100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE CCP

The Chinese Communist Party offered itself a laudatory show and speech from President Ji Jinping , for the whole world to notice. 

The impressive show of force shoudn't surprise. China scores on so many fields and its blatant shortcomings regarding human rights go largely unnoticed, even in Muslim countries that should be expected to care more about their brethern in the Western parts. 

Xi Jinpin rules more like Emperor Kangxi, who vassalged northern Mongolia and Tibet, than Qialong who was a more creative but distracted ruler. President Xi must have been amused meeting Trump, the perfect fool and "Barbarian". If one comes in contact with Chinese one better not forget that China lives by the rule of symmetry. Hence its harsh words regarding Hong Kong, Taiwan or the Spratlys and Paracels in the South China Sea or the Diaoyutais, which were returned by the US to Japan in 1971. One can be assured that Beijing will resort to any means to put its sphere of sovereignity in order. Obervers are divided about counting military intervention as a further radical step under consideration.

Chinese are apt at pillow After all, the afrodisiac calls China home.  China's belt and road initiative strangles as much as it gives. The original enthusiasm for China's new silk road has waned. It uses charm and plays its "otherness" to the sole end of control. The pillow smoothes as much as it suffocates. This "technique" was used by the Manchus to "domesticate" the Chinese ! Sometimes it feels as if mostly Western powers still do not fully know history, the power of Chinese ressentment after the humiliations that were imposed in the 19th and 20th centuries. If no country is like any other, then China might be the most definively"other" one. 

The catastrophes it unleashed on itself are yet again proof of a neurotic self-centered arrogance. Among the last Chinese leaders, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin were mostly busy cleaning or refubishing the house. Hu Jintao was more an approachable predictable autocrat.  Xi canged all that. He is the Sun God who wants to be the epicentre inside and in the world. He might still like to deal with the Americans but will have little time for Europeans considered as "have beens". Other contries everywhere will swallow the expected kowtow for some investment or infrastructure works that might ruin them in the future.

For Western mentalities, the end of dynasties are a thing of the past, often bitter but expected. For the Chinese, the looting of the Summer Palace in 1860 is fresh on the mind.  The spoiled youths in Shanghai live more with South Korean boy bands than with history lessons, but in their DNA there is an arrogant pride which is a perfect tool in the hands of a system which has no other direction than success. One mistake might lead to terrible consequences but intellectual humility has never been a "forte" in Chinese leadership. Neither is a sense of humor...after all the mocking of Empress Dowager Ci Xi led to the siege of foreign legations in 1900.

China co-rules the world, the seas and space. It is master of the narrative inside, but it never went as far as the hearts.   It is too selfish to start a war which would turn global. It will continue paying, like a cat until the mouse lets go or retreats. Hong Kong might be a key to get into the Chinese mind. For now, the CCP can count its blessings !