Narrative Warfare: Pooh Steals While The West Is Distracted

When Corona-chan began her world tour, observers noted that this would be exploited by hostile actors to advance their interests. The most obvious example has done so.

Prior to the aforementioned world tour, the protests in Hong Kong against a pro-CCP local government and its Beijing masters were loud, frequent, and massive. That momentum got broken overnight (as was the case with the Yellow Vests in France, but that's another post), and with the pandemic came the excuses needed to expand state power and lockdown all of the opposition therein.

Recently the local government, with its CCP plants, blatantly used thugs to keep out anti-CCP members and elements as it rammed through measures with dodgy legality to give the state legal sanction to use whatever force is required to exterminate the protests and all other forms of dissent in Hong Kong. Decades before the "Two Systems" agreement would expire, Beijing has ended it unilaterally while the West is unable to stop it from doing so.

As Black Pigeon notes, this is not done out of a position of strength. It is weak and vulnerable, and this move does not end this threat but only snuffs out the most obvious and closest instance thereof. It hopes to use the Social Credit system to psychologically condition, Pavlovian style, to obedience; Beijing is not wrong, as Chinese history is full of successful examples of state power used to subordinate the population to obedience via coercion by means of access to libertine indulgences. (Seriously, it's replete in their own media, current and pre-CCP.)

And Taiwan is noticing. While Beijing has neither the naval nor the air power needed to make a military invasion viable, that is not necessary. Economic warfare is sufficient, as is information warfare, and Taiwan knows it. Expect a change in attitude to come out of that state in the near future, reflected soon thereafter by attitude shifts to Taiwan, especially as the economic weakness of the ChiComs becomes openly acknowledged in the media and with it a lack of fear or concern of appeasing the ChiComs- in other words, for more states to act as Trump has and get hard-nosed about dealing with them.

But that's not yet reflected in Western media. It will once it becomes clear that the pro-Beijing narratives aren't going to be born out by reality, so expect the narrative to shift against them around the time Summer turns to Fall.