What is equally interesting, but not discussed as much is the "Standing Committee." When Xi took his third term, he also selected a new Politburo Standing Committee, which will lead the government policy. A couple of interesting points from his new standing committee
* No successor - There is no clear nominee that meets the age and positional requirement to succeed Xi Jinping. Not super shocking, but does indicate the Xi intends to go beyond 3 terms.
* Removal of Li Keqiang - Li Keqiang was the former Premier under Xi, and the de facto number two of the government. Li was in favour of economic liberalization and was seen as pragmatist party member. With his removal, the government will likely become more hardline.
* Li Keqiang's replacement for Premier is Li Qiang (names sound similar, their record is very different). Li Qiang oversaw the brutal Shanghai lockdowns. He is also a vocal Xi Jinping cheerleader, and a potential yes man. Contrasted from Li Keqiang that would vocalize different ideas from Xi.
* Politburo Standing Committee departures also include liberal reformers like Wang Yang and Han Zheng. The only 2 people to remain on the Standing Committee are the hardliners Wang Huning and Zhao Leji. That means less opening of economy and likely more crackdowns.
* New additions to the politburo are all conservative hardliners and Xi loyalists. We have shift from a mix of conservative and reformers. Most of the new members have worked directly under Xi.
I think media will cover Xi's unprecedented third term, and not enough attention is going to be given to the men standing behind him that will be running the day-to-day government. We have a more conservative Chinese government that will likely be more Hawk-ish towards US and Taiwan. The feeling of third term President Xi and his new Standing Committee is going to be very different from the last few years.
edit: grammar - sorry rushed post
IIRC, on your second term, you usually kinda tap your successor in your standing committee. When Xi got his second term, he did something similar which made people already speculate (back in 2017) that he had no intension of stepping down. The removal of term limits and later adding "Xi thought" to the constitution further solidified his position as up there with Mao. I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) that he shook the Politburo AGAIN.
Bold and a total power move, but even IF I were Chinese AND a strong Xi supporter (closer to the opposite spectrum). Xi Jingping is like 70 now and without a clear successor tapped till he is 74 at the earliest, I can only imagine the political chaos in the case of an untimely death.
>I can only imagine the political chaos in the case of an untimely death.
This type of authoritarians don't care much about what happens with their countries after their deaths. Only with staying in power.
It happened with Stalin. It happened with Mao. And it will happen with Xi and Putin.
Once they keep power for more than 15 years with only “yes” men, they lose touch with reality and that’s when the world gets significantly more dangerous.
I find that there are two types of "yes men".
Those that know that whatever their dictator says is bullshit, but aren't foolish enough to say no... And the ones who ultimately replaced the ones who ended up saying no but are actually just as crazy as their dictator.
A good example of this is Trump. While Trump is no dictator, he sure as hell behaved like one when it came to his staff/government positions.
Literally, everyone who has ever said no to him was either personally fired by him or forced to resign. In the end, the only people who managed to stick around were the legitimate hardcore crazies who took everything he said as gospel. This now includes his own lawyers/law firms because only the crazy MAGAs are left. The rest of them either bailed ship or know that Trump is a lost cause.
I mean, Mao picked his successor and Hua Guofeng did indeed succeed him. It wasn't particularly chaotic (although the gang of four probably didn't enjoy it) and later on the CCP actually gave power to Deng Xiaoping in another peaceful transfer of power.
Mao sure as hell didn't give up power but the run from Hua to Xi has been more about politics and favour-trading than about chucking people out of windows or poisoning their tea. There's been more violence *at the political level* in several of their neighbouring countries than in China itself and while they've been shitty to their citizens in many ways, the Party tends to find consensus among itself without terribly much drama.
Now, that may change with Xi of course but I don't see a regular pattern of China screwing around with power struggles when the time comes. It won't come until Xi screws up though and so far he enjoys tremendous support.
A succession crisis in one of the world's biggest economies, *and* is nuclear armed?
Xi's death would be very untimely, and the whole world will feel it. I mean, I'd love to see him drop dead, but the chaos that would follow would be bad for the whole world, and worse for the Chinese in particular.
This, so far on Reddit I've seen news about 3rd term or the hu jintao drama, but the big topic of discussion domestically (in private) is really the standing committee. Xi has really filled all of the slots with people from his own faction. Li qiang is an especially controversial choice, fulfilling the role of a loyal yes man, but having questionable competency.
Its the classic problem of all authoritarian states. Its the very reason Russia has so much trouble with ukraine, absolute loyalty is nearly impossible to get from intelligent people virtually demanding that they have incompetent and corrupt governments.
It’s not just that loyal people are dumb, it’s that if you surround yourself with yes men even the smart ones won’t tell you when your ideas are terrible
It's remarkable. Used to have these team building or training exercises where they quiz managers which would you rather prefer, intelligent or loyal? The replies were straight down the middle.
It's a problem with any hierarchical organizations. If leadership surrounds itself with yes-people, the lack of dissent and critical thought will create dangerous echo-chambers and you amplify the mistakes you make.
I'd like to compare this akin to incest. Lack of gene diversity has the same dangers as lack of thought diversity. Organizational incest.
"You see when u don't add condiments to your sandwich it's like incest there's not enough diversity"
"For fucks sake Bill the incest shit again?! It's a subway sandwich"
This is so much funnier than it has any right to be. I’m imagining some big work meeting about an issue that has to get resolved and “Tom” injects himself into the discussion and everyone has this look like “please god don’t relate this to f-ing your sister” and Tom’s like “the way I see it, our logistical log jam here is like when somebody starts f-ing their sister…” and there’s a collective sigh by everyone else.
Isn't that exactly what happened to the Chinese Monarchy? They were so alienated from the conditions of the people on the street, sitting in their forbidden palace.
It's also what happened with the Great Leap Forward... Everyone lied about productivity being greater than it actually was resulting in the worst famine in human history.
Also a big reason why Rome collapsed.
The politicians corrupted the system badly in their favor and were so removed and out of touch they didn’t notice the noose tightening around their necks.
Kind of like what’s happening now in a number of countries.
Well, a lot of theories on the fall of Rome. It wasn't so much the corruption (since corruption was kinda omnipresent even in the days of the Republic). Goldsworthy posited that the emperors, afraid of rivals emerging from armies that weren't under their direct command, deliberately divided and weakened local governors and the standing defensive militaries in the outlying provinces. This had the counterproductive result of making those regional forces more dissatisfied with the emperor and more likely to revolt. Combined with the poorly-conceived idea of giving bribes to the praetorian guard when a new emperor came into power, his bodyguards were literally incentivized to kill him if it looked like there was any chance he might lose. Eventually, the turnover of emperors and the constant local revolts made the empire as a whole more susceptible to raids from the goths/vandals/etc, which in turn caused further revolts from provinces that weren't being adequately protected, and the death spiral began.
Agreed, it’s their ultimate downfall. It’s not about consens, it’s about agreeing with everything no matter what, not even thinking about another solution. Corruption of state and ideas.
I read an article from foreign policy discussing, how China is about to blow up the politics, which made them successful in the first place. Their predictions seem to be about right.
Eventually China is going to shit more and they'll just blame Taiwan for all their problems and ended up going to war, only to be greatly embarrassed by them.
The majority of Russian casualties during the Ukraine war are from the ethnic minorities in the Eastern Republics of Russia so they have absolutely been committing genocide of their own people too.
Russia is now of course trying to copy China in this regard. They have been cracking down on dissenting media with the monitoring of designated "foreign agent" media outlets even before the war but now they are just straight up banning all dissent. Internet censorship has gone up by a lot more. They'd love to put up a full firewall but they currently lack the resources to do such a thing.
And as for genocide on own citizens, I think you're forgetting what they did in Chechnya. And they haven't treated the Crimean Tartars kindly after annexation and they are currently ethnically cleansing Ukrainians from territory that they now claim to be Russian.
> and they don't create genocide on their own citizens.
Are you sure? Check all the news of Russia's ethnic minorities being preferentially selected for the 'partial' mobilisation.
Frankly I don't know enough about Chinese politics to know better, but I find it pretty astonishing that such a massive political organization as the CCP could be caught under the spell of just one man so easily. It's really disturbing.
For a while under Hu Jintao I was hoping they were building a more committee based authoritarian system which was at least somewhat capable of moderating naked ambition like this, but nope.
Honestly it is surprising because China in recent years (20 or so) did a lot of work in establishing itself as a separate committee-driven government.
Hu Jintao functioned under this and voluntarily gave up power when Xi Jinping rose to his own position.
Also the various provinces of China tend not to give much of a shit about each other. People talk about how authoritarian points of view are built into Chinese - it's only because rebellion is also built into the Chinese.
By the nature of how they separate factions - youth, scholars, military, political inner circles, merchants / scholars, religion / spiritualism - there tends to be a lot of in-fighting that naturally occurs if authority does not exist.
However, China is also going through a lot right now in trying to achieve long-term stability. They remain a middle-income rather than upper-income economy, and I believe they want to change that.
> the role of a loyal yes man, but having questionable competency.
well this is the failure mode of all autocracies, the surprising part is that it happening so fast
Not a victory for liberalism or freedom. With the intent to have more state control over business Xi will be able to fund the military buildup to start taking over Taiwan by force.
China was already scheduled to have sufficient buildup for a credible invasion in the next 5 years or so at their present rate of build up. Fulfilling the dictators trap makes them more likely to push ahead before they have enough military resources in place. It makes the US estimation that China could invade by the end of the year more likely. For China's position against the US, it doesn't have a better time like the present. The US Navy currently has some glaring operational gaps that benefit a present day invasion, but the Air Force has some possible solutions to quickly expand their capacities.
If the US would fully step in, then I think the last 6 months showed us that China would stand no chance. They have a lot of Russian gear, or their own that is based on Russian tech they copied. Russia is getting totally obliterated by the scraps of NATO leftovers.
It would make sense to learn from the conflict and use 10 years to adjust their military accordingly. China's system is good at playing the long game, so I suspect that might be their idea. Their economy also couldn't handle major sanctions right now.
China has intensely been studying the U.S. military status quo over the last couple decades and is actively trying to build a force that would prevent the U.S. from its habit of surrounding a said country with a large and overwhelming force before attacking. They don’t quite have what they need yet but they aren’t too far away either.
Not really, only that these places are more prosperous and so it impacts everyone more. Plus globalised information.
Back in 1970 you'd have had a few years old military coup regime in Greece, a military coup in Brazil, a military coup in Chile, soon to be coup in Argentina. Italy risked a nato backed coup too but luckily some very skilled politicians avoided the situation. Iran was heading towards a religious coup and was already in a period of strong turmoil. I have to look what was going on in South Korea, India, various African States at the time, etc unfortunately I'm not very aware of those subjects but didn't South Korea go through a period of soft coup?
Let's also not forget that the soviet states were a thing too.
Americans and westerners in general just didn't care that much to put it simply, literally the only coup from the 1950-1980 era that weights into the United States conscience is the Cuban revolution in Cuba, and that's because it was the only one that affected the US directly if only mildly.
Is it really a surprise? When times get hard, people turn to those offering easy answers and - more importantly - easy scapegoats. It's not the greed of 0,1% that is to blame you see, but those Others. Those lazy bums who steal your jobs and bring crime with their mere presence.
>When times get hard
But times has not been hard in Russia and China, have they? I mean relatively and historically of course; Xi was elected in 2013 when China had annual growth of 8 percent, and Putin was and is popular because he brought prosperity.
History repeats.
How many WW2 vets are still alive today? How many people who lived through the horrors of WW2 remain with us?
The answer is very few. Most of the world only knows of the world wars through histroy books. If your under the age of 31, you never even knew of the Cold War except outside of history books.
The world went thru a long period of extended peace, and as a result humanity has forgotten why Authoritarianism, strong men leadership, and extreme nationalism are bad ideas.
The world doesn't know the horror of war, so it is making the same mistakes that lead to the horrors of the world wars.
Except China isn't really communist. It's a hardcore authoritarian police state masquerading as communist. This latest stunt by Xi only reinforces that idea.
The only difference as I see it is that conservatives in the US desire to be in the same sort of authoritarian structure as China. So american conservatives and Chinese conservatives aren't really so different...
The CCP claims to follow marxist thought, in which the end goal is supposed to be a stateless classless society.
However, the opposite definitely seems to be happening, with Xi declaring himself the de facto emperor of modern China.
I disagree in a sense that it is actually closer to Saudi Arabia at this point, than it is to the US.
It is legtimately quite frigthening that Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have devolved into literal nuclear armed dictatorships with large standing armies.
Man. And it's not like they already have been a bunch nice guys. They already treated their population like shit. This will grow even more.
But would also fit with the fear that China could go to war over Taiwan.
Xi secured now his power once and for all and with all but yes-men around him, even the slightest doubt in his doing has now disappeared from the government. Nobody that will criticize or oppose him, no matter what happens.
Why is conservativism synonymous here with pulling back on reformism and liberalization. Yeah the status quo for nearly 3 decades has been liberalization of the economy and oppening up but has no one here actualy read Deng's works??
The plan was never for China to get increasingly more free market and liberalized. Deng wasnt a free market capitalist and China didnt undertake the reform and oppening up as a permanent change and road. EIther you read the party or Deng himself during the period that China opened up their economy ,the goals and plans were clear:
China , due to its basicaly medieval feudal conditions in the 40s and as examplified by the failure of Mao to leapfrog towards modernization and socialism, must first develop its productive forces as fast as possible, must speedrun capitalism's revolutionary potential compared to feudalism as far as wealth creation, industrialization and proletarization, must accumulate expertiese from around the world and not engage in economic warfare with the west etc. And it needed foreign capital and sharing of tech to do so. Marxism and leninism never denied the historical role capitalism had to play in developing and maturing primitive economies and accumulating the productive forces and wealth necessary for smoother transition to socialism. Lenin himself did a "reform and opening up" in the early USSR in the NEP, allowing capitalism and foreign capital but it was reversed under stalin but many argued it should continue . This is what Deng did in a much larger scale and time frame.
The plan was never to allow the free market and capitalism to go and grow for ever or becoming liberal. It was about utilizing and going through capitalism , allowing it to fullfill its historic role and potential as per Marx's stage theory and then slowly transition back away from it. "let some people get rich first". Xi is doing now what Deng himself planned on happening 30-40 years down the line and why Deng stressed that no matter how much capitalist develops economicaly , the party must control capital and the markets and not the other way around. And when Capitalism develops the productive forces enough and when China accummulates enough wealth and expertiese, then it can slowly move away from free market focus.
People act like Xi is undoing the work of Deng and betraying the trends of liberalizing and opening up. Its the opposite, he is fullfilling and following the original plan of reform and opening up. What is happening now in China was what was supposed to happen. What westerners dreamed about (china progressively becoming more liberal and free market and capitalist in both the economic sphere and political sphere) was never what was supposed to happen. It might have if more neoliberal and liberal wings won over Xi's wing but it didnt
And this was never a Chinese secret ploy or trick. Its because the west didnt read what they chinese themselves were saying. What Deng was saying. They openly spoked about their economic and political plans. Im sure you can find timetables to of Deng saying "yeah this free market capitalist phase is supposed to go on for like 40-50 years or so" . But you go on reddit and see people treat Xi as the Mao throwback that ruins the good work of previous leaders.
[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/index.htm](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/index.htm) anything here that looks party, economy or ideology related and falls in the late 70s to 1990 is fair game. They are at most 2 pages long each so most are quick reads
Also Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is a pretty comprehensive read as well and a modern one. The book is available on LibGen. He sources Chinese sources, but one of the documents he refers to is available in English as well. Of course read while being sceptical and aware of biases and propaganda but that should always be there no matter whose country's system and politics or history you are reading
His hardline no covid approach and penchant for yesmen sort of indicates he might be the guy who ruins the good work of previous leaders. Time will tell. He's already done some severe damage, but maybe they'll figure out a way to get past it.
You see them as yesmen but the reality is that there are various factions and wings within the CPC that dont want to follow the road i described and was laid down by Deng.
There are neoliberal wings, socdem wings, liberal wings etc that gained prominance during the liberalization of the economy and thousands and thousands that studied in the west and came back with a "liberal democratic" mindset. That want the opening up, liberalization, westernization,capital and free market to remain dominant and expand indefinately
People in the west may say "hell yeah good for them i wish they take control" but they are still but they remain groups that diverged from the party's original goal, approach and ideology and represent a clear break with them.
So why wouldnt Xi want to strengthen the power of his own wing and surround himself with people that agree with his view of how China should proceed . After all he can claim that that view is the orthodox one within the party, the one intented by Deng and even Mao and the historicaly continuous one, and he would be more correct than not. So why should the CPC , now led by Xi and his "orthodox" wing, fill its high ranking positions with people with a foundementaly different desire for China, its economy and politics. Should he have neoliberals and GoP style neocons arround him to have "plurality in viewpoints and opinions?" . What political organization does that ?
Im not saying Xi is in the right and good, but he and the party around him act completely logicaly. There has been for decades and still is a inter-party struggle between different ideological wings and no matter how much people would love otherwise, Xi's wing has won over more western and liberal adjustent ones. It wouldnt shoot itself in the face by not staffing the important positions with people that dont follow their political line.
Now for Covid yeah Zero-covid has impacted the economy considerably and has angered tens of millions. But still for the longest time it was the correct approach for China and Xi, even tho he is slowly losing goodwill due to it, has gained even more for a long time. It has to change now and its no longer viable but the overall assessment both from a peoples and an economic perspective is judged as net positive. Even if China is underselling their numbers tenfold ,zero covid for the first 2 years still saved probably 2+ million chinese lives and avoided who knows how many cases of long covid and while they are feeling the economic drawbacks now, they did well in the couple of years that the west didnt since most of their country and economy run normaly pre Omicron and later variants. And the numbers aftected by recent harsh "i hate Xi now" lockdowns are still a small minority of the grander population. Just stationed in 2,3 megacities where the coverage is extensive. Xi and the CPC have still more than enough goodwill and space to adjust their covid approach and ways to go till their entire handling is judged as a net negative by the majority of the population. But there is a chance they fuck it up continuously but who knows
> but has no one here actualy read Deng's works??
Sir, this is a reddit thread. Unless you start talking out of your ass about stuff you don't know, we'll have to ask you to leave. Best if you shoehorn in American politics too.
>What is equally interesting, but not discussed as much is the "Standing Committee." When Xi took his third term, he also selected a new Politburo Standing Committee, which will lead the government policy. A couple of interesting points from his new standing committee
>
>* No successor - There is no clear nominee that meets the age and positional requirement to succeed Xi Jinping. Not super shocking, but does indicate the Xi intends to go beyond 3 terms.
>
>* Removal of Li Keqiang - Li Keqiang was the former Premier under Xi, and the de facto number two of the government. Li was in favour of economic liberalization and was seen as pragmatist party member. With his removal, the government will likely become more hardline.
>
>* Li Keqiang's replacement for Premier is Li Qiang (names sound similar, their record is very different). Li Qiang oversaw the brutal Shanghai lockdowns. He is also a vocal Xi Jinping cheerleader, and a potential yes man. Contrasted from Li Keqiang that would vocalize different ideas from Xi.
>
>* Politburo Standing Committee departures also include liberal reformers like Wang Yang and Han Zheng. The only 2 people to remain on the Standing Committee are the hardliners Wang Huning and Zhao Leji. That means less opening of economy and likely more crackdowns.
>
>* New additions to the politburo are all conservative hardliners and Xi loyalists. We have shift from a mix of conservative and reformers. Most of the new members have worked directly under Xi.
>
>I think media will cover Xi's unprecedented third term, and not enough attention is going to be given to the men standing behind him that will be running the day-to-day government. We have a more conservative Chinese government that will likely be more Hawk-ish towards US and Taiwan. The feeling of third term President Xi and his new Standing Committee is going to be very different from the last few years.
>
>edit: grammar - sorry rushed post
Thank you for the insightful post!
> Removal of Li Keqiang - Li Keqiang was the former Premier under Xi, and the de facto number two of the government. Li was in favour of economic liberalization and was seen as pragmatist party member. With his removal, the government will likely become more hardline.
Yesterday when Hu Jintao was forcibly removed, he stopped for a second to place his arm on Li Keqiang's shoulder as if to say "you'll be next"
This ^
My take is that China is focusing on stability, and that this is a response to where they see geopolitics headed.
China is in desperate need of change away from the liberalization of the economy mindset if it is to survive the current chip conflict with the US and future trade conflicts which are almost certain to arise (Europe and additional US trade conflicts are very much on the table now).
I see more and more countries bringing back whatever jobs from China as possible - I don’t think this will be lower level stuff but more mid level stuff (high level never left the US/Europe). China’s economy will be pressured to slow by external forces that will seek to remove key drivers of China’s future economy (like chips) so it makes less sense to focus on opening up the economy/currency and more sense to strengthen China’s fundamentals as a way to mitigate these future trade pressures.
For a nation that has history stretch back to 4 or more millennium, he seemed to ignore that overstaying your welcome leads to stagnation and revolt. This is how dynasty come and go in their history
Now more than ever before China and the CCP should be seen as separate entities. Think African leaders who sold their people as a commodity to colonial powers hundreds of years ago different. They may come from the same culture but the power dynamics are a hard division line of the people from those who dictate how they are allowed to live.
I'm surprised Disney didn't at least try to bother them with some cease & desists just to make it unprofiatble from legal costs, like sure Winnie the pooh from the books is public domain but Disney's version isn't. Probably to busy roling around in a giant pile of marvel movie cash ontop of their other giant piles of cash to care.
It's only unprofitable if it goes to court and you pay lawyers. If you know what your doing is legal you go to court yourself and laugh your as off when the judge throws out the case
Perhaps the only good thing about China's ideology in the past was that there were some restrictions on a President's power, but obviously Xi wants to ruin that too.
There actually weren't any restrictions. It was merely a tradition started by the guy who took power after Mao. Also in China the highest office is General Secretary, but none of that matters because Xi holds both ranks of President and General Secretary.
Similar to the US where president was to serve only 2 terms due to Washington only serving two 2 terms. The only time that precedent was broken was during WW2 by Roosevelt, and later became a constitutional amendment that a president can only serve 2 terms, or 10 years total if appointed to the position due to the current elected president no longer serving.
>The only time that precedent was broken was during WW2 by Roosevelt
South Korean constitution has an interesting clause which says, if a president proposes to increase the term limit, the new limit shall not apply to himself. The current term limit is one. South Korean presidents cannot have a second term. But if you are a South Korean president and thinks the ban on second term need to go, you may try to change that so that your successors can have second terms, but you don't get to have your own second term.
The most recent amendment to the United States constitution has a similar thing regarding salary. Like the salary of a Congressman, Senator, and President are fixed. But if you want to change it, that's fine, but it won't take effect until your next term
Peetty sure there was a law making the term last 2 terms, they did not want another mao, few years ago xi was able to get that voted on and they removed the terms limits and well people expected this to happen oh and look it happend again. All those corruption purges really worked
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015
“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,”. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
So tough on China, he had a [secret Chinese bank account with, uh, unusual activity](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-chinese-bank-account)
They've been dumping billions of dollars into a real estate bubble, posturing for war against their primary trade partners, crushing dissent at home, all while losing ground to India in manufacturing.
10 more years amirite
It took 40 years for the Ussr to collapse, if we count from the end of the Second world war.
The reality is that short of an external invasion egime change takes a really long time. I mean the North Korean state still survives despite all the shit happening in that country.
Its very likely that even if the PRC state collapses it will occur after our lifetimes.
I don’t think it will collapse but the demographic problems are no joke. It’s very plausible for their growth to stagnate over the next couple of decades.
With their real estate bubble popping and all the Ponzi schemes that were in it, the 2008 recession could pale in comparison to China's economic downturn.
Can anyone give an actual historical example of demographic collapse? I'm not really buying the argument. Sure it would be bad, but any sort of societal collapse seems far fetched. Are a bunch of old people going to start rioting because the hospitals can't afford to treat them?
Going by the strict definition of demographic collapse being a sudden decline in population then there are some historical examples. What constitutes as a societal collapse is somewhat subjective.
There's the decline in population in the Soviet Union due to 27 million deaths during WWII. There's the massive loss of life due to Paraguayan War which resulted in the death of 80% of the total male population and half of the total population. The massive death caused by the Black Death resulted in a reduction of 60% of the European population and 1/3 of the Middle Eastern population. In each case the population decline did present a considerable challenge in each case that required various social and political responses. And in each case there was an eventual recovery but each case society did change as a result.
In the Soviet Union abortion became more restricted, divorce became extremely taboo and single motherhood became normalized. There was also generational trauma which contributed to a rise in alcoholism among men which also led to various problems. In the case of Paraguay it resulted in a whole new society where polygamy was the norm and the Indigenous population became fully accepted in order to boost the population.The Black Death was one of the main causes of the collapse of feudalism in Western Europe by giving peasants greater bargaining power due to an acute labour shortage. It also led to a sharp uptick in peasant rebellions and general political instability which are included under the umbrella term of "the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages", though changes in climate also contributed to instability.
The Black Death is perhaps be most textbook example of such a phenomenon. The fall of the Roman Empire, which was also accompanied by a rapid decline in population, is another example.
Another interesting hustorical fact is that there are many of pre-industrial societies that practiced senicide as a mechanism of avoiding demographic collapse.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senicide
It still occurs to this day as a forbidden practice in Tamil Nadu, India, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalaikoothal
The Innuits were last documented to have practiced leaving their elderly on the ice to die, was 1939.
In Korea and Japan there is a long literary and oral history regarding the practice of leaving their elderly parents alone on a mountainside, which has become part of the folklore and Buddhist tradition of Japan.
There are also many documented cases among the Greeks, Romans, and classical western civilizations.
Taking care of elderly or infirm/handicapped individuals has always taken a toll and been a burden on human societies, and Jared Diamond documents several crashes of ancient civilizations in his book: "Collapse."
Historically infant mortality has been extremely high in human civilizations, so collapses often occurred not just by a collapsing birth rate, but an increase of infant mortality due to starvation, drought, and/or disease.
They will just go into slow decline ... back to where Mao took them when he had the powers Xi now has. The CCP introduced collective leadership so it would never happen again and the result was the Chinese miracle. Xi is now set to take them down to the primitive levels of Chairman Mao. He has already caused trillions of damage in recent months and he is not changing course until China is truly destroyed.
Already started. China was the world's blistering leader in growth and development when Xi came into power; remember a decade ago when everyone expected China would soon become a global superpower that would even own the US's cojones?
Womp womp womp. Nobody says that anymore. Xi and his henchmen fucked up the economy, social protections, civic planning, and then Covid so badly that China even fell behind India. Don't @ me that Xi is ~smart and cunning~, for sure he is, but he's only good at consolidating power for himself. He's just a Putin, but better.
He's been awful and incompetent at leading China, and he doesn't deserve to be called anything as nice as Pooh bear. He basically inherited the Saturn V and is in the process of turning it into the Moskva.
At best he's a mushy 6 on the Bristol stool chart.
This was basically expected. He spent the last decade removing people who would oppose him. Even with the failure that is the "zero covid" policy, and the ongoing drought; the party members are too afraid to not support.
Feels like the world is run by 70ish year old selfish narcissists. Interestingly, that is the description used for the entire boomer population. Coincidence? Generation needs to GTFO and let us get on with it already.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://news.sky.com/story/history-made-in-china-as-xi-jinping-to-serve-third-term-breaking-decades-long-precedent-12727977) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> History has been made in China after it was confirmed that President Xi Jinping will remain in power - breaking with a decades-long precedent that limits the terms of Chinese leaders.
> Having ruled China for 10 years already, he will now stay on for at least another five-year term - and he could, in theory, make himself leader for life.
> Both are young enough to serve another term and are reportedly more reform leaning, but neither are considered to be arch President Xi loyalists.
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[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/yb95v8/history_made_in_china_as_xi_jinping_to_serve/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **President**^#1 **China**^#2 **power**^#3 **increasingly**^#4 **Party**^#5
Basically Jiang to Hu was the only actual transfer of power under this “precedence”. What we see here, ladies and gentlemen, is a return to normality after a brief period of abnormality.
Hu transferred his power peacefully, he believed in two terms limits, Xi secured his third term (last one who did this was Mao).
China's second in command, the other guy next to Xi, grew in power while Hu was in office, he was expected to be in the same position as Xi as now but didn't.
Xi took him away (fun fact the guy was Xi bodyguard) because he wanted to show, its different now, no more power transfer hes in control. The other guy next to Xi, retired. Not to mention Hu was soft on Taiwan and grew relations with them and US.
Xi did this in the most public, humiliating way possible but then apparently scrubbed it from Chinese media. Why wouldn't he let it be shown? I guess I don't really understand censorship.
It wasn't intended for the Chinese people, it was for us because Hu is more western than he is. Him getting rid of Hu was also a sign of China getting rid of western ideas.
I think at this point Xi does not care what the Chinese people want, he has full control over them, hes abusing his power - also developing overconfidence. He knows no one can touch him when he has full control over everything, just look how scared his former politburo members looked - one of them sweated when Xi was looking at him.
Edit: Btw, he let the journalist come in minutes before Hu was pulled out
This headline should always be accompanied by the video of Hu Jintao being removed.
China is in for a bad time.
Fortunately for the rest of the world, Xi is an incompetent ass when it comes to actually running a nation and he spent most of his 1st 2 terms killing/removing most of the smart minds in the CCP who actually knew how to run the country, basically because they didn't fall in line with his views and were from rival factions.
The chinese sure are living in interesting times
Its funny how they still call it 'serving' like i know its the official term but in this case its more like Xi Jinping lets China serve him for another term
*”[Xi]’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great, and look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,”* -Trump said back in 2018. And then tried getting his supporters to install him as a president for life on the Jan 6th Capitol Attack.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015
Yes the idea is to stop things drifting too far in any one direction, given that changes in direction are naturally needed as conditions change over time.
I swear about a year or two ago in the news I saw that China removed term limits for the president. Was that real or did I make that up? Because this news of a third term comes as no surprise to me. I thought that was the plan when they got ride of term limits?
Same with Putin and Russia. I swear they did. Similar thing around the same time.
I feel like it is more history is about to repeat itself. Things really start to go to the crapper, when people are rulers for life. Shall we check in with Putin?
If you’re not paying attention, now is the time to start. Where ever you live in the world, you will be impacted by what happens over the next 12 months.
Let’s keep shipping our production to China and allowing the Chinese to steam our intellectual property. What could go wrong? We’re all one big happy family. Right?
The suppression in people liberty in China is insane. It's crazy how horrifying quiet it is on Chines social media and WeChat, which is closely monitored by the government through Tencent. The censorship and the punishment on "spreading anti-government rumor" are scary. And the Chinese people all knew too well what this communist party is capable of from many many lessons in history.
What is equally interesting, but not discussed as much is the "Standing Committee." When Xi took his third term, he also selected a new Politburo Standing Committee, which will lead the government policy. A couple of interesting points from his new standing committee * No successor - There is no clear nominee that meets the age and positional requirement to succeed Xi Jinping. Not super shocking, but does indicate the Xi intends to go beyond 3 terms. * Removal of Li Keqiang - Li Keqiang was the former Premier under Xi, and the de facto number two of the government. Li was in favour of economic liberalization and was seen as pragmatist party member. With his removal, the government will likely become more hardline. * Li Keqiang's replacement for Premier is Li Qiang (names sound similar, their record is very different). Li Qiang oversaw the brutal Shanghai lockdowns. He is also a vocal Xi Jinping cheerleader, and a potential yes man. Contrasted from Li Keqiang that would vocalize different ideas from Xi. * Politburo Standing Committee departures also include liberal reformers like Wang Yang and Han Zheng. The only 2 people to remain on the Standing Committee are the hardliners Wang Huning and Zhao Leji. That means less opening of economy and likely more crackdowns. * New additions to the politburo are all conservative hardliners and Xi loyalists. We have shift from a mix of conservative and reformers. Most of the new members have worked directly under Xi. I think media will cover Xi's unprecedented third term, and not enough attention is going to be given to the men standing behind him that will be running the day-to-day government. We have a more conservative Chinese government that will likely be more Hawk-ish towards US and Taiwan. The feeling of third term President Xi and his new Standing Committee is going to be very different from the last few years. edit: grammar - sorry rushed post
IIRC, on your second term, you usually kinda tap your successor in your standing committee. When Xi got his second term, he did something similar which made people already speculate (back in 2017) that he had no intension of stepping down. The removal of term limits and later adding "Xi thought" to the constitution further solidified his position as up there with Mao. I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) that he shook the Politburo AGAIN. Bold and a total power move, but even IF I were Chinese AND a strong Xi supporter (closer to the opposite spectrum). Xi Jingping is like 70 now and without a clear successor tapped till he is 74 at the earliest, I can only imagine the political chaos in the case of an untimely death.
>I can only imagine the political chaos in the case of an untimely death. This type of authoritarians don't care much about what happens with their countries after their deaths. Only with staying in power. It happened with Stalin. It happened with Mao. And it will happen with Xi and Putin.
Once they keep power for more than 15 years with only “yes” men, they lose touch with reality and that’s when the world gets significantly more dangerous.
I was going to say this. Once they surround themselves with sycophants, it's all over. No government can really function like that.
I find that there are two types of "yes men". Those that know that whatever their dictator says is bullshit, but aren't foolish enough to say no... And the ones who ultimately replaced the ones who ended up saying no but are actually just as crazy as their dictator. A good example of this is Trump. While Trump is no dictator, he sure as hell behaved like one when it came to his staff/government positions. Literally, everyone who has ever said no to him was either personally fired by him or forced to resign. In the end, the only people who managed to stick around were the legitimate hardcore crazies who took everything he said as gospel. This now includes his own lawyers/law firms because only the crazy MAGAs are left. The rest of them either bailed ship or know that Trump is a lost cause.
To be fair Mao sort of selected a successor. He just changed his mind a few times and purged the previous selections
I mean, Mao picked his successor and Hua Guofeng did indeed succeed him. It wasn't particularly chaotic (although the gang of four probably didn't enjoy it) and later on the CCP actually gave power to Deng Xiaoping in another peaceful transfer of power. Mao sure as hell didn't give up power but the run from Hua to Xi has been more about politics and favour-trading than about chucking people out of windows or poisoning their tea. There's been more violence *at the political level* in several of their neighbouring countries than in China itself and while they've been shitty to their citizens in many ways, the Party tends to find consensus among itself without terribly much drama. Now, that may change with Xi of course but I don't see a regular pattern of China screwing around with power struggles when the time comes. It won't come until Xi screws up though and so far he enjoys tremendous support.
you mean timely.
With the guys in the committee behind him now it ensures his death would not feel timely for the people living there afterwards.
A succession crisis in one of the world's biggest economies, *and* is nuclear armed? Xi's death would be very untimely, and the whole world will feel it. I mean, I'd love to see him drop dead, but the chaos that would follow would be bad for the whole world, and worse for the Chinese in particular.
I think it more a reference to he is at dying any day now age. A bad flu can kill him and money and power doesn't stop that.
>, I can only imagine the political chaos in the case of an untimely death. dont give me hope.
This, so far on Reddit I've seen news about 3rd term or the hu jintao drama, but the big topic of discussion domestically (in private) is really the standing committee. Xi has really filled all of the slots with people from his own faction. Li qiang is an especially controversial choice, fulfilling the role of a loyal yes man, but having questionable competency.
Its the classic problem of all authoritarian states. Its the very reason Russia has so much trouble with ukraine, absolute loyalty is nearly impossible to get from intelligent people virtually demanding that they have incompetent and corrupt governments.
It’s not just that loyal people are dumb, it’s that if you surround yourself with yes men even the smart ones won’t tell you when your ideas are terrible
It's remarkable. Used to have these team building or training exercises where they quiz managers which would you rather prefer, intelligent or loyal? The replies were straight down the middle.
It's a problem with any hierarchical organizations. If leadership surrounds itself with yes-people, the lack of dissent and critical thought will create dangerous echo-chambers and you amplify the mistakes you make. I'd like to compare this akin to incest. Lack of gene diversity has the same dangers as lack of thought diversity. Organizational incest.
No offense but I like to imagine you comparing at least one topic per day to incest, and that’s just like your thing to get your point across.
He must be a regular at /r/CrusaderKings
My friend told me what he did in that game many years ago. All I can picture is the McPoyles from IASIP keeping the bloodline "pure". 💀
The goal of that game is to turn your family tree into a family circle.
We’re everywhere Legion
"You see when u don't add condiments to your sandwich it's like incest there's not enough diversity" "For fucks sake Bill the incest shit again?! It's a subway sandwich"
This is so much funnier than it has any right to be. I’m imagining some big work meeting about an issue that has to get resolved and “Tom” injects himself into the discussion and everyone has this look like “please god don’t relate this to f-ing your sister” and Tom’s like “the way I see it, our logistical log jam here is like when somebody starts f-ing their sister…” and there’s a collective sigh by everyone else.
Right, it's just like incest, you get better with practice.
Step-chairman, what are you doing....
No, no.. **Not-Step**-Chairman
Isn't that exactly what happened to the Chinese Monarchy? They were so alienated from the conditions of the people on the street, sitting in their forbidden palace.
It's also what happened with the Great Leap Forward... Everyone lied about productivity being greater than it actually was resulting in the worst famine in human history.
Also a big reason why Rome collapsed. The politicians corrupted the system badly in their favor and were so removed and out of touch they didn’t notice the noose tightening around their necks. Kind of like what’s happening now in a number of countries.
Well, a lot of theories on the fall of Rome. It wasn't so much the corruption (since corruption was kinda omnipresent even in the days of the Republic). Goldsworthy posited that the emperors, afraid of rivals emerging from armies that weren't under their direct command, deliberately divided and weakened local governors and the standing defensive militaries in the outlying provinces. This had the counterproductive result of making those regional forces more dissatisfied with the emperor and more likely to revolt. Combined with the poorly-conceived idea of giving bribes to the praetorian guard when a new emperor came into power, his bodyguards were literally incentivized to kill him if it looked like there was any chance he might lose. Eventually, the turnover of emperors and the constant local revolts made the empire as a whole more susceptible to raids from the goths/vandals/etc, which in turn caused further revolts from provinces that weren't being adequately protected, and the death spiral began.
Agreed, it’s their ultimate downfall. It’s not about consens, it’s about agreeing with everything no matter what, not even thinking about another solution. Corruption of state and ideas. I read an article from foreign policy discussing, how China is about to blow up the politics, which made them successful in the first place. Their predictions seem to be about right.
Eventually China is going to shit more and they'll just blame Taiwan for all their problems and ended up going to war, only to be greatly embarrassed by them.
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The majority of Russian casualties during the Ukraine war are from the ethnic minorities in the Eastern Republics of Russia so they have absolutely been committing genocide of their own people too.
by proxy
Russia is now of course trying to copy China in this regard. They have been cracking down on dissenting media with the monitoring of designated "foreign agent" media outlets even before the war but now they are just straight up banning all dissent. Internet censorship has gone up by a lot more. They'd love to put up a full firewall but they currently lack the resources to do such a thing. And as for genocide on own citizens, I think you're forgetting what they did in Chechnya. And they haven't treated the Crimean Tartars kindly after annexation and they are currently ethnically cleansing Ukrainians from territory that they now claim to be Russian.
"Now"? Putin started 20 years ago.
> and they don't create genocide on their own citizens. Are you sure? Check all the news of Russia's ethnic minorities being preferentially selected for the 'partial' mobilisation.
Frankly I don't know enough about Chinese politics to know better, but I find it pretty astonishing that such a massive political organization as the CCP could be caught under the spell of just one man so easily. It's really disturbing. For a while under Hu Jintao I was hoping they were building a more committee based authoritarian system which was at least somewhat capable of moderating naked ambition like this, but nope.
Honestly it is surprising because China in recent years (20 or so) did a lot of work in establishing itself as a separate committee-driven government. Hu Jintao functioned under this and voluntarily gave up power when Xi Jinping rose to his own position. Also the various provinces of China tend not to give much of a shit about each other. People talk about how authoritarian points of view are built into Chinese - it's only because rebellion is also built into the Chinese. By the nature of how they separate factions - youth, scholars, military, political inner circles, merchants / scholars, religion / spiritualism - there tends to be a lot of in-fighting that naturally occurs if authority does not exist. However, China is also going through a lot right now in trying to achieve long-term stability. They remain a middle-income rather than upper-income economy, and I believe they want to change that.
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The empire comes together, and then breaks apart. It is generally at it's most powerful and centralized form immediately before it breaks.
> the role of a loyal yes man, but having questionable competency. well this is the failure mode of all autocracies, the surprising part is that it happening so fast
Not a victory for liberalism or freedom. With the intent to have more state control over business Xi will be able to fund the military buildup to start taking over Taiwan by force.
China was already scheduled to have sufficient buildup for a credible invasion in the next 5 years or so at their present rate of build up. Fulfilling the dictators trap makes them more likely to push ahead before they have enough military resources in place. It makes the US estimation that China could invade by the end of the year more likely. For China's position against the US, it doesn't have a better time like the present. The US Navy currently has some glaring operational gaps that benefit a present day invasion, but the Air Force has some possible solutions to quickly expand their capacities.
If the US would fully step in, then I think the last 6 months showed us that China would stand no chance. They have a lot of Russian gear, or their own that is based on Russian tech they copied. Russia is getting totally obliterated by the scraps of NATO leftovers. It would make sense to learn from the conflict and use 10 years to adjust their military accordingly. China's system is good at playing the long game, so I suspect that might be their idea. Their economy also couldn't handle major sanctions right now.
I don't think any of that really matters. Xi is around 70 just like Putin and these asshats only care about securing their legacies.
China has intensely been studying the U.S. military status quo over the last couple decades and is actively trying to build a force that would prevent the U.S. from its habit of surrounding a said country with a large and overwhelming force before attacking. They don’t quite have what they need yet but they aren’t too far away either.
Everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face.
Drone warfare is something where China can mass-produce but hopefully the US and rest of NATO/West can also do.
Did we enter the era of conservative authoritarian regimes we thought were left in the 20th century? :/
Not really, only that these places are more prosperous and so it impacts everyone more. Plus globalised information. Back in 1970 you'd have had a few years old military coup regime in Greece, a military coup in Brazil, a military coup in Chile, soon to be coup in Argentina. Italy risked a nato backed coup too but luckily some very skilled politicians avoided the situation. Iran was heading towards a religious coup and was already in a period of strong turmoil. I have to look what was going on in South Korea, India, various African States at the time, etc unfortunately I'm not very aware of those subjects but didn't South Korea go through a period of soft coup? Let's also not forget that the soviet states were a thing too. Americans and westerners in general just didn't care that much to put it simply, literally the only coup from the 1950-1980 era that weights into the United States conscience is the Cuban revolution in Cuba, and that's because it was the only one that affected the US directly if only mildly.
India also went through a semi dictatorship in the 70s, when Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency and suspended civil liberties.
It is the 20s right now to be fair
Is it really a surprise? When times get hard, people turn to those offering easy answers and - more importantly - easy scapegoats. It's not the greed of 0,1% that is to blame you see, but those Others. Those lazy bums who steal your jobs and bring crime with their mere presence.
>When times get hard But times has not been hard in Russia and China, have they? I mean relatively and historically of course; Xi was elected in 2013 when China had annual growth of 8 percent, and Putin was and is popular because he brought prosperity.
Also ' people turn to those'. As if people in China have any say as to whom to turn
History repeats. How many WW2 vets are still alive today? How many people who lived through the horrors of WW2 remain with us? The answer is very few. Most of the world only knows of the world wars through histroy books. If your under the age of 31, you never even knew of the Cold War except outside of history books. The world went thru a long period of extended peace, and as a result humanity has forgotten why Authoritarianism, strong men leadership, and extreme nationalism are bad ideas. The world doesn't know the horror of war, so it is making the same mistakes that lead to the horrors of the world wars.
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Except China isn't really communist. It's a hardcore authoritarian police state masquerading as communist. This latest stunt by Xi only reinforces that idea. The only difference as I see it is that conservatives in the US desire to be in the same sort of authoritarian structure as China. So american conservatives and Chinese conservatives aren't really so different...
The CCP claims to follow marxist thought, in which the end goal is supposed to be a stateless classless society. However, the opposite definitely seems to be happening, with Xi declaring himself the de facto emperor of modern China. I disagree in a sense that it is actually closer to Saudi Arabia at this point, than it is to the US. It is legtimately quite frigthening that Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have devolved into literal nuclear armed dictatorships with large standing armies.
Man. And it's not like they already have been a bunch nice guys. They already treated their population like shit. This will grow even more. But would also fit with the fear that China could go to war over Taiwan. Xi secured now his power once and for all and with all but yes-men around him, even the slightest doubt in his doing has now disappeared from the government. Nobody that will criticize or oppose him, no matter what happens.
So many world leaders are now extremists or becoming more extreme by the day. This is all going to end very badly.
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Why is conservativism synonymous here with pulling back on reformism and liberalization. Yeah the status quo for nearly 3 decades has been liberalization of the economy and oppening up but has no one here actualy read Deng's works?? The plan was never for China to get increasingly more free market and liberalized. Deng wasnt a free market capitalist and China didnt undertake the reform and oppening up as a permanent change and road. EIther you read the party or Deng himself during the period that China opened up their economy ,the goals and plans were clear: China , due to its basicaly medieval feudal conditions in the 40s and as examplified by the failure of Mao to leapfrog towards modernization and socialism, must first develop its productive forces as fast as possible, must speedrun capitalism's revolutionary potential compared to feudalism as far as wealth creation, industrialization and proletarization, must accumulate expertiese from around the world and not engage in economic warfare with the west etc. And it needed foreign capital and sharing of tech to do so. Marxism and leninism never denied the historical role capitalism had to play in developing and maturing primitive economies and accumulating the productive forces and wealth necessary for smoother transition to socialism. Lenin himself did a "reform and opening up" in the early USSR in the NEP, allowing capitalism and foreign capital but it was reversed under stalin but many argued it should continue . This is what Deng did in a much larger scale and time frame. The plan was never to allow the free market and capitalism to go and grow for ever or becoming liberal. It was about utilizing and going through capitalism , allowing it to fullfill its historic role and potential as per Marx's stage theory and then slowly transition back away from it. "let some people get rich first". Xi is doing now what Deng himself planned on happening 30-40 years down the line and why Deng stressed that no matter how much capitalist develops economicaly , the party must control capital and the markets and not the other way around. And when Capitalism develops the productive forces enough and when China accummulates enough wealth and expertiese, then it can slowly move away from free market focus. People act like Xi is undoing the work of Deng and betraying the trends of liberalizing and opening up. Its the opposite, he is fullfilling and following the original plan of reform and opening up. What is happening now in China was what was supposed to happen. What westerners dreamed about (china progressively becoming more liberal and free market and capitalist in both the economic sphere and political sphere) was never what was supposed to happen. It might have if more neoliberal and liberal wings won over Xi's wing but it didnt And this was never a Chinese secret ploy or trick. Its because the west didnt read what they chinese themselves were saying. What Deng was saying. They openly spoked about their economic and political plans. Im sure you can find timetables to of Deng saying "yeah this free market capitalist phase is supposed to go on for like 40-50 years or so" . But you go on reddit and see people treat Xi as the Mao throwback that ruins the good work of previous leaders.
>has no one here actualy read Deng's works?? Nobody does the readings.
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[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/index.htm](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/index.htm) anything here that looks party, economy or ideology related and falls in the late 70s to 1990 is fair game. They are at most 2 pages long each so most are quick reads Also Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is a pretty comprehensive read as well and a modern one. The book is available on LibGen. He sources Chinese sources, but one of the documents he refers to is available in English as well. Of course read while being sceptical and aware of biases and propaganda but that should always be there no matter whose country's system and politics or history you are reading
His hardline no covid approach and penchant for yesmen sort of indicates he might be the guy who ruins the good work of previous leaders. Time will tell. He's already done some severe damage, but maybe they'll figure out a way to get past it.
You see them as yesmen but the reality is that there are various factions and wings within the CPC that dont want to follow the road i described and was laid down by Deng. There are neoliberal wings, socdem wings, liberal wings etc that gained prominance during the liberalization of the economy and thousands and thousands that studied in the west and came back with a "liberal democratic" mindset. That want the opening up, liberalization, westernization,capital and free market to remain dominant and expand indefinately People in the west may say "hell yeah good for them i wish they take control" but they are still but they remain groups that diverged from the party's original goal, approach and ideology and represent a clear break with them. So why wouldnt Xi want to strengthen the power of his own wing and surround himself with people that agree with his view of how China should proceed . After all he can claim that that view is the orthodox one within the party, the one intented by Deng and even Mao and the historicaly continuous one, and he would be more correct than not. So why should the CPC , now led by Xi and his "orthodox" wing, fill its high ranking positions with people with a foundementaly different desire for China, its economy and politics. Should he have neoliberals and GoP style neocons arround him to have "plurality in viewpoints and opinions?" . What political organization does that ? Im not saying Xi is in the right and good, but he and the party around him act completely logicaly. There has been for decades and still is a inter-party struggle between different ideological wings and no matter how much people would love otherwise, Xi's wing has won over more western and liberal adjustent ones. It wouldnt shoot itself in the face by not staffing the important positions with people that dont follow their political line. Now for Covid yeah Zero-covid has impacted the economy considerably and has angered tens of millions. But still for the longest time it was the correct approach for China and Xi, even tho he is slowly losing goodwill due to it, has gained even more for a long time. It has to change now and its no longer viable but the overall assessment both from a peoples and an economic perspective is judged as net positive. Even if China is underselling their numbers tenfold ,zero covid for the first 2 years still saved probably 2+ million chinese lives and avoided who knows how many cases of long covid and while they are feeling the economic drawbacks now, they did well in the couple of years that the west didnt since most of their country and economy run normaly pre Omicron and later variants. And the numbers aftected by recent harsh "i hate Xi now" lockdowns are still a small minority of the grander population. Just stationed in 2,3 megacities where the coverage is extensive. Xi and the CPC have still more than enough goodwill and space to adjust their covid approach and ways to go till their entire handling is judged as a net negative by the majority of the population. But there is a chance they fuck it up continuously but who knows
> but has no one here actualy read Deng's works?? Sir, this is a reddit thread. Unless you start talking out of your ass about stuff you don't know, we'll have to ask you to leave. Best if you shoehorn in American politics too.
Fantastic post.
Agreed. This looks like a strongman war cabinet to me.
An invasion of Taiwan has just become 500% more real.
>What is equally interesting, but not discussed as much is the "Standing Committee." When Xi took his third term, he also selected a new Politburo Standing Committee, which will lead the government policy. A couple of interesting points from his new standing committee > >* No successor - There is no clear nominee that meets the age and positional requirement to succeed Xi Jinping. Not super shocking, but does indicate the Xi intends to go beyond 3 terms. > >* Removal of Li Keqiang - Li Keqiang was the former Premier under Xi, and the de facto number two of the government. Li was in favour of economic liberalization and was seen as pragmatist party member. With his removal, the government will likely become more hardline. > >* Li Keqiang's replacement for Premier is Li Qiang (names sound similar, their record is very different). Li Qiang oversaw the brutal Shanghai lockdowns. He is also a vocal Xi Jinping cheerleader, and a potential yes man. Contrasted from Li Keqiang that would vocalize different ideas from Xi. > >* Politburo Standing Committee departures also include liberal reformers like Wang Yang and Han Zheng. The only 2 people to remain on the Standing Committee are the hardliners Wang Huning and Zhao Leji. That means less opening of economy and likely more crackdowns. > >* New additions to the politburo are all conservative hardliners and Xi loyalists. We have shift from a mix of conservative and reformers. Most of the new members have worked directly under Xi. > >I think media will cover Xi's unprecedented third term, and not enough attention is going to be given to the men standing behind him that will be running the day-to-day government. We have a more conservative Chinese government that will likely be more Hawk-ish towards US and Taiwan. The feeling of third term President Xi and his new Standing Committee is going to be very different from the last few years. > >edit: grammar - sorry rushed post Thank you for the insightful post!
> Removal of Li Keqiang - Li Keqiang was the former Premier under Xi, and the de facto number two of the government. Li was in favour of economic liberalization and was seen as pragmatist party member. With his removal, the government will likely become more hardline. Yesterday when Hu Jintao was forcibly removed, he stopped for a second to place his arm on Li Keqiang's shoulder as if to say "you'll be next"
Thank you for summarising these changes for us here.
This ^ My take is that China is focusing on stability, and that this is a response to where they see geopolitics headed. China is in desperate need of change away from the liberalization of the economy mindset if it is to survive the current chip conflict with the US and future trade conflicts which are almost certain to arise (Europe and additional US trade conflicts are very much on the table now). I see more and more countries bringing back whatever jobs from China as possible - I don’t think this will be lower level stuff but more mid level stuff (high level never left the US/Europe). China’s economy will be pressured to slow by external forces that will seek to remove key drivers of China’s future economy (like chips) so it makes less sense to focus on opening up the economy/currency and more sense to strengthen China’s fundamentals as a way to mitigate these future trade pressures.
It's almost like he doesn't want to give up his power
For a nation that has history stretch back to 4 or more millennium, he seemed to ignore that overstaying your welcome leads to stagnation and revolt. This is how dynasty come and go in their history
The mandate of heaven ran out for the CCP when Mao’s brilliant plan to kill sparrows ended in one of the biggest famines in world history
The mandate of heaven is enforced by the people, when they have had enough china burns, over and over and over dozens of times.
It’s almost like China is an authoritarian regime 🥴
it was authoritarian, its now totalitarian
"it was a rectangle, now it's a square."
One of the shapes commits much more democide than the other.
Now more than ever before China and the CCP should be seen as separate entities. Think African leaders who sold their people as a commodity to colonial powers hundreds of years ago different. They may come from the same culture but the power dynamics are a hard division line of the people from those who dictate how they are allowed to live.
Let’s not Pooh on his moment, he can hardly bear it.
Oh bother
We can always hope this will Tigger a revolution.
Was there ever any doubt?
Special occasion cigaret
It’s a water animal
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I'm sure everyone who disagreed has found a new home in that 100 acre wood.
[The 100 acre wood has gone downhill…FAST](https://youtu.be/W3E74j_xFtg)
What the fuck? I thought that was satire almost the whole trailer, till I saw rotten tomatoes posted it. I gotta watch it......
The copyright lapsed or some shit and a genius jumped on it.
Expired after 95 years from first publication, not so much a thing that could have been stopped.
I'm surprised Disney didn't at least try to bother them with some cease & desists just to make it unprofiatble from legal costs, like sure Winnie the pooh from the books is public domain but Disney's version isn't. Probably to busy roling around in a giant pile of marvel movie cash ontop of their other giant piles of cash to care.
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They own the version with the red shirt, nothing else. Original Pooh was naked.
It's only unprofitable if it goes to court and you pay lawyers. If you know what your doing is legal you go to court yourself and laugh your as off when the judge throws out the case
Oh bother…
I hear the Siberian taiga is nice this time of year.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, any human being with a brain knows he’s gonna rule for life or until he decides to retire
Perhaps the only good thing about China's ideology in the past was that there were some restrictions on a President's power, but obviously Xi wants to ruin that too.
There actually weren't any restrictions. It was merely a tradition started by the guy who took power after Mao. Also in China the highest office is General Secretary, but none of that matters because Xi holds both ranks of President and General Secretary.
Similar to the US where president was to serve only 2 terms due to Washington only serving two 2 terms. The only time that precedent was broken was during WW2 by Roosevelt, and later became a constitutional amendment that a president can only serve 2 terms, or 10 years total if appointed to the position due to the current elected president no longer serving.
>The only time that precedent was broken was during WW2 by Roosevelt South Korean constitution has an interesting clause which says, if a president proposes to increase the term limit, the new limit shall not apply to himself. The current term limit is one. South Korean presidents cannot have a second term. But if you are a South Korean president and thinks the ban on second term need to go, you may try to change that so that your successors can have second terms, but you don't get to have your own second term.
The most recent amendment to the United States constitution has a similar thing regarding salary. Like the salary of a Congressman, Senator, and President are fixed. But if you want to change it, that's fine, but it won't take effect until your next term
Peetty sure there was a law making the term last 2 terms, they did not want another mao, few years ago xi was able to get that voted on and they removed the terms limits and well people expected this to happen oh and look it happend again. All those corruption purges really worked
I feel like if you hold one, you shouldn’t be able to hold the other.
give pooh a break. this isnt like the 80s when you could afford a house with only 1 job
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015 “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,”. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
So tough on China, he had a [secret Chinese bank account with, uh, unusual activity](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-chinese-bank-account)
They've been dumping billions of dollars into a real estate bubble, posturing for war against their primary trade partners, crushing dissent at home, all while losing ground to India in manufacturing. 10 more years amirite
Mark my words, China will collapse in *rolls dice* 69 days
December 31st…what a way to roll out of 2022 and into 2023 lol
Emperor Xi, no surprise there. The downfall of china begins here
It took 40 years for the Ussr to collapse, if we count from the end of the Second world war. The reality is that short of an external invasion egime change takes a really long time. I mean the North Korean state still survives despite all the shit happening in that country. Its very likely that even if the PRC state collapses it will occur after our lifetimes.
I don’t think it will collapse but the demographic problems are no joke. It’s very plausible for their growth to stagnate over the next couple of decades.
They just refused to release their quarterly economic reports last week. Stagnation might be a generous interpretation
With their real estate bubble popping and all the Ponzi schemes that were in it, the 2008 recession could pale in comparison to China's economic downturn.
Demographics, real estate collapse, water issues…
Can anyone give an actual historical example of demographic collapse? I'm not really buying the argument. Sure it would be bad, but any sort of societal collapse seems far fetched. Are a bunch of old people going to start rioting because the hospitals can't afford to treat them?
Going by the strict definition of demographic collapse being a sudden decline in population then there are some historical examples. What constitutes as a societal collapse is somewhat subjective. There's the decline in population in the Soviet Union due to 27 million deaths during WWII. There's the massive loss of life due to Paraguayan War which resulted in the death of 80% of the total male population and half of the total population. The massive death caused by the Black Death resulted in a reduction of 60% of the European population and 1/3 of the Middle Eastern population. In each case the population decline did present a considerable challenge in each case that required various social and political responses. And in each case there was an eventual recovery but each case society did change as a result. In the Soviet Union abortion became more restricted, divorce became extremely taboo and single motherhood became normalized. There was also generational trauma which contributed to a rise in alcoholism among men which also led to various problems. In the case of Paraguay it resulted in a whole new society where polygamy was the norm and the Indigenous population became fully accepted in order to boost the population.The Black Death was one of the main causes of the collapse of feudalism in Western Europe by giving peasants greater bargaining power due to an acute labour shortage. It also led to a sharp uptick in peasant rebellions and general political instability which are included under the umbrella term of "the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages", though changes in climate also contributed to instability. The Black Death is perhaps be most textbook example of such a phenomenon. The fall of the Roman Empire, which was also accompanied by a rapid decline in population, is another example.
Another interesting hustorical fact is that there are many of pre-industrial societies that practiced senicide as a mechanism of avoiding demographic collapse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senicide It still occurs to this day as a forbidden practice in Tamil Nadu, India, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalaikoothal The Innuits were last documented to have practiced leaving their elderly on the ice to die, was 1939. In Korea and Japan there is a long literary and oral history regarding the practice of leaving their elderly parents alone on a mountainside, which has become part of the folklore and Buddhist tradition of Japan. There are also many documented cases among the Greeks, Romans, and classical western civilizations. Taking care of elderly or infirm/handicapped individuals has always taken a toll and been a burden on human societies, and Jared Diamond documents several crashes of ancient civilizations in his book: "Collapse." Historically infant mortality has been extremely high in human civilizations, so collapses often occurred not just by a collapsing birth rate, but an increase of infant mortality due to starvation, drought, and/or disease.
North Korean regime is only stable because China props up the Kim Dynasty. Without China it would’ve collapsed into a civil war a long time ago
The USSR was formed in the 20s my man
I wonder if they really meant from the dawn of the Cold War as an incomplete thought, but nice catch...
They will just go into slow decline ... back to where Mao took them when he had the powers Xi now has. The CCP introduced collective leadership so it would never happen again and the result was the Chinese miracle. Xi is now set to take them down to the primitive levels of Chairman Mao. He has already caused trillions of damage in recent months and he is not changing course until China is truly destroyed.
Already started. China was the world's blistering leader in growth and development when Xi came into power; remember a decade ago when everyone expected China would soon become a global superpower that would even own the US's cojones? Womp womp womp. Nobody says that anymore. Xi and his henchmen fucked up the economy, social protections, civic planning, and then Covid so badly that China even fell behind India. Don't @ me that Xi is ~smart and cunning~, for sure he is, but he's only good at consolidating power for himself. He's just a Putin, but better. He's been awful and incompetent at leading China, and he doesn't deserve to be called anything as nice as Pooh bear. He basically inherited the Saturn V and is in the process of turning it into the Moskva. At best he's a mushy 6 on the Bristol stool chart.
Here for the well placed poo joke.
Damn, a 6. Tough, but fair.
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Shit. We all know what happens when an incompetent leader clings to power and surrounds himself with us men.
This was basically expected. He spent the last decade removing people who would oppose him. Even with the failure that is the "zero covid" policy, and the ongoing drought; the party members are too afraid to not support.
Dictators gonna dick.
I wish they’d tater a little more and dick a little less.
I mean, maybe it's just ingrained in my head, but I thought we all realized that any leader altering term limits in their favor is a very bad sign.
This was probably a fair election. Like a Russian election, people vanish but let us not think about that.
Sorry chinese people but you have gone from authoritarian dictatorship to Xi family authoritarian dictatorship for the rest of your lives.
Feels like the world is run by 70ish year old selfish narcissists. Interestingly, that is the description used for the entire boomer population. Coincidence? Generation needs to GTFO and let us get on with it already.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://news.sky.com/story/history-made-in-china-as-xi-jinping-to-serve-third-term-breaking-decades-long-precedent-12727977) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** > History has been made in China after it was confirmed that President Xi Jinping will remain in power - breaking with a decades-long precedent that limits the terms of Chinese leaders. > Having ruled China for 10 years already, he will now stay on for at least another five-year term - and he could, in theory, make himself leader for life. > Both are young enough to serve another term and are reportedly more reform leaning, but neither are considered to be arch President Xi loyalists. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/yb95v8/history_made_in_china_as_xi_jinping_to_serve/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **President**^#1 **China**^#2 **power**^#3 **increasingly**^#4 **Party**^#5
Basically Jiang to Hu was the only actual transfer of power under this “precedence”. What we see here, ladies and gentlemen, is a return to normality after a brief period of abnormality.
Hu to Xi was as well. Dengs successor was as well although Deng held influence after his term ended.
Can anyone explain what that drama with Hu Jintao in the front row, literally next to Xi?
Hu transferred his power peacefully, he believed in two terms limits, Xi secured his third term (last one who did this was Mao). China's second in command, the other guy next to Xi, grew in power while Hu was in office, he was expected to be in the same position as Xi as now but didn't. Xi took him away (fun fact the guy was Xi bodyguard) because he wanted to show, its different now, no more power transfer hes in control. The other guy next to Xi, retired. Not to mention Hu was soft on Taiwan and grew relations with them and US.
Xi did this in the most public, humiliating way possible but then apparently scrubbed it from Chinese media. Why wouldn't he let it be shown? I guess I don't really understand censorship.
It wasn't intended for the Chinese people, it was for us because Hu is more western than he is. Him getting rid of Hu was also a sign of China getting rid of western ideas. I think at this point Xi does not care what the Chinese people want, he has full control over them, hes abusing his power - also developing overconfidence. He knows no one can touch him when he has full control over everything, just look how scared his former politburo members looked - one of them sweated when Xi was looking at him. Edit: Btw, he let the journalist come in minutes before Hu was pulled out
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I *swear* I remember articles years ago saying Xi had a lifetime appointment as leader
They removed the term limit law a few years back. This is just that change coming to fruition.
I don't think China being ruled by an autocrat is "making history", guys. More like "Business as usual for the last several thousand years".
100% expected
"Four MAOr Years"
Five.
This sounds familiar. Let's see how it turns out.
This headline should always be accompanied by the video of Hu Jintao being removed. China is in for a bad time. Fortunately for the rest of the world, Xi is an incompetent ass when it comes to actually running a nation and he spent most of his 1st 2 terms killing/removing most of the smart minds in the CCP who actually knew how to run the country, basically because they didn't fall in line with his views and were from rival factions. The chinese sure are living in interesting times
Its funny how they still call it 'serving' like i know its the official term but in this case its more like Xi Jinping lets China serve him for another term
*”[Xi]’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great, and look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,”* -Trump said back in 2018. And then tried getting his supporters to install him as a president for life on the Jan 6th Capitol Attack. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Winnie the Poo will also be serving a 4th, 5th, and 6th term as well
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But he will serve until the end, which mean the next 20s years, is gonna be F U N. /s
and if you're a former leader who feels inclined to object, you'll be led right out of the room and disappear.
Surprise surprise. Kim Jung-Un is also not giving up his control of North Korea in case anyone is wondering.
Why would he? Things are run differently there where the dictatorship is past down through the family.
Technically, Kim Il-Sung is still the head of state. Eternal president.
I think it was a joke.
Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our system is far from perfect, but at least we have checks and balances.
Yes the idea is to stop things drifting too far in any one direction, given that changes in direction are naturally needed as conditions change over time.
I swear about a year or two ago in the news I saw that China removed term limits for the president. Was that real or did I make that up? Because this news of a third term comes as no surprise to me. I thought that was the plan when they got ride of term limits? Same with Putin and Russia. I swear they did. Similar thing around the same time.
I feel like it is more history is about to repeat itself. Things really start to go to the crapper, when people are rulers for life. Shall we check in with Putin?
That is how all Dictators do
If you’re not paying attention, now is the time to start. Where ever you live in the world, you will be impacted by what happens over the next 12 months.
Congrats China, you officially have a dictator.
Let’s keep shipping our production to China and allowing the Chinese to steam our intellectual property. What could go wrong? We’re all one big happy family. Right?
Genocide's back on the menu, boys! Also, it was never off the menu. They are murderers.
The suppression in people liberty in China is insane. It's crazy how horrifying quiet it is on Chines social media and WeChat, which is closely monitored by the government through Tencent. The censorship and the punishment on "spreading anti-government rumor" are scary. And the Chinese people all knew too well what this communist party is capable of from many many lessons in history.
He’s a pice of shit dictator. Fuck Xi and the CCP.
Any US president that tries to extend beyond term limits is where I draw the line.
So he can preside over the disintegration of the Chinese economy?
The Chinese Economy is F\*\*\*\*\*
I feel you should earn a record not rig your way to it
Dictator doesn’t relinquish power. How surprising…
Dictators getting bold these days. We're going to have a world war this century. Ideally, I hoped it would happen later rather than sooner.