The Boao Forum for Asia opened on Hainan Island on April 20. Basically, this forum is held every year on Hainan Island, but last year it was not held due to the epidemic, so this year was the first time that the Boao Forum was held a year apart. Although only two years have passed, the international situation in 2021, even within mainland China, is already completely different.
The first thing to notice is Wang Qishan. Wang Qishan was the secretary of Hainan provincial party committee, although only for about six months, but always the landlord. This year’s Boao Forum Wang Qishan attended, the moderator asked him to address the stage, he hurriedly stammered to justify that he was only announcing, not addressing, is to “do a curtain call for President Xi Jinping’s speech”. This is quite embarrassing, and there are various analyses, saying that Wang Qishan has changed from the old king, who was as powerful as Yan, to the old king next door.
A few years ago, when Wang Qishan was still the secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the legend in the official circles of the Communist Party of China was that “it is better to see the king of hell than the old king”, and all officials were fearful that one day they would suddenly be talked to by officials of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and then lose their jobs and go to jail. But this Boao Forum, Wang Qishan’s image is completely different.
However, on the issue of “speech”, many outside commentators said that Wang Qishan’s performance was vain and fearful, which I am afraid is not accurate, or not entirely accurate. In the Chinese Communist Party’s meeting culture, “speech” is not as simple as a speech during a meeting, but often has a specific meaning, especially in a meeting like the Boao Forum, what level and what topic is spoken, all have a specific meaning.
In the past few years, the Boao Forum keynote speech, basically Li Keqiang and Xi Jinping take turns to carry out. 2019 Li Keqiang keynote speech, the theme of the conference is “common destiny, common action, common development”; 2018 Xi Jinping keynote speech, the theme of the conference is “open and innovative Asia, prosperous world”; 2020 should have been Xi Jinping speech, the results did not open, this year he then, the theme of the General Assembly is “the world’s great changes: global governance together, play a strong voice of the Belt and Road”.
So of course Wang Qishan can not steal the thunder of the party and state leaders, even if it is more than the King of Yan in those years, but also not.
Let’s go back to this year’s Boao Forum.
This year’s theme is “World changes: a joint effort in global governance, playing a strong voice of the Belt and Road”. This is the first time that the Boao Forum has officially included the Belt and Road in its theme. In the past, although Chinese Communist Party officials desperately tried to promote the Belt and Road at the forum, the theme was always openness and cooperation. But this year, the international situation and the domestic situation in mainland China have been completely different.
The Boao Forum, whose full name is the Boao Forum for Asia, has among its founding members, in addition to Asian countries, Australia. In fact, the Boao Forum was first a forum for East and Southeast Asian countries and Australia, but this year Australia has waved its sleeves away. The Chinese Communist Party continues to promote the Belt and Road, but the Australian government announced that the Belt and Road agreement signed between the country’s Victoria province and the Chinese Communist Party was against Australia’s interests, so it was abolished.
In the past, the Boao Forum was mostly attended by many foreign dignitaries, even foreign heads of state. This year, the situation is very different, of course, because of the epidemic this year, foreign heads of state did not go to Hainan, but even if people do not go, there can always be a video speech, the result is now very few.
In the official media coverage of this year’s Boao Forum, there were hardly any decent foreign statements, except for a couple of unpleasant remarks by former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, chairman of the forum’s advisory committee, in Japan, and other comments by so-called think tanks from several Southeast Asian countries. The Boao Forum has been getting colder and colder in recent years, and yet it has little to do with the epidemic.
Xi’s keynote speech this year was much stronger and more offensive than it was three years ago. For example, he said, “International matters should be handled by everyone together, and the future and destiny of the world should be in the hands of all countries, and the rules set by one or a few countries should not be imposed, nor should the unilateralism of individual countries ‘lead the rhythm’ for the whole world. “
This paragraph is explicitly aimed at the United States.
In 2018, Xi Jinping said this when talking about the same issue, “No matter how far China develops, we will not threaten anyone and we will not subvert the current international system.”
As we all know, the so-called “current international order” refers to the one that was designed after World War II by the United States, led by the former Soviet Union and compromised by the United Kingdom, France and the Republic of China, or, as Xi Jinping put it, “the rules set by one or a few countries “. Three years ago Xi Jinping said he would not subvert them, but now he says your rules cannot be imposed, meaning “I don’t follow them anymore” and that he will have to re-define them.
My personal feeling is that the CCP’s decision makers may have decided that the United States’ combined power is rapidly declining while the CCP itself is strengthening, and that this back-and-forth makes the CCP’s actions more aggressive and, of course, more dangerous.
A similar meaning is actually found in quite a few of his speeches.
Xi said, “We must safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order based on international law, and the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core. The world should be fair, not hegemonic. Big countries should behave like big countries and show more responsibility.” He added that “in the era of economic globalization, openness and integration is an unstoppable historical trend, artificial ‘building walls’ and ‘decoupling’, contrary to economic laws and market rules, to the detriment of others. “
In addition to vigorously criticizing the United States without naming it, this is also a very Chinese communist characteristic of a speech, typical of saying one thing and doing another. When the Chinese Communist Party joined the WTO, the promise of various open measures, up to now has not been implemented; the Chinese Communist Party just last year on Australia comprehensive trade sanctions, bullying powerful; not long ago suddenly Taiwan pineapple and become a target; the past few years, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and other countries have suffered from trade bullying. The Chinese Communist Party has never taken the “multilateral trade system” into consideration.
There is a joke in Chinese folklore about a man who jumped on a train just as it was leaving, because he was late and found no room to sit. When people said there was no room, he said, “My butt is small, so I can’t sit in much space. So they squeezed out a little bit of space for him to sit. After that he shifted left and right and squeezed, sitting in a bigger and bigger place, and finally even lay down. Of course, others were not happy and asked him, “Didn’t you say your ass is small and you can’t use much space? He replied, “Yes, it’s because my ass is too small, so I can’t sit down, so I have to lie down.
The Chinese Communist Party’s entry into the WTO is really somewhat similar to this.
Xi Jinping also talked about “decoupling” and “building walls”. The biggest wall in the world now is the Internet firewall, which is essentially the decoupling of the information world. The Chinese Communist Party always emphasizes the special theory of China, using the term “Chinese characteristics”, and where there are characteristics, it can not follow international rules, and this has always been the case over the years.
The “international law-based” ruling of the International Court of Justice in the South China Sea, which the Chinese authorities did not recognize and ignore, is still fresh in our ears, and we all remember it clearly.
That’s why I said this is a speech characteristic of the Chinese Communist Party, that is, what it does and what it says have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
The Boao Forum did not open last year and was postponed for a year because of the New Coronavirus epidemic, also known as the Wuhan virus epidemic. The CCP knows that everyone is very concerned, so Xi Jinping has said a lot about the epidemic.
He said, “We should adhere to the people first and life first, strengthen information sharing and joint prevention and control, enhance health and medical cooperation, and give full play to the key role of the World Health Organization. We should strengthen international cooperation in vaccine research and development, production and distribution, and improve the accessibility and affordability of vaccines in developing countries, so that people in all countries can really use and afford them. We should comprehensively strengthen global public health and safety governance and jointly build a human health and wellness community.”
Still a very lofty speech, no account of how the epidemic came about, no account of why the Chinese government closed its own cities at the beginning of the epidemic, but was adamantly opposed to other countries closing their borders? No account of the results of the virus investigation, no answers to the questions of the WHO and the international community, and not a hint of apology or guilt, none whatsoever.
On the contrary, there was a total posture of a savior.
Xi also said that it is necessary to promote the common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom for all mankind, advocate exchanges and mutual understanding among civilizations, and promote the development of human civilization. Peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, freedom, these six words, in mainland China absolutely can not be expressed separately, must be said at once as a whole, if you only say democracy, freedom alone, it is easy to do detained by the police for questioning. This is also a very bizarre thing now under the governance of the Chinese Communist Party.
Does “exchange and mutual understanding among civilizations and promote the development of human civilization” include the establishment of a concentration camp to force it? Does it include brainwashing classes and legal classes?
Most importantly, Xi Jinping proposed that “China will never claim hegemony, expand, seek spheres of influence, or engage in an arms race, no matter how far it develops. Hearing these words, the people of Asia should feel very emotional.
The Boao Forum is an Asian development forum, and Southeast and South Asian countries make up the majority. Saying that the CCP does not claim hegemony and does not expand, I wonder what these countries will think. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which the Chinese Communist Party often talks about, was proposed by Zhou Enlai in Indonesia in the 1950s, but it was the early 1960s when the Indonesian Communist Party killed in a coup. The Communist Party of Malaya, the Communist Party of Thailand, the Communist Party of Burma, the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Communist Party of Cambodia, the Communist Party of Lao, all these countries, which Communist Party is not supported by the Chinese Communist Party behind the scenes? Who is behind the former Communist Party of Nepal and the current Maoist Communist Party of India?
The communist guerrillas in all these countries are the so-called “Maoist” guerrillas, that is, armed insurgent groups armed with Mao Zedong Thought. The so-called Maoist ideology, according to his own words, has only two parts. The first is the armed seizure of power, the specific method is the encirclement of the cities in the countryside; the second part is to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, simply put, is to continue to suppress after taking power, no mercy. The Maoist guerrillas, the armed seizure of power, and the use of the rural encirclement of the city means, the last century countries suffer from this poison, India and the Philippines communist Maoist guerrillas are still killing people, we actually understand in the heart.
It is because of the deep distrust of the Chinese Communist Party that Asian countries have the so-called “economic reliance on China, security reliance on the United States”. When it comes to security, economic growth is more important, but in an era of unrest and danger, security must be a more important national policy decision factor. That’s why countries have recently leaned on the United States and away from the Chinese Communist Party.
Of course, it is also why Xi Jinping has again emphasized non-expansion and non-hegemony. But this vow to the heavens is far less convincing than the CCP’s double-digit percentage increase in military spending over the past 20 years on average. In recent years, this Boao Forum for Asia has seen a lower and lower tier of foreign guests and a lower temperature, which is greatly related to the CCP’s increasingly assertive policy changes in recent years.
For, no amount of good words can outweigh one or two actions that do bad things.
Recent Comments