Kim Jong-fade is in Beijing getting advice on how to fleece witting Russian Agent Orange in their up-coming talks (Credit, MAJOR CREDIT to Trump for the summit). But I digress. Xi Jinping always has the same wan smile on his face. Look at his mouth compared to Kim's. Okay, as the Chinese will surely point out, Kim can never be Chinese. Then look at the other Chinese in the troop review. (I'm still insulted I never got a review of troops when I went there the second time. I deserved it, they've been reviewing me ever since (Oh! By the way, that reminds me, they were here just the other day. Opened up ye olde Publocc and the dashboard was in Chinese. Again. I'll finish this below. Too many digressions.)). Xi wears that same wan smile whether he's meeting Kim, Trump, or his maker. One cannot read a face that never changes. I saw a picture of Xi when he was a young guy during the Cultural Revolution, one of the sent down youth. Same unreadable face. His predecessor, Hu Jintao, had a wonderful, broad smile. And a serious face, and, and. This one: one. We all wear masks.
Okay now to finish the digression. When the Chinese are here, and understand, they are not just reviewing me, they take control of the frigging internal dashboard...and don't do anything else. They don't empty my account of ad "revenue," they don't disable the website, nothing. I was re-reading Kissinger's On China last weekend and that is what Chinese do! In fact, On China opens with an example of this, what 'Enery calls "offensive deterrence." The example was the 1962 (I believe it was) India-China Himalayas war. Mao went frigging nuts on the Indian army, I mean just mauled them, crushed them. Youlda thought he was making his way for New Delhi. And then Mao stopped. Just stopped...And returned captured Indian materiel, tanks, etc. (?) It was fucked up, man. Kissinger's point was that in Mao's discussion of the planned attack with his generals he hearkened back to two other wars, one with India, centuries, millenia, ago. "See, our ancestors did it this way. That's what we're gonna do." And the generals got the references! Not like us stupid Americans, "We gotta avoid another sneak attack like the Germans made on Pearl Harbor." China is the oldest continuous civilization on earth was HK's point.
Offensive deterrence is the bright idea that going batshit on an enemy will deter him into not sweating the small stuff. Like, taking out North Korea's nuclear capability, "That'll show Kim! He won't do that again!" What? Dude...
Needless to say the Chinese strategy of offensive deterrence has not traveled well. Other countries do. not. get. it. But the Chinese keep doing it. 1969: The Chinese launched a huge attack on Soviet troops in their border "war." Just destroyed a Soviet division. How do you think the Soviet Union took that? "Well, if you're going to be that way about it just take those islands". No. Next thing you know Soviet diplomats were asking their counterparts what their governments' position would be if the Soviet Union, like, nuked China. "Those squinty-eyed bastards!" was the actual comment a Soviet official made to an American official at the UUUU NNNN. Try to wrap your brain around a Soviet guy saying that to an American guy at the height of the Soviet-American COLDDD WARRR! It severely messed with their heads.
Chinese did the same in Korea. Sent 1,000,000 of their best squinty eyes into direct combat with the Americans. Nearly got themselves nuked there, too! MacArthur wanted to A-bomb China. Truman had to fire him.
Cultural Revolution: Struggle sessions in which the victim casually locks his house door to keep his "appointment" with the Red Guards and at the stadium entrance replies to the screamed query on his business there, "Aren't you having a struggle session? You can't have a struggle session without me." That struggle session guy "got" what was "really" going on (whatever that was) and took it in stride. Because he was Chinese. Non-Chinese? Not so much.
So much of Chinese behavior is symbolic. It is palimpsest. In actions where China's existential survival is put at risk (Chinese really need to ditch offensive deterrence), in actions of real violence to other Chinese, in fucking with an American's stupid blog, in the biggest of ways and in the most petty, Chinese behavior is best understood from an anthropological perspective. And even then you can't make sense of it. Like Xi Jinping's wan smile.
