Like every individual in the Biden Administration, the bumbling menace Antony Blinken stumbles from weird event to ensuing weird event.

His latest strange and confounding behavior is asserting the claim that the false country of Taiwan should join the UN.

What the Biden Administration is doing is the equivalent of poking China with a stick.

RT:

After the US secretary of state claimed Taipei’s accession to the UN would be pragmatic, Beijing hit back, reiterating that Taiwan should not be granted permission to join the body because the island was part of China.

Blinken said the reason the island’s participation in the UN would be welcomed was not political but pragmatic. “As the international community faces an unprecedented number of complex and global issues, it is critical for all stakeholders to help address these problems. This includes the 24 million people who live in Taiwan.”

The statement is not political or pragmatic – it’s a provocation.

This is what the plan is, apparently: the Biden plan to “contain China” is a bullying harassment campaign.

Instead of just declaring war, they do things to attempt to publicly humiliate China.

It’s worth noting that decades ago, the West was trying to understand China and became fixated on the concept of “face.” They talked so much about it that we actually have the loan idiom from the Chinese language – “saving face.”

The Chinese – and general Asian – concept of “face” is similar to honor, but more complicated. It is also related to what we would call “prestige.”

It includes honor, just like our idea of honor: being a good member of the community and nation, who is respected and viewed as being morally righteous, and willing to sacrifice for others and the good of the community or nation. But ” building face” also includes wearing certain clothing styles (now associated with brands), driving certain cars, living in certain areas, going on vacations, and other things we associate with prestige. Another aspect, which I guess we would just call “power” or “authority,” is the ability of an individual to exercise his will in society, and to make things happen. (Just for example, if you ask someone to get you tickets to a sold out event and they deliver, that person would be “building face” as someone capable of making things happen.) All of this is combined to create a person’s “face,” which is his persona as seen by the world.

(For the record, the concept of “face” is also the basis of the social credit system, which is why virtually all Chinese people support the social credit system – it’s built on a foundational element of their society.)

Anyway, this is what the boomers who analyzed Chinese culture in the 1970s determined was the driving force behind Chinese psychology. I think that is more or less true.

As I explained in my very long piece about China a couple weeks ago, the current regime in America is clearly acting on plans laid by more competent men who are mostly dead. So, when I see something like Blinken coming out and saying “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if Taiwan joined the UN?”, I am able to see that this is part of a very shoddy attempt to cause the Chinese authorities to “lose face.”

It’s very vulgar behavior, and it is intended to appear vulgar. What Blinken is attempting to do – more likely, what his advisors are attempting to do – is insult the Chinese authorities and make them look inept and incapable.

What isn’t clear is what exactly the goal of this is. It would make sense in the context of attempting to:

Humiliate the Chinese leadership to the point that the regime collapses (this isn’t possible, and the US authorities really should understand that by now), or Try to bait the Chinese into doing something stupid to “save face” (Xi is not ever going to do anything he doesn’t mean to do, so this also doesn’t make sense)

Really, all I’m able to do personally is just observe.

I do not understand the goals of the US State Department and Department of Defense with regards to China, beyond the fact that they are fixated on regime change. I’m not an expert on military strategy, and I’m highly skeptical of anyone who claims to understand how a war would unfold in this third decade of this third millennium after Christ. However, given what I understand about the current social situation inside China, I am quite certain that there is no possibility of doing a Ukraine-style color revolution. It’s just not happening. The Chinese people love Xi like they loved Mao, and just do a little bit of research on what the Chinese people tolerated from Mao.

I am completely unclear on how well the Washington establishment understands China, but having seen their actions, I would say not very well. That’s why it looks to me as if Blinken’s team simply read some book talking about “face” and decided to attempt to humiliate them.

We should also note that Mike Pompeo took a very similar approach, and that he is still planning State Department strategy at the Hudson Institute, where he is billed as an expert on foreign policy and China.

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