ART OF WAR TO ART OF LIVING - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 BLESSINGS COME IN DISGUISE 塞翁失马，焉知非福。 “Sai Weng lost horse, how can I know it is not a blessing.” — Chinese Proverb The Virtual Buddy app was very well-received once it was launched. For Xiao Ming and the team at Xiōngdì Technologies it was a proud moment. Over the next few months, the app went on to become exceedingly popular and soon accumulated a large amount of data of a vast chunk of people, especially youngsters. For Xi Xiao Ming, it was an exciting time. She had invested all her energies into Xiōngdì and the Virtual Buddy app to ensure their success. It was a time to enjoy her success. Xiao Ming was also proud to have contributed to the tech world of her motherland. She was happy to use the name Xi as she was blinded with the brute power of the supreme leader of her country. Here was a leader who she felt had the good of the people in his heart. “I endorse and unfailingly believe in the vision of our paramount leader, Xi Jinping, an ethnic nationalist and one who sincerely believes and endorses the vision of China which draws on allusions to past empires,” Xiao Ming wistfully shared with her boyfriend Lu Yao. “I’m proud to be a small contributor to this vision,” she continued. “Our paramount leader walks the talk. He speaks the political language of Marxist term of class struggle and uses Maoist tactics such as self-criticism and rectification. His brand of communism promotes Confucius and e-commerce too,” she added admiringly. As the Virtual Buddy app continued to grow in popularity, it inevitably attracted the attention of the Chinese Communist Party. Seeing that a private entity had such a humungous amount of personal information did not sit well with the Party. Overnight it was decided that the Party must take over, in the greater interest of the public. Once the decision was taken, the Communist Party stepped in and went to work with typical precision. The Party established preliminary contact with Xiao Ming and from then on things moved swiftly (and downhill, as per some of the employees). Within three months the acquisition was completed. Barring those in the higher echelons, no one knew the exact terms of the deal, but everyone knew for sure that they had filled Xiao Ming’s pockets sufficiently for her to remain financially comfortable, very comfortable, all her life. Her parents thought it was a sign of success and a measure of her importance that the party had taken over the app and even compensated her! As expected, they did not credit Xiōngdì Technologies with the creation of the app. Xiao Ming lost the associated fame. In fact, in public memory Xiōngdì Technologies was shown to have financially collapsed and was erased by the Great Firewall policy of the Chinese Communist Party. Though wrecked and traumatized, Xiao Ming rationalised what had happened through the prism of unabashed admiration, almost bordering on reverence, for her country’s leader, the all-powerful Xi Jin Ping. The Virtual Buddy App was a manifestation of Bao and Bai, who were her alter-egos. Bao and Bai were no longer in existence, consigned to history with the creation of the Virtual Buddy app. But now the app was gone too, effaced from public memory, she felt that a part of her was lost too. “Though I was financially recompensed, I have sunk into anonymity and disgrace,” she shared with Lu Yao. Lu Yao could barely comfort her. They both were aware of the Great Firewall Policy of their motherland. *************** Past Forward The year was 1998, and the beefy Communist Party of China feared that the China Democracy Party could possibly breed a powerful new network which the party elites in all likelihood would be unable to monitor or control. The mandarins were worried the network could spawn branches much like the arms of an octopus. Perhaps the incidents of Soviet Union following glasnost and perestroika weighed on their minds. Thus, the Democratic Party was banned, followed by a series of arrests and imprisonments. The same year the Great Firewall project was launched. The first phase of the project lasted eight years and the project reached completion in 2008. Meanwhile a saying of Den Xiaoping made in early 1980s became famous, “If you open the window, both fresh air and flies will be blown in”. This is considered to be the political and ideological basis of the Great Firewall project. The quote has a bearing to the period of the economic reform of China that became known as the “socialist market economy”. This was in supersession of the political ideologies of the Cultural Revolution and opened up the market for foreign investors. However, it was paramount that despite the economic freedom, values and political ideology of the Communist Party of China had to be protected by “swatting flies” of ideologies which were in contravention to the intrinsic belief and ethos of the party. In the interim, the Internet arrived in the Red Dragon in 1994 as an inevitable consequence of and as a supporting tool for the “socialist market economy”. Indisputably the Great Fire Wall’s role was to modulate and maintain the hegemony of CCP. *************** “I do appreciate the fact that the CCP had their own compulsions. My mind traversed back to Han Feizi, the philosopher and statesman who mentored China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. He believed that people by nature are fickle, unstable and selfish and must be purveyed and kept in line through vigorous rules of law and punishment.” Lu Yao nodded his head, as Xiao Ming continued, “However I have to admit, I am grappling with the loss of Xiōngdì Technologies. The app was a visitation of my dreams, a personification of my precious Bao and Bai,” Xiao Ming sobbed on Lu Yao’s shoulder as he stroked her head and cheeks affectionately. Her idols were Sun Tzu and Xi Jinping, who she felt had the good of the people of her motherland at heart. Xi Jin Ping doffing several hats was the all-powerful leader of the oriental world as the Red Dragon expands it’s military and economic hegemony globally. The president is technically a ceremonial head of state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under the existing PRC Constitution, the presidency is a largely ceremonial office with limited powers and control. However, since 1993, as a matter of convention, the presidency has been held simultaneously by the General Secretary of the all robust and powerful Chinese Communist Party, the singular and paramount leader in the one-party system followed by the country. The presidency is officially regarded as an institution of the state rather than an administrative post; thus, theoretically the president serves at the pleasure of the National People’s Congress, the legislature, and is not legally vested to initiate any executive action on his own prerogative. This individual administers various duties under separate titles. For example, the leader meets foreign dignitaries and receives ambassadors in his capacity as the president, issues military diktats as Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and upholds party rule as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). So, he is virtually invested with all the powers and potency. The presidency was first established in the PRC Constitution in 1954 and successively held by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi. Liu fell into political disgrace during the Cultural Revolution, after which the presidency became vacant. During the era of Mao, there were no term limits for the presidency. Between 1982 and 2018, the constitution stipulated that the president could not serve more than two consecutive terms. In 2018, term limits were abolished, but the post’s powers and ceremonial role remained unchanged. Even as she thought about the country’s past, she could not reconcile to what had happened. “But I am shaken and shattered today, unable to reconcile with my loss,” a tearful Xiao Ming continued. The already smitten Lu Yao found Xiao Ming even more alluring in these tragic circumstances. Attempting to offer her solace, he planted a tender kiss on her lips. As he found her responding, he kissed her again, with greater passion, as he attempted to suck out the loss of Bao and Bai and the Virtual Buddy app. As the crimson red sun sank behind the skyscrapers of Shenzhen, in a moment of weakness and lack, Xiao Ming too capitulated and wilted under the trauma and momentarily blanked out her buried siblings and the Virtual Buddy app. She let go of her emotions and succumbed to carnal pleasures. It was a vicarious attempt to blank out the ghosts and demons in her mind. But did she have an option? She was at the altar to emerge as the Technological Empress of China but the power of the state and her paramount, visionary leader had already laid grandiose plans which could not be challenged or combatted in her motherland. Through carnal indulgence she found a window of opportunity to let go the flood of emotions which had swamped her mind. Finally, she could feel the release of endorphins. And the Tech Enchantress let go! Xiao Ming had money, but everything that she had worked for, was no longer hers, lost in the sands of time. She had sunk into anonymity. For the first time in her life, she felt that there was something lacking in her life. She should have been happy, very happy; she could have bought anything that her heart wished for. “I feel absolutely rudderless, there is an uncanny fear that isn’t going away. I felt so powerful with my fitness regime, rejuvenated with my knowledge of sciences and logic. Have I reached the summit? Have I crossed the Rubicon?” Xiao Ming asked Lu Yao.