China's Bilderberg - The Secretive Beach Retreat Where China Leaders Plot World Domination
Have you ever wondered how China’s stone-faced, dead-eyed leaders set their policies? How much debate takes place, who is involved, and whether it ever gets heated? Do the nation’s economic, scientific, and creative experts get to bend their ears, at least to some degree?
These are questions that have plagued Sinophiles and China-watchers for decades. The decision-making and operational mechanics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are a black box, but it is known that the CCP has its summer retreats at Beidaihe, a seaside locale in Hebei Province that is 180 miles from the nation’s capital. There, at the beach, they set policy goals each year.
Shrouded in the strictest secrecy, there’s no way of knowing what exactly is on the agenda at the Beidaihe meetings. Think of them as China’s Bilderberg meetings, where people of power meet regularly but nobody can say why.
What’s known about Beidaihe can only be expressed in the most general terms, that political leaders meet with experts in economic, scientific, and social science fields to form the grand strategies that steer the nation’s growth and development. Those meetings are the rare occasions when honest data on China’s economy are laid out on the table, putting to rest the legend of China’s recurring 7 percent GDP growth.
Normally held in mid-August, if the Beidaihe summit is convened at any other time, it provokes rife speculation by China-watchers. In 2002, when the meetings took place in late July, the rumor was that Jiang Zemin, China’s political leader at the time, resisted retirement and the issue of succession had become, well, an issue.
This year, the Beidaihe summit started on August 3, a week earlier than is the norm. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that the bump was due to China’s stock market meltdown, its economic cool down, and President Xi Jinping’s planned September visit to the United States.
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What takes place behind closed doors and in government villas isn’t part of their universe, and is met with a collective shrug. Expectations and street gossip still have their place; this year, people were worried about their decapitated stock portfolios, the slow economy, and the drama in the manhunt for corrupt CCP officials. Discussions and decisions made by China’s leaders, whose collective wealth is unimaginable for the average Chinese citizen, mean little. Behind their robotic façade, Chinese leaders simply don’t see themselves as answerable to the general public.
Chinese nationals are accustomed to being kept out of the loop, yet it is undeniable that these secret meetings have a big impact on Chinese life. It is almost surely that one of China’s most profound traits—its stalwart anti-Japan stance, or at least the propaganda that whips it up—was forged in meetings like those in Beidaihe.
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Surely, next year’s Beidaihe summit will have some intense discussions, fueling the grand schemes that will project Chinese geopolitical power for years to come. But we won’t hear about those plans, and that’s exactly how the CCP wants it.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/20/the-secret-seaside-resort-where-china-s-leaders-plot-world-domination.html