Ideological War

As the confrontation between China and the United States continues to intensify, I believe there are three very important factors that determine the direction of this competition. One is politics, including the United States’ alliances and the countries China can unite or cooperate with. Another factor is cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, advanced chip manufacturing, optics, IC circuit design, and software, which is also an essential component, encompassing network security, information processing, database storage, and more. The final factor, which might even be the most important, is ideological confrontation. I currently believe this is the decisive factor and that it will also affect the other two factors. This is especially true in the context of the U.S. continuously conducting cognitive warfare. Looking back at history, the last superpower that competed with the United States was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union possessed strategic nuclear weapons, meaning that regardless of whether the Soviet Union’s conventional military power exceeded or fell short of NATO’s, the U.S. could not solve the Soviet Union militarily from the outside. The Soviet Union also had vast territories and abundant resources, along with strong technological capabilities. Therefore, I believe the U.S. found it difficult to suppress the Soviet Union solely through containment measures. I believe the only way the U.S. won the Cold War and this superpower competition was by using propaganda and cognitive warfare to internally undermine the Soviet Union as a superpower. This also makes me puzzled about the U.S. system. Why was Reagan elected president at the precise moment when he was most needed? If humor and wit could conquer voters, why didn’t someone like him get elected earlier or later, but instead, at just the most appropriate time, he was elected president? At the time when a humorous and witty president was most needed to conduct propaganda and ridicule the so-called “Soviet system,” he coincidentally appeared. Many people believe the U.S. has a significant systemic advantage, but I completely disagree, especially in light of the views of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in economics. They argue that a country’s prosperity depends entirely on its political system, which is an extremely absurd viewpoint. First of all, attributing a country’s rise or fall entirely to a single factor is very extreme and wrong. Every country’s history, cultural environment, and geopolitical conditions are vastly different, and even small events can change and influence a country’s trajectory. At best, one could say that the political system might be one factor in determining whether a country is strong, but it is neither the sole nor the primary determining factor. There are many countries with so-called democratic systems that the West highly regards, yet why are there only a few truly developed countries in the world, like the United States, the English-speaking Commonwealth nations (excluding India), and some European countries? Some countries, like Japan and South Korea, are hard to classify as truly developed countries. Moreover, these major developed countries are almost all connected to the United Kingdom, most being English-speaking nations or former British colonies, such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and even Singapore and Hong Kong. I refer here to countries with relatively high per capita GDP. Of course, there are exceptions, such as small nations with high GDP that are not included in this context. Are there only these so-called democratic nations in the world? Why hasn’t Brazil become a superpower like the United States? Brazil’s land area is similar to that of the U.S., and it has abundant resources, farmland, and favorable environmental conditions. Brazil’s political system is also quite similar to that of the U.S. and could be considered democratic by American standards. Yet why is there such a significant gap between Brazil and the U.S.? This applies to Argentina, South Africa, and many other potentially strong countries that ultimately did not become superpowers like the U.S., or even fell far short. Similarly, countries like Japan and Singapore, by Western logic, do not follow truly democratic systems. In Japan, the people do not directly elect the prime minister, and Singapore has long been under authoritarian rule with no general public elections. Yet these countries have still become developed nations. Many countries have adopted so-called democratic systems, even ones very similar to that of the United States, but they still face hunger and poverty. Meanwhile, some countries without democratic systems have developed quite well in recent times. I firmly believe that political systems do not determine a country’s future. What determines a country’s future is the belief of its people, the spirit of the nation, and its ability to resist ideological warfare from the U.S. and the West. I believe the United States’ cognitive warfare against China has infiltrated all aspects of society. Let me start with a straightforward example: the names of countries like “America” in Chinese. Why did we use high-ranking Chinese words like “Mei” (美, meaning beautiful), “Ying” (英, meaning heroic), and “De” (德, meaning virtue) to name these countries when translating them? These are some of the best terms in the Chinese language, yet they were used to name foreign nations. In the past, these countries were referred to as “barbarians,” and we used more derogatory names for these foreign nations to express our contempt and the superiority of our own country. Now, however, we have given the most noble names to these foreign nations. I think this subtly affects people’s mindset towards these countries. In the past, especially in the last century, we indeed needed to adopt a learning attitude, but that does not mean we were in a state of blind admiration. Nowadays, this learning attitude is no longer as necessary, yet we still retain these almost sycophantic names. This includes foreign place names and landmarks like Les Invalides, the Pantheon, Buckingham Palace—names that sound far more elegant than some of the names we use for our own places and landmarks. The United States conducts cognitive warfare in many areas, such as distorting our history. For example, foreign materials often depict the territory of our former feudal dynasties as much smaller. They also deliberately distort and smear the early years of the Republic. Regarding the Great Leap Forward, during which satellite photography was not advanced, and U.S. reconnaissance methods were focused on military targets, China did not release population data for those years, so the outside world could hardly determine how many people died during the Great Leap Forward. I am entirely unsure where claims of tens of millions of deaths come from. How could they obtain such information? Did they have the capability to count the number of deaths during the Great Leap Forward in China? Clearly, those media outlets and so-called individual bloggers have neither the ability nor any credible informants with such capabilities. Even the U.S. government could not have known. From the population statistics before and after the Great Leap Forward, the population still grew due to a high birth rate. It is therefore extremely difficult to estimate the number of deaths during that time accurately. Some anti-China bloggers make wild claims, and their numbers seem to depend entirely on how much they hate China, with figures ranging from 10 million, 20 million, 30 million, 40 million, to 50 million. Even the so-called “conservative” estimates from Western sources claim between 20 and 40 million deaths, which differ by tens of millions. These ridiculous numbers are entirely unreliable, mostly fabricated without any basis. As for the specific death toll, I think it is no longer verifiable, and even core members of the Chinese government may not know the exact figure, as it might not have been systematically counted or disclosed to the outside world. Regarding the question of whether the Great Famine was caused by natural disasters or human factors, this is another key issue. Of course, Western media unanimously claim it was a man-made disaster, but in reality, it might have been more influenced by natural disasters. Another point of suspicion is why large-scale famines occurred during the collectivization reforms of state-owned farms in every country, including Ukraine, Argentina, China, and Cambodia. The Western media portray similar scenarios, blaming collective reforms for inefficiency. However, I do not believe that farmers would rather starve themselves than work hard. While it is true that people in cooperative groups might slack off, why would they still refuse to work hard to produce more food for the collective, even knowing they might starve in the second or third years? I find this unimaginable. I am more inclined to believe that such reforms challenged the fundamental principles of capitalism, leading to the most concentrated and aggressive propaganda. Even if collectivization reforms reduced efficiency and created various problems, I do not believe large-scale famines occurred before these reforms, while there was enough food to eat, only to have widespread famine suddenly occur in the two to three years following the reforms. It is possible that the first year saw some difficulties, and the following years might have been slightly affected, but I believe the situation was not as severe as Western propaganda suggests.

2024 12 25
Mike Shang