“I think engagement—it was right to try. And it was a great tribute to American diplomacy under nine presidential administrations with the, perhaps somewhat naive hope, that China might not turn into a Jeffersonian democracy, but might become less hostile. That was a good diplomatic effort. Did it succeed? Not yet. And engagement has now ended. Now, can we start it up again? I believe that under Xi Jinping, that is probably impossible.”
—Orville Schell
(Guess who saw the eye doctor. has a treatment plan, and two thumbs? This asshole).
It appears that El Salvador’s concentration camp runnin’ wannabe dictator has extended his term and is angling to be President For Life. This tendency to seize and grip for dear life to power goes a long way back in time—who doesn’t recall introductory Rome and learning about the shift from Republic to “Caesar for Life” empire?
In the US, Donald’s been fantasizing about this a while (and with his increasing ties to the Epstein Files and indications of being a pedophile, I’m sure he’s going to fight tooth and nail to keep that self-pardon on the table. In 2021, Putin managed to clear his own way to staying in power for life, but the real trailblazer for this is ol' Xi Jinping, who managed to clear his way for lifelong power back in 2018.
Xi and Putin are pseudo-BFFs. That is to say: they have similar aims and as a result, they’re working together warily and each one is waiting for the opportune moment to slit the other’s throat for the most advantage. Putin wants China to take the brunt of the losses while Russia reestablishes itself as an empire; Xi wants Russia to take the losses as China reasserts itself as an imperial power and is watching Russia’s debacle in Ukraine, grateful he didn’t try his hand at reclaiming Taiwan before waiting to see how his ‘ally’ would trip and bleed.
Men like this don’t have friends; they are callous, ruthless, and manipulative.
Just get a taste of how callous Putin is: Russia claimed to have developed the world’s first Covid vaccine back when we were in the pandemic; there were a lot of questions about the credibility of this claim.
To prove it’s efficacy and safeness, Putin had it tested on… himself, wait, no, sorry, on his daughter. I’ve heard from people who grew up in functional, loving families that as a general rule, their parents put their child’s safety ahead of their own.
Putin would have no comprehension of such an idea.
(Of course, in the US, caring about a child’s safety is becoming increasingly outdated—Donald wants to pardon his ol’ sex-trafficking pedo pal and has already moved her to a minimum security holding in preparation).
Xi, it seems, might give a little more of a damn about his daughter, who may still be living in the US. Apparently Xi Mingze a real bug up the ass of that kooky conspiracy crackpot Laura Loomer. You might know Loomer, she went from handcuffing herself to Twitter HQ to transforming herself into a Jigsaw-lookalike
[That dipshit in the middle looks an astonishing amount like the snake-boiling animal abuser I went to school with, down to the “The facial hair indicates you’re an adult, everything else looks like you stopped growing around 12.”
to… well, this:
Loomer belongs in a padded room, not occasionally referenced in political news, even on my local station, as if she’s a normal political figure. Frankly, her nativism-based campaign against Xi Mingze is more rooted in racism than it is in genuine concern about international affairs regarding China.
Milo/Nero is quite the piece of shit himself, who is or was close to Robert Mercer, Steven Bannon (of acid bathtub fame), and that race-baiting site Breitbart. He likes to play around with the whole “am I or am I not a nazi?” shtick, but the whole “I’m only joking!” thing kinda got blown apart when his passwords leaked and they’re very clearly antisemitic and pro-nazi, including shit like “Kristallnacht.”
Apparently, Milo’s love of nazism didn’t extend far enough to learn about Ernst Roem and the Night of Long Knives; you’d think those might be relevant for someone who is so flamboyant about being gay, but hey, no one ever accused nazis of being smart or logical.
Robert Mercer has ties to Cambridge Analytica, which had some real sketchy election ties in 2016; they’re also tethered to Steve Bannon, Breitbart, etc., and Mercer, as discussed here, does not believe human life has inherent value. He’s got a fascination with toy trains and loves abusing his housekeepers who don’t drain every drop out of his shampoo bottles properly.
Donald’s Term 2, now, is more when we get to the figures of Thiel, Musk, Yarvin, etc., but they carry the same disdain for the value of human life, as noted in the article I linked attached to those names. Thiel gets a little recent tie-in here: Hulk Hogan died, Hulk previously sued Gawker into oblivion. Thiel bankrolled that cause he was furious Gawker outed him back when.
Today’s not about US shitheels, though, let’s get back to China and Xi.
Our backgrounds shape who we were, are, and become, and Xi’s current insecure, paranoid grip on power quite possibly stems from his stunted upbringing in the context of the Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a big-time leader, who had been close with Mao since the thirties and was considered one of the founders of Communist China. Jinping was one of four children he had with his second wife and, as Zhongxun was part of the ‘new elite,’ his son counted among the so-called “Princelings.”
Well, not for long; Xi is born in June of 1953.
In 1958, Mao instittues the Great Leap Forward—and it is a catastrophic failure that leads to mass famine throughout China. In 1959, Mao is pressured to step down; in 1962, he is stripped of executive power; in 1963, Xi Zhongxun is one of those who fall from grace along with Mao’s decline in power.
Zhongxun is described as one of the “antichrists” of Communist China. Xi Jinping endured struggle sessions—brutal Maoist events to humiliate, scorn, injure, and even torture so-called “class traitors.” So did his entire family.
Xi’s half-sister died and this casts a “deep shadow” over the entire family—there’s a leading theory that she committed suicide, adding to the trauma of the event. Like many things, such as Tiananmen Square, Xi is not known to have ever publicly commented on this and China’s not exactly open with their records.
in 1966, Mao and his allies make a play to seize power again in the form of the Cultural Revolution. Jinping joins the Red Guard in working to eliminate traditional and capitalist elements from China, but after a shift, is sent to work in the countryside.
We have some stories from this era, but they’re the kind of propaganda you expect from dictators: he parceled out motorcycle parts to provide for a village’s needs, showed inhuman strength by carrying heavy bags of rice long distances without swapping arms—it’s not eighteen holes-in-one but it’s still over-the-top enough to make you roll your eyes as you listen to Paul Bunyan stories about Xi Jinping.
When he returns from the countryside, in his early twenties, he enters what is called “China’s MIT,” where he studied chemical engineering. After, he goes into party politics—and as Frontline, previously mentioned, puts it, "he “drank the Kool-Aid of the Cultural Revolution” despite “his father being one of the antichrists” of the nation.
For three years, he is the junior aide of a senior Communist official, and then he is sent to the provinces, where he will begin to work his way up through the ranks and make a name for himself primarily as a man who rooted out corruption.
To me, his toeing-the-line approach and ass-kissing to the Central party are certainly safer, but they speak to more of a follower than a leader. Anyone can go along to get along and recoil at the first sign of being in the wrong.
Xi is also in the provinces when Tiananmen Square happens. In the West, we refer to Tiananmen Square, but this is a misnomer. While we are most aware of Tiananmen, there were student protests going off across China showing dissatisfaction with the CCP.
This has something to do with modern China associating these protestors with “troublemakers” and “the West,” relying on a national myth that sees China as trampled on since the Opium Wars., with these protestors being one more form of the West meddling to cause issues. This is a significant part of why discussion of the events is banned online—but also why in Tiananmen Revisited, the author discusses how even in real life, people are wary to talk about it and speak of protestors as “troublemakers” or use other similar, dismissive words.
Mao and the CCP are viewed in this mythos as having lifted China from the dirt, given it unity, and thrown off the shackles of Western imperialism. It’s a heady myth.
While Xi is not known to have spoken of Tiananmen Square and the pro-democracy movement, he had been married to his second wife, Peng Liyuan, for a few years by this point. She is a former singer who serenaded the bloody soldiers who had massacred pro-democracy protestors.
Despite Xi’s lack of a public comment, I think this speaks for itself.
His silence also speaks to my previous point about him being more a follower than a leader: he did not set his own course, but looked for signs from the Central Party and tried to toe the line of what would be seen as good in their eyes without raising alarms, perhaps haunted by the specter of his father’s fall.
Even in these early days, his grip on power was tinged by insecurity and fear.
By the new millennium, as Western culture is inundating China, Xi is heading the Fujian Province. This is a coastal province, and coastal areas were, as is often the case in history, the first to receive new ideas and technologies. He stays there till 2007, assiduously building up his reputation as a man who roots out scandal inside the Party.
This is what brings him to the attention of the Central Party and, in the wake of a corruption scandal, launches him to head Shanghai, a massive promotion that lands him in the upper echelons of Chinese power-players. Even here, he remains simple and declines the luxuries often provided to those in his position; within the year, seven months or so to be precise, he is launched almost right to the top.
At the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi joins the Politburo and becomes one of the nine most powerful men in China. He is placed in charge of the Central Party School, which instructs future Party leaders. This was previously one of Mao’s positions. Xi institutes a strict rule that teachers must align their teachings and speeches with the spirit of the Communist Party, seen as a harbinger by one teacher—Cai Xia, though I didn’t confirm—of his future authoritarian rule.
His big test came in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics—a test that he passes with flying colors.
Not only does it bring a sense of national pride, China’s economy has ballooned: for the last forty years, it’s been growing at roughly four times the rate of the US. Seventeen years ago, it was still in the midst of this growth and had surpassed Germany, the UK, and Japan to become one of the world’s largest economies.
And while the US is cruising toward the Great Recession, China is awash with cash and national pride. China decides US debt is a great way to use some of that excess cash they’ve got sitting around, a problem we’re still facing today.
By 2012, Xi has solidified power and become both General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China. Upon taking power, he makes trivial signs to indicate he’s a man-of-the-people: he claims he won’t have his motorcade interfere with traffic and tries to foster a paternal image with his nickname of Winnie the Pooh sorry, Papa Xi.
Behind the scenes, Document Number Nine is distributed and is intended to be secret (it, obviously, is leaked; Gao Yu, the journalist who was able to get a copy and leaked it, was sentenced to seven years for “leaking state secrets”).
This is another glimpse at Xi’s insecurity and his fears of having a feeble grip on power. Document Number Nine, unlike the love potion, is not a good time and echoes some of Putin’s fears. It accuses non-governmental organizations, civil societies, and other such groups of fostering discontent in China.
In addition, it is explicitly anti-Western, anti-democratic, and opposes human rights, freedom of the press, judicial independence, and requires strict adherence to Party dogma and doctrine.
And before long, he’s used this to start up an old fashioned, Communist style Purge.
To paraphrase, with gritted teeth, Matthew Pottinger: ‘Everyone thought, “It’ll last six months.” It’s been twelve years.” and later, "The historian Stephen Kotkin said, ‘Hitler used to kill his enemies and Stalin killed his friends. Xi is purging both his friends and his enemies and that is the mode by which he governs.”
I’m a bit wary to leave Pottinger’s quote standing as-is; as an architect of Trump’s China policy during term one and a fan of a more aggressive approach toward China, well: let’s just say the same Frontline episode really let me down by making it sound like Donald was the only one with China on his mind in 2016.
For those unaware: Democrats had the goddamn Trans-Pacific Partnership pass, which that orange dipshit pulled out of like Fred should’ve pulled out of Mary Anne. The TPP was intended to create a trade deal with other Asian and Pacific nations that would allow us to circumvent China and weaken their economic grip.
The other sources from the administration, HR McMaster and John Bolton, leave something to be desired as well. Bolton’s a kook and I didn’t realize quite how spineless and wishywashy McMaster is: he and Pottinger worked to be ‘tougher’ on China because Taiwan, but critique Biden’s defense of Taiwan and approve Donald’s prevaricating. Are we trying to be “ambiguous” or “aggressive” (those words are not synonyms), what cohesive policy did you and Pottinger, or Bolton and Pottinger, have beyond Faction over Nation, Democrats Bad?
(As much as I loved PBS, NPR, and other publicly-funded sources, there’s no denying that in order to keep funding, they had to kowtow to the right and neglect information; ultimately, it didn’t save them from the current right-wing shitheels in Congress gutting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which means that by the Halloween season, there won’t be a PBS or an NPR anymore For reference: PBS is my source for, like, 75% of what I’m writing).
Back to on-topic: Xi’s Purge.
A discussion of this also gets a glimpse into the Orwellian state of Chinese society—though, as noted, Orwell could never have dreamed of the extent.
China has approximately one surveillance camera for every two citizens. Now, these numbers are misleading; you’ve got to figure some rural village is going to have a lot less of this than a populated hub like, say, Shanghai. Still, it’s a frightening number. In addition, they use AI for digital and facial tracking/recognition, often at street corners.
And, of course, there’s the wildly frightening Social Credit Score they’ve implemented, which could use a whole post of its own.
Even the internet, which we so often see as a way to shatter any boundaries to information, has been managed by China’s so-called “Great Firewall,” a mix of both technology and legislation to keep even such Western-ubiquitous entities as Facebook and Google out of China altogether. That’s wild, when the concept of the Great Firewall was first unveiled people laughed it off as impossible.
But it happened.
This also gives me a more appropriate time to discuss the Winnie the Pooh incident/censorship, as the way the Great Firewall works and how quickly is could eliminate these references, as well as other allusions and spin-offs, almost overnight and then, going forward, before they were ever seen.
Cai Xia discusses how she had been surveilled and was purged after a post supporting individual rights. As we discover at the end of the documentary, comparing Xi to a mafia boss led to her being expelled from the Communist Party; since 2019, she has been a dissident living in exile in the United States.
Like other rogue nations such as Russia, El Salvador, and South Sudan, China under Xi has figured out that calling political enemies “terrorists” tends to get them a pass on political violence for a while. Xinjiang province, home of the Uyghurs, is a prime example of this and draws some uncanny parallels to Putin’s rise to power, in my eyes.
During Xi’s early presidency, he took advantage of Uyghur attacks by alleged separatists—Xinjiang Province, first taken in the 18th century, has more than once split off from China, making this not unbelievable.
However, thinking of Xi’s best pal Putin, I can’t help but think of false flag apartment bombings being pinned on Chechen separatists, labelled as terrorists despite being (Russian) FSB agents, and the whole “We’ll wipe them out in the outhouse” thing that had a big role in the leadup to the Second Chechen War.
Now, I have no such information on China but they’re a tough nut to crack and I think it’s a valid concern to raise when it comes to an authoritarian party that used this as justification to begin mass arrests of Uyghurs, leading to over a million being arrested by 2017. Putin and Xi’s closeness also begs the question. We’re getting close to a decade later and, to my knowledge, treatment of Uyghurs has worsened since then.
When questioned about this treatment, Peking University professor Jia Qingguo refuses to discuss these inhuman conditions and instead makes a very weak attempt at a “whatabout” fallacy by bringing up Iraq and Afghanistan. While those wars deserve criticism and condemnation, it’s not the subject of the hour.
Another of Xi’s issues is that China is “rich, but not powerful.” This is part of why China has military parades and has gotten more aggressive. It hopes to present itself not just as an economic power, but as a military and political one as well as an expansionist imperial power.
This is why I began by linking Putin and Xi and a previous post about the former: what Xi envisions for China’s growth is perfectly in-line with The Foundations of Geopolitics and Putin’s kooky ‘philosopher’ Dugin’s plan.
In another connection: Putin has tried to link himself to and restore the reputation of Stalin as a great leader; so, too, has Xi done so with Mao by neglecting the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, which saw China open up more to Western culture and capitalism, bringing China wealth—but not power.
Regarding China’s aggression, I’d point to the South China Sea—as well as the, more commonly seen in films, Nine-Dash Line. For a long time, studios would have to edit maps to feature this in order to get a release in China; more recently, it seems studios have made mistakes and it’s slipped into US films as well.
Mistakes or studios have, I dunno, maybe just decided it’s easier to save time and cost for a bigger ROI by only filming one version and retaining the nine-dash line. Isn’t maximum profit for minimal output one of those fundamental lessons of capitalism? Ethics don’t tend to enter into financial equations of that sort too often, I’ve found.
But it’s not just imaginary dashes on a map; China has taken steps to seize control. Taiwan, as Frontline shows us, has identified 14 different places it believes are vulnerable to attack and we are given a glimpse into training exercises. China’s military is supposed to be up to the task by 2027 allegedly and they’ve been holding military parades, with Xi for propaganda, as well.
Come 2027, whether they’ll pull the trigger is unknown.
What we do know is that not long after Xi took the presidency, China began working on creating seven artificial islands on coral reefs in the South China Sea. Despite promises these would not be used for military purposes, it didn’t take long to figure out they’ve got runways for fighter jets and docking stations that aren’t going to be used for pleasure cruises or fishing trips. These waters are also aggressively patrolled by Chinese vessels, which harass and bully others out of the waters.
It’s been seventy years since Taiwan split off.
When asked why Xi now finds its reunification with China an “existential” issue, the previously-mentioned professor Qingguo of Peknig University responds about Taiwan specifically—but in a broader sense, about China’s imperial and terrotorial ambitions in general—by saying that these places, from Hong Kong to Taiwan, “dont have the right to separate… the land from the motherland.” (Geez, echoes of my mom shrieking, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it!”)
Nixon, apparently, couldn’t care less about Taiwan and was perfectly willing to surrender it to China.
(Why Frontline decided to include this, I really don’t know. It seemed slotted in there to justify Donald’s Conservative Crew being outraged that Biden said no less than four times the US would defend Taiwan in case of Chinese invasion and how no other president has stated this, their hostile and aggressive attitude was ackshually supposed to be ambiguous and Donald not commenting one way or the other is way more in line with being hostile and aggressive. I don’t fucking know, I assume it was to avoid offending conservatives that the later segment about the global importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry wasn’t linked to, “Yeah, this is one reason why we don’t want China taking over.”)
Anyway, Hong Kong shows another example of China’s double-dealing: when Britain gave up Hong Kong in 1997, it was with the understanding of a fifty-year agreement of “One country, two systems.” This allowed the more Western-influenced regions of Hong Kong and Macau to retain some of their independence as they adjusted to once more becoming a part of China. Idealistically, within that fifty years, a more human rights-oriented attitude would prevail.
Xi decided that was too long to wait.
Chinese attempts to crackdown are resisted, in particular after a law is passed allowing China to extradite people from Hong Kong. This leads to the Umbrella Movement—called thus for the use of umbrellas both to shield from pepper spray and surveillance technology.
While there are fears Xi will send in the army and crackdown, he is too conniving for that; he waits, then has a security law passed which goes after protestors by criminalizing them as guilty of subversion, collusion, and secession. By 2020, he decides to shut down the “one country, two systems,” plan early and issues wanted orders for student leaders.
Personally, I found a significant chunk of my learning on China pretty disheartening and Xi struck me as in a strong position. After learning a bit more and seeing some of his insecurities pointed out and in action, it’s clear there are cracks in his power and his insecurities are justified. And as long as he continues on his scorched-earth path, his paranoia and insecurities are going to worsen the cracks in his power.
First off: China’s military ambitions by 2027.
Xi has always studied and looked to follow examples, even back in the days of his provincial leadership and silence on Tiananmen Square. His cutthroat best buds relationship with Putin means he’s got Ukraine on his mind and he has an inside glimpse at the madman who pulled the trigger on war. Not only that, he has a glimpse at the quality of Western and US intelligence, which turned a war Putin planned to last a few weeks into a years-long struggle that has had devastating consequences for Putin and Russia.
Xi is likely to be wary of finding out how much he doesn’t know our intelligence apparatus knows by gambling on a war, seeing how that worked out for Putin.
Then we’ve got the protests. Covid-19 lockdowns in China led to anti-Xi protests that were the largest since Tiananmen Square—and they were brutal to him. Video shows chanters demanding “Freedom of speech,” “Chinese people have human rights, too,” and, worst for him, “Xi Jinping, step down!”
When the government forbade ‘overt messaging,’ protestors answered cleverly by holding up blank pieces of paper as signs of the Chinese government’s censorship, leading to them being dubbed the White Paper Protests
For another aspect: while our economy in the US isn’t under the greatest leadership (pretty big blazing red flag when you fire the person who reports bad numbers instead of taking steps to improve the problem, but hey, shooting the messenger is always a great idea and at least we know we can’t trust government data on jobs going forward), Xi has allowed the economy to take a backseat and neglected it for roughly a decade, focusing instead on ideology, nationalism, and consolidating power.
A look at China’s economy shows a housing boom turned into a housing surplus, with vacant residences “littering the country”—I’m not sure if this is directly tied to the “ghost cities” of China, as the term wasn’t explicitly used, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
China also suffers from an aging work force which is not being replaced—estimates place youth unemployment as high as 25%.
Today, there appear to be ongoing protests, and I’m sure there’s a link to be drawn between the two. News coverage remains difficult in such a repressive country, but I’ve seen a few headlines about unpaid workers, mass unemployment, deadly riots against Xi, protests spreading, and banks failing.
I’d be curious to learn more about the current state of these protests and see what’s being discussed, likely heavily veiled in allusion—before being censored—on Chinese media in regards to these protests. But the Great Firewall kinda goes both ways, at least to my limited understanding—if you can crack onto Chinese social media and get a look at it from the West, I wouldn’t know how to either access or read it, anyway.
Unfortunately for us, the trade war and its tariffs are a great way to shoot ourselves in the foot when we could be taking advantage of it. Our tariffs previously led to soybean purchases going from the US to Brazil, which kinda bit us in the ass and has contributed to us facing inflation, a larger trade deficit, and a rise in unemployment.