When Europe and the USA opened up trade with China in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were all sorts of wonderful products they coveted, like furniture, silk and tea, but the Chinese had no particular desire for Western products. Britain had (literally) a quick fix for this, developing poppy fields in India and selling opium to China. Very soon there was an enormous Chinese demand for opium. The Chinese government tried to put a stop to this by banning the import of opium, to which a large proportion of the population in coastal cities became addicted. In the 1st Opium War, when the British navy shelled these cities into submission, China was forced to provide unfettered access to trade with the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842.
That would teach the Chinese to interfere with free trade!
Chinese Dynasties
Some of the greatest inventions of all time were made in China. Over a thousand years ago they had invented paper, gunpowder, printing and the compass, and their famous dynasties like the Yuan dynasty, the Ming dynasty, and the Qing dynasty unified this enormous country and kept its citizens under tight control whilst the West was in its infancy.
China has a long memory, and for them the humiliations of the 19th century are recent history, and something they are determined shall never happen again. The new dynasty of Communism is not far removed from early dynasties, and its emphasis on a tight surveillance of the population is nothing new. From a Chinese point of view, control is an essential element of maintaining a fifth of the world’s people as a cohesive whole. China is a collective culture, not an individualistic culture like in the West, and the average Chinese has little difficulty in accepting the surveillance and control that characterizes every aspect of daily life – just as long as there are benefits.
The People and the President
Without tangible benefits for the population, China risks chaos and dissolution. Therefore Chinese leaders are constantly measuring and responding to the mood amongst the people. This is “The People’s Republic of China” clearly shown in the 1949 horoscope for Communist China.
China. October 1st 1949. 15.15 Beijing AS 5.56 AQ.
The Aquarius Ascendant and Moon show the people as the dominating force in the horoscope. It is a collective spirit which rules the country, and the individual is subsumed by the community. The Sun in fall in the 8th house conjoining Neptune reflects, amongst other things, how the individual ego is sacrificed for the group.
China is ruled by the Politburo, and primarily by the seven highest officials who compose the extremely secretive Standing Committee. Xi Jinping is currently the highest of these officials – the General Secretary. Whilst Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping have abrogated near dictatorial powers, they are still vulnerable and accountable, first to the Party and then to the People, acutely aware that discontent in the population can bring an end to their power.
So the Moon in Aquarius trine the Sun in Libra shows a partnership between the people and the president which needs to be harmonious at all times. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao mobilized the youth of China to purge those in established positions – this was the time when Saturn ran in to the Uranus-Pluto conjunction – and this way maintained power. Xi is focused on eliminating corruption, and in this way he has also got rid of potential political rivals. He has simultaneously also won the hearts of the people, and is extremely popular.
Collectivization
The interplay between the collective and the individual is illustrated by the South Node in Libra in the 8th House, and the North Node in Aries in the 2nd House. The evolutionary dynamic is to empower the individual, moving from collective ownership to private ownership and developing a materially strong and independent country rather than a weak and dependent country threatened by chaos and dissolution represented by Neptune, Ceres and Mercury conjoining the South Node.
It is quite likely the this conjunction involving Ceres (farming) reflects the drastic collectivization policies in the early years of Mao Zedong, when a completely illusory philosophy of industrialization and farming – the Great Leap Forward – resulted in tens of millions of deaths through starvation in the period from 1958 to 1962 – the largest man-made disaster in history. This took place as the Sun progressed through the 8th house, with a progressed lunar eclipse (as China and the Soviet Union parted ways because of ideological disagreements after the death of Stalin) leading to a conjunction of the Sun with the South Node.
The phrase “Great Leap Forward” is instructional in terms of the newspeak employed by China, where the Party constantly distorts reality and does not hesitate to lie to avoid unpleasant truths. This manipulation of truth pervades the whole country. Edicts are issued down through the system demanding certain kinds of economic results. Lower officials distort the figures to satisfy the leadership. This is the great flaw in Chinese communism, and it is alive and well today with the State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) which are the Chinese answer to Western corporations. The state pours money into these SEO’s which become bloated and inefficient but are allowed to continue, where in the West bankruptcies sort out the weak from the strong.
The Great Firewall
President Xi came to power on March 14th 2013, with the slow formation of the Uranus-Pluto square, which in the following years hit the Sun and the Mercury-Ceres-Neptune conjunction, so there has been a genuine effort to eliminate the endemic weaknesses of a corrupt system, where officials try to please their superiors by falsifying results. However, at the same time, information has been subject to ever-increasing control not least through the Cybersecurity Law of 2017. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter are banned in China – it is the Chinese government that decides what people can and cannot know. Netizens cannot mention Mao or Xi on social media – there are well over 100,000 people employed to censor internet content if you try.
Foreign Policy and Trade
China has historically been suspicious of other countries, perhaps with some justification. The whole country was overrun and occupied by Kublai Khan in 1205, and colonial powers carved out zones of interest in the 18th and 19th centuries. Japan launched a brutal invasion in 1937 at a time of civil war between factions led my Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-sheck. The Mars-Pluto conjunction in Leo and the 7th House indicates the sense that others can threaten them, and there is a tendency to demonize the opposition. This is exacerbated by the square from Venus in Scorpio and semisquare from Uranus. In Chinese consciousness, the whole area of foreign policy is a powder keg waiting to explode, and international trade, represented by Venus in Scorpio in the 9th House, is a major anxiety factor. Threatening China through trade, as Trump did, is only likely to invoke disproportional reactions.
Venus is in a weak sextile to Jupiter (in fall in the 12th house) and Saturn in Virgo – and midpoint both – so there is a realistic attitude to trade, but it is very isolationist and controlled. China wants to sell goods to other countries, but they want to control goods from other countries, and preferably also demand fierce concessions like access to intellectual property. It’s a very unfair and autocratic process.
China and the USA
The highly significant conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn at 0 degrees Aquarius in December 2020 – the dawning of a new age of Air – fell on China’s Moon and Ascendant. This seems to be a planetary spotlight on the country for a new era, and the Chinese certainly act as if it is. In China today there is a view that the USA is on the way down, and China on the way up. Not just that – USA is a failed democracy that has descended into chaos and was completely inept in handling the pandemic, whilst China’s tightly-controlled centralized system was far more successful.
The US economy is in debt and failing, the Chinese economy is poised to overtake it and has vast resources at its disposal. The US infrastructure is degraded, whilst Chinese airports and railways are constantly expanding. China has over 20,000 miles of high-speed rail allowing speeds of over 200 mph. The USA has none. At this point in time, China is brimming with confidence. This is expressed in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) envisaged to revolutionize trade routes through Asia, the Middle East and Africa. This will make China hugely influential and is designed to move the balance of power to China.
A New World Order
How this develops in the next few years is going to be riveting to watch, because transit Pluto will conjoin China’s Moon and Ascendant from 2024 to 2027. Uranus will be in Gemini at this time, and will trine the Moon and Ascendant from 2026 to 2028. That suggests huge changes for the country.
Of course, this Uranus-Pluto trine could be an excellent indicator of a successful BRI with a global expansion of Chinese soft power. A web of connections issuing forth from Beijing will create tight bonds with many different countries who will become dependent on the loans, finance and engineering expertise offered by China. This rare trine, which takes place every 140 years or so, will bring an electrification revolution, so it is very likely that China will become a powerhouse for electric cars, solar, battery and all the other inventions which will characterize the new Air age, where combustion will be a thing of the past.
People Power
The big question is – how will the centralized Chinese government and Xi Jinping in particular weather the enormous upheavals suggested by this Pluto transit. Pluto on the Moon may indicate a draconic control of people, but it may also indicate the people sloughing off dictatorship. The Uranus transit which follows will force a more open and democratic leadership, and what we are likely to see is a mild form of the Cultural Revolution which took place at the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the mid-sixties.
China may have had great success in modernizing, but there are many danger signs in connection with its leadership. There is a personality cult around Xi Jinping just as there was with Mao. In March 2018 he was essentially made president for life. He is expanding China’s military power aggressively, both in the South China Sea and against Taiwan. He has supervised a crushing repression of Muslims in Xinxiang and has to some extent reversed the opening up of China that took place earlier.
Xi Jinping’s Horoscope
Although Wikipedia gives Xi’s birthdate as June 15th, 1953, there is considerable uncertainty about whether it is correct. Probably not – it does not seem to reflect the tribulations he went through during the Cultural Revolution, when his mother was forced to denounce his father, who was thrown into prison when Xi was 15. Xi’s sister committed suicide under the pressure, and Xi himself was sent to be “re-educated” in the countryside. He escaped, was arrested, and worked digging ditches.
1953 is of course the year of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction which is powerfully connected with socialism. (Putin was born the same year.) The June 15th date shows the North Node at 3.46 Aquarius exactly on China’s Moon, and Xi’s Moon in conjunction with the South Node, so the horoscope for this date does resonate with China’s and is also subject to the same Pluto transit.
It remains to be seen just how much the Uranus and Pluto transits destabilize China. Overall, these transits probably represent China’s growing ascendancy, but it is also possible that a wave of reform sweeps through China, forcing the Party to transform and be more open. The whole world – and particularly the communist world – is going to be in a state of flux in the mid 2020’s as the next Saturn-Neptune conjunction kicks in at 0 degrees Aries. Putin will go, but will Xi stay?
Adrian Ross Duncan
17th August 2021