Classic Form: In a tactical dilemma, one must be willing to sacrifice a lesser objective (the plum tree) to secure a greater, more vital one (the peach tree). This can involve sacrificing a pawn to save a king or taking a small loss to achieve a decisive victory.
Modern Version: Execute token, high-profile "crackdowns" on non-essential companies, officials, or programs to create the public illusion of reform, transparency, or internal strife. This sacrificial act distracts foreign observers and relieves international pressure, allowing the uninterrupted advancement of core, long-term strategic programs.
AI-Powered Execution: AI-driven wargaming and simulation can calculate the optimal "sacrificial pawn." The system can model global media reactions and market sentiment to determine which specific concession—such as publicly fining a tech giant like Ant Group or closing a few controversial Confucius Institutes—will generate the maximum positive public relations benefit while protecting the core mission (e.g., the expansion of the underlying surveillance state or the military-civil fusion program). AI-powered sentiment analysis can continuously monitor the global information environment to identify when foreign pressure is reaching a critical threshold, signaling the opportune moment for a sacrificial gesture to de-escalate tensions and reset the global narrative.
CCP Application
Sham "Crackdowns": The CCP may publicly punish a high-profile tech firm like Alibaba or Didi to project an image of "rule of law" and robust regulatory oversight, especially ahead of international summits or trade negotiations. This act (sacrificing the "plum" of a single company's autonomy) distracts from the fact that the state's overall control over the entire tech sector and its access to citizen data is actually being tightened and centralized under the CCP's direct authority (preserving the "peach" of total information control).
Rebranding Operations: When Confucius Institutes came under intense international scrutiny for being propaganda arms of the state, the CCP closed many of them, sacrificing the toxic "Confucius Institute" brand. However, it simultaneously re-opened them under new, innocuous names like "language and culture centers" or embedded their functions directly within university foreign language departments, thus preserving the core influence and intelligence-gathering mission.
Staged Economic Weakness: The CCP may strategically release official data suggesting an economic downturn or "stage an injury" to lower foreign expectations, induce complacency in its rivals, and deflect criticism. This feigned weakness can be used to secure more favorable terms in trade negotiations or to mask massive, off-budget state-led investment in strategic sectors like military AI and quantum computing.
Collaborators: Western financial analysts and media outlets that interpret every token crackdown as a genuine move toward market reform, encouraging continued investment and giving credence to the CCP's deceptive narrative. Foreign governments and diplomats who are eager to claim a "win" and thus accept superficial concessions as signs of substantive progress, relaxing pressure on the CCP's more fundamental and egregious behaviors.
Counter: Shift analytical focus from superficial, headline-grabbing events to underlying structures and long-term strategic trajectories. The key question should always be: what capabilities are being preserved and enhanced, not just what is being publicly sacrificed?. Maintain consistent, multi-domain pressure on core issues such as human rights, intellectual property theft, and military expansion, and refuse to be placated by token gestures. This stratagem is a form of strategic deception designed specifically to manipulate the West's own analytical and news cycles. The CCP understands that Western media and markets are event-driven and possess short attention spans. By periodically feeding them a dramatic but ultimately insignificant "plum" (a crackdown on a billionaire, a purged official), they can reset the narrative and buy more time to cultivate the far more important "peach" (military modernization, total surveillance) in relative quiet.