[A continuation of the theme I began in last year’s piece Digital Nomads vs Locals]
One way or another, a chunk of my day gets allocated to skim-reading a heap of articles. Regular newspaper stuff, tweets, posts, Substack - most of it just floats on through. But every now and again, one item seems to trigger a flashing neon light in my salience landscape. And a little voice inside says, “Ooh, that’s interesting.”
Cognitive neuroscientists are still trying to unravel the mysteries of “relevance realisation,” and just how we can pick out useful stuff like this. Me, I’m grateful that mine still works.
And the last time this happened was with Bill Bishop’s excellent Sinocism newsletter, a great resource for information about current Chinese politics. Bill mentioned a press conference where a senior Foreign Ministry spokesman had given a speech, showing considerable ire at the way America was posturing about being such a beacon of democracy.
Check out a quote from Wang Wenbin’s speech here:
The US has practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “color revolutions” in Eurasia, and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, constantly bringing chaos, livelihood woes and human rights disasters to many countries. This is just one of the many textbook examples of how the US democracy destabilizes the world. Facts have repeatedly proven that the drama for democracy orchestrated by the US is never a boon but a bane for the world.
Digging into some more background, it looked pretty clear to me where all this was leading. The Party had prepared a new rhetorical front for the grand power battle currently being waged between China and the US. And this was the opening salvo.
China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) is the country’s attempt to grapple the reins of industrial capitalism from the Americans. It consists of the Chinese doing deals with governments all over the globe, in areas as diverse as Central Asia, Africa and South America. Their plan is to buy up minerals and other natural resources.
And they have new rhetorical ammunition in the chamber to forward their aims on the world stage. It runs something like this…
Hey guys, we’re not like the Americans. You know what they do, don’t you? Why, they flood your country with innocent-looking NGOs, who stir up the young with progressive politics and get them to overthrow your government. Yes, that’s right, they regime-change you. Then they install a puppet president, who’s first act is to sign away all your mineral rights in perpetuity for peanuts!
Let’s face it, guys. They learned all this from the Brits. And you know all about what they did to your ancestors, don’t you? Yes, they sent in the missionaries first. Then they sent in the plantation owners and the slave-ships. These NGOs are just modern-day missionaries.
But now you have an alternative! Yes, us, the Chinese. We won’t mess with your culture, your religion or your politics. We just want to do business. We don’t care who holds the head of the cow. We just want to be allowed to milk it.
So, drop the West, guys. And do business with us. Take a stand against colonialism!
I understand that I am putting words into the mouths of others here. But I think that there is evidence. Have a look at this clip from a recent speech by Fred M’Membe, who is leader of the Zambian Socialist Party, with ties to the Chinese government. Fred is speaking about the visit of Kamala Harris to Africa in April 2023.
You might be wondering, what does all this have to do with Digital Nomads?
Well, it’s true that it is the western NGOs and politicians who are being fingered as modern-day colonisers by the Chinese media initiatives in countries targeted for the BRI. But the reality is that, in the process, all non-tourist Western visitors risk get labelled the same.
Young, affluent Westerners with laptops make absolutely ideal avatars for any stirred-up locals to project their anger upon. Sitting there in our co-working spaces, hanging in our western-style cafes that oust the local ones, complaining to our AirBnB landlords about the wifi, and preaching progressive politics to local youth - can you even think of a more obvious target?
Right now, the Chinese media initiative that seems to be kicking off across BRI-targeted nations is in its infancy. But I have a feeling that it is not going away and will very likely escalate.
Travelling the world with our laptops, doing our remote work, it is good in my opinion to be aware of what might be coming down the pipe over the next few years. That way we can calibrate how we interact with the locals we meet.
Thank you for reading.