Chapter 2 Things are changing: The West's "velvet" tested China's "gauntlet" in 2008

"Juniors" are unhappy, and the consequences are serious In the relationship between China and the West, there may have been many things that were ambiguous. In the words of scholars, they are the so-called structural contradictions. All these contradictions gradually became clear in 2008.The overseas Olympic torch relay event before the Wenchuan Earthquake has aroused the attention of many circles at home and abroad.What is most uncertain about it is that no one expected that in 2008 Chinese young people would behave so bravely and decisively, with the courage to act, and knowledgeable and cultured young people could make such quick responses.What made them burst out the power of instant cohesion?This issue is very worthy of attention.

This iconic event is the backlash of Chinese young people caused by the Olympic torch relay, including boycotting Carrefour.It should be noted that the actions of the "Torch Generation" were not the Boxer-style ones. The young people responded based on their own knowledge and understanding of Chinese history and reality.Although the current assessment cannot be too accurate, this is the first time the West has seen a rebound of young Chinese people in the 30 years since the reform and opening up. Perhaps in the eyes of Westerners, an Olympic torch relay is nothing, and it does not actually encroach on China's great interests. Therefore, this kind of backlash caused the West to immediately show a gesture of surprise.

One of the characteristics of young people's boycott of Carrefour in various cities this time is that they immediately took action to confront the West with actions, and the targets were chosen precisely.Without this move, it is hard to argue that the Chinese government's move to snub France at Davos in 2009 would have happened.Is this kind of value choice with statistical significance based on the responses of young people, which promotes China's foreign policy, a product with "Chinese characteristics" in the context of globalization?My personal understanding is this.Especially in the past 20 years, in a sense, China has been working for foreign countries and using its own hard-earned money to support Western countries to live a luxurious life. It can be said that the formation and accumulation of this material culture is the result of the youth of China. A condition and a catalyst for a person to react after being emotionally humiliated.

In a sense, this is an opportunity for China's upper echelons to adjust.Otherwise, the Olympic Games is likely to become a battlefield between China and the West, and the performance of Chinese young people on this battlefield will become an even more difficult page in Chinese history. The U.S. is indeed rather sluggish this time. On August 8, 2008, when the Olympic Games opened, the Russian-Georgian war broke out. The U.S. could not judge whether the Russian army would reach Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, for at least five days. Under such circumstances We had no choice but to ring the gong at the Olympic Games to withdraw our troops. If we didn't have trouble with China after the Olympic Games.It was France that made the most trouble. Chinese young people immediately boycotted Carrefour, which is a symbol of business, very directly.At that time, I wrote a blog posting the cover of the magazine "Public Life" during the 1935 "12. .

What is the driving force behind this seemingly radical action?More than half a year later, the economic crisis broke out. The wealth accumulated by the Chinese people over the past 30 years or even 60 years is so vulnerable to changes in the external environment. Is this a new "war threat"?I feel that this is a kind of early warning rebound of young people in the face of the possibility of the West exploiting China again.Therefore, there is every reason to believe that the young people's rebound after the torch incident became a landmark symbol of China's relations with the West.This incident seems to be less intense than when the Chinese embassy was bombed in 1999, but if it goes back to 1999, if it can have the energy of the rebound in 2008, what an amazing level it will be!

From 1999 to 2008, it was a dynamic process of cultural change.During this period, there were two military incidents: one was the "bombing of the museum" in 1999; the other was the "collision of planes in the South China Sea" in 2001.These two incidents were not widely reported by the mainstream media at the time, but they became the main topics of discussion among young people on the Internet.The topic on the Internet actually completed a cultural accumulation for the rebound in 2008, but no one noticed this statistically significant cultural accumulation.Therefore, when the rebound came out, the Chinese did not expect it, and neither did Westerners.Its significance is not just that the West bullied China, and Chinese young people rebounded for a moment of dignity, but that what has been accumulated from the 1990s to the present suddenly exploded.There is no doubt that those Westerners who have played the "color revolution" very skillfully are thinking about this matter and doing a lot of statistical work.Because the contradiction of capitalist expansion needs to maintain its advantages through various means, including industrial transfers, financial tools, and "color revolutions" targeting young people in developing countries.Whether it is to take advantage of the Chinese market or the desire to take advantage of the modernization process, in short, the West needs to shape China in a way that is in line with their interests. However, the sudden outbreak in 2008 made them realize that shaping China into a There was a huge obstacle to their ideal model.With the emergence of structural contradictions between China and the West, this has become a very critical factor.

The rebound of young people in 2008 actually contained the cultural accumulation of successive generations of Chinese people since the Opium War in 1840.Why is it that the cultural accumulation since 1840, when this generation encounters such an accidental event, bursts out such intense energy?Where is its statistical significance?In my opinion, it is very different from individual college students who took to the streets after the "bombing of the embassy" in 1999. Its appeal, organization and response far surpassed that in 1999. In other words, this is An iconic twist.I always feel that behind the young people's rebound this time, there is a kind of motivation for them to fight for their own future. That is to say, they feel that if they continue to be soft on the West, their own future will be castrated and deprived. It can be said that it was the first time they linked their personal future with the future of the country.When young people in a country find that their own destiny and the destiny of the country are co-existing, and express it in a fierce way, it is hardly a sign of a changing era.

In addition, the pressure on the elite is the problem of forcing the rich to donate after the Wenchuan earthquake.Some young people told me: I donated 1/3 of my salary, and I queued for two hours to donate blood. I just want them to donate so much money, so I believe that forced donation is right.Forced to be "noble", some people accused it of "kidnapping", so it was kidnapped!What's the matter!The young man said: I am noble, and you must be noble today.Why did Wang Shi fall into such a big stumble, because he was not sensitive to this thing and didn't know it.In general, the elite were moved.After the earthquake, everyone worked together and did a good job, and the leaders performed even better.The key now is that you are noble, and the account of your lack of nobleness has been turned out.

This strong pressure is a positive phenomenon. None of the adults expected that the post-80s who were originally thought to be semi-drug-addicted and addicted to the Internet suddenly became noble.Many people, including celebrities, are noble in this situation.The political pressure formed by this young class cannot be ignored, because their behavior reflects the trend of China's future development.From a cultural point of view, this kind of "nobleness" spreads upwards and toward the center from the young people at the bottom, and even from overseas and marginal young people.

After the earthquake, I met Liu Huan and chatted with him. He had just returned from the United States to donate for the Sichuan earthquake.Later, Liu Huan became anxious. It was already 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and there were still two hours left. Where could I get it?There was no way, the assistant said to go to China Merchants Bank, and Liu Huan went together.Originally, it was against the regulations to withdraw 500,000 in cash, and an appointment was required. Later, China Merchants Bank recognized Liu Huan and heard that they were in a hurry to donate for the earthquake. The bank staff immediately brought out 500,000 in cash.Later we saw Liu Huan put a big bag into the donation box on TV.Although these tiny details are a kind of little nobility, what they reflect is the result of a kind of cultural spread.At that time, some celebrities did not donate much and were scolded by others. They either didn't know that cash was required at the time, were not too stingy, or it was too late.

We can see that the entire society has formed a "field" driven by the sudden nobleness of young people when they defended the Olympic torch.Many people invest in money, and what they get in return is to be "noble" with young people.This shows that even in a highly commercialized society, pressure from the bottom can produce "noble" pressure.It can be said that without the noble behavior of young people defending the Olympic torch, the "nobility of the whole people" in the Wenchuan earthquake would not have come so quickly and violently.From a military point of view, this is a mobilization and organizational capability.In fact, the West has been clamoring about the "China military threat theory" there, but this time I think they really feel what a threat is.Not long ago, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command visited China. When he went to the National Defense University, a Chinese military officer introduced the basic situation of China’s military. A friend of mine was there at the time. The expression of the U.S. Pacific Commander changed slightly when he reached 100 million people, but when he talked about other things, he didn't respond at all. The power of the people and the igniting of emotions are a kind of pressure on internal and external troubles. Of course, it cannot be said that the whole society is noble if the people are noble. If you repeatedly force it like this, it is possible to realize the overall nobleness of the society in the end. Because external pressure is exerted and gradually becomes stronger, the people will rebound.The most typical is the protest against the torch relay being blocked in France.Regarding the matter of blocking the torch, your police don’t care about the city of Paris, so I will block Carrefour. We don’t care whether blocking Carrefour is right or wrong, and whether it is in line with national policies. This is indeed the most direct response, an activist response, and the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Didn't say it was wrong. Our Fortune: Historical Pain Since 1840 With the outbreak of the financial crisis, China's industrial structure is forced to adjust, and the structural contradictions between China and the West will make young people "unhappy" more and more, and this kind of "unhappy" pressure will produce noble, When there are many noble things, one will naturally look for big goals.The biggest sign of the torch incident is the emergence of the soil for big goals in China.That is to say, when young people in a country, while examining their own future, find some connection with the big goal of national development, it is not far from the formation of the big goal. After the Cold War, we have already seen the Western expansion model very clearly. We use the spread of ideas to overthrow the system naturally formed in late-developing countries, or use precision strikes to destroy this system, and then complete its expansion model.Of course, its mode of expansion has also changed, which is the so-called post-modern way. From the perspective of historical development, the most important thing is that the first-mover capitalist countries used a large-scale war to remove obstacles to capitalist development, that is, surplus products and personnel. That's basically what happened in World War II.Later, nuclear weapons, weapons of indiscriminate lethality, came out, freezing its original war model to solve the capitalist economic crisis. On the one hand, with the rise of the socialist model in the Soviet Union, the West wants to adjust labor welfare and engage in ideological games with the Soviet Union; on the other hand, it uses color revolutions or precise strikes to destroy the system that is an obstacle and the leadership group they do not like. To destroy a seemingly abstract institutionalized thing, which was particularly evident after the Cold War.Of course, behind this is mainly to smash the industrialization achievements of some countries. The US method is to use financial derivatives and industrial transfer.Cooperating with financial tools and industrial transfer is the promotion of some countries, such as China, which is the most obvious example.The United States favors China economically, allowing you to lower the wages of workers in processing trade, supply them with cheap daily commodities, maintain the economic environment for them to develop and practice financial tools, and at the same time maintain the advantage of the sword in your hand with the money earned from financial tools , such as ballistic missile defense systems.Everyone has seen the financial crisis, especially the young people, who finally realized that the situation of being sold by others and counting the money for others has cruelly happened to us.This can be said to be one of the important reasons why young people are unhappy in 2008. There are precedents for this way of removing obstacles in the West, and when we remove others, some of us Chinese still cheer along.Whether it is Milosevic or Saddam, it does not matter whether he is a dictatorship or a dictatorship. Its system is very complete and orderly, and it operates by itself.The West either uses the method of color revolution, or the method of precision strike, or uses both methods. The typical one is the Yugoslavia. What method does the Yugoslavia use?It is to hit first and then release.Hit first, hit almost, and then a color revolution throws you off, which is dual use. In 1999, the United States first used precision strikes to destroy Yugoslavia, and then played a color revolution in 2000, throwing Milosevic to the Hague court. This can be said to be the most successful version.There is no need for the United States to destroy too many of your industrial resources, because the next step is to complete industrial transfer.After the industrial transfer, what should I do next?The next step is financial tools, through which you can absorb the profits of your industrial manufacturing industry.If your system and leadership continue to hinder my expansion model, I will use precision strikes or color revolutions to kill you, and then foster an elite, let you serve as a base for my industrial transfer, and at the same time build my financial tools. A ladder to extract profits. This is the way postmodern capitalism is played, and it is a very standard mode played by the West. Its method is that if you hinder me, I will get rid of you.Of course, what the United States is most afraid of is nuclear weapons. Why do they attach so much importance to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues?If Yugoslavia had nuclear weapons back then, the result might have been different.Now India and Pakistan may be in a stalemate because of India's terrorist attacks. Both of them have nuclear weapons, especially Pakistan is the only Muslim country that has nuclear weapons. Will the financial crisis here become the fuse that triggers a world war?This is very noteworthy. From the perspective of the Chinese, the West’s dealing with China is nothing more than two points: the first is to use the ballistic missile defense system to delay the nuclear weapons in your hands to prevent you from fighting with them; the second is to use financial tools to control you.Of course, the prerequisite for financial tools to manipulate you is that you open the channel for industrial transfer to him.Back then, we did not have the opportunity that the Soviet Union had in 1929. Taking advantage of the large-scale economic crisis in the West, we bought so many technologies and equipment at low prices, and hired so many Western engineers and technicians.If we want to achieve modernization, we have no choice but to act as a base for other people's industrial transfer, the so-called "exchanging the market for technology".However, it should be said that we did not plan carefully when we decided to do this, and it is impossible to have a well-designed strategic direction: one day I will exceed your "big goal".In this regard, whether it is Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union, they have done better than us.Although they made many mistakes and paid a huge price when catching up with the first-developed industrialized countries, this does not mean that later-developed countries, especially big countries like China, can only be vassals of others. Fortunately, we have had historical pain since 1840, which allowed us to quickly develop "two bombs and one star" after 1949, and when people used financial tools to absorb our profits while transferring our industry, nuclear weapons were not available. was crushed.This is very important to China. The August 8, 2008 Georgia-Russia conflict was a landmark event in regard to the nuclear weapons of lagging powers.It turns out that the United States and Russia are basically balanced in terms of nuclear power, but the U.S. overlord insisted on building an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe and intercepting them during the take-off phase of Russian intercontinental missiles, ultimately destroying this cold war. The so-called "balance of terror" came out, so Russia can only do everything possible to maintain the balance and maintain the equal status of the two sides by counterattacking.This point, as the strategic game between the United States and Russia becomes more and more obvious, the military battle will definitely be staged like a serial drama, which is clearly seen by young Chinese, and they will naturally think about why Russia is doing this. Russia has completed its industrialization and accumulated a large amount of military technology resources during the Cold War, so the Western strategy is to smash it in an all-round way, encircle you within the scope of NATO through the ballistic missile defense system, and make your nuclear weapons useless. Eventually it reaches the point where you can't make it.Because according to the negotiations between the United States and Russia, the nuclear warheads of the two sides will be reduced to 1,700-2,200, and then they will negotiate to reduce the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000.Russia said that we can quit, but if we don’t, the United States also has a trick: I will sanction you in other places, and I will torment you.Why did Russian military officers call Gorbachev the "missile stripper president" and Yeltsin the president who "exchanged nuclear safety for wine"? nuclear warheads.You can’t do it unless you destroy it, I have other ways, cut off food and water, so that you can’t eat or drink, and support the opposition forces inside you, anyway, it will make you uncomfortable, make your people uncomfortable, and make your regime lose its legitimacy.But the problem is that the United States is too ambitious this time. It is clear that its hundreds of thousands of troops are trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it will also deploy a ballistic missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The 2008 Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, published a new book "What's wrong with America?" ", which clearly stated that the Bush administration was politically incorrect and used "9.11" to meet the needs of oil and military-industrial interest groups, and did not consider the combination of combating terrorism and economic development at all.However, the neoconservative elites of the Bush administration exposed the real "big goal" of the United States in the Russia-Georgia conflict, which made the back of a country like Russia that had "big goals" shudder.It should be said that this is the "big goal" of the Bush administration that has pushed Russia into a path of exploring the "big goal".From the perspective of Russia's resources, it is impossible for it not to return to the Soviet era militarily.Just look at Russia's desperate test-launch of intercontinental missiles and its first visit to Latin America by warships after the Cold War. There are shadows of the former Soviet Union. Tear off the veil of the West and open up the veins of "unhappiness" In May 2003, the American Beatles, which had been banned in the former Soviet Union, held a concert in Russia’s Red Square. The original requirement was 20,000 tickets, but 120,000 young Russians crowded the Red Square to revel. What excited the young people was the song "Back to the Soviet Union" written by the band's lead singer Paul McCartney in 1968.Judging from the video on the Internet, when he sang, all the crazy young Russians waved the flag of the former Soviet Union's sickle-axe and shouted loudly, and Putin was present at that time.Later, during the military parade in Russia's Red Square, he replaced the flag that he walked in the front with the flag that the Soviet army planted on the German Parliament Building.This detail fully demonstrates that under the pressure of the West, Russia uses its new soft power to establish "big goals" among young people. Looking at the game between major powers from a military perspective is a very important perspective for China to re-establish the "big goal" of commercial warfare.In fact, the United States and Japan are currently stepping up the deployment of "Aegis" anti-missile destroyers in the Western Pacific (18 in the United States and 5 in Japan). Intercontinental missiles are intercepted during takeoff.However, such major trends related to future national security seem to be discussed only in military forums and a few military journals, and only young people who like the military will see them, and many people in the academic world do not regard this threat as a boundary Studying the future development of China without the conditions is just talking about the economy, and behind the talk about the economy is the logic of the supremacy of interests and the culture of individualism. Therefore, in the mainstream political ecology, the lack of "big goals" is natural. Now that the financial tools are messed up, the public has seen something.Before the transfer of Western industries to financial tools, there are some more tangible things, the so-called "world factories", which allow China to produce low-end things, and then control oil in the Middle East and Central Asia.At the same time, after you become the "world factory", smash that part of your own industry. The way to smash your independent industry is first to support your processing industry, use your cheap labor and cheap land resources to support your low-end industry, and then use financial tools to crush your high-end independent industry. This is against China Method.Through financial tools, let you take financial Viagra and financial aphrodisiacs, so that a large amount of your capital cannot be invested in independent industries. On the one hand, it enters the financial casino for them to withdraw, and on the other hand, it turns into their bonds through export exchange.The result now is that they messed up their financial tools, migrant workers returned to their hometowns, and China's stock market crashed. This gave us the "Chinese April Youth" who were born to protect the Olympic torch. I took a living Western model education class.It turns out that what makes me unhappy is first a big feeling, but why are you unhappy?This time, I suddenly got through and figured it out. It was amazing in 2008. After the financial crisis broke out, young people's rebound on whether China should buy US bonds to save the US economy actually connected with the torch. Interestingly, after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the United States decided to sell about US$6.5 billion in weapons to Taiwan. At that time, young people online opposed the purchase of US bonds.Although some scholars, from the perspective of economics and realism, believed that young people were motivated by emotion, they did not dare to speak out publicly at the time, and officials at least immediately denied the purchase of U.S. bonds again. In fact, there is an underlying logic hidden here, that is, the adults do not do things well, and as a result, the adults will use the children's future to pay for their negligence.And once the child sees this, the problem arises.After the financial crisis, when many government officials were busy discussing how to recruit "financial talents" on Wall Street, young people on the Internet were discussing the acquisition of 81% shares of French Soma CNC machine tool company by Gansu Xinghuo Machine Tool Company for 2 million euros. , They know how difficult it is for China to purchase five-axis CNC machine tool technology alone.This is of great significance for China to break through the bottlenecks of thin-walled structures and complex-shaped aviation and submarine engine processing technologies.Interestingly, these young people may be the ones who called for boycotting Carrefour on the Internet a few months ago. If they were the Boxers and Red Guards that some intellectual elites called, then they should smash all French things.It can be seen that things are not as simple as the previous generation imagined with their own historical memory. In 2008, during the outbreak of the Russia-Georgia War, I wrote the following about the situation of the post-80s generation in Russia: "Although the post-Soviet generation of young Russians lacks an in-depth understanding of the country's history, many of them have similar bitter memories in childhood - the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left their grandparents and Parents have lost their life savings. These young people are neither the lost generation of the former Soviet Union in the turmoil of the mid-1990s, nor the spiritually empty, consumer-obsessed post-Soviet generation predicted by Russian writer Victor Pelevin. Pepsi generation'. These young Russians who grew up with the Internet and hip-hop songs have become staunch supporters of Putin's foreign policy, but they have abandoned the Kumon-style preaching language. For these energetic young people , rap music, aerobics, novelty summer camps, and state-of-the-art computer labs are more attractive." The whole world heard it, the Russian teenagers sang songs like this: 15 years ago when our country was destroyed they mock us Our parents lost their life savings no pension no future But now we're back on our feet Now we're going to act and we'll be stronger Because our ancestors once shed blood and sacrificed to defend the motherland during the war! In 2008, our leaders also began laying flowers in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes.But in the previous year, the movie "Lust? Caution" in which you took off your pants in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes was actually able to be staged. This shows that our top management has also changed, and this change has something to do with the external environment and internal conditions.