Xi's Olympics Fiasco

Xi Jinping has turned The Center of Everything (“China” in English) into one of the most dangerous places on earth. He randomly jails visitors in retaliation for perceived hostility of their governments. 119 Canadians are in the slammer, four on death row. By forcibly preventing rigorous, scientific, investigation of the cause of Covid-19 which has ripped out of The Center, killing millions worldwide, Xi is fostering endless, uncontrolled, global pandemics. His actions in Hong Kong and his vicious concentration camps for millions of The Center’s Uyghur citizens show his absolute contempt for human rights.

In a decision as dumb as those of Dumb Don, he plans to showcase all this by opening the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 4, 2022. Just seven months from now.

If no Canadians can afford to visit The Center because they risk unlimited jail time for being Canadian, who can safely send athletes and spectators? No country with even the slightest political, military or economic difference with The Center.

Then there is The Party’s Social Credit System which monitors all activity of all Center citizens and all visitors on Party servers. Those of us who have visited The Center know that Rule One is to leave all cellphones and PCs at home. Anything brought into The Center is tagged and monitored, forever. A massive security risk.

Xi has steadfastly refused to investigate the cause of Covid because he knows that The Center will be shown to be its cause, as it was with SARs in 2002. His very public refusal makes The Communist Party’s spectacular, decades-long, ineptitude clear for everyone to see.

Visiting The Center for any purpose carries very high health risk. It is a never-ending hot spot and no place for athletes or spectators. Companies like Apple with huge supply chains there are being forced to reconsider their positions. Putting at risk over a million Center jobs. And Xi’s popularity.

Already the G7 countries meeting in Cornwall in the UK, have gone after China for both problems, presaging an Olympics boycott.

This is a process Xi cannot control. Indeed, a boycott has moved well beyond the political stage and is already a subject on the sports channel ESPN. The closer we get to February 4th, the louder these voices will be on all media, especially social media. The Great Firewall will not be able to keep so many voices at such high volume out of The Center. Xi will have to mobilize his so-called Wolf Warriors to attack all of them worldwide, raising the volume and anger to exceptionally high levels. This will come together spectacularly on February 4th.

Crazier still, Xi is threatening Taiwan with military force, choosing Magna Carta Day, of all days, to send 28 fighter jets and bombers into Taiwanese air space. He could easily precipitate a war with Taiwan well before February 4th. What then?

One of the more interesting media to watch in Xi’s insanity will be TikTok. Controlled by The Party, it has 1.1 billion users worldwide. How many of these will turn against The Party? What will The Party do to shut them down? What will their reaction be?

The Olympics will be covered by democracy-based broadcasters like NBC and the BBC. They will give huge coverage to jailed Canadians, Covid, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Uyghurs in concentration camps. How can Xi shut them down? What will happen when he tries? The Beijing Olympics go dark on the world stage?

Xi became the President of The Center of Everything in March, 2013, just a few months before The Center applied to hold the 2022 Winter Games. Much of his presidency has been occupied with getting and putting on the Games.

Why, then, has Xi worked so hard to turn The Games into a fiasco? Is he really dumb enough to think that his policies do not undermine the Olympics and his image?

The only possible answer is that it never occurred to Xi that the Information Cost-Velocity Curve, not The Center of Everything, dominates the behavior and structure of all human organizations. It progressively diffuses power away from organizations like The Party.

The faster we move down the ICVC, the faster and more widely power is diffused. Remember what the Gutenberg Press did to Europe. Xi didn’t understand that today, centuries after Gutenberg showed the process, the Q-Anon Effect can quickly and effectively shatter his plans for putting The Center at the center of everything. Xi is acting like Kodak, not Apple. Like Mussolini, not McLuhan.

Interestingly, something did click for Xi in the last few months. He is now in full panic over the massive power dispersion built into the world’s rapid advances on the ICVC. Starting with Jack Ma’s Ant IPO, he has ripped into tech company after tech company, forcing them to accede to Party control. Even Chief Privacy Maven, Apple CEO Tim Cook, has been forced to turn over to The Party all information on Apple customers in the Center. And who knows where else?

But it’s a bit late. No Olympics sponsor in the world that can afford to risk its brand by supporting Xi’s policies. The Uyghur concentration camps alone are gifts that the global media, social and legacy, will use to shred these brands. They will have no choice but to pull out. Soon. Investors will go nuts.

At the same time, sponsors will suffer from the Disney Effect. Disney’s movie sales in The Center are so big that it allows The Party to censor every film it releases worldwide. The NBA has had to censor everyone in its ecosystem in order to maintain its sales in China. Those who do not follow Party instructions, like H&M, are simply shut down.

Some of the big brands at risk: Olympics sponsors Airbnb, Allianz, Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, Intel, Panasonic, P&G, Samsung, Toyota and Visa. You can hear their boardrooms now!!

Xi will be left surrounded by leaders like Putin, all strutting pompously in Mussolini-like displays. No one else will be there. They will have no reason to be.

The smartest thing Xi can do to head off this fiasco is what he did to Jack Ma, cancel the Olympics. If he allows them to go forward, this will all get a lot, lot worse for him.