This story barely made the news, and of course, if you're afflicted with the American lamestream corporate propatainment version of media - a media only slightly less valuable than 1930s Pravda for a valuable source of news and information - you may not have heard about this story at all.

And speaking of the American propatainment media, Pravda, and so on, the Chinese media (of the same stock as the American propatainment media and Pravda) didn't hear about this story until after it was over, and of course, the reasons given for the visit were all standard boilerplate about "unity" and "the wonderful diversity of diversity" and "follow the Party/science/politburo/Fauci" and "trust the (latest five year) plan". (Funny that, how much the Q anon stuff sounds like the Chinese Communist Party, but I digress...)

Oh, and did I mention that all of this fuss was over Chairman Xi Jinping's recent visit to Tibet, the first major Chinese leader to visit that country in decades? And did I mention that the visit was only announced after it was already over? (Story shared by D.P.):

Xi ‘secretly’ visits Tibet, first trip by a China president ..

The reasons for the visit were ostensibly the 70th anniversary of the Anschluss of Tibet by Communist China, an opportunity to issue more boilerplate, which according to the article Mr. Xi did:

According to Xinhua news agency, the president visited the president visited the Tibet Autonomous Region in connection with the 70th anniversary of Tibet’s “peaceful liberation the first time in the history of the party and the country”.

...&c &c blah blah blah.

Now I have to wonder, was Mr. Xi's visit simply about commemorating the Tibetan Anschluss, or was it possibly about something else? After all, the visit took place during a period of another record rainfall and flooding in his country, and thus far, Mr. Xi has at least "shown the flag" during such disasters, showing up personally in critical areas. One would have thought therefore that another high-ranking envoy could have been sent to Tibet, while Mr. Xi remains to be seen managing the latest crises.

Perhaps that is the point: perhaps he needed to be seen at the center of a "happy" event (at least from the Communist perspective) like the annexation of Tibet, and not constantly associated with floods and Covid.

As usual, however, I have another high octane speculation to advance. Consider Al Jazeera's version of the story of the visit:

China’s Xi urges people in Tibet to ‘follow party’ in rare visit

Al Jazeera is at least seeking deeper motivations for the visit than simply a celebration of the Anschluss, for it's sub-headline mentions the growing tensions with India in addition to the other boilerplate about party unity and trusting the Fauci... er... The Science... uhm, I mean, The (Latest Five Year) Plan:

In Lhasa, Xi watched a cultural performance that showcased Tibetan culture and loyalty to the party through song and dance, including a famous song with the lyric “sing a folk song for the party, the party is like my mother”.

But what if, after all, the visit really is about the Flooding/the Plan, at least in part? There is an odd mention in the Al Jazeera version of the story that hints at this:

After a “warm welcome by cadres and masses of all ethnic groups”, Xi went to the Nyang River Bridge to learn about ecological and environmental protection of the Yarlung Tsangpo River and the Nyang River, CCTV said.

And that brings me to this story I blogged about a couple of years ago and which I have mentioned in various interviews: China plans rapid expansion of 'weather modification' efforts Note what this story actually says: China basically plans to turn all of Tibet into a "weather modification zone", with specific emphasis on domestic weather control:

For six decades, the communist nation has deployed military aircraft and anti-aircraft guns to lace clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen to thicken water droplets to the point where they fall as snow or rain. The technology has mostly been used at a local level to alleviate droughts or clear skies ahead of major events, such as the 2008 Olympics or last October’s 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

Part of that is a new weather modification system in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, Asia’s biggest freshwater reserve. Chinese scientists are working on the ambitious Tianhe (“sky river”) plan to divert water vapour northwards from the Yangtze River basin to the Yellow River basin, where it would become rainfall.

They say they have found potential channels near the boundary of the troposphere that could carry 5bn cubic metres of water annually. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has reportedly constructed hundreds of chambers in the mountain region – known as Asia’s water tower – to feed silver iodide into the atmosphere in large volumes. (Boldface emphasis added)

Notably, the flooding in China this year is not restricted to the Wuhan basin below the Three Gorges Dam, but has ventured - exactly according to "the Plan" - further north, where there have already been three dam failures, while heavy rains and floods continue in the south as well. So could Xi's visit also be about inspecting those weather modification facilities?

Is this why a top Chinese general accompanied him? And, more importantly, is this visit because that plan is going well, or horribly wrong? One may even go so far as to ask, was this visit about reasserting control of those facilities and reining them in (not to coin a pun)? Or was it about using those facilities to counter-act someone else's weather warfare?

Obviously, I do not know. But I am convinced that there is weather manipulation going on in China; they have admitted it. And that manipulation is causing a great deal of suffering in China, on Mr. Xi's watch...