What Mao Taught Woke – Part III

For many months, mainland China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) elements have become increasing aggressive, and more frequently so. In one close call in December 2022, a PLA Navy fighter aircraft flew across the nose within twenty feet of a U.S. Air Force (USAF) RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft operating in international airspace, forcing it to take evasive action to avoid collision. At the end of May 2023, a Chinese fighter aircraft flew within 400 feet of the nose of a USAF RC-135 aircraft conducting routine operations over the South China Sea, forcing it to fly through the Chinese fighter’s wake turbulence.

Addressing the incident, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) foreign ministry spokesman defended his country’s unlawful, unsafe, and unprofessional actions. He told reporters in Beijing:

China’s military actions are completely justified, lawful, safe and professional. . .. It is the U.S. that should deeply reflect upon itself and correct the wrongdoings [emphasis added].

Retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis wrote: “. . . as a former sea captain of a similar US destroyer, it almost made my heart stop to watch this video.” He continued, “This is wildly unprofessional and provocative behavior on the part of the Chinese Navy. . . . Wars start with incidents like this. Shame on the PLA Navy.”

But whatever complaints one may have with the Chinese military these days, we should at least recognize that they are using our lingo – which we learned from them. Deep reflection to correct one’s “wrongdoings” is precisely the language of self-criticism, a well-known Maoist concept most closely associated with the 1950s through the 70s. Thanks to the wonders of the Pentagon’s Diversity/DEI training protocols in recent years, countless U.S. military personnel have become quite familiar with the self-criticism concept our adversaries are now calling us to put into practice.

Actually, this exercise in deep reflection should prove fairly simple. In those Diversity trainings that prompt group discussion by asking a question along the lines of, how did “white supremacy culture” manifest in this situation, a training facilitator heeding China’s recent counsel need only remove the words “white supremacy culture” and replace them with “Western imperialism.”   

The fact that the Chinese acted so dangerously in the Strait while both PRC and U.S. defense chiefs attended a major regional security summit in Singapore ought not to be overlooked. The anniversary of the final, violent phase of the Tiananmen Square crisis from the spring to early June of 1989 probably provided even greater incentive to teach the Western imperialists a lesson.

Could it be any clearer that the Chinese leadership no longer respects the United States or its armed forces? One might ask: why should the PRC respect an adversary who not only fails to respond as a serious nation is expected to do when a spy balloon overflies its sovereign territory for an entire week, and, moreover, it continues to prioritize an array of irrational and perverse – mostly racial- and sexual-based – social agendas? All of which, obviously, is pursued at the expense of legitimate U.S. combat readiness.  

Of course, few if any outside the West buy into the silliness of “Diversity is our strength” or “Diversity is the Force.” What serious air force agrees with one U.S. Air Force major command that proper pronoun usage increases “lethality.” Certainly not the Chinese, whose murderous leader Mao believed political power “grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Conservative author Rod Dreher predicted last year: “America is going to have to get its butt kicked in a major war for this ideological madness to go away.” For Dreher to be proven wrong, however, the right people in Washington need to be awakened to the real world, immediately; and to change course more drastically than any vessel in the Strait of Taiwan threatened by a reckless Chinese warship.

Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and military historian. He is the author of Flight Risk: The Coalition's Air Advisory Mission in Afghanistan, 2005-2015 (Naval Institute Press, 2018), and (forthcoming), Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation's Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press).