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China’s “Century of Humiliation” began in 1839 with the First Opium War. The Qing Dynasty was in decline, and foreign powers began stealing territories and extorting trade concessions through wars and military expeditions. It was a long century that only really ended in 1949 with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
But even then, there was unfinished business: Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Macau and Hong Kong have now been returned to China. But Taiwan remains unredeemed. Indeed, Taiwan exists to deny victory to the People’s Republic. To this day, Taiwan claims to be the real China, asserting sovereignty over the rest of China under the protective umbrella of the United States.
It is clearly a sore spot for Beijing. Until the Taiwan Question is settled, the rise of the People’s Republic didn’t really end the Century of Humiliation.
We are told that we must risk war over Taiwan because they make chips for AI. We’re in an “AI race.” Just as we are in a “rare earth minerals” race.
I am skeptical of these arguments. If we were in an “existential” race with China over AI, we would simply move the factories out of China’s reach, like Stalin moved whole industries behind the Urals. But then I remember: history is a long record of leaders facing existential threats and doing nothing.
When I hear that “we” need to acquire territories or risk war over resources and technologies, I cynically wonder who this “we” is. We the people always end up paying for stuff. Whenever we hear “geopolitics” invoked, that’s a sign that we are going to pay twice: first in blood, then in money.
Why pay in blood? Is it simply because politically-connected oligarchs don’t want to compete for contracts, so they bribe politicians to deliver them?
All this, of course, was hovering in the background when Donald Trump and a planeload of billionaires landed in Beijing for a summit.
First of all, taking Elon Musk to China smacks of taking a knife to a gunfight. There are issues of sovereignty and identity at stake here that cannot be addressed by dangling business deals. Trump should have learned that already with the miserable failure of his merchant envoys Witkoff and Kushner to end the Ukraine War.
But Trump can’t learn that. He’s an old man. His powers are declining. So he increasingly defaults to what he knows best: selling steaks, selling wars, selling himself. He’s a merchant. All he ever thinks about is money.
Second, Trump never should have made this trip to begin with, because he threw away a lot of the cards he planned to play in Beijing by starting—and losing—a war with Iran. Trump, however, is simply in denial. He is prolonging the war—and thus increasing the negative consequences—apparently hoping for a miracle so that he does not have to admit defeat.
So of course he did not reschedule the China summit. That would be admitting defeat. In fact, there is some speculation that he was hoping to get China’s help in extricating himself from the Iran mess. He also probably hoped for a bump in the polls. Because that’s what he’s been reduced to: grasping at straws, juicing the stock market and opinion polls with lies and stunts.
Naturally, Trump is claiming great things from this summit. But they are all pie in the sky. For instance, China has promised to buy jets from Boeing. But first, it isn’t the job of the President of the United States to be pitching Boeing jets to Communist dictators. Second, it may never happen.
Let’s talk about what actually happened. Trump’s Beijing summit looks to me like the first 36 hours of America’s Century of Humiliation. We saw Donald Trump buttering up Xi Jinping, praising him as a great leader. Trump does this with Putin and Kim as well. Contrast that with the insults he delivers to America’s allies. This is standard operating procedure for a narcissist. He takes his friends for granted while chasing the approval of his enemies.
Xi did not repay Trump’s flattery in kind. Instead, he spoke the truth. He came right out and said that the United States is a declining power. Trump, of course, deftly pivoted, saying that it applied to Joe Biden’s America, not to Trump’s.
In truth, America has been a declining power long before the vegetable Biden’s presidency. Biden was just a symptom of decline. But Donald Trump has dramatically accelerated it.
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I will leave it to future historians to debate the causes and turning points in the decline and fall of the American empire. As Gibbon showed, there’s a lot of decline in an empire. It will probably be declining long after I am dead.
But the Iran War feels like a turning point.
America lost the Iran War on day one, because there was no way that the United States could emerge from this war more powerful than when it went in. I take some grim satisfaction that arch neocon Robert Kagan has declared the obvious: that Trump has been checkmated by Iran.
America’s loss was not contingent on what happened to Iran. Sometimes both sides in a war lose. Iran could have been destroyed utterly. Iran may still be destroyed utterly. But that does not alter the fact that the United States lost more than it gained, because America’s status as World Cop depends largely on bluff, and Iran called it.
Iran demonstrated that the US could not protect its Gulf dependencies. That protection, moreover, was a quid pro quo for the petrodollar system, which is the key to keeping the globe’s biggest debtor government solvent. That system is now unraveling.
The Gulf monarchies are turning to countries like Ukraine to help secure themselves against Iran. Cargoes are now being priced in other currencies than dollars. The United States is now making huge loans to the cash-strapped United Arab Emirates to forestall them selling off US Treasury bonds at a discount. The US Treasury has begun to raise interest rates on new bonds, which means that the US will be paying more to creditors and less to clients to keep the whole system afloat.
The war is now in its eleventh week. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Indeed, the United States is now blockading Iranian oil, which the US initially allowed to pass to keep global prices from spiking even higher. The world is facing shortages of oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and other chemicals necessary for modern industry.
That means less of everything good: less light, less warmth, less medicine, less food. For the poor countries of the world, that means famine. And that means more of everything bad: more instability, more violence, more refugees flowing into white countries.
All these consequences were perfectly predictable to me, and I’m not an economist, a geopolitical analyst, or a think-tank Mandarin. I just follow the news with my eyes open. Which means that all these consequences were known to Donald Trump, his cabinet, and the Pentagon brass as well.
But the war went ahead anyway, because this war is not about making America stronger. It isn’t about America at all. This war is Israel hoisting America with chains and bleeding it dry to destroy another of its regional enemies.
Just like the Iraq War, the Iran War was premised on lies about weapons of mass destruction and sold as quick and easy because, of course, the Iranians long for “freedom,” so they “want us to bomb them.”
Bush II was not stupid and disloyal enough to attack Iran. Neither was Obama. Neither were Biden’s minders. Only Trump was a big enough fool and traitor. And his cabinet was too traitorous, too stupid, or too weak to stop him.
I didn’t think the Iran War was possible, because I didn’t think Trump and the people around him were this dumb and evil. I was wrong.
Trump has no cards in the Gulf. If he continues to attack Iran, Iran will continue to retaliate against the Gulf states.
Thus far, Iran has induced a global economic crisis with merely restrained, tit-for-tat retaliations. If Trump goes all in, Iran probably has the capacity not just to destroy the entire economy of the Gulf but to render the region uninhabitable by destroying the desalinization plants. That would trigger a global depression, if we are not already in one.
There is no reason to think that the US could cripple Iran’s retaliatory capacity before the complete destruction of the Gulf—and what remains of America’s global credibility as a superpower.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Against Imperialism here.
What’s the best possible outcome with Iran? The United States needs to admit defeat and end the war as quickly as possible, for the longer we wait, the worse the consequences for everyone. The Strait of Hormuz will remain under Iran’s control. The world will be forced to accommodate Iran, beginning with the Gulf States. Some crowned heads may have to roll. America’s regional military bases will probably be abandoned. Iran will emerge as the new regional power.
America didn’t just lose power by attacking Iran. Power does not disappear. It simply moves about. In the Gulf, America’s power will go to Iran.
But America has not been weakened in the Gulf alone. The US has lost so much equipment and materiel in the Gulf that it cannot credibly protect Taiwan and South Korea. That’s China’s back yard. Thus China may be the biggest winner of the Iran War, because she did not actually fight.
Trump lies so much now that the world tends to tune him out. But if you really believe that America is in an existential AI race with China, and Taiwan is a key part of that, then you should be very worried about some statements out of Beijing: Trump’s claim that the plan to sell $14 billion in US defense equipment to Taiwan is a “bargaining chip,” the claim that NVIDIA might be permitted to sell sensitive AI-related technology to China, and the sunny declaration that it would be good for more Chinese money and students to flow into America.
Is Trump signaling his willingness to sell out America to China because he wants Chinese help extricating himself from the Iran War, which we are in because Trump sold out America to Israel?
I just don’t see how patriotic Americans will ever get our country back, Elon Musk will ever go to Mars, and Silicon Valley will ever win its AI race as long as Israel always comes first.
27 comments
Brilliantly written. Things are beginning to look very bleak. Famine in Sub Saharan Africa would be a blessing if only our leaders had the temerity to keep them out. No one is counting on that.
Famine is an evolutionary selection pressure. Could make the claim that it’s in a way even eugenic. There are certain types of people who are more likely to live through it – these are the richer, the powerful, the smarter, the healthier, the more resourceful etc.
When dealing with a narcissist, a common technique is stonewalling. Feigning indifference and just not really responding with emotion at all, just letting all flattery and insults brush past. “Oh okay, that’s cool man….wow”. This cuts the narcissist deeper than anything else because it gives him no narcissistic supply (the energy they feed off, the high that keeps them motivated), and signals that you just really don’t care about him. The opposite of love isn’t hate, after all, it’s indifference. China being belligerent to Trump’s buttering would’ve had him on Truth-social ranting a whole time and given him another enemy to have drama with (Trump loves his drama). China responding to the buttering with positivity would’ve had Trump start trying to treat him like his European allies, he’d inevitably shift to causing drama and picking a fight anyway. Being indifferent to him just makes him slink off, which is really what the Chinese want at this point. A low effort meeting, a low effort dunk, and just being brutally honest, short and blunt with your criticisms. Don’t tilt the global lolcow and get involved with his drama, let him make an ass of himself elsewhere and tank his own reputation, not yours.
But backing cranks in Taiwan who claim sovereignty over the whole of China is not one of them. If Taiwan wants its sovereignty guaranteed, the first step should be to renounce claims to the rest of China.
I’m pretty sure it’s the Chinese Communists that won’t allow Taiwan to renounce it’s claims on the mainland Greg, that’s paradoxically a red-line for them. The reasoning being that if the claims are renounced, then the civil war is over, and then the two separate countries become perceived as being actually two different countries. That’d finalize the divorce. By insisting the situation de-jure remains two factions in a civil war, despite de-facto being two different nation states, the mainland can delay international recognition for Taiwan. It’s a face saving measure and a non-problem for the Taiwanese, and they’re less worried about a Chinese invasion than westerners according to polling.
Is Trump signaling his willingness to sell out America to China because he wants Chinese help extricating himself from the Iran War, which we are in because Trump sold out America to Israel?
He wants someone to blame for the mess he made, I don’t think he’d care about getting out as long as he can point the finger and say “I may have made the mess, but he made it worse”. Narcissists are notorious for not admitting fault or taking responsibility, their first instinct when they’ve stumbled into a humiliating situation is to drag as many people in as possible. Which is exactly the reason he won’t find any help.
Taiwanese politicians are quite adamant about the sovereignty claim. However, once it became clear that the Iran War was lost, the leader of the Kuomintang party, the party of Chiang Kai Shek who founded Taiwan, but which is in opposition now, went to meet Xi.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the Chinese Communists that won’t allow Taiwan to renounce it’s claims on the mainland Greg, that’s paradoxically a red-line for them. The reasoning being that if the claims are renounced, then the civil war is over, and then the two separate countries become perceived as being actually two different countries. That’d finalize the divorce. By insisting the situation de-jure remains two factions in a civil war, despite de-facto being two different nation states, the mainland can delay international recognition for Taiwan. It’s a face saving measure and a non-problem for the Taiwanese, and they’re less worried about a Chinese invasion than westerners according to polling.”
Good explanation. Using the word ‘divorce’ is a very good way of characterizing the mindset of the different parties. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and the KMT (Kuomintang, also known as the Nationalist Party) do not want divorce, whereas the independent mind DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) wants divorce.
All of the East Asia have the patience to endure the waiting time, but lack the courage to take the risk of a gamble. The personality of East Asians prefers to keep the chips on the table unused to bring a sense of security. (At least, the outcome does prove to be better than the permanent split caused by Putin’s hasty actions.)
“If we were in an “existential” race with China over AI, we would simply move the factories out of China’s reach, (…)”.
Trump is recommending that chip manufacturers IMMEDIATELY move their manufacturing facilities to USA. He also expects that the USA will have 40% to 50% of the world chip business by the end of his term.
— Martin Armstrong
And, to Israel, of course. They only moving will be to Israel.
Israel will not make peace possible. It appears like Trump has positioned America in another Vietnam.
The Jews demand their pound of flesh.
Great article! I guess there were no “secret weapons,” after all if there were “secret weapons” they are still “secret.” All the conspiracy theories about “reverse engineered” alien technology displayed on the big, and small screen, and written about on social media all these years, were pipe dreams. 🙃
Israel is the key factor in America’s self-inflicted decline. Jews are loyal to Israel, not to the US. The Epstein Class rules the US, for the benefit of themselves and Jews worldwide, at the expense of the American people.
Jews have contaminated every White country with their disgusting, degenerate ideology. The US would be a healthy, prosperous country, but for Jewish influence. The same holds true for other White countries, especially the Yookay.
Trump and Biden are typical examples of degenerate philosemites.
“But backing cranks in Taiwan who claim sovereignty over the whole of China is not one of them. If Taiwan wants its sovereignty guaranteed, the first step should be to renounce claims to the rest of China.”
It IS the official stance of the ROC (Taiwan) that continue claim of sovereignty over the mainland that is maintaining peace across the straits.
The people in mainland DO NOT hate Taiwan continue claim of sovereignty over the mainland. What they hate is Taiwan renouncing claims to the rest of China. Because to the people in mainland, Taiwan renouncing claims to the rest of China is de facto claiming independence, which will 100% trigger war from the mainland.
The 1992 Consensus between the KMT and the CCP means that it is ok so long each side is claiming sovereignty on the other side. This is an arrangement that is acceptable to both sides.
That’s fascinating, and although the current situation is absurd, I can see why the PRC prefers it to de jure + de facto independence.
I couldn’t stress this enough. Let me put it this way.
If Taiwan (ROC) renounce claim over the mainland. In the PRC’s recognition, this amounted to declaring independence. And this means 100% war will initiate from the PRC side.
The PRC WANTS Taiwan (ROC) to continue claiming sovereignty over the mainland. In fact, this is the stance acceptable to both sides stipulated in the 1992 Consensus in Singapore when the two sides had a meeting, which is often summarized by four words, 一中各表, which means One China with different interpretation. And the PRC’s interpretation is China comprises of the mainland and the Taiwan island, and the China is the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whereas Taiwan’s interpretation is China comprises of the mainland and the Taiwan island, and the China is the Republic of China (ROC).
People think Taiwan will be safer if it stops claiming sovereignty over the mainland. ABSOLUTELY WRONG. It is Taiwan’s continue claiming sovereignty over the mainland that peace has been maintained across the strait so far. This sounds counter-intuitive, but this is true. Internalizing this paradox is the key to resolve the China-Taiwan question.
I have decided to remove the paragraph in question, which is an aside to the argument anyway. Thanks.
For Whites racial thinking is the only useful kind of political thinking.
Our states are gone anyway. All those flags, those national jingles, and those un-enforced borders are worthless. All that bluster about how “great” our “diverse” “nations” are (meaning how rich and militarily powerful our states are) is bluff, and the bluff is being called. The states aren’t even ours any more; they are run by rich Jews and they are being filled up with non-Whites brought in to crowd out and ultimately to eliminate us Whites. We have no stake in the pride and success of projects that exist to secure White genocide and Jewish supremacy.
Race first. Our race is the one thing we must try to salvage from this vast and terrible wreck.
Race first. If you keep your race to can rebuild everything, even after a century of humiliation, as the Chinese are proving. If we lose our race we lose everything forever.
Greg: [T]he Iran War feels like a turning point. America lost the Iran War on day one…
—
Excellent analysis of available news, Greg.
People should have paid more attention to honorable, courageous Joe Kent back in mid-March: “Trump’s Counterterrorism Chief Resigns Over Iran War” at nationalvanguard.org
JOE KENT, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday. saying that there was no justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s attacks on Iran.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” he said in a statement announcing his resignation and including a copy of his resignation letter to Trump. (See image.)…
The main culprit for the century of humiliation was actually the Manchurians. These early horse-riding tribal conquerors later evolved into conspirators similar to the Jews, and most East Asian racists know this.
Whatever the Chinese do, they should never let Christianity become a major force in Chinese culture. From Christianity follows the jews; from the jews follow blacks, ad infinitum. Just look at what Christianity has done for the White man, we have no nations, states, cities, towns, neighborhoods, culture, or racial loyalty. We do have a lot of jews, blacks, browns, yellows, and reds who rule over us without pity, mercy, or compassion. 🙃
Manchurians is not the reason for China’s downfall. The reason is China was a pre-industrialized agricultural economy fighting against a newly industrialized West headed by England and other European powers. The result was preordained.
And absolutely precise evaluation of the situation we are in. It was so humiliating to see trump behaving as he did in China especially allowing them to buy up even more land in America with his excuse being something about disallowing them would cause land prices to crash or some nonsense! GOOD! Let land prices go down so WHITES could buy the damn land!
As Mr. Gould said in this thread though, race needs to be our number one priority. We are going to lose territory, that’s a given. Our Race is going to face something tantamount to what the Germans faced after bravely trying to take on the jewish world order in WW2, we are going to lose one third of our lands if we are lucky, perhaps more, but what’s most important is that our race survives and we consolidate our numbers in a territory or territories exclusive to us. Like Greg and Joe said, this is our century of humiliation so to speak and hopefully we can keep the turdworlderers out of our consolidated territories while we breed ourselves back into the people our ancestors have always been. Two fratricidal world wars have destroyed so many of our warrior bloodlines. It’s going to take some time to rectify this mess morally and genetically. That’s if we still have the will to exist, something Revilo Oliver was convinced by the end of his life we had lost and are doomed to extinction. I still think there is hope or else I wouldn’t bother distressing over such matters. I’d just join the normies and bask in blissfull delusions.
Thanks, good comment.
The “Century of Humiliation” didn’t end in 1949. It continues to this day. I am not talking about Taiwan. The PRC propagated this narrative is certainly for propaganda purpose to position itself as the polity that end China’s woe. If only. I can cite many examples, but I just cite one. In February 1951, in other words, under the PRC’s watch, India invaded and annexed Tawang and occupy it to this day. Tawang is a historic town, being the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama and home to a four-hundred-year-old Tibetan monastery. Most people in China today are oblivious to this history thinking the PRC merely inherits the territorial dispute (called South Tibet by China and Arunachal Pradesh by India) with India from its predecessor and not realizing that it is a new land loss under the PRC’s management because the PRC, having total control on the media, has been suppressing it.
Renewed Tension India China Border Who’s to Blame
Remembering a War – The 1962 India-China Conflict – gregoryclark.net
Oops, the following are the two links I meant to put here but for some reasons it didn’t render the URL:
https://ppr06262023.substack.com/p/renewed-tension-india-china-border
https://gregoryclark.net/others/remembering-a-war-the-1962-india-china-conflict/
Mr. Johnson, this analysis is exceedingly accurate and realistic.
Unfortunately, that means that normies will have no idea what it means, and our rulers will do the opposite of what is in our interest. (Largely, because our rulers are Jews and their enablers. They know this analysis is solid.)
On the bright side, this cabal must crumble in order for us to thrive; and they sow their own destruction.
The bit about bleeding the U.S. dry stood out to me. Yes, I’m a rabid anti-semite. My fault is that it took me more than half of my more-than-fifty years to become one.
Once THEY enter our lands, the process begins. So, if a particular society is taken as an individual entity, it’s taken Americans 400 years to begin to notice the blood-letting. Americans are an “above-average” people. I’m an above-average guy.
Do Americans have another 400 years left to sort this out?
TBH I’m hust not that worried about it.
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