1/Fuck. I knew this would open a can of worms. I'm not done yet. I said I held off commenting until I was decently informed. But there was one crucial thing I overlooked and I'm so sorry. It's to do with the BRI and its relationship to China's central government.
2/The BRI is critical to China's success on the world stage and to Xi Jinping's claim to the presidency for life. That's why it's so important to the CCP and why China's top brass are pushing it so exhaustively. But there's one thing about this that misleads everyone.
3/The impression we get is that the BRI is Xi's brainchild, centrally organised & executed flawlessly from top to bottom.
In reality, the BRI is neither centralised nor uniform in planning & implementation.
4/Though the BRI is controlled by state-owned enterprises, most of them don't answer directly to the central authorities, but to local and provincial arms of government. There is much overlap of policy, even conflict of interest. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
5/Precisely because of its organisational shortcomings, it allows for a surprising amount of flexibility and innovation, a long way from Xi's uniform vision of China. One day he may have it overhauled and remade into a single entity the way he's doing to the Chinese people.
6/Because let's get this clear: Fuck Xi Jinping. He seeks to eliminate diversity and multiculturalism in his ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang and now Inner Mongolia, and with his earlier religious persecutions.
7/But if I'm going to criticise signing up to the BRI, then it's only fair to shed some light on how the BRI actually works. In its current format, BRI business agreements are most often aligned to local government interests, rather than to the central leadership.
8/Arguing 'it's all the CCP' is true in one sense & vastly misleading in another. Like lumping the Morrison government w/the Victorian Liberals. They're all arseholes, but one runs the country & the other's a joke whose contribution to managing COVID-19 is 'let's kill some bats'.
9/Anyway, I'll say no more because I'm starting to come to the end of what I know. If people have questions, do what I did and search online. You don't have to be able to read Chinese; all my sources on this occasion were in English. #BeltandRoad #IStandWithDan #auspol #vicpol
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