whole process democracy, vague as it is, yet another example of proactively seeking discourse power, just as important long term as military and economic power. Bill yesterday alerted us to another concerted push to gain discourse power, to control the narrative. In a 2021 online webinar to launch a new Renmin University report, "Global Ambition: Opportunities and Challenges for China to Promote the Reform of the International Discourse System" key speaker Wang Wen, executive dean of Chongyang Institute of Finance, used this increasingly common call to tackle directly the normalisation of western (meaning American) concepts as definitive of reality. As a slogan which has a big audience in China’s think tanks, it sounds somewhat postmodern and also Foucauldian, a critique of the way American culture and American categories define reality worldwide, wielding discursive power. The remedy, according to the report and the speakers launching it, is for China to replace those framings with its own categories. Paralleling China’s economic and military rise, this is presented as necessary, universally good, beneficial to all and a historic inevitability. The trajectory of this challenge to America’s mental hegemony grows out of China “having been beaten” by Western imperialists, resulting in a period of starving, the current challenge is now “being scolded.” It is a given that “the West” generically, but especially the US cannot abide China regaining its’ rightful place, and the dep history of the past 150 years proves it. Far from being a postmodern opening to multiple subjectivities, this is a demand that China henceforth defines truth. Above all, it is a victim narrative, positioning China still in a struggle to free itself of the yoke of ”falling into the trap of Western conceptual theories over and over again”, as another speaker, the Global Times writer Ding Gang put it. But how to achieve this? Expanding military power may soon push the US Navy out of the South China Sea. Expanding economic power makes businesses worldwide keen to do business with China. Ding Gang is inspired by military analogies: “智库的 zhikude in English are think tanks. Their ideas are as powerful as tanks. The impact must have a theoretical basis. The more solid the theory, the stronger the impact. Now we must strive to advance towards the goal of breaking through the existing Western theories, and in some aspects of theories can be crossed, paralleled, and supplemented with Western theories to achieve the purpose of innovation and gain wider acceptance.” This is circular. In a flash, we are back in the idea of somehow critiquing yet adopting dominant western ideas to serve China’s ongoing rise. Challenging the power of the think tanks, yet also borrowing their methods; a familiar dilemma for patriotic Chinese for 150 years. Confusion reigns, yet China must break out of this discourse trap. In practice, the more China tries to break out, the more it mimics its critics.