Once a person can recognize patterns, those patterns lose their power over them. This is true not only in chess, but in every other domain of life. If you look back at the formulas used by the most popular magazines of our youth — Reader, Yilin, Zhiyin — you’ll find they didn’t just capture human nature; they captured the core desires of their era. At the very least, their approach to shaping public opinion is worth studying.
Every Zhiyin-formula story tells the same kind of tale: a powerless individual treated with tender care by a mighty government, at any cost. It follows the exact same template as “the domineering CEO falls for the wild, impulsive, love-starved girl.” Every story of this kind, no matter how it’s dressed up, follows the same underlying formula — and it strikes precisely at the core desires of its target audience.
The Korean drama My Sassy Girl was made at the peak of South Korea’s economic rise — the so-called Miracle on the Han River. Thanks to that economic growth, Korean women achieved an unprecedented level of social status. To ride that cultural wave, the chaebol-controlled entertainment industry rolled out films like My Sassy Girl. The story it told: a woman can be reckless and demanding, and the man will still bend over backward to love her unconditionally. While chaebol-controlled media amplified and spread this message, chaebol-run talent competition shows were springing up like mushrooms after rain.
Any people-centered industry that booms must be precisely targeting the deepest desires of the moment. An ordinary girl sees a world of dazzling material abundance through the media’s lens and builds a mental template of what life should look like. That media-constructed template becomes the model apartment in the minds of millions — the aspirational floor plan for the life they dream of. The cost of that “model apartment” keeps climbing, pushed ever higher by shadowy forces behind the scenes. The further it drifts beyond ordinary people’s reach, the harder it becomes to let go — because it’s no longer just a lifestyle. It has gradually become their definition of happiness itself. Only that model-apartment version of themselves counts as happiness. Everything else falls short.
The moment ordinary girls believe they’ve found a shortcut that can transform their destiny overnight, they begin to look down on the steady, conventional life paths their parents walked, always chasing the dream of leaping to the top in a single bound. As more and more young women pour into an entertainment industry that promises fame through youth and beauty, the chaebol bosses open their own playbook — one that breaks through every moral boundary and plumbs the depths of human exploitation. One jaw-dropping scandal after another erupts. More and more contestants, trapped in the vortex of abuse, find themselves unable to bear the humiliation — and take their own lives. Even so, the industry has taken on a life of its own. Nothing stops the waves of young women, full of hope, from rushing in one after another.
Once an idea takes root in the mind and is constantly nourished by the media messages that surround you, failing to reach it becomes unbearable — tossing and turning through sleepless nights, wishing you were dead.
To escape that pain, people go looking for shortcuts. Nearly every scheme, in every era and culture, follows the same steps: 1. First, display the mirage in all its splendor. 2. Blend that distant fantasy with the target’s innermost desires. 3. Then open a shortcut through the barriers that seem to block the way. Everyone rushes toward that shortcut, jostling for position — and the less people have to begin with, the more fervently and desperately they chase it.
The old Zhiyin-formula stories all had one fatal flaw. But people back then were too starved for meaning and too sheltered from the world to notice — they chose to ignore it. Every Zhiyin-formula story painted a picture of a powerful government treating a vulnerable individual with boundless tenderness, showcasing the beauty of freedom — God-given rights, universal equality. If all people under the gaze of Lady Liberty are worthy of the beacon of freedom’s costly, tender care, then that beacon should open its arms to the world’s ordinary people — not erect barriers at its borders to keep them out.
Back in the day, Carter accused Deng Xiaoping of not allowing Chinese citizens to travel freely. Deng immediately replied: “How many do you want? I’ll start with ten million.” Carter went pale, fumbling and deflecting.
Every scheme of this kind has the same problem: it will spare no effort showing you its superiority and beauty, but it will never actually let you share in that beauty — even as it constantly proclaims that beauty belongs to everyone.
A rich man tells a group of poor children: “Your parents are cruel. Look at my children — they eat whatever they want, play however they like. Total freedom. Not like your parents, who won’t let you eat your fill, won’t let you play freely, and force you to study.” The rich man’s children play along, displaying their lifestyle and developing a sense of superiority.
But one sharp poor boy catches on immediately. He turns to the rich man: “Can I call you Dad? I’ll come live at your place, be your son, eat what I want and play what I want — just like your son — and you’ll be responsible for me!” The other poor children follow suit.
Before the rich man can even find the words to deflect, his own children panic. They rage at their father, demanding he never allow this, and warn off the poor children with threats of their own. “I just wanted you to see how well I live — I never intended for you to actually live like me! Know your place!” the rich man shouts at the poor children.
This is the root logic behind “Kick It While It’s Collapsing.”
Under a normal dollar cycle, when the dollar is about to enter a declining phase, oil prices should be at a low — making it convenient for the dollar to buy at the bottom. However, as I mentioned several months ago, the commodity cycle seems to have moved ahead of schedule, with oil prices leading the charge. Typically in commodities, gold moves inversely to the dollar — when gold rises, the dollar falls, and when the dollar rises, gold falls. The current situation seems to have gone completely off-script. Over a year of consecutive Fed rate hikes has driven the dollar up sharply, but even more dramatic is gold’s rise — which has been even more extreme. One of these moves must therefore be manufactured. And anything artificially inflated requires constant feeding — once the feeding stops, it collapses. Gold’s explosive rise signals that the market doesn’t believe the dollar can hold.
If the cycle front-runs expectations, the dollar’s rate-cut bottom-fishing strategy will come up empty. All this chaos is designed to disrupt the rhythm — and when the rhythm is broken, money can’t flow out.
China has just halted all ongoing construction projects to audit for external borrowing. Some localities, unable to raise funds internally, have been quietly borrowing from abroad — and dollar interest rates right now are terrifyingly high. Just days ago, Guangdong became the first province to announce it has zero hidden foreign debt. Other provinces will be audited one by one in the weeks to come. In the meantime, projects that launched on borrowed debt must pause and follow the unified deployment plan. Additionally, the newly upgraded financial regulatory authority has begun reviewing certain domestic real estate projects — approving them to resolve financing through internal debt channels, while prohibiting any unauthorized external debt fundraising. A debt-laden project in Tianshui was recently disclosed. Similar announcements will increase — this is part of the audit process, and the cleanup has officially begun. Otherwise, these things would simply be buried, not disclosed.
A fitting toast: Steadfastly walk the financial path of socialism with Chinese characteristics!