The Malaise Within

Prof. Trifkovic, the Chinese elite wants to be the top dog in the New World Order as much as the Anglo-American elite. So, why has the Anglo-American elite been tearing down its power base, the United States, while at the same time building up the Chinese elite’s power base, China? What does the Anglo-American elite hold over the Chinese elite to keep it subordinated? If the the Anglo-American elite holds nothing over the Chinese elite, why is the Anglo-American elite acting so irrational and illogical?

—Thomas Allen

Franklinton, N.C.

 

 

Instead of the old dichotomy between China’s “one-party dictatorship” and “American democracy,” what we have today is the competition between China’s meritocratic elite—steeped in the classic Confucian values—and America’s postmodern quasi-elite.

 

The latter is recruited exclusively from the intersectional left, which is morbidly obsessed with countless –isms (climatism, transgenderism, multiculturalism, etc.), devoted to “equity” however defined, and terminally steeped in civilizational self-hate. It completely dominates the media, academe, big business (most notably the key internet technology sector), entertainment, and government agencies. It has been, as Mr. Allen says, “tearing down its power base, the United States” because it is imbued with ideological zeal comparable to that of the Bolsheviks, who were tearing down the Russian state, society, and economy a century ago.

 

China’s political leadership is not guided in any meaningful manner by the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao. Had the Kuomintang won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, I am confident that Chiang Kai-Shek’s current succesors would have pursued policies that are not qualitatively different from those pursued by Xi Jinping and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.

 

Those policies are based first on the unstated but deeply rooted conviction that China is the most civilized nation in the world, superior to all other nations and cultures, and therefore destined to be the leading world power by mid-century. Second, they are based on the well-founded but also generally unstated belief that Western civilization is decadent and on its last legs ideologically, morally, and demographically.

 

In January 2017, the Chinese Communist Party published a policy paper on preserving “great traditional Chinese culture,” calling for “active political support for the revival of our traditional cultural heritage.” This sort of action is light-years away from what our current government would do to preserve traditional American culture. To wit, President Biden proudly announced in June that nearly 14 percent of his 1,500 federal agency appointees identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.

 

“We will bury you,” Khrushchev told America 65 years ago. He was wrong: by imposing central planning and collectivized agriculture for ideological reasons, the USSR grossly misused its human and natural resources. Today’s China, however, has solid grounds to believe that it has the means, moral and material, to overtake America by winning a long, nonviolent contest in every field of human endeavor.

 

Unlike the Western tradition, which emerged in the late Renaissance and then blossomed on both sides of the English Channel during the Enlightenment, China does not treat the individual, endowed by natural rights, as the key building block of a good, harmonious polity. It gives absolute primacy to the family, the community, the Han ethnicity, and the State. It does not see diversity as strength but as a self-evident weakness to be exploited. Accordingly, China does not accept immigrants and asylum seekers and its elite has no qualms about describing Islam as a violent cult. Most of China’s 1.4 billion people accept the legitimacy of the system that ensures stability and prosperity, the tangible proof of “the mandate from heaven.”

 

Horrified by the quarter-century of Mao’s revolutionary misrule, of which it has a vivid collective memory, the Chinese elite is loath to disturb what it sees as the natural order. It shares an essentially conservative consensus on gender roles, marriage, family, local community, and the nation. It will continue to uphold the hierarchical order in a competitive, merit-based society: good grades, loyalty to the state, and hard work will be rewarded.

 

China’s elite has an abiding contempt for the ongoing American obsession with race, gender, sexuality, and all related pathologies. At the same time it expects to enjoy the fruits of the malaise, which has the potential to destroy America from within. The outcome of this world-historical competition is not in doubt, unless a miracle comparable to Trump’s 2016 election victory repeats itself (perhaps with a more rational GOP candidate) in 2024.