{"id":87034,"date":"2024-02-21T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=87034"},"modified":"2024-02-21T06:47:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T12:47:17","slug":"everythings-fine-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=87034","title":{"rendered":"Everything’s Fine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the 1960s and ’70s, the Peoples Republic of China had, very nominally, the world’s largest “army”, listed at the time in the Guinness Book of World Records as being 200 million <\/em>strong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, those were CCP numbers, ginned up by adding up the nominal numbers of the “Peoples Militia” – basically most of the nation’s able-bodied people impressed (dare we say, “Shanghaied”) into a putative “fighting force” armed with antiques, spears and dogma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason, of course, was to project a mien <\/em>of power, resolve and invincibility, at a time when China was three decades removed from subjugation, warlordism and indolence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, China is none of those things (other than perhaps run by the modern warlords, the CCP’s regional apparatuses). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet<\/a>…:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chinese companies are doing something rarely seen since the 1970s: setting up their own volunteer armies. At least 16 major Chinese firms, including a privately-owned dairy giant, have established fighting forces over the past year, according to a CNN analysis of state media reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These units, known as the People\u2019s Armed Forces Departments, are composed of civilians who retain their regular jobs. They act as a reserve and auxiliary force for China\u2019s military, the world\u2019s largest, and are available for missions ranging from responding to natural disasters and helping maintain \u201csocial order\u201d to providing support during wartime.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The reason? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguably, because all is not well in China. The pandemic exposed some of the internal fault lines that are perking up the ears of some China watchers; social unrest that’d been repressed or satiated for decades came boiling up to the surface (although you’d have to talk with those China watchers to know it, since the US media will never cover it until it’s too late). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe return of corporate militias reflects Xi\u2019s rising focus on the need to better integrate economic development with national security as the country faces a more difficult future of slower growth and rising geopolitical competition,\u201d said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at Asia Society Policy Institute\u2019s Center for China Analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCorporate militias under military leadership could help the Communist Party more effectively quell incidents of social unrest such as consumer protests and employee strikes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This being CNN, the audience needed to be reassured that this wasn’t anything associated with the big, bad American right:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The\u00a0<\/strong>forces, which do not currently operate outside China,\u00a0have more in common with America\u2019s National Guard than its\u00a0<\/strong>militia movement, which refers to private paramilitary organizations that usually have a right-wing\u00a0<\/strong>political focus.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Red China may or may not end up being a viable enterprise for purposes of governing itself, much less conquering the world. But given CNN’s performance, that ship may have left the docks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1960s and ’70s, the Peoples Republic of China had, very nominally, the world’s largest “army”, listed at the time in the Guinness Book of World Records as being 200 million strong. Of course, those were CCP numbers, ginned up by adding up the nominal numbers of the “Peoples Militia” – basically most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[426,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orwell-overestimated-democrats","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87035,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87034\/revisions\/87035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}