The CC/PRC using rare earths elements as an instrument to try to control the economies and thus, the policies of other countries is another clear indication of the shamelessly and blunt unhidden aggressive agenda of Beijing to exert dominance over both its regional neighbors and eventually the rest of us - yes, you and I.

There's nothing subtle in the heavy footed and klutz approaches of Beijing to begin now to use its economic clout and leverage to control the economies and government policies of other countries.

Xi Pinying, the CPC apparachik who in 2013 will become the new leader of the PRC and who hasn't any other claim to respectability or credibility than that feeble credential, has said that the CPC/PRC is not trying to export revolution. That's because the otherwise historically slow and dense Chinese learned a powerful lesson from the failure of the USSR, recognizing that trying to export revolution would create another self destructive Cold War.

Instead, the CPC/PRC is conspicuously exerting its newfound economic power to try to subdue and subjugate other countries, Japan being foremost on the agenda. Why Japan? Because the CPC/PRC knows it cannot become a global hegemon without first becoming a regional power. To become a regional power, the CPC/PRC must subdue and subordinate Japan.

There's nothing subtle about the cave men of Beijing who carry a big club and pound it anywhere, where ever and whenever they think they can use it. This klutz approach is no better than trying to export revolution. It is in fact an organized and systematic campaign by Beijing to bring the world under the control of its fascist censoring dictatorship and state corporatism.

Beijing is playing a deadly dangerous game and it's more than unfortunate for all of us that the arrogant domineering dopes in Beijing cannot realize the fact.

The United States of America, which conceived, initiated and completed both the Manhattan Project to end WW@ and the Apollo

(Let's try this again.)

The United States of America, which in response to Hitler's Germany initiated and completed the successful conclusion the Manhattan Project to suddenly end WW2, then later conducted the first human mission(s) to the Moon and back, certainly can gear up quickly to get up to speed, and then much more, to become independent of the CPC/PRC current but transitory dominance of the rare earth elements resource market.

The Jung Gwo/CPC/PRC are ham handed fools to show their hand in using REE as instruments of their economic and foreign policies so readily and imprudently as they presently are doing.

Any 'central country' aka the 'middle kingdom,' that in its grandest of grandiose delusions wants to try to dominate and rule the world impresses no one by such a blatant and heavy handed use of its state and export policies to try to impose its fascist authoritarian attitudes and behaviors against Japan and the West and thereby try to dominate and control the democracies and their free peoples of the world.

Who could miss the bull in the China Shoppe that Beijing is in this matter, which is only an early symptom of the CPC/PRC mindset of bullying and bossing the world to bow to it and to comply with its fascist censoring willfulness? Beijing is self revealing of its nothing less than frothing at the mouth impulse/compulsiveness to use its economic power sooner and immediately rather than later to try to gain control of the global economy and to become the fascist censoring dictatorial hegemon of the world.

This domineering Jung Gwo policy raises the question as to what major modern and future movements or trends of human history and civilization does Beijing stand for or represent? The fact and reality is that the Jung Gwo/CPC/PRC are a reactionary force of history in their absolute opposition to the modern philosophies of government, i.e., democracy, democratic society, culture, civilization.

The Jung Gwo, i.e., the Chinese make their claim to rule the world only on the basis of their being the Jung Gwo and in their nostalgia for their 5000 year Jung Gwo civilization of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and nothing more that those highly objectionable vacuous and reactionary claims. Reactionary and regressive through and through.

Taipei Times

Editorials
Fri, Mar 12, 2010 - Page 8?

China shows signs of neo-fascism
By J. Michael Cole ???

With its strong emphasis on technology, the military, strong single-party leadership and a collective national identity that refuses to recognize pluralism, the PRChina is displaying increasing — and worrying — symptoms of fascism.

From the military parade surrounding the 60th anniversary of the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Oct. 1 to forced relocation and assimilation programs targeting ethnic minority groups such as the Uighurs, the PRC is in many ways reminding us of the fascist states that reared their ugly heads in the first half of the previous century.

In some ways, it is difficult to apply that term to the rising dragon, primarily because of some marked differences from its predecessors. For one, fascist states tended to be short-lived and led by strong — and often charismatic — rulers. he PRC, even if we take 1949 as its starting point, has a long history and its leaders, with the possible exception of former premier Zhou Enlai (???), are not known for their charisma.

The PRC's embrace of capitalism in the early 1990s has also masked its fascistic tendencies, because “unrestrained capitalism” was one of the principal targets of fascism. The fact that the PRC finds its roots in communism and 19th century European class conflict — both of which fascism traditionally opposed — can also mislead the observer.

Still, today’s PRC arguably represents fascism 2.0, neo-­fascism or “fascism with Chinese characteristics.”

One of the most peremptory signs of fascism is the state’s negation of individualism and the idea that citizens draw their identity and raison d’etre from the state. Evidence of this emerged earlier this week when Chinese Vice Sports Minister Yu ­Zaiqing (???) chided 18-year-old Olympic champion short track speed skater Zhou Yang (??) for thanking her parents — but not her country — after winning gold at the Vancouver Winter Games last month.

“It’s OK to thank your parents, but first you should thank the motherland. You should put the motherland first, not only thank your parents,” Yu told the Southern Metropolis Daily.

In his book "Anatomy of Fascism," American historian Robert Paxton defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites abandons democratic liberties,” traits that are apparent in the PRC today.

Traits.

In his essay" Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt," published in the New York Review of Books in 1995, Italian intellectual Umberto Eco highlights aspects of fascism that have disturbing reverberations in the contemporary PRC. Features of Ur-Fascism, or “eternal fascism,” Eco writes, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

Let us explore the features unearthed by Eco that apply to the PRC today.

For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

In the contemporary PRC, this translates into the state’s intolerance of dissent. Reporters (foreign and local), rights activists and ordinary citizens face censure, arrest and loss of employment if they dare criticize the state. Critical coverage of everything from lagging reconstruction in quake-hit Sichuan to calls, recently published in 13 daily newspapers, for an end to the unjust hukou passport — a system introduced during the Maoist era that prevents most Chinese, especially residents in rural areas, from moving to other parts of the country — is seen as treason. Even when motivated by love of country, anyone who criticizes the authorities over such matters as environmental catastrophes, social inequity, corruption, forced relocation, outbreaks of disease (such as SARS) and censorship can be assured of negative repercussions for himself and his relatives. [The Nobel Peace Laureate] Liu Xiaobo (???) and Gao Zhisheng (???) are two recent examples.

This phenomenon is behind Beijing’s oft-used reference to the “feelings of the Chinese people” being hurt by negative news coverage or other counties’ policies that run counter to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) national policies.

Disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Eco writes: “Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”

In his book "When China Rules the World," British author Martin Jacques, whose views on the PRC are hardly critical, argues that the greatest problem likely to accompany the PRC's rise will not be political, but rather “Han Chinese” racism. Beijing’s attempts to portray its citizens, regardless of ethnic background, as “Han Chinese,” is part of that feature. Its refusal to regard Taiwanese or Aborigines as ethnic groups in their own right is also a symptom of its enmity toward diversity.

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-­Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This, of course, is the very core of nationalism.

“At the root of the Ur-­Fascist psychology,” Eco writes, “there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”

Yu’s berating of Zhou for thanking her parents but “neglecting” the nation — her “only privilege” — stems from this phenomenon. The obsession with plots, both domestic and international, is also prevalent in CCP rhetoric, from fears of US “encirclement” and “containment” to “splittism” in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan.

The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

“However,” Eco writes, “the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the democratic opponent.

This obviously applies to perceptions of the US and, to a lesser extent, Japan and India. It also explains fears, mostly expressed by political scientists, that the PRC could “miscalculate” by expecting that it could prevail in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait despite US participation. As the PRC's military modernizes, reinforced by notions of victimhood and nationalism, the likelihood that it will embark on military adventurism — either against Taiwan or elsewhere, such as a border conflict with India — will increase.

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology … [and] cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

“The members of the party are the best among the citizens [and] every citizen can [or ought to] become a member of the party,” Eco writes. However, “knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically, but was conquered by force, [the leadership] also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.”

The CCP’s claims that Chinese are “not ready” for democracy also derive from this aspect of fascism.

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism.

“For Ur-Fascism ... individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter,” Eco writes.

Not only do Chinese citizens have no “common will,” but the “interpreter” — the CCP — endeavors to ensure that no large group can achieve common will, which would threaten its hold on power. Religious groups like the Falun Gong and the Roman Catholic Church, opposition parties, ethnic groups and protesters — all are closely monitored, forced underground or dispersed when the “threat” of organized opposition to central rule begins to form.

This fear is also inspired by memories of warlordism, which for decades compelled the CCP to impose restrictions on each region’s control over the armed forces, even at the cost of loss of effectiveness.

“There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People,” Eco writes.

The CCP's control of information, its use of Internet Police to monitor Web and SMS activity, and a strong emphasis on Chinese symbolism and culture that is prevalent in the film industry are Eco’s future, and it has arrived.

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

“Elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning,” Eco writes.

The CCP’s imposition of simplified Chinese, which deprives Chinese citizens access to ancient texts and, in many ways, created an intellectual Year Zero in 1949, is such an instrument, as is censorship of the media and control of the material allowed to enter the country.

“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes … [It] can come back under the most innocent of disguises,” Eco writes.

It is rising next door.

(J. Michael Cole is a journalist at the ‘Taipei Times.’)