An audio of a meeting on 14 May 2022 of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee was supposedly leaked and it's gone round the internet but ignored by mainstream media. It was an hour long meeting which detailed plans for mobilisation.
For defence purposes, China is divided into 5 regions - Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central Region. A Taiwan invasion would be the responsibility of the Southern Region, hence Guangdong holds certain responsibilities.
The meeting discussed bewildering details and all fear-mongering on internet focus on a part, that of Jennifer Zeng's transcript that mentions "... mainly 1,358 detachments of various types with a total of 140,000 personnel, 953 ships of various types, and 1,653 units/sets of various unmanned equipment...." All and sundry are keyboard military experts who assume this refers to a mobilisation against Taiwan. Based simply on Zeng's translation, all online media believes in it's authencity, such as The Times Of India, Hindustan Times, Glenn Beck talk show, and many others.
Who is Jennifer Zeng?
She holds a masters in geochemistry from Peking University. She became a serious Falun Gong practitioner and was arrested and prosecuted 4 times during China's crackdown on the movement. Zeng fled China and now lives in Australia. The Falun Gong movement produced many Chinese dissidents and ferocious CCP critics. Zeng is one such, and she fans anti-CCP narratives via her blog "The Inconvenient Truths".
According to Jennifer Zeng, the audio was secretly recorded and passed to Lu De of Lude Media who posted it on his Youtube channel. Zeng made a transcript in English, inserted English sub-titles, posted on Youtube, and promoted it on her blog.
In a follow up youtube video, Zeng explained the meeting was in Guangzhou, but was online to other defence regions and bodies via military fibre network and satellites. The meeting was secretly recorded not at Guangzhou but at another satellite location. Hence bad background and many people talking at the same time. It took her a long time to complete the transcript due to poor quality as well as lots of CCP and military jargons used. She is convinced of the authenticity due to the details and she had proof-checked the existence of various institutions and companies mentioned in the meeting. Zeng mentioned, without showing evidence, that 4 top military officers had been executed recently in connection with the leak.
Who is Lu De?
His real name is Wang DingGang. There is no public profile on him. Lu De has a Youtube channel he calls Lude Media. His videos are hugely popular and he is well know for disclosing a lot about CCP secrets. Who is his source, no one knows.
At some point he got enticed into the murky world of Miles Kwok, a virulent anti-CCP clap trap. He ended up working with Miles as CEO of "Rule Of Law" (ROL), one of various organisations set up by Miles with the audacious objective of destroying the CCP. It was Lu De who linked Li-Meng Fan to Miles. Remember Fan, the first virologist to finger the SARS-Cov2 was lab-made and came from Wuhan Lab leak. Miles made Fan a director in ROL where she had the fundings to attack CCP bioweapons programme.
Who is Miles Kwok?
This man is known as Miles Kwok, aka Miles Guo aka Guo Wengui aka Ho Wan Kwok. Not much is known of his early years. Of his later years, one can write a book.
In 1993 he bursted onto the Chinese real estate scene in Zhengzhou and later in 2008 gained recognition for bulding the Olympic Park in Beijing. Soon, he was a well known billionaire. He cultivated local political leaders, one of whom was Ma Jian, Vice Minister of China’s Ministry of State Security. Ma himself was arrested for corruption in 2015. According to Miles, Ma put himself in harm's way because he collected indiscretions on all sorts of party officials. Ma was sentenced to life imprisonment. He had implicated Miles for giving him a few millions in bribes. Miles fled to US. When the CCP acted to confiscate his assets in China, he turned on the communist party leadership and threatened to unload secrets of party corruption, information he probably gleaned from Ma. Miles billed himself as enemy #1 of the CCP as he sought assylum in US.
To facilitate his assylum application, Miles sought closer association with the Trump admin circle. He took up membership of Mar a Lago Club and sought out ultra rightist Steve Bannon, one time Trump's White House Chief Strategist. The two bonded in their mutual hatred of the CCP and their anti-CCP propagation agenda. Miles tapped Bannon's brain for media creativity, while the other milked the Chinese tycoon's millions to fund his MAGA activities.
To his credit, Trump steered clear of Miles and did not subscribe to GETTR after getting booted from Twitter. There seemed to be talk of Trump getting some GETTR equity but nothing materialised. That was good fortune, or wisdom, for Miles is one of the parties behind GETTR and there is some corporate misfeasance going on.
Miles has since created many organisations primarily tasked to propagate anti-CCP news or misinformation (ROL for example), several commercial enterprises, media platforms, cryptocurrencies, investment deals, nurtured a growing cult of followers of anti-CCP Chinese diaspora, set up New Federal State of China, a sort of Chinese government in exile in US. He runs what has become known as a "Whistleblower Movement" against CCP. He has more than 70 law suits pending, lost a couple of cases with hundreds of millions in fines. He has claims of frauds against him, of mis-using investors' funds, mis-led his followers. He has galvanised and mobilised clueless diehard followers against anyone who came up against him, even suggesting violence. He has also taken to join the US Patriots' fight against the Liberal Left. Did I say one can write a book about his exploits!
Back to the audio file. Is it real, is it a hoax, is it intelligence psy-ops, or is it counter-intelligence psy-ops?
In today's world of mis-information, one needs to be smart to discern the truth, or at least understand that something does not seem right. A hoax or prank by some private individuals is unlikely in view of the details involved in the discussion. I have always stressed we need to appreciate context and the messenger's motivation.
For context, one needs to have a fairly good world view and knowledge of current affairs. A couple of days prior to the Guangzhou meeting, President Biden met with the Asean leaders. He will then meet up with the Quad in East Asia on the later part of May. The audio leak comes at a time of increased rhetoric by hawkish US lawmakers, Biden admin and US allies, to counter the threat against Taiwan. The leak could be intentional on the part of China to make unfriendly voices bring down the heat a few notches. The Daily Caller quoted a former senior Trump staffer, to his credit, said it was "meant to intimidate".
I went some lengths to talk of Lu De, Miles and Zeng to illustrate a need to understand the messenger before jumping to conclusions. Their motivation is clear. Were they in fact unknowingly handed the audio file on a platter to propagate a Chinese ploy. Was it similar to the way the Daily Beast and New York Times received the Steele Dossier on the Russian Collusion. Zeng believes the audio file was recorded by anti-President Xi elements within the CCP, suggesting a schism exists within the party.
Last year, a further twist happened. ROL sued its CEO Lu De for breach of fiduciary duties. See Rule of Law vs Wang Dinggang. ROL claimed damages from Wang for acts against the interest of the Whistleblower Movement, ROL and New Federal State of China. In 2021 Lu De and Li-Meng Fan parted company with ROL and Miles. The duo had grown disillusioned with Miles and several incidents brought them to the conclusion that China's enemy #1 is in fact, not a CCP critic, but a Chinese dissident hunter. They suspected Miles to be working secretly for the CCP, identifying Chinese dissidents and betraying them over to the party.
Lu De and Fan's claims could be right. The CCP has infiltrated the US institutional and political leadership for years. The establishment leadership in both Democrat and Republican parties are compromised. China has its hands up Biden's arse. There are evidentiary proofs. However, Trump and MAGA lawmakers have not been infiltrated. In retrospect, it seems quite clear that the objective of Miles is to infiltrate this conservative sphere of influence. If I were the MAGA crowd, I would be extremely fearful of Miles. What they are dealing with may be counter-intelligence psy-ops. I would keep miles away from him, no pun intended.
Relax. It's not hoax, it's not intelligence nor counter-intelligence psy-ops.
Anyone with some military background at certain levels can easily understand what the meeting was all about. One key give away is the talk about transitioning from peace to war. What the meeting was all about was the development of a Standard Operating Procedure for a graduated state of readiness for war. The US has 5 levels from Defcon 1 to Defcon 5. Defcon stands for Defence Readiness Condition. Every country has this in one form or another, so does Singapore. For example, in the meeting, you hear them speaking of using civilian assets. This is called commandeering civilian assets for military purposes. Same old same old for Singapore. This is all legislated in the Singapore Armed Forces Act. In fact, if you are an owner of some heavy equipment, mostly in transportation or construction segment, you would most probably have been involved in SAF exercises where your equipment were commandeered.
So, everybody, stand-down and relax. It's much ado about nothing. Let me end on a lighter note. Readers of my blog should know I often throw in some personal experience. And yes I do have a personal tale here. I cannot go into details to avoid any breach of secrets. During my national service days, as a newly commissioned 2nd lieutenant, I was posted to a special unit. Our unit was tasked with the responsibility of operating certain communication infrastructure we inherited from the British Armed Forces. I realised the unit had no Standard Operating Procedures, or SOP as we used to call it. An SOP for the unit is essential to establish the instructions for each state of readiness. The officers before me had done nothing. I raised the matter to Division HQ which relayed to Mindef. Nothing moved. As an idealistic young officer, I was concerned and pushed for an answer several times. In the end, I was instructed to write the SOP "since I was the one who brought it up". It was as ridiculous as it can get. Hey, I wasn't a general, how was I to understand the scheme of things at the national level? I assumed the response was actually their way of telling me to zip up. I obeyed. In retrospect, it's understandable as the army was very young and still finding its way at the time.
An invasion plan would have been more specific and limited in scale, would certainly have discussed enemy strength and weaknesses, would have identified scope of operation, command and control matters, identified friendly and unfriendly forces, described terrains, talked of matters like beachhead, command location, reserves, order of advance, and a host of other combat issues, etc. There was none of that. In effect, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee meeting was about developing an SOP for the Southern Defence Region, which will eventually trickle down to an SOP for each individual operating unit. It's exactly the same kind of SOP that I tried to get top brass to initiate for my unit some fifty years ago.
