Flashback – How The Trilateral Commission Converted China Into A Technocracy

It was no mis­take of his­tory that China trans­formed from a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship into a neo-authoritarian Technocracy.

In this regard, the influ­ence of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, its mem­bers and poli­cies on the world stage can hardly be quan­ti­fied. The Com­mis­sion, founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973, drew mem­ber­ship from North America, Europe and Japan. Out of approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers, only 86 were orig­i­nally from the United States, and yet they cor­po­rately devised and pushed poli­cies that suited the entire mem­ber­ship, and did so under a vir­tual cloak of invis­i­bility that lasts even into 2013.

Today, we reap the “ben­e­fits” of Tri­lat­eral manip­u­la­tion. The Euro­pean economy is trashed, Japan’s economy is still smol­dering from the mid-1990’s and the U.S. is much worse off today than in the late 1960’s. But, the polit­ical sys­tems of these coun­tries are not much better off than their economies. The fruit of decay in the United States is painfully evi­dent with a frac­tured and con­tentious politic that defies rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on even the most minor issues.

My friends at Coali­tion for a Pros­perous America and Economy in Crisis, among others, are working hard to offset messed-up trade poli­cies that put Amer­ican industry in the toilet over the last 30 years. As long as we have some freedom of speech left, orga­ni­za­tions like these are a wel­come voice, even if they are shouted down by the global free-trade cartel.

How­ever, people need to know where and how this all started, and who was respon­sible for it. Only by under­standing the gen­esis of glob­al­iza­tion can modern eco­nomics, pol­i­tics and social trends be under­stood. Can anyone say, “Pin the tail on the donkey?”

Thirty-five years ago, in the November 1978 and April 1979 issues of Tri­lat­eral Observer, Antony C. Sutton and myself wrote the fol­lowing analysis on China. We warned of the dis­as­trous effects that would result if these poli­cies moved for­ward, and we thor­oughly exposed the mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion who were almost solely respon­sible for China’s ascen­dent rise as a world power. That no one lis­tened at the time is self-evident, because nothing changed and no one resisted. (For clar­i­fi­ca­tion, names of Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers are in bold type.)

Tri­lat­eral China Policy

The policy of “nor­mal­iza­tion” of rela­tions with Com­mu­nist China — in effect a pro­gram to build China tech­no­log­i­cally into a super power — was imple­mented by Zbig­niew Brzezinski.

A high ranking Admin­is­tra­tion source is reported as saying: “This was Zbig’s baby more than anyone else’s.:

From out­side the White House (from a top policy maker who gen­er­ally sides with Cyrus Vance):

“Zbig is really riding high now. He had the cen­tral role behind the scenes, and he was all alone in the press play. I’m told the Pres­i­dent thinks Zbig did 99 per­cent of the work on China.”

More likely, how­ever, the China policy was for­mu­lated and imple­mented by a Tri­lat­er­alist troika: Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. And this policy was only a con­tin­u­a­tion of a policy begun under a “Repub­lican” Admin­is­tra­tion, that of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, another Trilateralist.

The heady effect that these vast policy making exer­cises have on these men, almost an infan­tile reac­tion, is well reported in the Wash­ington Post on Feb­ruary 8, 1979 with the head­line, China Policy: A Born-Again Brzezinski,describing how Brzezinski excit­edly describes his meeting with Teng [aka Deng Xiaoping]:

FEBURARY 1979 — The eyes sparkle with excite­ment even days later. The arms erupt in sudden sweeping ges­tures when he talks about it. And that causes the photos — about a dozen of them — to fly out of Zbig­niew Brzezinski’s hands and scatter over the floor of his office as he is speaking.

 “Here’s Cy… and here I am… and there is Teng right between us.… ”

 Brzezinski is talking in that quick. clipped, excited style that is his way, and he is pointing at one photo that remains in his hand while he bends to scoop up the rest, talking all the while.

 “It’s amazing, when you think of it. The leader of a bil­lion people — having dinner in my house just two hours after he arrived in this country!

 “I mean, it really is rather amazing!”

Tri­lat­er­al­ists And The China Trade

An example of the influ­ence of a mere handful of Tri­lat­er­al­ists in cre­ating self-serving poli­cies many thou­sands of miles from the United States, can be illus­trated by a recent con­fer­ence in Japan.

In early Feb­ruary 1979 a sym­po­sium on the China Trade was spon­sored by the Japanese news­paper Nihon Keizai. The few speakers were mainly Tri­lat­er­al­ists, and the Tri­lat­erals agreed with one anothers’ pro­posals thus cre­ating a power bloc. Reporting in the U.S., the Wash­ington Post (Feb­ruary 9, 1979) cited only Tri­lat­er­alist speakers.

The key Japanese speaker was Tri­lat­er­alist Kiichiro Kitaura, Chairman of Numuru Secu­ri­ties Com­pany, Ltd.

What were Kitaura’s pro­posals? They were:

• Inter­na­tion­alize the yen
• Con­sul­ta­tions and coop­er­a­tion between Japanese and Amer­ican busi­nessmen on ways to pen­e­trate the Chi­nese market
• “Blending” Japanese and Amer­ican technology

Of course, Kitaura thor­oughly agreed with fellow Tri­lat­er­alist Philip Trezise (from Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion) that Japan’s large cur­rent account sur­plus should be invested abroad and not in Japan. Trezise was backed by another Amer­ican Tri­lat­er­alist, Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Inc., who, like Kitaura, urged more Japanese trade.

In brief, this impor­tant con­fer­ence was dom­i­nated by Tri­lat­er­alist thinking, and that was the only thinking reported, yet on the sur­face the Tri­lat­eral link is not apparent to the lay reader.

 Tri­lat­eral Buildup of Com­mu­nist China

Tri­lat­erals pro­pose to build up Com­mu­nist China. Tri­lat­er­alist policy is clear cut. The West must aid the con­struc­tion of Com­mu­nist China: this is expressed in An Overview of East-West Rela­tions (Tri­angle Paper No. 15, p. 57) as follows:

“To grant China favor­able con­di­tions in eco­nomic rela­tions is def­i­nitely in the polit­ical interest of the West” adding “…there seems to exist suf­fi­cient ways for aiding China in accept­able forms with advanced civilian technology.”

Tri­angle paper 15 also adds:

“The sit­u­a­tion is dif­ferent… where arms sup­plies or advanced mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies are con­cerned, except for types of equip­ment that by their nature serve purely defen­sive pur­poses.” (p. 58)

In fact, as we shall see later, Tri­lat­eral firms have exported even advanced mil­i­tary tech­nology to Com­mu­nist China.

Fur­ther, as part of one world, Tri­lat­er­al­ists see an ulti­mate merging of free enter­prise Taiwan with the Com­mu­nist main­land. Even more remark­able, the paper envis­ages that Com­mu­nist China will return to an expan­sionist aggres­sive policy under two conditions:

1. as Com­mu­nist China “gets stronger,”
2. if rela­tions with the Soviets are “normalized.”

The paper adds, “already now, the activity of Com­mu­nist Guer­rillas in Thai­land and Malaysia, linked to each other and looking to China, per­sists and even seem to be on the increase.” (page 59)

So far as Com­mu­nist China is con­cerned, we may con­clude that Trilaterals:

• Want to build Com­mu­nist China into a mil­i­tary superpower,
• wish to do this with the full and clear under­standing that China will likely resume its expan­sionist course in the Far East, and
• are willing to sub­si­dize guer­rilla activ­i­ties in Thai­land and Malaysia (much of the “civilian tech­nology” cur­rently being trans­ferred has use­ful­ness for guer­rilla warfare.)

Tech­noc­racy Recognized

The transfer of tech­nology was a key aspect of early Tri­lat­eral policy. Admit­tedly, their stated goal of “fos­tering a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” was not fully under­stood in 1978 – 79. How­ever, by June 2001, at least one writer for Time Mag­a­zine (con­nected with the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, by the way) got it per­fectly in Made in China: The Revenge of the Nerds:  China had been con­verted into a Tech­noc­racy! According to the author, Kaiser Kuo:

The nerds are run­ning the show in today’s China. In the twenty years since Deng Xiaoping’s [Ed. Note: count back­ward to 1978 – 79] reforms kicked in, the com­po­si­tion of the Chi­nese lead­er­ship has shifted markedly in favor of tech­nocrats. …It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to describe the cur­rent regime as a tech­noc­racy.

After the Maoist mad­ness abated and Deng Xiaoping inau­gu­rated the opening and reforms that began in late 1978, sci­en­tific and tech­nical intel­lec­tuals were among the first to be reha­bil­i­tated. Real­izing that they were the key to the Four Mod­ern­iza­tions embraced by the reformers, con­certed efforts were made to bring the “experts” back into the fold.

During the 1980s, tech­noc­racy as a con­cept was much talked about, espe­cially in the con­text of so-called “Neo-Authoritarianism” — the prin­ciple at the heart of the “Asian Devel­op­mental Model” that South Korea, Sin­ga­pore, and Taiwan had pur­sued with apparent suc­cess. The basic beliefs and assump­tions of the tech­nocrats were laid out quite plainly: Social and eco­nomic prob­lems were akin to engi­neering prob­lems and could be under­stood, addressed, and even­tu­ally solved as such.

The open hos­tility to reli­gion that Bei­jing exhibits at times — most notably in its obses­sive drive to stamp out the “evil cult” of Falun Gong — has pre-Marxist roots. Sci­en­tism under­lies the post-Mao tech­noc­racy, and it is the ortho­doxy against which here­sies are mea­sured. [Emphasis added]

Thus, during the 1980’s Tech­noc­racy (and sci­en­tism) took deep root not only in China, but also in South Korea, Sin­ga­pore and Taiwan. Sim­ilar gains were seen in Europe during the 1990’s and in the United States since 1973.  The Tri­lat­eral Commission’s utopian “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” is Tech­noc­racy, and China was the first modern exper­i­ment and trans­for­ma­tion. And, why not China? Dealing with a single Com­mu­nist dic­tator was a lot easier than dealing with a par­lia­ment, con­gress or senate in more demo­c­ratic nations.  The so-called “Neo-Authoritarianism” men­tioned above is ample evi­dence that the cham­pions of Tech­noc­racy knew full-well that it would be easier to trans­form an already author­i­tarian nation into authoritarianism one; in fact, as far back as 1932, orig­inal mem­bers of Tech­noc­racy, Inc. in the U.S. called for a dic­ta­tor­ship in the U.S. in order to imple­ment Technocracy.

This is the rest of the story, of which I was a keen observer at the time. What I lacked in edu­ca­tion and aca­d­emic dis­ci­pline was amply shored up by the con­sum­mate researcher and scholar, Antony Sutton, who was a pro­fessor of eco­nomics and a research fellow at Stanford’s pres­ti­gious Hoover Insti­tu­tion for War Peace and Rev­o­lu­tion in Cal­i­fornia. Sutton is widely rec­og­nized as most detailed and pro­lific writer in the 20th cen­tury on the transfer of tech­nology from the West to the East.

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