The Third Opium War (Part One)

The agenda behind the COVID-19 assault on China

The Third Opium War

Part One

The agenda behind the COVID-19 assault on China

Emanuel Pastreich

The corporate media is flooded with reports of the supposed spontaneous uprisings of Chinese citizens against the oppressive Communist regime enforcing inhuman zero-COVID policies that lock down entire cities and that require QR code scans for the use of all public buildings, including public restrooms.

Granted that the media has entirely ignored efforts of Chinese to organize protests, strikes, and online campaigns against the true exploitative forces in China, multinational corporations like Walmart, Amazon, and Foxconn, it seems doubtful that this new flurry of political heavy breathing represents a serious effort to address economic inequality in China.

Rather we are being fed yet another flavor of color revolution customized to the current ideological environment of narcissistic decay in the United States, one that encourages the projection of internal totalitarianism onto the “other,” onto China.

China is the only place, within the sickly etiolated intellectual discourse of the United States, wherein the enemy techno-fascism can be accurately limned without political risk. 

At the same time, there can be no doubt that China is subject to a massive campaign to destroy governance and to create a docile population subject to the whims of faceless powers who hide behind online systems masquerading as “government.” But that “communist government” turns out to be, if you scratch the surface, private contractors, Israeli, Japanese, American and other IT and intelligence firms, who have set up shop across China at the local level and are seizing control of government by privatizing all functions of government, using COVID-19 as the wedge to force everything online.   

This strategy has no precedent in the policy of the Communist Party of China, or in the Communist tradition of Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong. Rather it draws on the strategies of Israeli and other private contractors to seize control of local government using the control of IT infrastructure. That strategy has much in common with the takeover of local government by contractors that has been implemented in Oklahoma (as documented by Julianne   Romanello) and in Louisiana.

The knowhow for contract tracing, facial recognition technology. Geo-fencing, and mandatory daily PCR tests can be traced back to the technology and policy for the control of Palestinians on the West Bank, as well as American research on social manipulation carried out by DARPA, RAND, and other contractors for the Department of Defense and the CIA.  

The reader of the media is offered a choice between two flawed interpretations of what is happening in China. On the one hand, there are those who suggest that the techno-fascist policies we see in China are a product of an alien and dangerous Chinese culture that threatens the freedom of the West and its glorious constitutional tradition. This threat is attributed to communism and a docile Chinese civilization stretching back to the antiquity.

On the other hand, there are others who defend China as an emerging alternative civilization, one maligned by the jealous declining Western powers because of its new technological and economic power. But such critics choose to look the other way when it comes to totalitarian governance that Chinese workers face under COVID-19.

Let me illustrate these two perspectives with statements made by two colleagues of mine, men with whom I have had close exchanges in the past.

For an example of China-threat rhetoric, I cite a fellow contributor to Global Research John Whitehead who writes,

“The fate of America is being made in China, our role model for all things dystopian. An economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum. China is a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largess of its corporate elite.”

The dystopian world that Whitehead describes in China, is beyond dispute. But it is most certainly not “made in China.” Rather large parts of Chinese local government (and the enforcement of the COVID regime varies immensely from region to region) have been taken over by private contractors tied to investment banks like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, and private contractors for IT.

The reductive rhetoric used by Whitehouse precludes the most obvious conclusion: that the working people of China and the United States are having their lives, their freedoms, and their health destroyed by multinational corporations and that they should work together to combat this global takeover.

Many American intellectuals feed us a warmed-over “yellow peril” argument such as was advanced in the 19th century, presenting Chinese culture as inherently repressive and corrupting, something that must be stopped from entering the United States at any cost. Such an effort to demonize an alien culture is a classic strategy employed by the rich to deflect a serious discussion of class conflict and of the control of the means of production to a reductionist emotional anger at the foreign.

The alternative view offered in the media is that presented by intellectuals like Martin Jacques, author of the thoughtful study of China’s rise, “When China Rules the World.” Although Jacques offers a more balanced and fair perspective on China than does the “yellow peril” gang, his decision to present China and its civilization as an alternative to a corrupt and decadent West, without mentioning a word about how COVID 19 has been used as an excuse to implement radical social control, deeply undermines his arguments.

Jacques stated recently that “for China to embrace common prosperity, to establish a society of greater fairness, greater equity, that is a very important message not only to China, but to the world as well” while remaining silent on COVID policies. Such an approach is intellectually dishonest and suggests that he has agreed to collaborate with the deeply compromised gang of Chinese, Israeli, American and other teams of investment banks and consulting firms who are radically restructuring Chinese society.   

Although China does offer some alternatives to the extraction-based imperialism that drives the Western economies—especially as a nation that has not waged any foreign wars in recent history, and has had almost no overseas military presence, nevertheless, the narcissistic advertisements for designer clothes used by multinational corporations to turn Chinese into consumers, the push to eliminate books and newspapers from hotels and other public spaces, the radical degrading of the quality of journalism (which was superior to the US until the last five years) and the promotion of the lives of the rich and powerful as an ideal for youth, suggests a covert war has been launched against the Chinese people by multinational interests that is at least the equal of campaigns in the US and Europe.

The failure of those sympathetic to China to confront this cruel reality, and to rather limit their analysis to praise for China’s more rational diplomacy, for its advances in rail technology and in solar energy, or for its less imperialist approach to investment in Africa, is unacceptable. 

Why should we call it the “Third Opium War?”

Those struggling to understand the nature of the COVID-19 assault on China would do best to consider the last time that the Western powers, and specifically the financial powers in London, set out to take over the Chinese political system, to control the Chinese economy, and to degrade and diminish the authority of Chinese culture.

That process of political, ideological and military assault was launched in the two Opium Wars. British corporate interests worked hand-in-hand with corrupt members of the Chinese ruling class, men who saw in the decay of the Qing Dynasty opportunities for personal benefit through the promotion of British propaganda, namely arguing that Western civilization was inherently more advanced than China’s.

The first Opium War of 1840 was launched by the British to establish absolute authority in East Asia and to strip China of its autonomy through a political and cultural assault that not only impoverished the Chinese economy, but also reduced the ability of Chinese to think for themselves.

The British employed the same strategy they used in India: developing corrupt relations with the gentry at the local level so as to undermine the central government, attacking Chinese civilization as inherently backwards, and inducing economic dependency on the British imperial trade system and finance system.

At that time, China had the most powerful economy in the world, a highly educated population, and an admirable commitment to stable agricultural production and sustainable long-term development. Unlike other nations, China could not be drawn into the tangled spider’s web of trade and finance controlled by the British easily.

The British ruling class could not stand it that China ran a trade surplus with England and that it had no need for British products or use for British logistics in external trade, but sold the British large amounts of tea, porcelain and other products on its own terms.

The British cultivated ties with corrupt local gentry and introduced ideas about transportation via trains, mail service, finance and banking, and medicine that were radically different than what existed in China. The British suggested in the publications that they produced, and later in the missionary schools that they set up, that massive changes were necessary in China in order China to make progress towards modernity. Some of those suggestions were accurate; most were twisted so as to justify imperialism; some concepts like the imperative for growth and international trade were deeply destructive.

Although the British victory in the first Opium War and in the Second Opium War (together with France in 1856 to 1860) was a result of British superior military technology, the British were not ahead because they were smarter but rather because they had waged constant wars in the 18th and 19th centuries that pushed the development of these specific technologies.

At the same time, “Britain” or “England” are misleading terms that habit and institutions force on us so that we can only perceive conflicts in terms of countries, and mistake battles between corporate interests for conflicts between the presidents of China, the United States and Russia. 

It was not “England” that attacked China in 1840 after Governor General Lin Zexu wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria in 1839 asking that she end the immoral opium trade and then proceeded to burn illegal opium that the government had seized. Rather it was the British bankers in London who formulated and implemented this plan to take China apart, to reduce it to a semi-colony using the knowhow they had from their takedown of India, Bangladesh and other nations.  

The organization at the center of the Opium Wars was the British East India Company, private corporation reporting to the richest British citizens that was able to employ the authority of the government to justify and to advance its activities.

The British East India Company developed a sophisticated system for analysis, for the assessment of opportunities for financial benefit, and for the exploitation of weaknesses in other countries in the early 19th century. It had teams of experts prepared to take action, including military action, for the benefit of the banks, and it lobbied at home British politicians to encourage military action that benefited its clients.

The British East India Company was the father of MI6 (military intelligence section 6) intelligence agency founded in 1909, and more importantly, the grandfather of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the United States) founded in 1947. Both of those organizations pose as government agencies but work, for the most part, for the benefit private interests.

Operation COVID-19

Let us move forward to Operation COVID-19, the global coup d’état disguised as a pandemic that was launched against China, and the world, in December of 2019 and that continues on to the present. Although not directed exclusively at China this operation resembles the previous two Opium Wars in method and in purpose.

The author does not have inside knowledge as to exactly how the COVID-19 operation was planned and launched; most likely no one has the full picture. Enough information is available, however, to permit an informed assessment, as opposed to the repetition of the disinformation circulated as journalism these days.

The strategy behind the Wuhan outbreak of 2019, the start of the COVID Wars, had its roots in classified research conducted at DARPA, RAND, and other American institutions, on how to conduct warfare using biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cyber-warfare.

The cyber-warfare imagined in security circles was less concerned with hacking computers and more with hacking the minds of citizens so as to render them incapable of independent thinking and encourage psychological and ideological dependency on a consumer culture powered by narcissism. The promotion of a banal consumer culture that destroys the intellectual functions of the educated classes in politics was a critical part of the groundwork for the COVID wars.   

This new form of warfare is best described as “silent weapons for quiet wars,” to use the term employed in the (supposedly) classified manual from the 1950s discovered in 1986 that describes the use of social engineering and automation as a strategy for domination. Private finance and intelligence complexes like BlackRock, Vanguard, and Goldman Sachs, along with the strategic teams of billionaires are the primary clients of this campaign.

China was selected as a primary target (although the strategy is being carried out around the world) for the radical degradation of the population’s thinking through the promotion of AI, smart phones, thereby creating addiction to consumption culture and immediate stimulation, and forcing dependency on technology.

China was a ripe target because modernization ideology has been so central to Chinese society and the imperative to surpass the West that humiliated China in the 19th century is so acute among Chinese intellectuals that the promotion of dangerous automation and geo-fencing could be easily justified as a means for China to surpass the West and to become truly modern. Moreover, Chinese Confucian thought encourages a trust in the role of government that makes it hard for citizens to grasp how corporations have seized control of policy and administration in government.

The use of QR codes for all public spaces, including public restrooms, the requirement of vaccination, and PCR tests within the last 48 hours (or sometimes last 24 hours) was initially accepted by citizens because it was justified as more advanced than the “West.”

Most likely the operation was launched by corrupt elements of intelligence in both the United States and China who are pursuing plans to create a slave society in which billionaires set the ideological and administrative rules for the entire society. 

The Chinese and the foreign agents involved in COVID-19 policies at the local level follow directives issued by private intelligence companies that work together with the World Economic Forum, intergovernmental agencies like the World Health Organization that is controlled by the Gates Foundation, and to other multinational institutions tied to global finance.

The promotion of a “new Cold war” between the United States and China in the corporate media is critical to this campaign. Lower level government officials, and citizens, on both sides, are fed the story that because relations between China and the United States are getting worse, that there can be no cooperation or communication between the two nations. This narrative is made substantial by directives that prohibit, or make difficult, interactions between government officials, academics, and cultural figures.

The reality is that a tiny group of key players representing the super-rich in the United States and in China coordinate closely to promote COVID19 lockdowns in China.

If anyone asks who makes these policies in China, who handles the data, or who is control of the programs, that undergird QR codes and contact tracing, the answer is inevitably it is the Chinese government. But the truth is that few, or none, of these policies were made up or implemented by the Chinese government itself, but rather that the Chinese government is occupied by IT corporations that report to the billionaires (often through Israel and the United States,) and bypass the Chinese government altogether.

Those involved in the Wuhan COVID-19 action in 2019 ruthlessly attacked those in the Chinese government who opposed them, setting up their own shadow government in cooperation with private consulting firms and intelligence contractors.   

That shadow government in China (or the United States for that matter) draws its power from its control of IT processes that government depends on. Control of the transfer, storage, processing and all internal communications in government by private IT firms (often simply private intelligence firms in effect selling off data to the highest bidder) has made possible the construction of a shadow empire that is run for the benefit of the billionaires, using a carefully calibrated process to degrade the thinking of citizens, and to decrease freedom of movement and action over months and years. This plan effects massive shifts in society in a manner that is slow enough as to avoid detection by citizens (especially if they are addicted to smart phones) and rapid enough to make the organization of effective resistance difficult.

Ironically, the Communist Party of China, which is described by the Western press as the unique source of totalitarianism in the world, is often the only force capable of resisting the march of techno-fascism. Whereas Western corporations are busy eliminating humans from organizations and implementing AI-based automation, and transforming political parties into appendages of investment banks, the CPC actually holds meetings with large numbers of people, conducts concrete debates on policy that involve detailed consideration of specifics. 

A walk through any city in China will make it obvious what sort of a war is taking place below the surface.

Advertisements for I-phones, Italian designer clothes, processed foods laden with sugar, and other consumer goods produced by multinational corporations scream out from every corner at the citizen rendered consumer.

This campaign creates an uncompromising money economy linked to the spider’s web of global finance. Youth gather at I-Phone lounges to gossip and message each other about banal topics, or eat at fashionable restaurants at a great distance from any awareness of the reality that faces working people.

At the same time, there are posters put up along the streets that call on the citizens to be ethical, to treat others with respect, to keep the city clean, and to care for family. These posters encouraging ethical behavior remind me of things I saw in early childhood that have since disappeared since in the United States. These efforts at ethical government are products of the CPC, not foreign concerns.