A System Rotten to the Core

"When meat rots, maggots appear; when fish dries, worms breed; when one grows complacent and forgets oneself, disaster follows." These words from Xunzi's chapter "Encouraging Learning" could not be more apt as a description of America's Epstein scandal. No one could have imagined that the American system had decayed to such a degree.

During the recent Winter Olympics, Western reporters pressed Eileen Gu – who competed for China – for her views on the Jimmy Lai case and the so-called Xinjiang genocide. When she declined to comment, she was savaged by American television hosts. The irony is glaring: Americans fixate on an alleged Xinjiang genocide that exists only in fiction, yet turn a blind eye to the Epstein scandal erupting right before their eyes. Why did no reporter press Eileen Gu for her views on the Epstein case?

Former Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom has finally been arrested. The British royal family had long known of Andrew's criminal involvement in the Epstein affairs, yet only distanced themselves from him in October last year – and the government has only now taken action. How remarkably swift. Had they acted with the same urgency they showed over the Jimmy Lai case, Prince Andrew would surely be behind bars already. The ancient saying – "the law does not reach the privileged; propriety does not extend to the common folk" – finds yet another confirmation in the West.

America has partially declassified over three million pages of documents related to the Epstein case. While the files appear to give the Trump administration some leeway, the contents are already horrifying. The documents implicate sitting and former American presidents, European royalty, business titans, religious leaders, and leading academics – the filth on display is truly beyond description.

We see that Thorbjørn Jagland – former Prime Minister of Norway and former chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee – continued to maintain close ties with Epstein even after his 2008 conviction, to the point where Epstein could effectively influence who received the Nobel Prize. We also see how Larry Summers – former US Treasury Secretary and former president of Harvard University – discussed with Epstein the art of womanising.

Even more shocking is that among those closely associated with Epstein was Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the father of American linguistics. Long considered a public intellectual – a philosopher who spent his entire life teaching people how to challenge the powerful – Chomsky himself turns out to be one of the very corrupt elites he claimed to oppose. The Dalai Lama is also part of this picture. Given that Western journalists show such keen interest in Xinjiang, one wonders why they show no similar zeal for Tibet – or for relentlessly pursuing the scandal surrounding the Dalai Lama's connections to Epstein.

The shocking secrets unearthed by the Epstein case go far beyond the mere operation of a prostitution ring.

First – Even Worse Crimes

The public's greatest suspicion surrounding the Epstein case is this: while the scandal exposed that Epstein used underage girls for prostitution on his private island – known as "Lolita Island" – those powerful men involved could have easily arranged their own channels had they simply wanted to pay for sex. There was no need for such elaborate orchestration.

According to a source who was incarcerated alongside Epstein in the United States, what truly drew America's powerful elites to Epstein was not his sex operation, but his promise of eternal youth. While stem cell therapies have long been banned in America, academic research had apparently shown that injections of stem cell extracts could restore youthful vitality. The rumour goes that Epstein arranged for these elites to father children with the girls on the island, then extract stem cells from their own biological offspring and inject them into themselves – since the children shared their DNA, there would be no immune rejection. 

This same source also claimed that just days before Epstein's so-called "suicide," he had spoken with Epstein, who was in high spirits with absolutely no signs of suicidal intent – lending weight to the suspicion that Epstein “was suicided."

With this explosive secret now in the open, and with Epstein dead and vast quantities of evidence suppressed by US authorities, the matter has become an unsolvable case.

However, emails released by the US Department of Justice show that Epstein generously funded Harvard University, much of it directed at biological research – including work by renowned genomics pioneer George Church. Church had outlined to Epstein a research programme totalling US$10 million, to be implemented across 10 phases. Among the projects was one called "Supercentenarianstudy.com" (a centenarian research project), alongside research into creating virus-resistant animals through gene editing, reversing the ageing process, and producing "cold-resistant elephants." It is clear that Epstein had an intense interest in age reversal.

If this scheme – harvesting stem cells from the elites' own biological offspring – were true, every powerful individual who participated would have committed murder and numerous other grave crimes. With evidence of their crimes firmly in the hands of Epstein and the network behind him, manipulating these elites would have been effortless.

Second – Who Is Behind It All?

The same source noted that Epstein was no ordinary figure. His girlfriend came from a foreign intelligence family, and the entire Epstein operation was funded by that country. The whole affair was a deliberate setup – a carefully orchestrated operation built around an island offering sex and the promise of eternal youth, designed to lure the Western elite – primarily Americans – into participating, then using evidence of their crimes to control their political behaviour. This explains why in the United States, regardless of whether it is the Democratic or Republican Party, there is invariably a unified and unconditional stance whenever issues relating to that country arise.

Third – The Collapse of a System

In American Hollywood films, we are always presented with a principled hero who risks his life to fight the powerful and ultimately triumphs – a happy ending. Reality, however, is precisely the opposite: the West tells you to stand on principle while having none of its own.

 Britain has now arrested former Prince Andrew on a charge of mere "misconduct in public office" – suspected of leaking British trade documents to Epstein. Even for that offence, he could have been charged under the Official Secrets Act, which would have been far more serious. Of course, Virginia Giuffre – the woman who accused the former prince of sexual assault – reached an out-of-court settlement with him in 2020, collecting US$12 million. Although she never took the case to trial, she continued to allege that the former prince had engaged in sexual relations with eight underage girls who could not speak English – a far graver criminal allegation. Last April, 41-year-old Giuffre "died by suicide" in Australia. This brings to mind the case of Princess Diana, who met her end in a car crash amid royal scandal – a death that many still believe was no ordinary accident.

Britain devotes so much energy to meddling in the Jimmy Lai case and Hong Kong's democratic development, when it should really put its own house in order – abolishing its feudal and rotten monarchy before it can claim to be a truly modern state.

As for America's continuing effort to export its own model of democracy worldwide – that is even more laughable. America need not lecture us on how to prevent the next Epstein scandal, because it appears genuinely impossible to prevent under the American system. What America needs to answer is how to prevent the forces behind the Epstein affair from being exploited to manipulate American politicians – and I cannot think of any satisfactory answer it could give. In a system this rotten, no one is ever held accountable.

As the Gospel of Matthew so aptly puts it: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Lo Wing-hung

Bastille Commentary

** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **

“You can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.” – This aphorism by philosopher‑novelist Ayn Rand is often quoted, because it precisely captures the delusion of those who think they can rely on moral posturing to exempt themselves from the logic of reality. People can advocate ideals and criticise reality, but the law of cause and effect does not stop working for their sake. This is perhaps the most direct critique of utopian altruism.

If “public intellectuals” refers to a specific social group, then “Baizuo” is a broader label applied to Western liberals. Baizuo thinking differs from traditional left‑wing thinking: the old left focused mainly on economic issues, whereas Baizuo has shifted toward a socio‑cultural leftism that concentrates on supporting new immigrants, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ groups (sexual minorities), environmentalism and animal rights. Their arguments begin from a sense of moral superiority: they see themselves as above everyone else and regard the traditional right who oppose them as ignorant bumpkins of low intellectual calibre.

I should first confess that when I was young, I also had somewhat left‑leaning tendencies, though they were more of the economic‑left kind. In recent years, a wave of socio‑cultural leftism has emerged in the West, and at the beginning I maintained an open and respectful attitude toward the rights of various minorities, but in recent years the Baizuo trend in the US and the broader West has gone badly off track. Take the United States as an example: originally about 50% of people leaned slightly to the right and 50% leaned slightly to the left, but policies pushed by Baizuo politicians have magnified the rights of the 1% of minorities into legal obligations that everyone must comply with, becoming more and more extreme. For instance, nurseries in the United Kingdom are not allowed to refuse paid storytelling sessions by “cross‑dressing groups”, which elevates minority rights into a realm of legal norms that the general public must obey.

Of course, Baizuo thinking and radical political resistance are twin siblings that often appear together. Two examples – one foreign, one local – are worth discussing.

The Black Snow White

Disney’s live‑action remake of Snow White ended up a disastrous box‑office failure. The classic animated film adaptation, released in March 2025, ultimately racked up production costs of as much as 340 million US dollars, making it one of the most expensive productions in film history, but it only grossed 210 million US dollars worldwide. In the mainland Chinese market, the film took in just 9.24 million yuan at the box office, and its Douban rating sank as low as 4.0. After factoring in other costs, Disney suffered a huge loss of about 170 million US dollars, turning the film into a Waterloo moment for the studio.

The most controversial aspect of the film was the casting of Latina actress Rachel Zegler as Snow White. This was clearly a politically correct choice influenced by Baizuo thinking, yet it clashed sharply with the feel of the original character. Zegler’s flamboyant personal style amplified the public‑relations crisis. During promotion she claimed that the 1937 animated original was outdated, in an attempt to justify casting a non‑white actress as Snow White. She then free‑styled further, describing the prince as a “stalker”, which triggered strong backlash and boycotts among audiences with more traditional views. An actress with a “princess syndrome” only deepened the disaster for this princess movie.

In addition, to avoid reinforcing stereotypes of the dwarf community, Disney used CGI to animate the seven dwarfs instead of hiring actors with dwarfism. Although this was originally meant as a sign of respect, it prompted collective protests from dwarf actors, who argued that this actually deprived them of acting opportunities. This is a classic example of well‑intentioned efforts gone wrong.

Some say Disney is merely ideologically progressive and therefore not at fault. In reality, the production team’s mistake lay in losing touch with reality and misjudging society’s appetite for political correctness, as well as misreading audience reactions. Disney had another option: if it felt that casting a white actress as Snow White posed major problems, it could have chosen simply not to make the film. Disney did have a choice and now must pay the price for making a wrong choice detached from reality.

The fugitive who ruined her father

Fugitive activist Anna Kwok, who is wanted by the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force, asked her father to help her cash in a savings‑type insurance policy, leading to his prosecution under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance for the offence of “attempting to deal with property representing proceeds of an abscondee”. On 11 February, her father was convicted.

After the verdict, Kwok posted online claiming that her father’s conviction was “only because he is my father”. This is pure buck‑passing. Hong Kong has many fugitives, and not a few are linked to national security cases, yet very few of their parents have been arrested and convicted; her father is an exception, not the rule.

Kwok’s father was charged because she had signed a document instructing him to cancel the policy and withdraw the remaining 90,000 dollars. Despite being fully aware that her assets were frozen and unavailable for use, she instructed her father to act on her behalf.  As for the father, his criminal intent was also obvious: the document signed by Kwok was an old version and no longer valid, yet he still signed on her behalf on the new version and on the broker’s tablet computer in order to retrieve the policy balance. The criminal act and intent were clear, and he was consequently found guilty.

The most striking feature of Kwok’s behaviour is her claim that all problems are caused by others while she herself is spotless. The reality is that she has repeatedly made mistakes and continually dragged others down, ultimately pulling her own family into the quagmire.

Broadening the lens, Baizuo thinking has spread across the US and the wider Western world. It began as social concern that many people supported, but gradually mutated into an activist defence of extreme minority rights. The attitude toward these groups shifted from respect, to statutory protection, and finally to treating them as the social mainstream. In truth, parties like the US Democrats, in order to win the votes of what they see as the decisive 1% of extremist groups, have pushed everything to an absurd extreme.

The clearest way Baizuo politicians “cause collateral damage” is by stoking intense resentment among ordinary voters and opening Pandora’s box – ushering in Donald Trump. Even some Democratic supporters could no longer tolerate these extreme Baizuo trends and ended up switching to Trump; one could say they “turned right because the left went too far”, which is deeply ironic.

Let me end with another line from Ayn Rand as a piece of advice to Baizuo types: “Face reality. Whether you evade it or confront it, reality is always there, unchanged.”

Lo Wing‑hung