{"id":203917,"date":"2022-01-31T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=203917"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:16","slug":"mr-xi-plays-davos-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/01\/mr-xi-plays-davos-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Xi Plays Davos Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

A collective West \u201cled\u201d by unspeakable mediocrities looks at the Russia-China strategic partnership as if it was something like a double-headed Anti-Christ. Xi, for his part, seems not to be impressed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

19 Jan 2022 – <\/em>The virtual, special address<\/a> by President Xi Jinping to the World Economic Forum\u2019s 2022 Davos Agenda exhibits all the elements of a riddle inside an enigma.<\/p>\n

At first, it certainly could be interpreted as a simultaneous message to the Empire of Chaos and global public opinion.<\/p>\n

Much more than prescribing \u201ceffective doses against unilateralism, decoupling and ideological antagonism\u201d \u2013 not so subtle allusions to the usual suspects \u2013 Xi most of all positioned China as the indispensable driver of Globalization 2.0.<\/p>\n

The address was simultaneous to the announcement of China\u2019s GDP growth at 8.1% in 2021 and commodity trading reaching new highs: the center of global manufacturing is the world\u2019s biggest exporter for the 8th<\/sup> consecutive year.<\/p>\n

The implementation of the word\u2019s largest free-trade zone, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) across Asia-Pacific, will just solidify the trend.<\/p>\n

Trade with the myriad partner nations of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increased by 23.6% \u2013 and that essentially means increased Global South trade. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China increased by 20.2% in dollar terms: once again, as in 2020, China was the top FDI destination on the planet.<\/p>\n

The whole trade\/commerce landscape should even improve in 2022 when the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) is fully ratified. France, currently presiding the EU Council, is manifestly in favor.<\/p>\n

Compounding the trends, China\u2019s GDP per capita has reached $12,551, crucially above the notorious \u201cmiddle income trap\u201d; above the global average GDP per capita; and now entering \u201chigh-income country\u201d territory, as defined by the World Bank.<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s key message, when it comes to addressing \u201cDavos Man\u201d \u2013 the trademark WEF audience \u2013 was unmistakable: China is and will continue to remain the safest of havens for global Capital. The Masters of the Universe \u2013 from BlackRock down \u2013 duly nodded their approval.<\/p>\n

But then, there are \u201ccountercurrents\u201d. And that ominous, imminent global economy crisis.<\/p>\n

Take me to the river<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now we enter the deeper enigma of how interpenetrated Xi\u2019s vision and the Davos agenda may, or may not, be.<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s main theme is multilateralism. And that\u2019s the context in which he introduced his rich \u201ccountercurrents\u201d metaphor. Xi de facto held the collective West as \u201ccountercurrents\u201d in the river of History \u2013 incapable of stopping its inexorable flow to the sea.<\/p>\n

Yet these \u201ccountercurrents\u201d, as Xi defines them, are not merely trying to stop the flow of economic globalization. He leaves it subtly implied they are trying to stop the flow of Globalization 2.0 as led by China: a very strong economy working in tandem with an arguably successful \u201czero Covid\u201d policy.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t even have to refer to the West. He just needed to suggest that China forged its own way to tackle the current challenges. And the Chinese way beats the West\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The global economy is being confronted, across the board, by manpower shortages \u2013 from harvest workers to truck drivers to supermarket cashiers. Costs for everything from raw materials to container shipping went through the roof. Supply chains are horribly over-extended and in many cases broken.<\/p>\n

The hegemonic narrative blames exclusively the proverbial Covid-19 variants for the very real possibility of causing the mother of all supply chain breakdowns that may hit most of the planet in 2022.<\/p>\n

In contrast, variants of guerrilla analysis sustain that the global economy is being deliberately being driven over the cliff. The supply chain breakdown is being facilitated by the multi-restriction \u201cwar on Covid\u201d \u2013 which directly subverts production, trade and services.<\/p>\n

Global Capital would never allow a comprehensive public debate about the toxic role of the financial system \u2013 which has been kept under artificial respiration since 2008, with central banks unleashing storms of helicopter money, inflating real state markets, stocks, precious metal prices. In real life, what\u2019s nearly inevitable next in the horizon is the bursting of a massive stock and real estate bubble all across the West.<\/p>\n

A de facto collapse of the global economy would provide the ultimate \u201copportunity\u201d (Klaus Schwab\u2019s terminology) for the WEF\u2019s Great Reset \u2013 which remains the real Davos Agenda. But according to the hegemonic gospel, that would happen because<\/em> of Covid \u2013 not because of the implosion of the financial casino.<\/p>\n

For nearly two years, we have been living through the progressive enshrinement of techno-feudalism \u2013 one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In lightning speed, the techno-feudalism virus metastasized into an even more lethal, wilderness of mirrors variant, with cancel culture enforced by Big Tech all across the spectrum and science routinely debased as fake news across social media.<\/p>\n

The average citizen remains discombobulated to the point of lobotomy. Giorgio Agamben defined the whole process as a new totalitarianism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What does Capital really want?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s open to debate to what extent Xi actually endorses the ultimate \u201copportunity\u201d offered by Covid-19: a Great Reset<\/a> that essentially refers to the replacement of a dwindling manufacturing base by automation, in tandem with a reset of the financial system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The concomitant wishful thinking envisages a global economy that will \u201cmove closer to a cleaner capitalist model\u201d, as embodied, for instance, in the delightfully benign Council for Inclusive Capitalism<\/a> in partnership with the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

It was up to William Engdahl\u00a0to ask the crucial question: Will the Federal Reserve Crash Global Financial Markets As a Means to Implementing Their \u201cGreat Reset\u201d?<\/a><\/p>\n

Xi using Davos as a convenient P.R. platform does not necessarily mean China subscribes to the Davos Agenda. Davos, after all, has nothing to do with multilateralism.<\/p>\n

Last December, the WEF actually postponed Davos 2022 from January to early summer. It remains to be seen whether this may have something to do with the advent of Cyber Polygon, a cyber pandemic gamed by the WEF in July 2021.<\/p>\n

Herr Schwab himself defined it as \u201ca comprehensive cyber-attack [that] could bring a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole.\u00a0The Covid-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance\u00a0in comparison to a major cyber-attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

So our current \u2013 global \u2013 predicament may be just a \u201csmall disturbance\u201d compared to what comes next. And has already been gamed.<\/p>\n

No one, from Zeus to Shiva, knows what comes next \u2013 apart from NATO expanding to outer space. Yet it\u2019s very telling that the distinct possibility of a global economic crash \u2013 while Xi promotes Globalization 2.0 led by China \u2013 is happening simultaneously to NATO provoking Russia into war and the US demonizing China to Kingdom Come.<\/p>\n

A collective West \u201cled\u201d by unspeakable mediocrities looks at the Russia-China strategic partnership as if it was something like a double-headed Anti-Christ. Xi, for his part, seems not to be impressed: watching the river flow, like a Taoist Bob Dylan, he has just dismissed these mere \u201ccountercurrents\u201d with a wave of his hand.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at <\/em>Asia Times and<\/em> columnist for<\/em> Consortium News and<\/em> Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he\u2019s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan<\/a> (2007),<\/em> Red Zone Blues<\/a> (2007), <\/em>Obama Does Globalistan<\/a> (2009), <\/em>Empire of Chaos<\/a> (2014) and <\/em>2030<\/a> (2015), all by Nimble Books. Pepe was contributing editor to <\/em>The Empire and The Crescent and<\/em> Tutto in Vendita in Italy and is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Jan 2022 – A collective West \u201cled\u201d by unspeakable mediocrities looks at the Russia-China strategic partnership as if it was something like a double-headed Anti-Christ. Xi, for his part, seems not to be impressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":191566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[867,2642,232,244,2051,803,1868,1268,1126,1050,91,278,2064,70,1594,172,1038],"class_list":["post-203917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-anglo-america","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-capitalism","tag-china","tag-cold-war-iii","tag-competition","tag-covid-19","tag-european-union","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-south-china-sea","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-west","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284656,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203917\/revisions\/284656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}