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China Is Winning and Why That’s Wonderful
The American people’s job is to stop militarist elites from blowing it all up.
“This is the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened.“- Chinese Red Note user celebrating American TikTok refugees.
2025 has brought a series of amazing things I never saw coming. Most have to do with Chinese tech outwitting the US Empire, but some may point to a kind of evolving human consciousness in the age of the Internet. Here are three of them.
An app preventing World War III
In early 2024, the US warned the Chinese-owners of the Singapore-operated video sharing app TikTok. They had nine months to sell TikTok to an American company, or the app would be banned in the US. At the time, TikTok had about 170 million users in the US, more than half of all Americans.
The stated reason for the ban was fear of China. The Chinese government could use the app to spy on Americans, or influence what U.S. users see. Apparently, only US spy agencies get to do that. The bill was called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said of the ban, “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance operations,, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women.” The real reason probably had more to do with people posting videos of the horrors in Gaza, pro-Palestine messages the government wanted censored.
TikTok sued against the ban, but in January 2025. the Supreme Court ruled that the “risk to national security” posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed concerns about the free speech rights of the app’s users. Under the TikTok ban, millions of people would lose their favorites, and thousands of creators would lose their audience and their income.
Then, something amazing happened. Americans calling themselves TikTok refugees started posting videos on Xiaohongshu, (pronounced Zhow-hong-shoo, which translates as Little Red Book or Red Note) a social media app owned and operated by a Chinese company. Most site users spoke Mandarin, and most writing was in Chinese characters, but using translation software, Chinese and American users could talk to each other. And they did.
People started posting videos of their lives in China and the USA. Chinese users welcomed the Americans and answered their questions. Both groups were amazed at how reality differed from what they had been taught about their adversaries. Americans started learning Mandarin. Chinese students got help with their English.
I joined Red Note and I love it. I see all kinds of people asking each other questions, sharing experiences, many in tears. Americans saying “We were taught to hate you, and you have welcomed us with so much love.” Chinese users had trouble believing life in America is so hard. “You work two jobs?” “An ambulance ride cost you $10,000? It’s not like that here.”
A country song with Chinese flutes called “Ballad of Xiao Hong Shu,” describes the support people are getting on the site. The song has over 100,000 views on YouTube. (I don’t know about other platforms.) One Chinese woman posted a video of herself dancing to it and saying, “This (the Tiktok refugees’ arrival) is the greatest thing that’s ever happened.”
Maybe a bit of an overstatement there, but I see her point. The US has been building up for war with China for years, surrounding it with military bases, promoting separatist movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. U.S. military leadership says there will be war with China no later than 2027 (as if the decision was totally out of their control.) US regime change agencies have been spreading stories of Chinese crimes, which so far have consistently turned out to be lies.
The People’s Will is Not Pro-War
Our leaders are trying to gain our support for a war no one else in the world wants. But how will they manufacture consent for a war between people who know each other and interact regularly on the Internet? It won’t be easy. This app could prevent World War III.
Red Note has become an international phenomenon. People from other countries are joining. The rulers are scared. As users streamed to Red Note, President Trump un-banned Tiktok, and an unnamed U.S. official told CBS News that “Red Note, just like TikTok, could face an ultimatum to divest, or be banned as a national security threat.”
Despite TikTok being back online (with Israeli spies monitoring content there) many Tiktok refugees are not going back. One young African-American woman on Red Note posted, “Going back to that censored platform be like an abused wife going back to the guy who battered her. Like going back to a job you hated. Stay here.”
It’s not just Red Note. Video loggers are visiting China and showing the world how welcoming and attractive conditions are, with people able to walk the streets freely and have enjoyable lives. Social media and translation software is changing human consciousness, and China is leading the way.
Money doesn’t make computers intelligent
On Jan. 21, President Trump announced $500 billion for a massive artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure development, to be run by three tech giants. He promised to “dominate AI for years.”
Two days later, a small Chinese company called Deep Seek released a free, open source AI program which rendered the whole AI personal assistant thing unprofitable. The program was trained for about $6 million, not hundreds of billions.
What happened then? Surprise! Deep Seek became a “national security threat.” The US navy has already banned it and Congress is planning more comprehensive bans.
But they’re too late. Because Deep Seek’s AI is open source, developers around the world are already creating their own versions, which in some cases are even better.
Sustainability is a national security threat.
China recently announced a giant orbiting solar panel array, as long as five football fields, that could generate power day and night and beam it to Earth as microwaves.
I don’t understand the science, but experts say the space panel could generate more energy than the Earth’s entire supply of oil. Most people would call that a great advance, leading toward a more sustainable civilization. But U.S. leaders are calling it a space weapon and national security threat. Will they try to blow it up, like they did the Nordstream pipeline?
I see a pattern here. With the US, everything China does is a national security threat. That’s because “national security” means for them total dominance by US corporations. They can’t compete; they won’t share, so they ban Chinese things or put huge tariffs on their products. Chinese electric cars are far cheaper than Teslas, but with a tariff of 100% on them, Americans who want electric are stuck buying from Elon Musk and friends.
Why is China winning?
Where did these three wins for Chinese tech come from? In four words, China is not capitalist. American technicians can do the space panels, the AI, the social media apps, but they are hamstrung by corporate short-term profit motive. With the space solar panel, no big company could profit from controlling it, as such a huge project would have to be nationalized. So the idea just sits there, while the Chinese Communist Party says ‘Go ahead. This is a good thing.’
You can see the difference in all areas of competition. The US relies on bullying other countries, either militarily or economically. They have military bases all over the world and have sunk the entire global South into debt traps with their control of banking systems, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile, China does international relations cooperatively. Their Belt and Road Initiative makes poorer countries into valuable trading partners by helping them build infrastructure.
When I told a vendor at a local market about the stories in this article, he got very excited. “Yes!” he said, “China is winning, and it’s great! I was born in Michoacan [Mexico], and China is building a railroad for us that will make things much better.”
China loans money internationally, but at much lower interest than Western banks charge. They have pulled together the BRICS trading alliance, which now has 19 members and partners and is growing fast. BRICS countries house over half the world’s population and over 40% of economic activity. They aim to free the world from the US economic stranglehold. Their basic idea is ‘More for you is more for me,’ as contrasted with the US position of keeping as much as they can for their own billionaires.
Without military industries clamoring for profitable conflicts, China doesn’t need or want war. Their business people want peace so they can make more money.
Downside of China’s growth
It’s important to note that, while infrastructure developed by China is helping people live better around the world, the same is not true of animals, plants, land, and water. China seems a lot more respectful of Nature’s needs than capitalists are, but they are still taking more from Earth than they give back. They are world leaders in renewable energy and land restoration, though, and I pray they will move more toward sustainability in the future.
What must we do?
The American Empire is in terminal decline and close to collapse, and China is showing the way to something new and better. But all that could be destroyed by a few well-placed nukes. We have to try to prevent that and prepare ourselves to survive the collapse and make something more beautiful out of it. I suggest a few ideas.
● If you do social media, join Red Note. Just download the app. Post there if you are able.
● Learn more about China. Make some Chinese friends. Learn some Mandarin. Maybe visit if you can.
● Speak out against the China-bashing war propaganda. Ask people where they are getting their information. Point them to Red Note or to v-logs of Westerners visiting China and seeing reality there.
● Build your community; get to know your neighbors, help each other.
Above all, resist apathy and NEVER EVER, give up.
There is a powerful force on our side.
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