Once you do engage with them, it's hard not to respect them and you definitely learn something, these are philosopher kings compared to the sound-bite simpletons that pass for western leaders. Westerners talk about free speech, but these ‘autocratic’ leaders have given their people the most basic condition for free speech, which is freedom from western domination. Westerners are so narcissistic that they only want to see mirrors, and are deeply confused and angered when they see other faces, saying other things. They want to smash such things, and call the wreckage Freedom™.

Back To China

China, which we'll focus on here, has a much wider range and depth of discussion than the West. There's huge debate within guardrails, but what westerners don't get is that they have guardrails also. The range of platformed perspectives in the West is actually much smaller, with the bullshit just heaped taller. Americans talk about left and right, which is a joke. Their 'left' is hard right anywhere else in the world.

Returning to China, Reading The China Dream ‘maps’ the intellectual environment into Liberals, New Left (ie Marxists), and New Confucians. This itself is a simplification, but it's already much more diverse than what passes for western thought. The Western debate is all within liberalism (who should we bomb, never should we bomb). The whole culture suffers from a deep historical myopia which confuses repeating the same shit over and over with debate and discussion. You cannot even discuss Marx without unexplaining all the propaganda against him, and he's just a philosopher. You cannot even start a conversation with these people because, again, basic respect is missing.

I was once invited for an interview with an Australian radio station and after talking to me for a minute they were like ‘you're not a Marxist, are you?’ I was like, ‘no, I'm a Buddhist, but I've read Marx,’ and that was too much for them. I was uninvited. Westerners don't understand how deeply self-censored their corporate media is. It's just privatized propaganda. The Overton Window of acceptable debate within the West is actually very small. As Noam Chomsky said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Just today, however, I saw a child's hand hanging from a window, where 'Israeli' (re: American) bombs had flung it. We can effectively say that the Overton Window is closed, and people are being openly defenestrated (myself included). Now people are being told that they have to accept and even support genocide, and they always were. And yet actually civilized people must still explain themselves to settler-colonizers, like Australians, who are merely more successful 'Israelis'.

Take, for example, this conversation:

Hamish: So why are Chinese Navy ships circumnavigating Australia? What is the purpose of this? How do we interpret this behavior?

Zhou Bo: Then I should probably remind you why your warships sail so close to China's coastline? And why did your military planes invade the airspace of the Paracel Islands? That's China's airspace. And you've not done this once or twice, but many times.

Hamish: But our official position is that we're ensuring freedom of navigation in international trade lanes. There is a difference between the two.

China is expected to explain itself, but the ‘official position’ of White Empire (Australia is not a real country) is expected to be self-explanatory. As Bush's brain Karl Rove said, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

This was honestly evil when he said it (in 2004), back when America controlled global navigation, was the world's #1 trading partner, and could command and conquer. But now it's just evil, both wrong and wrong. America today is a vanishing minority of ship building, an astonishing majority of shit-stirring, and cannot control the Red Sea, never mind the South China Sea. Hence Zhou can turn the imperial language back on itself, inquiring politely about the empire's new clothes, or lack thereof.

Zhou Bo: I mean, our ships are also conducting "freedom of navigation" operations around Australia.

Hamish: And what's the purpose?

Zhou Bo: First of all, it's the high seas, and we have the right to sail. There is no international regulation that prohibits us from doing that. In fact, the question should be to ask you: Why did you cross the Taiwan Strait? What are you passing through there for? You don't really have much real trade through there, do you? One-third of your trade is with Chinese mainland, and warships don't need to cross the Taiwan Strait to transport these goods.

Hamish: So you mean, the interpretation that we should get from this is, "You don't do this to us"?

Zhou Bo: I don't think the Chinese government has ever expressed its views in this way, but international law does allow us to do so. But if you can ask yourself, I think that's good for you.

Hamish: (laughs) So let's end here, shall we?

As you can see, the Australians have to keep ending conversations because they're fundamentally incapable of starting them at all. They cannot approach other civilizations with respect at all. Every civilization should either be trying to be like White Empire or they're wrong, and must explain themselves, endlessly, because Empire cannot actually listen and is just looking for an excuse to hit you. The Tears For Fears song goes everybody wants to rule the world, but this is false. Everybody doesn't. Most of the world just wants to be left alone, to fight with our neighbors and family perhaps, but not to get involved in every conflict everywhere all at once. Who has the bandwidth for this? Only these bandits who couldn't stand each other in Europe.

Simply existing where you are is a strange concept for people with a deep ‘white hole’ at the center of their unsettled colonial souls. This is nonetheless normal and the world is simply returning to the pre-colonial mean, though the cruelty only seems to increase at the end. They leave us a ruined world, literally getting hellishly hot while they incinerate the future, ie children. But the base layer of reality persists underneath, and increasingly on top. As Zhou Bo said, in conclusion, To put it simply, “I believe that the current international order is not fundamentally different from the past: it has always been a collection of different countries, different social systems, different national identities, different cultures, and most importantly, different civilizations.” To westerners who can only understand our rhythm and blues through white interlocutors, let me put it even more simply. “Let it be.” If you stop asking stupid fucking questions and listen to the world struggling to be free, “There will be an answer, Let it be.”

Read Karl Sanchez, generally.