The sun set on the British Empire long ago.
Now China is setting on it, too.
For while poet Rudyard Kipling famously observed that “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” Beijing and Britain are meeting — on U.K. soil — with the Chinese as conquerors.
So laments The Telegraph’s Sherelle Jacobs, who warned in a September 11 title that “Britain has already surrendered to China’s war on Western civilisation.” But here’s the kicker:
Much the same can be said about the United States.
Jacobs began by discussing 9/11, mentioning that while Muslim terrorists constitute an overt, “tangible” threat, the Chinese fascists (no, they’re no longer “communists”) are different: They operate cleverly, almost clandestinely. Projecting what’s called “soft power,” Beijing’s campaign is a bit like a computer virus, insinuating itself into your systems and then corrupting them and using them for its maker’s own ends.
As Jacobs writes, stating that the Beijing regime is in a way more frightening than al-Qaeda:
This new enemy does not seek to destroy Western values by waging open war. Rather it is steadily rendering freedom and democracy obsolete, through infiltration of our economic and political system in the shadows. The CCP has been extraordinarily successful in capturing Britain plc.
In recent decades it has bought into strategic infrastructure in industry and energy, from Heathrow Airport to Hinkley Point. Beijing has also effectively co-opted large parts of British academia, much of which is now financially reliant on Chinese donations and students. And there are suspicions that it has extended its tentacles into the heart of our democracy, with alleged spies in Parliament.
This penetration of every aspect of British life has afforded China leverage to mute elite criticism of its dire human rights record and aggression towards Taiwan. It amounts to a new mode of attack on the West, and this time not the work of a ragtag group of guerrillas but a remorseless double-faced state.
Chillingly, Project Britain may only be a sideshow in China’s quest for power at all costs. Having influence on UK assets enables Beijing to get away with nationalist aggression in the South China Sea. Yet this capture has been assured by our ruling class’s relentless willingness to endanger their own country for the sake of global investment.
Whether or not Britain is a “sideshow,” it certainly is just one front in China’s soft-power cold war. Consider the longest Western front. The New American has been reporting for years about how Beijing injects Chinese propaganda into hundreds of American colleges and K-12 schools via its “Confucius Institute,” which is overseen by a Chinese Ministry of Education entity called “Hanban.” China also succeeds in censoring many movies we watch through its powerful State Administration of Radio, Film and Television; Beijing bullies Hollywood film producers into compliance by making the censorship a condition for access to its huge, lucrative market. China uses the same leverage to pressure other American businesses into doing its bidding as well, which includes things such as not referring to Taiwan as a country or not quoting the Dalai Lama on social media.
In other words, Orwell’s Ministry of Truth is now a reality — with some of its duties outsourced to Beijing.
Yet instead of tackling this problem, Western pseudo-elites attack those who would, exhibiting what Jacobs calls a “maniacal defiance” against the common good. And why?
Part of the reason is money.
As Jacobs relates, providing just one example, Britain’s “Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, recently visited Beijing, and has boasted about securing £600 million of licences to launch fund management companies there.” Is it any wonder that Cleverly (echoing other pseudo-elites) says, to quote Jacobs, that “disengaging with China is not ‘credible’”?
Yet something far darker (partially catalyzed by cash) is also occurring. As writer Lee Smith wrote in a very sophisticated 2021 essay: In “Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create ‘therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.’”
Owing to soft Chinese power and even softer Western heads (relativism-born lack of principle), we now have the latter. Apropos to this, liberal New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a piece years ago that “documents the exact moment when the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them,” Smith relates. “Blaming the Republican Party for preventing them from running roughshod over the American public, they migrated to the Democratic Party in the hopes of strengthening the relationships that were making them rich.”
Ergo, the Democrats transitioned from the ostensible party of the little guy to the party that makes him littler.
Of course, these pseudo-elite traitors attempt to co-opt the GOP, too — and to an extent they’ve succeeded.
This contempt for republican government (aka “democracy”) was perhaps reflected in 2013, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had a “level of admiration” for China’s “basic dictatorship.” Speaking for many pseudo-elites, his attitude was not at all surprising:
These are moderns, morally vacuous people, bereft of faith in God, belief in Truth, and hence devoid of principle. What does fill them, and consume them, is power lust. Thus is Beijing, our nightmare, the stuff of their dreams: an ultimate statist government, wielding total, unassailable power.
So it’s soft power, soft heads, hard currency, and stone hearts — and what could be a hard fall for Western civilization.
