So the Chinese government just had a huge party in Beijing, attended by 100 or so heads of government, where they announced the launching of the One Belt One Road initiative. They even had cute videos in English like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0lJc3PMNIg
But still, nobody has any idea what this is all about. And the reason is that Chinese public PR is utterly retarded. It just doesn't work. China's government has absolutely no way of reaching the hearts and minds of white people.
Part of it is racial hostility. Yellow men just aren't cool. I hate saying this, I've lived half my life among them, and personally I like them very much. But I gotta say the truth. They just aren't cool. Not even physically. They're not small, the average Chinese is probably taller than the average Italian by now. But they're skinny and awkward and just not very alpha. You just can't fight average T levels. There's plenty of cool guys in the right edge of the distribution, but alas. China will never be cool. Not even Japan is cool. Look at Cool Japan and other government initiatives. Only Anime and other stuff geared to 13 year olds is cool, because the Japanese never grow out of that age, as McArthur famously said. And the Koreans are basically prostituting their teenage girls all across the world for cheap (Korean dramas and K-pop shows are sold really cheap to get access) just in order to spite Japan getting more Western attention.
So now that I've established my impartiality by shitting on all of East Asia at the same time: what is the One Belt One Road thing? Well I don't really know; but what I know is why it sounds so weird. You see, Chinese has this thing where ideally any word or language unit must be 4 syllables long, in order to sounds good and be memorable. As it happens Chinese characters are all 1 syllable long, so it's also 4 characters, 4 words. It just has to. It just sounds good. It fits. It has been like that for 3,000 years. Even Confucius spoke in 4-word units. Mandarin today is about 30% 4-word idioms, some classical idioms going back thousands of years, some neologisms made by ad agencies, some political slogans made by the Communist Party Propaganda Department. That's how Chinese works. And it's beautiful once you get used to it.
So One Belt One Road is exactly 一带一路 yidai yilu, 4 words. Other famous slogans would be Mao Zedong's 造反有理 zaofan youli, "rebellion is justified", Deng Xiaoping's 改革开放 gaige kaifang "reform and opening", or Jiang Zemin's 三个代表 sange daibiao "the three represents", which incidentally means the Communist party represents the peasants, the workers and the capitalists whether they like it or not.
So anyway, everything has to fit in 4 words, so 一带一路 it was. They couldn't just say "Land and Sea overseas infrastructure investment plan". That would be more than 4 words. So you get this weird "belt" and "road" thing, where the belt stands for land route and road stands for sea route, for the only reason that it sounds right. Apparently the Koran doesn't make any sense at all when read in translation but the Arabic just sounds so incredibly good, with rhyming and stuff that it became incredibly popular. Although it really doesn't make any sense at all. Well, welcome to humanity.
So anyway, a friend of mine just told me he'd been to a conference on One Belt One Road and that it was the most boring official speech he'd ever listen in his damn life, and that's saying something in China. Another friend though just sent me this chain-mail sort of stuff which kinda cheers on the whole thing. I assume it was made by the government, but I'll translate it here so you can also have the Chinese side. Or better put, what China's government says internally. Because remember, 90% of what the mainstream western press says is also, exactly, government made propaganda, we just don't call it that.
A lot of people can't quite get what One Belt One Road means. In fact it's quite easy if you make a simple metaphor: say infrastructure to a country is like a person who goes buy a house. For the vast majority of people, they do need a house, but they don't have the money on hand. Well, China here is like a developer, a construction company and a bank all put together. China has money it doesn't know what to do with, it has empty houses, and the construction companies have no orders either. So we have both demand and supply sides here with nothing to do. What can we do?Easy, we make a mortgage. China lends money to all these countries, and then these countries use this very money to ask Chinese companies to build them infrastructure, paying back the money to China in installments in the next decades.By doing this China can use it's foreign currency reserves in a smart way. We can avoid buying US treasury bonds like we're stupid; those give almost no yield. By lending out the money for interest, the yield is much higher. With this plan China can also put to use its industrial overcapacity, we get orders which reactivate our manufacturing base. And all these countries which would use China's money and rely on China to build infrastructure; their economies will grow eventually, they'll use money to pay us back, and they will also buy Chinese products.So everybody wins, that's what One Belt One Road is all about. [This sentences rhymes in the original]Also through this infrastructure we can achieve two roads to Europe, one by land and one by sea. If there is any war with the US, the US won't be able to encircle us. At the same time this would accelerate the speed of transport from China to Europe, lowering transport costs and increasing China's competitiveness.All these countries would use Chinese products as the standard of their infrastructure. This means that in the future they would need to use Chinese products to service the infrastructure. This would exclude other countries' products, giving our manufacturers an advantage when competing with foreign manufacturers.Of course inside all this there will be some loans which go bad. It's like a bank, there's always someone who can't pay back their mortgage or their car loan. But banks don't care about that, why? Because they make enough profit to compensate for it. And with China's One Belt One Road, China would profit twice. One through the interest on the given loans, way higher than the yield of US debt. And then again when these countries buy Chinese products, giving money to Chinese private businesses. In business terms this is a very lucrative process, if we can manage well the level of bad debt, we are sure to make a net profit.Also if China gets to develop these countries' infrastructure, naturally these countries will become more friendly towards China. All these countries will be our friends. And as everybody knows, it is always good to have many friends. This applies to people and to states.During this process, you may notice that China outright gives aid to some countries, without expecting payback. Some people don't understand this, how can we give stuff away for free? It's very easy. When you get some business from someone, you gotta give them some advantage. When shopping in a store, many shops give regular discounts, they'd give you coupons if you buy a lot, or even free products. Countries do the same. You're making money out of someone, if you don't give them something in exchange, well the business won't go anywhere. All these aid packages are in fact discount coupons of a sort. Because besides us there's also Japan or Germany giving loans, helping others build infrastructure. We have competition.This kind of plan was in fact invented by the Americans. When the US wanted to open up foreign markets, they didn't do like other countries and use military force to conquer colonies and their markets. What the US did was use what they called "open-door policy", they used loans, the Marshall plan, etc. They gave loans to other countries, and these countries then used the money to buy American products. By doing so the US occupied these countries' markets without shedding blood, which helped America become wealthy, and the US dollar become the world's reserve currency. Thus the US became the world's factory and ultimately the boss of the world. China is actually learning from America's path to greatness, growing through peace, and not force.So, you see, One Belt One Road is a very farseeing policy, it is precisely the path for China's rising. If you have any friends who still don't get it, send this piece their way. Let everyone get it. The Great Renewal of the Chinese Nation is just around the corner!
Original below
很多人搞不清楚一带一路到底是什么意思？其实打一个最简单的比方，基础建设对于一个国家来说，就像一个普通人去买房买车，对于绝大多数的国家来说，需要，但是拿不出这么多钱。而中国就好像是房地产商，建筑商和银行的组合体，有闲置资金，有空房，同时建筑公司也没活干，两边都有需求，怎么办？很简单，按揭了。中国借钱给这些国家，然后让这些国家，用这笔指定的钱找中国公司去修基础建设，然后分成几十年慢慢地还给中国。这样中国的外汇储备就有了灵活的运用，不用傻乎乎的只能去买美国的国债，收益几乎为零，借给别人收利息，收益高的多。中国过剩的产能，就有人出钱来买，盘活了中国的制造业。
而这些用中国钱的国家，靠中国帮助修好了基础建设，经济就会发展，就会有钱来还中国的钱，同时还会买更多的中国产品。这样各取所需，就是所谓的一带一路。
除了这些，一带一路的国家接受美元贷款，可以用人民币还款，这样，这些国家慢慢就开始接受了人民币作为储备货币，人民币，慢慢就获得了和美元同等的地位。同时通过这样的基础建设，形成了从海上和陆路两条直达欧洲的通路，一旦发生和美国的战争，美国无法对我们进行完全的封锁，同时，另一方面也加快了中国到欧洲的物流速度，降低了流通成本，进一步增强了中国的竞争力。由于这些国家使用中国产品作为基础建设的标准，后续的配套自然也要使用中国产品，这样就产生了排他效果，让中国在和其它的制造业国家竞争时，占据了优势地位。当然在这个过程中，肯定会有一些坏账，就像是银行一样，总会有些人还不起房贷车贷。可是银行依然乐此不疲，为什么？因为它赚的更多。而中国的一带一路，实际上赚两次钱，一是借钱出去的利息，比买美国公债赚得多的多，另一方面，这些国家必须使用中国的产品，让中国的民间企业能受惠，所以从商业的角度来说，几乎是一个暴利的过程，只要控制好坏账的比例，肯定是利大于弊。同时，由于中国为这些国家发展基础建设，会增大这些国家对中国的友好度，让这些国家成为中国的好朋友，谁都知道，朋友多了好办事。做人是如此，国家也是如此。在这个过程中，你会发现中国会对一些国家进行无偿援助，很多人想不通，为什么会这样呢？很简单，你做别人的生意，就得送给人家优惠。商场也要定期给你打折，买多了要给你送优惠卷，免费的产品。国家也是如此，光赚别人的钱，不给人家点好处，生意就做不走，这些无偿援助，实际上就是折扣卷。因为除了我们，日本德国也借钱给别人，帮别人搞基础建设，我们是有竞争的。这个方式实际上是美国人最先发明，美国为了获得市场，并没有采用其他国家的办法，通过武力征服，获取殖民地来获得市场。而是通过所谓的门户开放政策，租借法案，马歇尔计划等等，借钱给其他国家，让这些国家回过头来买美国的产品，这样兵不血刃地就占领了这些国家的市场，促进了美国的繁荣，让美元成为世界储备货币，使美国成为了世界工厂，最终成为世界老大。中国实际上在学美国崛起的方式，通过和平而不是武力，实现崛起。所以，一带一路是非常有远见的决策，是中国崛起的必由之路，如果你的朋友中还有人不知道到底是什么意思？把这个转出去，让大家都明白。中华民族的伟大复兴，已经指日可待了！
