As the Feng-Shui of acrimony reverberates in a long haul jumbo jet great circle route over the North Pole linking the White House to the Great Hall of the People, the ceaseless rumination dissecting globalism uses up every ounce of the 800 minute endurance marathon flight of the high altitude jetways. With the burgeoning prevalence of Chinese state-owned corporations intertwined with American stock exchanges, the topography of trillions of dollars and yuan mixed and mashed into an ambiguous paste has the look and feel of a high stakes video game of Darwinism, and one side is clearly demonstrating that Natural Selection is anything but, when forcibly capitulating to ideologically based coercion.
The world has become haphazardly muddled, as the information age is encouraged to swerve into the mainstream subconscious, and political boundaries on paper maps face extinction, as their digital and highly advanced brethren of apps choose to display the contrived reality of the creators. The elitist hierarchy of the tech realm is engaged in a dangerous game of chicken with a regime relentlessly hunting for the elusive prey of universal subordination, and the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the ghastly experiment of social media is enough to cast accountability or empathy to a forced labor camp in the frozen and arid expanses of the Gobi desert.
Currently, there are 248 Chinese companies actively traded on US stock markets, the figure staggering considering that a linear magnitude of 360 total foreign-owned entities are allowed eligibility and the privilege of being exposed to a robust economy of firms and investors. While, the basic principles of the free market are the driving force of tolerating the brutish politics of Beijing for lucrative financial gains, the relaxed policies by the government and the markets, not only sets an unsustainable precedent in detrimentally influencing the migration of US manufacturing oversees and attenuating the supply chain, but encourages indirect Chinese involvement in domestic politics. The People’s Liberation Army cannot directly compete with the US military, but is currently winning the financial and information battle, an unsettling status that lawmakers and business leaders are either oblivious or indifferent to.
Headlined by Alibaba, founded by the now vaporized ex-tycoon Jack Ma, who apparently couldn’t satisfy the wealth fetish of his financial suitors, the ominous swarm of Chinese conglomerates populating the ecosystem of US exchanges offers promises of diversities to investors and financial engineers, but at what cost? The self-proclaimed “Amazon of China” in piercing Western culture with the essence of the daunting dragon, remains a high volume behemoth which at one point eclipsed over $300 per share in 2020. While the prevalence of the digital shopping megaplex has been a strong, though volatile performer, critics questioning the latitude afforded to Beijing-controlled corporation, while the central government and Communist party resorts to medieval torture inquisition inspired tactics to squash any opposition to their absolute power. The irony is that Silicon Valley developed technology, where acquired through acceptable business practices or industrial espionage is the fundamental driving force and AI sentry for the country’s ceaselessly complex and stunning powerful omnipresent surveillance system, highlighted by hundreds of millions of HD facial-recognition cameras. Party officials say that the use of the vast tool prevents crime and ensures public safety, and absolutely nothing insidious can result from militarizing a theoretical police state of totalitarianism with cutting edge tracking technologies. Surprisingly, a quick search on the Alibaba storefront reveals a dearth of political satires or critiques, including the absence of Orwell’s 1984.
However, rewarding Chinese bureaucrats and thus the sum of the whole parts termite colony bent on world domination with opportunities to fund their diabolical plans with the money of US is the new normal in the horrific future shock environment of unpatriotic undertones, ironically spawned though the funding infrastructure of the irregular arrangement between policy makers dictating securities protocol and the tendrils of a rogue government. An army of disrupters has been released across the entire breadth of social media, sports and lifestyle platforms, as individuals and bots compensated by the uncomfortable relationship between the East and the West hurl terabytes of anti-US propaganda directed at destroying the country from within. While the nation implodes politically, and the resulting toxicity prevents healthy conversation, at least those who are in part responsible for the predicament can rest easy that their billions pilfered was a bottom dollar price tag for selling out to their fellow citizens.
If there does exist a proverbial LED effulgent light at the end of the suffocating tunnel of betrayal, the SEC is attempting to draft legislation aimed at removing Chinese companies that fail to comply with transparency requirements. As Beijing-run firms have thus far refused to open their books to US officials, the mandate would force the corporations from the NYSE and NASDAQ if the willful defiance continues.
With evolution of the cryptocurrency infrastructure, the industrialized free market may be able to narrowly dodge a bullet in averting China’s egregious attempt to hijack industrial culture, the West faces a force typified by the blatantly subservient characteristics of a stagnant, yet formidable hive mind.