Discourse Power | May 1, 2022
Lessons from Ukraine, the Geopolitics of Pandemics, and Ghosts from the Past
Happy International Workers' Day,
Thank you to everyone who shared and commented on Discourse Power's inaugural issue. Newcomers are welcome to read the first post, which featured a long essay on China and Ukraine, titled Beijing’s General Adaptation Syndrome.
As a new Substack, this is still a work in progress, so please send me any feedback or suggestions, and if you like what you read, consider sharing Discourse Power with your colleagues and friends.
Feel free to share in the comments or in my DM any publications, videos, or analyses by Chinese researchers and policymakers that you think should be included in future editions; leftists, rightists, liberal dissidents, neo-Maoists, economists, political scientists, public intellectuals, and whatever you may find - anything goes, as long as it provides a unique perspective.
Thank you for reading,
Tuvia
Today’s Recommendations
"We should emphasize the use of special warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare on the battlefield, particularly drawing inspiration from the Russian Army's experience with next-level urban combat" - According to Wu Baiyi, a senior research fellow at the Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government leading think-tank, the Chinese public's main concern about the war in Ukraine is how the country should respond to protect its own interests. He goes on to make relevant policy suggestions.
Excerpts:
“Speak justice 要讲公道 - The values, basic principles, rules of behavior, and style of diplomacy are fundamentally defined by the nature of a country's system. Chinese diplomatic thought is a benchmark for distinguishing the ideology and diplomatic theory of foreign relations between the CPC, the new socialist China, and other political parties and countries around the world.
It is the result of an organic combination of Chinese cultural values and the proletarian outlook on morality, history, and internationalism...As a result, China has always been able to maintain a relatively aloof and positive diplomatic posture in contrast to the superpowers and hegemons of the international arena, gaining the trust of conflicting parties and encouraging them to reconcile.
“Prioritize the national interest - It is well known that China and Russia share a 4,374-kilometer border and that there is significant potential for economic and trade complementarity in the fields of energy, food, space, and military industries, commodities, manufactured industrial goods, and consumer goods.
Needless to say, the two parties share similar views on major international issues. These are straightforward but vital national interests that are unlikely to be affected by a single occurrence, and China is unlikely to budge regardless of what other countries say.
Similarly, China and Ukraine not only share a long history of friendship and trade complementarities, but they also place a premium on Ukraine's crucial role in promoting international cooperation along the Belt and Road.
As a result, China's independent expansion of relations with Ukraine will not be constrained by its other relationships. This is the only approach to truly express Chinese diplomacy's sovereign and independent nature while also effectively safeguarding our country's fundamental interests.
”Master the art of war - We should use the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a case study of modern warfare in terms of players, scope, and global impact, among other tactical considerations... The highest form of warfare is winning without fighting.
On the one hand, it is critical to recognize that the cost of war in modern times is difficult to determine precisely and that it encompasses psychological damage, social ramifications, and the erosion of international credibility, among other things... On the other hand, we must be fully aware of what "the war to end all wars" means today...
”Among the world's major powers, China's security environment is relatively tough, and we still have some unfinished business in terms of national unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. As China develops as a significant power, protecting the interests of our nationals overseas has become a critical component of national security.
In order for our military to be battle-ready, we must concentrate on and be prepared in the following areas:
”1) carry forth the advantages of our political work, strengthen the People's Army's mass consciousness, conduct ideological mobilization prior to the war, and ensure that the commanders understand fully the just and reasonable cause for their actions;
2) Uphold Mao's winning military doctrine of "never fight unsure battles" and "concentrate superior forces to shower absolute destruction on the enemy." More emphasis should be placed on multi-domain battles, joint operation capabilities [between the five PLA branches], and the effectiveness of command, control, communication, and intelligence systems in today's environment;
3) accelerate the development of efficient, accurate, practical, and special weapons and equipment to satisfy the diverse needs of our army's actual combat scenarios as soon as possible, so that we can reach world-class standards;
4) emphasize the use of special warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare on the battlefield, particularly drawing inspiration from the Russian Army's experience with next-level urban combat;
5) pay heed to humanitarian relief and search and rescue doctrines, battlefield conventions, and operational protocols that are tailored to our military's domestic and global requirements;
6) focus on gaining and consolidating actual battle experience in nuclear, biochemical, and proliferation prevention in order to develop a meaningful and effective operational and prevention plans;
7) ensure the reliability and feasibility of wartime applications, and accelerate the development of institutional mechanisms to improve the level of integration and interoperability between our military and relevant systems related to statistics, reporting, diagnosis, external liaison, propaganda, and so on.
”Improve China's all-round capacity to deal with full-scale foreign sanctions - Given the US-led West's unwavering commitment to interfering in our internal affairs and impeding our efforts to achieve national rejuvenation, sanctions against China are expected to be their go-to tactic, as well as one of the most significant and unavoidable struggles our country will face in the New Era. We should closely study Russia's playbook. (China Review, April)
"European civilization is an aggressive civilization that operates under the law of the jungle. It exploits any opening to malign others to justify its killings, even if it means fabricating bogus charges" - Distinguished Professor Wen Yi of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Antai School of Economics and Management recently gave a keynote presentation in which he stated that the medieval syphilis plague could teach us about the importance of discourse power.
On February 15, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China (RDCY) held a conference themed "Pandemics and the Rise and Fall of Major Powers", in collaboration with the Institute of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the School of Global Governance. Professor Wen’s keynote speech was shared last week on the popular nationalist platform Guancha.
Wen begins that for centuries, historians and archaeologists in Europe have blamed Christopher Columbus and his crew for bringing it back from the Americas, but new evidence based on the DNA tests of exhumed bones indicates that patient zero was, in fact, indigenous to the continent.
Wen Yi says that these revelations in Europe have been suppressed in a telling fashion, in a sense that it is "useful in deeply understanding the true nature of European civilization", that is, how the West utilizes its monopoly over "discourse power" to get its way.
Excerpts:
"What can we learn from the history of syphilis today? The war for discourse power is one of the most important takeaways. How so? The syphilis plague in Europe has unsettled Europe's pompous and cocky population.
"The Europeans had always claimed to be civilized, colonizing every continent and boasting to be superior to everyone else, but syphilis was a major embarrassment for them, so they played the 'blame game'.
"It wasn't called that back then; instead, it was referred to as buck-passing and mutual allegation as to where the disease originated... European civilization is an aggressive civilization that operates under the law of the jungle.
"It exploits any opening to malign others to justify its killings, even if it means fabricating bogus charges. This civilization is a civilization of bandits, with brute force as its governing principle.
"These blame games and public opinion wars are far from inconsequential. When an opportunity arises, they are frequently used as a pretext to start a war or seek financial reparations...
"The Japanese had learned these tricks from Europe when they launched their invasion of China... When you put all of this together, it's simple to see how the US government has behaved since Trump took office.
"The US has waged a 'trade war' against China, spreading claims of 'genocide in Xinjiang', launching the 'COVID tracing' campaign, and launching a slew of other coordinated strikes." (Guancha)
"The US is Number 1 on failed pandemic prevention, Number 1 in spreading diseases, Number 1 in spreading fake news, Number 1 in..." - Professor Wang Wen, Executive Dean at RDCY, released a study that included a litany of statements about the United States being the world's "Number 1" in failed governance in general, and pandemic response in particular, as China faces the most severe lockdowns since COVID erupted.
The report is based on essays published in 2021 in the prestigious and peer-reviewed Journal of Political Science under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). It's about molding future global narratives of how COVID and its repercussions are understood, Wang said in an interview with party-state media.
From the report: "It is evident that infectious disease laws and the rise and fall of great powers need to be reconsidered, that communicable diseases factors on national strength need to be reevaluated, and that the global harm caused by pandemics, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, should prompt people to rethink human nature, our ecology, global governance, and great power cooperation." (CCTV)
"Let the Party's revolutionary theory enter your businesses, its voice permeate your community, and its fragrant words pervade the air on every street corner" - It's evolving - just backwards.
Since last month, the Party Committee of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has been handing out small "pocketbooks" - or, Little Red Books, to be precise - with quotations by Chairman Xi. Expect to see a lot more familiar specters from the past making a cameo, as China moves closer to the 20th Party Congress later this year (Douyin, via Winston Sterzel)
Playing in the Background
Australian band King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, the Frank Zappas of our generation, have released a new double album.
Discourse Power is written by Tuvia Gering, a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and a Krauthammer Fellow, specializing in Chinese security and foreign policy, and emergency and disaster management. Any views expressed in this newsletter, as well as any errors, are solely those of the author.
Follow Tuvia on Twitter @GeringTuvia