The EconomistAugust 29th 2020 United States 19O
n august 20th, shortly after Steve
Bannon was arrested aboard a yacht in
Long Island Sound in connection with an
alleged charity fraud, the owner of the
yacht, a property developer named Guo
Wengui, posted a video online intimating
that the Chinese Communist Party (ccp)
had orchestrated the downfall of the for-
mer White House adviser. Mr Guo, who fled
China in 2014, has established a formidable
online persona as an outspoken dissident
who, in his telling, will bring down the ccp.
From his 152-foot yacht and his $67.5m
penthouse overlooking Central Park, he
spins tales of Chinese elite corruption and
purges, styling himself a “ccpterminator”.
(Mr Bannon is given the same nickname.)
On June 4th, the anniversary of the Tianan-
men Square massacre in 1989, Messrs Guo
and Bannon announced, aboard the yacht
in New York harbour, the founding of “The
New Federal State of China”, meant to sup-
plant the People’s Republic.
Mr Guo’s penchant for grandiosity has
made it difficult to sort truth from fiction
in his claims. Even his personal details are
hard to pin down. He is about 50 and also
goes by the name Miles Kwok, or Miles Guo,
though he is also possibly known as Guo
Wugui or Guo Haoyun, and he holds as
many passports as he has names. (Accord-
ing to the New York Times Magazine, he also
claims never to wear the same underwear
twice.) In China he amassed a fortune of
$1.1bn, according to a Forbes estimate in- It is not clear how much he still has;
both his yacht and his Manhattan apart-
ment are for sale.
On his way up Mr Guo befriended Ma
Jian, vice-minister of state security from - He also played a part in bringing
down a deputy mayor of Beijing, reportedly
with the help of a sex tape of the official
with a mistress. He became an object of fas-
cination to American diplomats in Beijing,
who pumped him for political gossip. But
Mr Guo fled to America during President Xi
Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which
would soon sweep up his friend, Mr Ma.
Chinese authorities have accused him
of multiple crimes, from bribery to sexual
assault. He denies any wrongdoing. The
Wall Street Journalhas reported several ef-
forts by Chinese authorities in 2017 to repa-
triate Mr Guo; he has applied for asylum in
America. Chinese state media have at-
tacked him. But some dissidents and scep-
tics, wary of his past ties to Chinese state
security,donottrusthim,wonderingifhe
worksbothsides(hehasdismissedsuch
insinuations). American intelligence is
saidtolistentohisinsights—butalsoto
keephimatarm’slength.
Thatmaybewise.ThedaybeforeMr
Bannon’sarresttheJournalhadreported
thata companyheandMrGuoareinvolved
in,gtvMediaGroup,wasthesubjectofa
federalinvestigationintoitsfundraising.
MrGuocalledthereporta fabrication,part
oftheccp’splottotakeMrBannondown.
Buthisanticshavewornthinonhishosts.
“Therewouldbea lotofgroanswhenhis
namecameup,”saysa formerTrumpad-
ministrationofficial.InbothBeijingand
Washington,it seems. 7NEW YORK
An exiled businessman is China’s most
vocal dissident. Who is he really?Guo Wengui and Steve BannonCognitive
dissidents
Heroorvillain?T
he wayDee sees it, America is locked in
a dangerous spiral. Standing near the
courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the
middle-aged man watches volunteers
sweep glass from beside two blackened
wrecks of lorries. “People feel a certain type
of animosity in their heart now. It’s not
gonna stop,” he says. He took his adult son
to demonstrations in the city this week as
confrontation escalated from peaceful
marching to looting, arson and then to
murder. “Protests are gonna continue, be-
cause two more lives were taken,” he says.He says his fellow protesters, though
they smashed property, were not set on vio-
lence. Yet they were enraged. They erupted
after a white policeman trying to arrest an
unarmed 29-year-old black man, Jacob
Blake, shot him repeatedly on August 23rd.
Bystander videos showed him shot at close
range as he tried to get into a car with his
three young children. “How can you justify
shooting that man in the back seven times?
Why you got to shoot a person with intent
to kill?” asks Dee.
Mr Blake survived, but may be partially
paralysed. His relatives called for calm: his
mother said all sides must “take a moment
and examine your hearts.” Yet clashes
flared in ways similar to confrontations
after police choked to death George Floyd,
in Minneapolis, in May.
After many buildings were destroyed,
armed men—said by some locals to be
white vigilantes from beyond Wisconsin—
arrived, set on resisting rioters. One 17-
year-old, Kyle Rittenhouse, was filmed fir-
ing an assault rifle at a crowd. He was ar-
rested at home in neighbouring Illinois on
August 26th, and charged with murdering
two protesters. Footage online suggests he
shot them, and injured a third, as they
chased him along busy streets.
Kenoshans deny that their city is usual-
ly troubled. Many blamed outsiders. David,
a businessman who picked through wreck-
age at his car-sales lot, says rioters de-
stroyed stock worth $400,000. He de-
scribed feeling terror when they came,
saying attackers left only when he bran-
dished his own weapons. “Half of the peo-
ple in the protest are armed, the business
owners are armed. I’m surprised there
wasn’t a mass shooting before,” he says. He
predicts a surge in support for President
Donald Trump. Voters “don’t want lawless-
ness, this is like a war zone”.
Will Mr Trump get a boost? For all the
popular dismay over police killings, some
voters—especially older and whiter ones—
are anxious about recent looting, violent
protests and an uptick in urban gun deaths.
Polls suggest there is support for reforming
the police, but not defunding them. That
helps to explain why Joe Biden, on August
26th, said: “Burning down communities is
not protest, it’s needless violence.” Tony
Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor,
was also quick to take an offer from Mr
Trump of federal agents to restore order.
At the Republican convention the vice-
president, Mike Pence, spoke of the need
for more law and order, referring to Keno-
sha. But a close focus on the city could be
risky. It looks awkward that the man
charged with murder is a police cadet and
avid fan of the president, who sat in the
front row of a Trump rally, in Iowa, in Janu-
ary. Vigilantes rarely help promote law. In
Dee’s view, such people came to this city
with “the intent to hurt somebody”. 7KENOSHA, WISCONSIN
Yet another round of police violence,
angry protests and murderMore trouble in WisconsinA summer of fury