There are massive attacks on our computer and network systems every day so that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can keep surviving and subjecting it’s citizens and all people of the world.
China is even copying the West’s Colonial experience with the Belt & Road Initiative.
It is a perfect copy and ‘improvement’ by going and making deals with countries and places that cannot normally pay for facilities (like Sri Lanka’s Port deal) From NYT story:
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — Every time Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, turned to his Chinese allies for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the answer was yes.
Yes, though feasibility studies said the port wouldn’t work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had refused. Yes, though Sri Lanka’s debt was ballooning rapidly under Mr. Rajapaksa.
Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing’s largest state-owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing, as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the port drew only 34 ships in 2012.
The whole point was to make a colony out of Sri Lanka. The costs did not matter. And now Sri Lanka gave the rights to 15000 acres for 99 years.
here are 35 ports within similar China financing in this NYT image:
In each of these port deals the design is to create a loan structure and if the smaller country cannot pay for the construction (done by primarily Chinese companies – state run usually) then the smaller country will lose it’s sovereignty.
Great plan? I ask you to build a port in your country – I will build it with my people (no transfer of knowledge or otherwise using local labor) and I charge you a good amount of money for this privilege. So if you cannot pay because maybe there is a reason a large port has not been built here, then I will take the land I built the port on. 35 ports all done in the same way.
Has the copy to china trend paid off for China?
The South China Morning Post has the story:
Shanzhai has been prevalent in China in recent decades and this has earned China the reputation of being a “copycat nation”. Western media report that China’s preferential policies and regulations to restrict market access, such as the the “Great Firewall” in the internet industry, and the lack of intellectual property protection, give Chinese companies an unfair home advantage to create copies.
Then the story goes into a side effect for the Shanzai ecosystem in China – this hub of copying has created it’s own “innovation” by being good at copying. In fact some copiers have imitated so well, that they also added improvements, which made the copied product actually better than the original (such as Alibaba the “ebay” of China).
There are some other examples but the game has changed a bit after so many years of copying (successfully), and now in fact the copying is a one-upmanship. Thus one can’t just assume China will ‘only’ copy?
If you look into history it is interesting to note that during the warring states period (during 475 -221BC) Because of the competition within the whole of then fractured China one must actually look into the opposite of copying (legal proof and a legal system that protects innovation). The problem of Chinese history in the last 2500 years is that there is no express desire to create a legal system which is fair to the people. What was developed was many types of philosophies like Legalism and Confucianism. In legalism it is assumed that the people are all evil and will do bad things (selfish) for themselves instead of for the state. Although legalism espouses meritocracy that is only a means to an end. The bureaucracy was filled with smart and capable leaders and also assumed the peasants need to be held in line. this was the dominant philosophy by the end of the warring states period in the Qin empire.
The western philosophy of Aristotle “Rule of Law” is a principle:
That all people and organizations within a country, state, or community are held accountable to the same set of laws. The Rule of Law has its origins in ancient Greece and, more specifically, in the philosophy of Aristotle. In his work titled Politics, Aristotle raised the question of whether it is better to be ruled by the best leader or the best laws. In exploring this question he found advantages and disadvantages to both governing methods. His conclusion, however, suggested that laws were appropriate for most societies since they were carefully thought out and could be applied to most situations. Therefore, people should be ruled by the best laws. These principles evolved into a copying ban and laws of Intellectual property protection.
The Chinese state(Qin) that won the Warring states period main philosophy was of legalism and meritocracy not rule of law. What happens when “anything goes” except do not go against the emperor. Assuming all people are “evil” is not a general good philosophy. Of course Confucianism had a different thinking but the fight in the bureaucracy between the camps of legalism and Confucianism did not end until even during Chairman Mao’s era and he was in favor of legalism. The CCP has taken up the atheistic tendencies of the communist system to make sure you do not hold anything above the party(the emperor). When there is no focus on the rule of law then one gets the rule of copying.
Specifically plato.stanford.edu has an explanation:
Rule of Law and Rule by Law
Some theorists draw a distinction between the Rule of Law and what they call rule by law (see e.g., Tamanaha 2004: 3). They celebrate the one and disparage the other. The Rule of Law is supposed to lift law above politics. The idea is that the law should stand above every powerful person and agency in the land. Rule by law, in contrast, connotes the instrumental use of law as a tool of political power. It means that the state uses law to control its citizens but tries never to allow law to be used to control the state. Rule by law is associated with the debasement of legality by authoritarian regimes, in modern China for example.
As we saw in the discussion of Hayek (1973), the other side of this coin is a disparagement of legislation, precisely because its enactment seems patently and undeniably to represent the rule of powerful officials. Legislation is a matter of will. The legislative process produces law simply by virtue of a bunch of people in an assembly deciding that a given law is to be produced. And this is done by the very men—powerful politicians—to whose power the Rule of Law is supposed to be an alternative.
People in the west do not understand this thinking because we have been inculcated from the most basic classes in grade school. This is why it is so foreign to us. And why we do not ‘understand’ the Chinese people in general – the cultural chasm is wide.
So if we are both on the Internet as we are, then we will always be attacked by the Chinese people or government or somebody due to that being in their culture(almost like a right).
Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has capitalized on the global connectivity of the internet age in ways no other nation has. Once regarded as a “second-tier” cyber power, China has aggressively and consistently built its national cyber program to the point where it is now considered one of the world’s preeminent cyber players. A recent study ranked China as a “Most Comprehensive Cyber Power,” second only to the United States. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used a multi-pronged strategy to achieve this remarkable ascent, prioritizing computer science and technology education within China and creating a pipeline of talent for cyber military operations.
As the Chinese military and intelligence apparatus became more cyber-capable, units within the People’s Liberation Army and contractors operating on behalf of the Ministry of State Security embarked on a systematic cyber espionage campaign. China obtained sensitive information held by foreign governments and stole intellectual property for cutting-edge technologies across numerous sectors by leveraging cyber alongside traditional intelligence collection methods and various forms of economic espionage. The campaign has, by any measure, been immensely successful.
So what are the future plans of China’s government?
Following years of seeking parity with the Western world, China’s leaders now seek to surpass their global and regional rivals and truly establish the PRC as the preeminent global superpower. China’s near-term national strategy, the 14th Five Year Plan, released in October 2020, aims to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign technology and build out domestic high-tech production capabilities.
The Chinese threat actors are using this template of trying to surpass the US and European Powers to develop indigenous technologies and sell them to Africa and Asian countries (wherever they can get some influence) – where the US/European influence has been waning.
The Bottom line is the west believes in the Rule of Law not the Rule by Law since any man as judge/party member can create a law that is beneficial to the state and not the people
Why is this so important? Because we (as the west) do not understand China CCP and are mistaking with our understanding as we understand the rule of law. The CCP does not look at the world within the rule of law. Now if you look at the decisions of China CCP within this framework then it is of course easier to understand all their actions, including the BRI, the constant Cyber attacks, the South China Sea 9 dash line and any other maritime decisions by China CCP. Everything falls to the party and if the party wants it they have to have it, there are no discussions or rules of law to consider.
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