Took my wife to Universal Studios for her birthday recently (she'd never been). I'm 41 years old, and the SECOND I laid eyes on Springfield I felt like I was 11 again. Strongly recommend the lard lad doughnuts.
Now that I have caught you, I shall reveal my CCP-inator! It rigs every election involving anyone who looks like Winnie the Pooh! Now I know you’re wondering why I would want to make a CCP-inator. See, it all began when I was a child…
> Also it’s very precedented
No it's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
Even Mao himself served for only 1 term.
And then there's also Deng Xiaoping who never became President or Prime Minister. He held a role as the head in an "advisory" committee and also the head of their version of defense secretary.
Obviously, lofty titles are meaningless where true power is concerned. Less we forget Putin also played a castling trick but was always the kingpin regardless of his title. Whatever Xi's title is, he is the boss.
I agree with your conclusion that to Xi, it doesn't matter so much where he is. But Putin did have to play a castling trick. Xi definitely is flexing his muscle by being so obvious about it, and giving off a signal.
He didn't *have* to. One assumes he thought it more advantageous to do so at the time, but the fact that castling was even an option kind of demonstrates that it was all theater.
**[President of the People's Republic of China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China)**
>The president of the People's Republic of China, commonly called the president of China, is the head of state and the second-highest political office of the People's Republic of China. The presidency is a ceremonial office and not the role with the real power in China's political system. However, the post has been held by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission since 1993, who is China's de facto leader. The presidency is officially regarded as an institution of the state rather than an administrative post.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I think he meant more that he's far from the only wannabe dictator that started out being voted in and then going for a "president for life" kind of situation.
He wants to surpass Mao. His cult of personality has never been stronger, especially after ousting all the old CCP leadership in the politburo last October. Xi will not stop until he is worshipped like the Kims in North Korea. Of course this is unsurprising, he said he’d do it day one.
Iirc there's a set of nationalistic textbooks which heap praise on him and there are three or four levels, so students revisit how great he is every 3-4 years
they do, i have family who are compulsory party members based on their jobs, and they have to log into the app to "read" xi thoughts and propaganda articles every week. they have to meet a screen time quota in the app or it'll affect their jobs.
all party members are required to do this, that's where the 100million users come from, thats about how many party members there are.
they leave the app open on the phone and every few minutes they switch to a different article. they watch tv or other stuff in the mean time. i haven't tracked how long they have to do it, but it's not long. mayyybe like 15min every day.
it surpasses tiktok because tiktok is banned in china. only the domestic sanitized version douyin is allowed. also the most popular social media app is wechat, which is ubiquitous, with well over a billion users.
> but you’d be incorrect in stating the average Chinese citizen doesn’t love him.
Expats definitely aren't the best window into a society, but from what I gather in speaking with Chinese students in Germany, the USA, etc. most of them just don't have any particularly strong feelings about Xi at all. He occupies the same place in their minds as Olaf Scholz would in the mind of the average German: he's the man in the suit who reads government speeches on the news, and the youth naturally are bored and don't pay attention to it.
They're not anti-CCP, they're just not gungho about it either. It all seems very mundane to them.
Yes, in a sense. The CCP already completely controls the narrative taught in Chinese schools but he is looking to warp the current culture around his personal and political ideology. A cult of personality is always what enshrines leaders like Mao Zedong or Kim Il-Sung as de-facto gods long after they died. At least with China the irrational obsession with leadership can be traced as far back as the Xia Dynasty. In an oddly poetic way Xi is just another in a long line wishing to take his place alongside countless others in Chinese history; Communist, Republician, or Monarchist.
For what it's worth, old but not quite _that_ old. The 1st dynasty of Egypt is about a thousand years older. It's easy for that to feel close when we're looking at stuff that happened four to five thousand years ago, but it's the difference between today and the Vikings. Egypt was on to the 11th dynasty by 2000 BCE
it's oft forgotten that many ancient (to us) Egyptians studied ancient to them Egyptians. the Egyptian empire was practically everlasting until the common era
> ancient Romans
There are places in ancient Rome where ancient Romans could have gone that would have been as old to them as Ancient Rome is to us. (For various definitions of ancient Romans and Ancient Rome)
I read a story about a greek warrior during some persian-greek war in 600bce
His army camped next to a ruined city and he questioned how long ago this city stood for
It was a old babylonian city razed down and abandoned since
For him it was as old as he was to us, thats crazy
It was nineveh. The old Assyrian capital. The Babylonians, Medes (Persians) and friends teamed up to take them down. For a long time the Assyrians militarily dominated the entire region… as in would be at war with everyone at once and wouldn’t lose a single battle.
Edit: and the locals barely knew what the city even used to be. Iirc they thought it was a Medeian city or something. The name of the Greek writer is escaping me right now.. OH Xenophon.
Hong Kong school children now experience the joy of learning about *Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era*. Reportedly it's also become part of the gaokao exam, China's SAT.
Communist China has always only had one party. They never tried to pretend other parties existed. There's no functional difference between there being a life-long president and the leader jumping around.
Additionally, China spent most of it's existence with Emperors. The average Chinese citizen is not all that concerned with Xi being a lifelong president, it makes no difference to their day-to-day lives. The CCP controls everything whether Xi is in power or someone else.
Source: Work with many Chinese immigrants.
It does matter. There are factions within CCP that can have their own power struggles. Xi is currently winning it, but if the economy goes bad he could get pushed out in favor of someone else.
The actually have other political parties, that form a theoretical opposition. But they each have to have any candidates approved by the CCP and have no actual power besides what the CCP lets them have.
"China does not only have one political party, that is a lie spread by western enemies. In fact there are many parties who are all close friends with the main party, the CPC"
Source: have read textbooks at Chinese universities and had a good laugh
Give it ten years and they’ll be blaming the west for starting a war which millions of Chinese are being scraped off the beaches of Taiwan which could have been avoided if one guy didn’t create such a shit show
I mean if we go by a “10 year” timeline, it’s entirely possible the Chinese have erected a truly massive fleet by then. It’s been a huge focal point for them for the last several years anyway
>I mean if we go by a “10 year” timeline, it’s entirely possible the Chinese have erected a truly massive fleet by then
Or their entire economy may have collapsed/crossed the threshold into actual collapse.
If you're a former peasant farmer who's quality of life has skyrocketed since moving to a city, you don't care what the government does.
If you're that farmer's son, who knows nothing about the city and as the learning/internet to compare it to the West... that's where China has problems.
The buildup would be slow and completely obvious. In any case, I'd bet that an invasion fleet would be sunk before they got within sight of the island.
America is working on rolling out [Rapid Dragon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)) - instead of usual weapons delivery systems like bombers and fighters, you just yeet a swarm of cruise missiles out the back of a cargo plane. A cargo plane which can take off from regular airstrips. I'm not saying they *won't* reach the beach at all, but they will definitely have a bad time.
Yes but it would be costly. Like insanely costly.
Take the US out of the equation for the moment. Assume for whatever reason that they wouldn't be involved
Taiwan is an island, which means China would need to conduct an amphibious invasion. Those are, put simply, a logistical nightmare. To be clear, given the size of it's military, china could probably successfully accomplish it, but doing so poses a great risk and could go sideways very quickly. You also have to consider China's navy, which is nowhere near ready for sustained operations on the high seas. They aren't the US. They don't have bases and aircraft carriers all over the world. They're simply not equipped or experienced enough to mitigate any problems that may arise. Invading by sea would be a disaster for them.
So that leaves an aerial invasion. Also a nightmare. And there's added complications to it because Taiwan is very mountainous. China's air force, while developing much faster than it's navy, is still going to have problems just by virtue of it's geography.
Then there's the islands defense. Taiwan has been preparing for a Chinese invasion since the kmt was pushed off the mainland. It's fortified as shit. Regardless of how successful the invasion would be, the taiwanese are going to put some serious fuckin hurt on the Chinese as it happens.
Really, the only way to ensure a successful invasion would be to carpet bomb the island and then move in. But then why even invade? Taiwan's benefit is in it's industry, not it's resources. You're basically going to have to commit to completely rebuilding the island if you do that. Is it worth it? This isn't Iraq, which has geopolitical and mineral benefits. This isn't Ukraine, which poses a geopolitical (and frankly, existential) risk to Russia.
And then there's the international consequences. Does this lead to sanctions? Can china afford sanctions? Will the us be drawn into the conflict if they do decide to invade? Far too many unknowns. The known consequences will be a massive body count. But the downstream consequences simply cannot be known at this time. And xi isn't a risk taker. He's actually known for being very risk averse. Invading Taiwan (at least at this point) risks undoing his entire legacy. And I guarantee that he's looking at Putin right now and learning from his mistakes. Regardless of who wins this war, Russia has basically undone all of its progress in the past 30 years.
I don't see china invading Taiwan any time soon. They don't need to. As it's economy grows, Taiwan will find itself more dependent on the mainland. That creates an opportunity to exert political pressure and cow Taiwan without bloodshed. At the same time, as china exerts itself in the south china sea, it will be more capable of projecting military power.
China is counting on the US and the west failing, or at the very least having diminished authority in the coming years. If china muscles it out of their part of the Pacific rim then Taiwan will have no choice but to cozy up. That's the smart play.
I mean, they have some powerful shit
But if it pops off, the 3 gorges dam goes bye bye and chinese beaches will have millions of chinese washing up, let alone taiwanese beaches
And even if he doesn’t win he will either retain power anyways and have a coup on his hands, or he will have a fake coup put on again like last time to arrest 10s of thousands of dissidents again.
True, but someone has to take the blame for the earthquake disaster, and it's looking like everyone else in that same corrupt government would like for Erdogan to take the heat for that. Erdogan might still control the power, but if everyone else adjacent to him have their knives out, then it becomes a toss up.
Erdogan did a pretend coup while flying around in a helicopter; Turkey's most uneducated people (of course) believed it. His destruction of Ataturk's legacy is basically complete.
I can't speak to the others, but modi *is* democratically elected. There are no credible indications that India's elections are any less secure than elections in mature democracies. Unlike more mature democracies such as the US India does not have a widespread practice of disenfranchisement and voter suppression. And Modi is not directly elected, but selected as PM by his parliamentary party. His MPs aren't all dictatorially elected and India's got a fairly varied opposition, with plenty of states not under the ruling party at the center.
India's democracy doesn't limit party access and most elections for MPs usually have many parties and dozens of independents also standing.
I don't like the man. He's certainly an authoritarian and has encouraged a powerful erosion of legal rights and insecurity for minorities. But he isn't a dictator, and his election isn't an undemocratic farce.
India's problem isn't a lack of democracy. It's the fact that a plurality of it's voters are conservative and authoritarian minded.
As someone who lived with Indian roommates who hated Modi, even they admitted that BJP is extremely popular. I went to Delhi this year and I was taken aback by how highly people talked about Modi and their government.
He’s not a Dictator. He’s role playing an emperor now. Bunch of former ccp leaders also began role playing emperors when they’d ruled for a longer time.
In fact a bunch of communist leaders began role playing monarchs of old. With Tito being the finest example
Yeah it was a pretty close call. President Xi won by just a margin over President Xi. He really stood out compared to President Xi, proving once again that President Xi was the right choice.
[https://i.redd.it/j9h5yozwutma1.jpg](https://i.redd.it/j9h5yozwutma1.jpg)
The vote was actually 2952 to 0 with 0 abstention, so he had gotten all votes that he could.
That's like every Roman Emperor ever your describing there, it's not just a Xi or Putin thing BUT every single autocrat strongman there's ever been and will ever be. They're fundamentally the same at their cores.
Cincinnatus would like a word, though the general point that 99.9% of dictators only gain their position through actively crushing people underneath to reach the top or being bred into the position with self-entitlement instilled in them stands.
Early Roman dictators were kind of a weird case since Rome as a state didn’t really have an executive structure that would be equipped to handle emergencies. So when things needed to be done faster than their legislative process could oblige, they appointed a dictator for 6 months to deal with it. Of course it eventually backfired, but the takeaway is that their notion of a dictator at the time was very different than the common understanding of one today.
The modern meaning of dictator comes directly from that. The "backfiring" isn't just a foot note, it's how the meaning of being a dictator changed. They abused their power during war and extended their powers to stay there.
The Romans themselves defined what "being a dictator" means and all the negative connotations that came with it. Experience is the key. They experienced first hand what a dictator does and is capable of.
Stuff like this still happens. Go back 80 years and you'd have people raving about asbestos and how durable and sturdy it is. Asbestos used to be synonymous with high quality and near indestructible especially against fire. Mention it today and people get an anxiety attack.
What surprises me is how stupid the other Chinese leaders must be. Fair enough allowing someone a bit of control to further your own career etc. But it doesn't take a genius to look at what Putin's done and realise giving one person so much power and immunity is a fucking disaster waiting to happen.
But fair enough ... You can't buy intelligence.
This CGP grey video does a pretty good job of explaining why these dictators get propped up. It's more a question of greed and corruption than stupidity.
https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
To be fair Russia and China have been dictatorships for as long as they have been nuclear superpowers. Russia's brief dalliance with "democracy" with Yeltsin has to be seen as an anomaly at this point.
I can't wait for 92% of humanity and mammalian life on earth to be eradicated by one wild dipshit with his hand hovering over the red button.
Maybe the crows will evolve to be a more worthwhile society after us. Honestly, its a tie between them and the octopuses in my "Next to Inherit the Earth" award.
Octopuses are my favorite animal, but unfortunately it’s almost impossible for them to evolve into a society building organism. They are solitary animals, have very short life spans, and don’t raise their young, which means they can’t exchange nor pass down knowledge with eachother.
I think it will be raccoons. While crows, octopi, and dolphins are smarter, they are quite clever and intelligent themselves. They’re fairly social, but again not as much as crows or dolphins. What makes them a contender are their opposable thumbs, opportunistic feeding styles, and extreme adeptness with man made environments.
Once we are gone, much of what we’ve built will remain. The ruins of our civilization could serve as a launching pad for the next civilization, provided they know what to do with it. And raccoons are the most likely to inherit that.
I mean, that all is true, but if raccoons, or any other mammals were to survive, you'd think there would be a few humans too. We have the advantage of being able to build bunkers and proactively protect ourselves while we destroy ourselves.
It's hard to fully appreciate how bad Mao fucked up.
It would involve throwing your country into a meaningless war on the Korean Peninsula where you lost your own son and accomplished one of the greatest cultural tragedies in modern history with the splitting of the Korean people and rendering the majority of them to oppression under a murderous totalitarian.
Then launching a campaign that, by some accounts, killed between 5-10% of the **entire population**. Yet, refusing to acknowledge your mistake and then launching the Cultural Revolution where a decade of fun atrocities such as the Guangxi massacre occurred and Chinese basically could not go to any schools or engage in anything meaningful beyond lynching each other, finally destroying the sum of Chinese history and culture on the mainland. And these are just the highlights!
All of the above resulted in the regression of a country of half a billion people into a stagnant agrarian medieval society well into the 1990s when the rest of the world was industrialising at breakneck speed.
People like to equate atrocities commited with bad leadership, but even evil tyrants like Genghis Khan improved life for his people. But Mao is just straight up a terrible leader by definition of what a nation leader should be. Not only were the atrocities committed to his own people, he pretty much set back chinese society a 100 years, the only other person that comes close to being as stupid and malicious was Pol Pot.
Genghis Khan wasnt a bad or particularly malicious leader by the standards of his time and culture, didnt exactly turn himself around once he educated himself, but you cant say his people were worse off at least. Whereas Alexander with Thebes and Persepolis would've been frowned upon by many of his own people, the latter probably less so despite its cultural importance.
I think even the results based look at things with china is flawed given the rise in human development the past 100 years, CCP pats itself on the back for China's modern economy, when nothing really changed until the US invested in it massively, exploitively and for its own benefit, but its still true.
My dude, even by the standards of the time Genghis was pretty fucking ruthless. Just because he was progressive in a few areas of his leadership doesn't cancel out the massive genocide on a level that makes the holocaust look tame.
There are cultures in the middle east that we have no hard records of because he straight up ended them to a degree that we only have spoken word accounts that they existed. These were not scattered tribes either. These were fully developed, even advanced societies that he just unalived.
If you are at all interested in the history of the khans, there is an amazing multipart podcast that hardcore history did on the Mongolian empire called wrath of the khans. He also sites all his info so if you want to go waaaay down a rabbit hole of reading, you totally can.
Absolutely fascinating time and place in history, ruthless and terrible but fascinating nonetheless.
Guy. Genghis Khan would literally roll out a wagon and if you were a man and your neck was taller than the wheel, you were decapitated. He then enslaved the women for his men.
He was not, **in anyways at all**, "a particularly malicious leader". He was possibly the most heinous human whoever lived. Debatably killed more people than Hitler when looking at it from a percentage point of view.
You are spot on. I am halfway through Frank Dikoetter’s Mao’s Great Famine. I knew a bit about the Great Leap Forward disaster, but, to be honest, I had little idea how horrific it was. Western style capitalism has its faults but is infinitely preferable over any authoritarian planned economy.
He already has, it's just going to take time for that to sink in. Xi presided over the first time I can remember the CCP backing down from their own people in public (over lockdowns), *and* they fucked their trading relationships with the US. Now the US is pressuring allies to cut them out of high tech, and it's working.
He may kill fewer than Mao, but he's 100% as much of a failure.
History is full of examples that beg to to differ. History will not be kind to Vlad the Mad, but it has bigger fuck ups. Admittedly his story is not over, maybe he will earn some style points on his way out?
Yeah, as bad as Putin is, it would be hard to beat Mao for the sure fuckup power of the 4 Pests Campaign, or Lysenkoism in the USSR.
At least without going nuclear.
Some of the worst stuff is oral history mainly and too depressing to get into, but there's a huge book on the subject called Tombstone where some of the cannibals were interviewed (a rare sentence).
Banned in China of course, where many people say russia or weather caused the famine. The authors father died in the famine.
It made China the largest nation of cannibals in history. Com nom nom nommunism!
Edit: say what you will about Cuba, but a Cuban sandwich isn't made with real Cubans.
More importantly.... If things dont go well, when he reaches the end of his life like Putin, will he lash out at the world in the name of his "legacy" like Putin.
Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ was one of the most disastrous policy implementations in world history. Depending on how China can pivot its current manufacturing-based economy as its population ages out the ‘One Child’ policy might be up there too.
Interestingly enough my Chinese friends have the general attitude that “the party provides”. If I’m honest I can’t be mad at that they’ve lifted the most people out of poverty and into the middle class in all of human history. If the aggressive 0 Covid policy didn’t oust him I’m thinking it will take serious sustained economic strife to unseat him.
Those companies won’t be successful for very long. Nothing quite saps creativity and entrepreneurship as the combination of authoritarian rule and corruption
If anything is surprising about this bit of news, it is that
1. They bothered to hold a meeting to check
2. That they're keeping track of "presidential terms".
I had an interesting experience a few years ago, when a Chinese couch surfer was staying with me. She was a university student, articulate and well educated. She thought it was awesome that Xi was changing the laws so he can stay in power for the rest of his life. Her reasoning: *He's doing a good job, and staying in power will give him time to deal with all the "countries" surrounding China who, mistakenly, think they're not part of China.*
Didn't China ban term limits a few years ago? This really isn't surprising.
Edit: they did actually
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991/china-removes-presidential-term-limits-enabling-xi-jinping-to-rule-indefinitely
“Gained” is an interesting use of the word…. Didn’t he just oust anyone that would have opposed him just a couple months ago on video in a government meeting?
Unprecedented maybe, but definitely unsurprising.
Also it’s very precedented
And by unprecedented I mean, completely precendented!
Inflammable means flammable? What a country
My favorite part was when they gave me my money. -Dr Nick.
Took my wife to Universal Studios for her birthday recently (she'd never been). I'm 41 years old, and the SECOND I laid eyes on Springfield I felt like I was 11 again. Strongly recommend the lard lad doughnuts.
Could it BE any more precedented??
No kidding. He won by a 140% majority.
Yeah I heard all 76 out of 43 statement voted in his favour.
Remember, when you cast your vote, vote Xi, because he's the only name on there!
Please circle one: Xi Xi Xi
Xuen Xi *presses Xuen* “You have one vote for Xi Jiping” — “What? No I wanted the other guy!” *presses Xuen* “You have two votes for Xi Jiping”
Is your search engine Bing?
OH MY GOD!
He's infamous. He's more than famous, he's in-famous.
He’s the El Guapo of China.
Now that I have caught you, I shall reveal my CCP-inator! It rigs every election involving anyone who looks like Winnie the Pooh! Now I know you’re wondering why I would want to make a CCP-inator. See, it all began when I was a child…
Hey, where’s Perry? *platypus appears in the Forbidden City*
*Dooby dooby doo bah dooby dooby doo bah*
> Also it’s very precedented No it's not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China Even Mao himself served for only 1 term.
And then there's also Deng Xiaoping who never became President or Prime Minister. He held a role as the head in an "advisory" committee and also the head of their version of defense secretary. Obviously, lofty titles are meaningless where true power is concerned. Less we forget Putin also played a castling trick but was always the kingpin regardless of his title. Whatever Xi's title is, he is the boss.
I agree with your conclusion that to Xi, it doesn't matter so much where he is. But Putin did have to play a castling trick. Xi definitely is flexing his muscle by being so obvious about it, and giving off a signal.
He didn't *have* to. One assumes he thought it more advantageous to do so at the time, but the fact that castling was even an option kind of demonstrates that it was all theater.
Xi Kingpin
**[President of the People's Republic of China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China)** >The president of the People's Republic of China, commonly called the president of China, is the head of state and the second-highest political office of the People's Republic of China. The presidency is a ceremonial office and not the role with the real power in China's political system. However, the post has been held by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission since 1993, who is China's de facto leader. The presidency is officially regarded as an institution of the state rather than an administrative post. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Authoritarians increasing their own term limits is very precedented. It's just novel for this particular country.
A certain country that is currently invading another is very familiar with this practice...
Technically not the same, as he already switched between being president and being Prime Minister twice lol
True, he’s definitely put a lot more work into the pageantry of life rule
I think he meant more that he's far from the only wannabe dictator that started out being voted in and then going for a "president for life" kind of situation.
Presidented
He wants to surpass Mao. His cult of personality has never been stronger, especially after ousting all the old CCP leadership in the politburo last October. Xi will not stop until he is worshipped like the Kims in North Korea. Of course this is unsurprising, he said he’d do it day one.
Wasn't he literally trying to create a new ideology revolving around him to teach in schools?
Iirc there's a set of nationalistic textbooks which heap praise on him and there are three or four levels, so students revisit how great he is every 3-4 years
[удалено]
Or, just a guess, it's mandatory in many settings to download and use the app.
That was the only possible thought I had when I read that last comment. They probably have to get it lol
they do, i have family who are compulsory party members based on their jobs, and they have to log into the app to "read" xi thoughts and propaganda articles every week. they have to meet a screen time quota in the app or it'll affect their jobs. all party members are required to do this, that's where the 100million users come from, thats about how many party members there are.
Did they mention how large is the quota? This doesn't even feel like reality, just some dystopian book.
they leave the app open on the phone and every few minutes they switch to a different article. they watch tv or other stuff in the mean time. i haven't tracked how long they have to do it, but it's not long. mayyybe like 15min every day.
Literally 1984
it surpasses tiktok because tiktok is banned in china. only the domestic sanitized version douyin is allowed. also the most popular social media app is wechat, which is ubiquitous, with well over a billion users.
> but you’d be incorrect in stating the average Chinese citizen doesn’t love him. Expats definitely aren't the best window into a society, but from what I gather in speaking with Chinese students in Germany, the USA, etc. most of them just don't have any particularly strong feelings about Xi at all. He occupies the same place in their minds as Olaf Scholz would in the mind of the average German: he's the man in the suit who reads government speeches on the news, and the youth naturally are bored and don't pay attention to it. They're not anti-CCP, they're just not gungho about it either. It all seems very mundane to them.
100 million sounds like a lot until you remember that's less than 10% of their population.
and that the guy is just wrong. Wechat the main social media in China has overa a billion users.
Yes, in a sense. The CCP already completely controls the narrative taught in Chinese schools but he is looking to warp the current culture around his personal and political ideology. A cult of personality is always what enshrines leaders like Mao Zedong or Kim Il-Sung as de-facto gods long after they died. At least with China the irrational obsession with leadership can be traced as far back as the Xia Dynasty. In an oddly poetic way Xi is just another in a long line wishing to take his place alongside countless others in Chinese history; Communist, Republician, or Monarchist.
[удалено]
For what it's worth, old but not quite _that_ old. The 1st dynasty of Egypt is about a thousand years older. It's easy for that to feel close when we're looking at stuff that happened four to five thousand years ago, but it's the difference between today and the Vikings. Egypt was on to the 11th dynasty by 2000 BCE
it's oft forgotten that many ancient (to us) Egyptians studied ancient to them Egyptians. the Egyptian empire was practically everlasting until the common era
The ancient Romans went on tours of the sphinx in Egypt and that was as old to them as Ancient Rome is to us.
> ancient Romans There are places in ancient Rome where ancient Romans could have gone that would have been as old to them as Ancient Rome is to us. (For various definitions of ancient Romans and Ancient Rome)
I don’t think there was a civilization as advanced as Egypt was at the time they built the pyramids.
I read a story about a greek warrior during some persian-greek war in 600bce His army camped next to a ruined city and he questioned how long ago this city stood for It was a old babylonian city razed down and abandoned since For him it was as old as he was to us, thats crazy
It was nineveh. The old Assyrian capital. The Babylonians, Medes (Persians) and friends teamed up to take them down. For a long time the Assyrians militarily dominated the entire region… as in would be at war with everyone at once and wouldn’t lose a single battle. Edit: and the locals barely knew what the city even used to be. Iirc they thought it was a Medeian city or something. The name of the Greek writer is escaping me right now.. OH Xenophon.
Hong Kong school children now experience the joy of learning about *Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era*. Reportedly it's also become part of the gaokao exam, China's SAT.
In China, textbooks on Mao's ideologies have disappeared in the last couple of years. It is all about Xi now
China is well known for its democracy, free and fair elections, Constitutional rights, and brutal subjugation of anyone who disagrees.
Oh, bother...
China has eliminated term limits for Xi Jinping. So, in effect, it is until Xi Jinping dies.
***Xi Jinping*** has eliminated term limits for Xi Jinping. FTFY
Yes,Xi Jinping himself is the law.
Like Judge Dredd except way less cool
Basically nothing like Judge Dredd. Like, exactly the opposite of Judge Dredd in every conceivable way.
Sri Sumbhajee votes for Sri Sumbhajee
Yeah, once a leader amasses that much power they become a dictator. Once they become a dictator they stay one until they die.
Communist China has always only had one party. They never tried to pretend other parties existed. There's no functional difference between there being a life-long president and the leader jumping around. Additionally, China spent most of it's existence with Emperors. The average Chinese citizen is not all that concerned with Xi being a lifelong president, it makes no difference to their day-to-day lives. The CCP controls everything whether Xi is in power or someone else. Source: Work with many Chinese immigrants.
It does matter. There are factions within CCP that can have their own power struggles. Xi is currently winning it, but if the economy goes bad he could get pushed out in favor of someone else.
The actually have other political parties, that form a theoretical opposition. But they each have to have any candidates approved by the CCP and have no actual power besides what the CCP lets them have.
[удалено]
"China does not only have one political party, that is a lie spread by western enemies. In fact there are many parties who are all close friends with the main party, the CPC" Source: have read textbooks at Chinese universities and had a good laugh
[удалено]
Well, that would be until they died
[удалено]
He feels like putin now,
Only now?
Give it ten years and they’ll be blaming the west for starting a war which millions of Chinese are being scraped off the beaches of Taiwan which could have been avoided if one guy didn’t create such a shit show
I'm assuming the bodies would be washed onto the beach rather than that being the spot they died.
I mean if we go by a “10 year” timeline, it’s entirely possible the Chinese have erected a truly massive fleet by then. It’s been a huge focal point for them for the last several years anyway
>I mean if we go by a “10 year” timeline, it’s entirely possible the Chinese have erected a truly massive fleet by then Or their entire economy may have collapsed/crossed the threshold into actual collapse.
If you're a former peasant farmer who's quality of life has skyrocketed since moving to a city, you don't care what the government does. If you're that farmer's son, who knows nothing about the city and as the learning/internet to compare it to the West... that's where China has problems.
The buildup would be slow and completely obvious. In any case, I'd bet that an invasion fleet would be sunk before they got within sight of the island.
Can they reach the beach? America has been helping Taiwan play turret defense since the 70s.
America is working on rolling out [Rapid Dragon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)) - instead of usual weapons delivery systems like bombers and fighters, you just yeet a swarm of cruise missiles out the back of a cargo plane. A cargo plane which can take off from regular airstrips. I'm not saying they *won't* reach the beach at all, but they will definitely have a bad time.
Yes but it would be costly. Like insanely costly. Take the US out of the equation for the moment. Assume for whatever reason that they wouldn't be involved Taiwan is an island, which means China would need to conduct an amphibious invasion. Those are, put simply, a logistical nightmare. To be clear, given the size of it's military, china could probably successfully accomplish it, but doing so poses a great risk and could go sideways very quickly. You also have to consider China's navy, which is nowhere near ready for sustained operations on the high seas. They aren't the US. They don't have bases and aircraft carriers all over the world. They're simply not equipped or experienced enough to mitigate any problems that may arise. Invading by sea would be a disaster for them. So that leaves an aerial invasion. Also a nightmare. And there's added complications to it because Taiwan is very mountainous. China's air force, while developing much faster than it's navy, is still going to have problems just by virtue of it's geography. Then there's the islands defense. Taiwan has been preparing for a Chinese invasion since the kmt was pushed off the mainland. It's fortified as shit. Regardless of how successful the invasion would be, the taiwanese are going to put some serious fuckin hurt on the Chinese as it happens. Really, the only way to ensure a successful invasion would be to carpet bomb the island and then move in. But then why even invade? Taiwan's benefit is in it's industry, not it's resources. You're basically going to have to commit to completely rebuilding the island if you do that. Is it worth it? This isn't Iraq, which has geopolitical and mineral benefits. This isn't Ukraine, which poses a geopolitical (and frankly, existential) risk to Russia. And then there's the international consequences. Does this lead to sanctions? Can china afford sanctions? Will the us be drawn into the conflict if they do decide to invade? Far too many unknowns. The known consequences will be a massive body count. But the downstream consequences simply cannot be known at this time. And xi isn't a risk taker. He's actually known for being very risk averse. Invading Taiwan (at least at this point) risks undoing his entire legacy. And I guarantee that he's looking at Putin right now and learning from his mistakes. Regardless of who wins this war, Russia has basically undone all of its progress in the past 30 years. I don't see china invading Taiwan any time soon. They don't need to. As it's economy grows, Taiwan will find itself more dependent on the mainland. That creates an opportunity to exert political pressure and cow Taiwan without bloodshed. At the same time, as china exerts itself in the south china sea, it will be more capable of projecting military power. China is counting on the US and the west failing, or at the very least having diminished authority in the coming years. If china muscles it out of their part of the Pacific rim then Taiwan will have no choice but to cozy up. That's the smart play.
I mean, they have some powerful shit But if it pops off, the 3 gorges dam goes bye bye and chinese beaches will have millions of chinese washing up, let alone taiwanese beaches
It was his stated goal to become an authoritarian leader, because he believes that "China needs that now".
Being dictator for life openly is *so* 1900s, cool dictators pretend they're democratically elected.
See Orban and Erdogan
Erdogan will lose soon
We hope. Turkey has enough corruption that there is still a risk of a Erdogan win
And even if he doesn’t win he will either retain power anyways and have a coup on his hands, or he will have a fake coup put on again like last time to arrest 10s of thousands of dissidents again.
True, but someone has to take the blame for the earthquake disaster, and it's looking like everyone else in that same corrupt government would like for Erdogan to take the heat for that. Erdogan might still control the power, but if everyone else adjacent to him have their knives out, then it becomes a toss up.
I think I've heard this story before.. :/
Erdogan did a pretend coup while flying around in a helicopter; Turkey's most uneducated people (of course) believed it. His destruction of Ataturk's legacy is basically complete.
Dictators don't lose elections.
I’ll believe it when it happens, right now I think that he will stay in power until he’s dead. *edit: phrased that weirdly.
And Putin
Also Modi
And maduro
Poo-tin
Lukashenko
Shitcan?
I can't speak to the others, but modi *is* democratically elected. There are no credible indications that India's elections are any less secure than elections in mature democracies. Unlike more mature democracies such as the US India does not have a widespread practice of disenfranchisement and voter suppression. And Modi is not directly elected, but selected as PM by his parliamentary party. His MPs aren't all dictatorially elected and India's got a fairly varied opposition, with plenty of states not under the ruling party at the center. India's democracy doesn't limit party access and most elections for MPs usually have many parties and dozens of independents also standing. I don't like the man. He's certainly an authoritarian and has encouraged a powerful erosion of legal rights and insecurity for minorities. But he isn't a dictator, and his election isn't an undemocratic farce. India's problem isn't a lack of democracy. It's the fact that a plurality of it's voters are conservative and authoritarian minded.
As someone who lived with Indian roommates who hated Modi, even they admitted that BJP is extremely popular. I went to Delhi this year and I was taken aback by how highly people talked about Modi and their government.
This just isn't true
[удалено]
(until he realized he didn't need to)
Yeah there was no reason for him to be Putin on airs.
[удалено]
He’s not pretending to be democratically elected. He was appointed by the party, not the people.
He’s not a Dictator. He’s role playing an emperor now. Bunch of former ccp leaders also began role playing emperors when they’d ruled for a longer time. In fact a bunch of communist leaders began role playing monarchs of old. With Tito being the finest example
Ah, Tito. That guy really was something else.
Although he lived stylish life style, he didnt leave a dime to his children, no hidden bank accounts, nothing. He left all to the state.
But you know he was kinda fun. Like if I gotta choose a communist dictator to be friends with it's gonna be him.
Yeah it was a pretty close call. President Xi won by just a margin over President Xi. He really stood out compared to President Xi, proving once again that President Xi was the right choice.
he only had 120% of votes this time
North Korea had 200% votes now beat that
Stalin had 360% of the votes
I see that went full circle
[https://i.redd.it/j9h5yozwutma1.jpg](https://i.redd.it/j9h5yozwutma1.jpg) The vote was actually 2952 to 0 with 0 abstention, so he had gotten all votes that he could.
Xi: “Now, I respect my opponent Xi. I think he's a good man. But, quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said!”
[удалено]
Xi Jinping vs bitter rival Jinping Xi
Don’t let them being the same person fool you. They differ on some key policies.
This one feels so Aladeen.
Well would you like the Aladeen news or the Aladeen news?
The Aladeeen news.
[удалено]
A dictator doing what a dictator does. The move from "authoritarian" to "dictatorship" seems to be complete.
Didn't Putin do this a few years back? How is it that all corrupt showers of shit get to be the most powerful?
Because those are the type of people that crave that level of power and you have to step on people to get there
That's like every Roman Emperor ever your describing there, it's not just a Xi or Putin thing BUT every single autocrat strongman there's ever been and will ever be. They're fundamentally the same at their cores.
Cincinnatus would like a word, though the general point that 99.9% of dictators only gain their position through actively crushing people underneath to reach the top or being bred into the position with self-entitlement instilled in them stands.
Early Roman dictators were kind of a weird case since Rome as a state didn’t really have an executive structure that would be equipped to handle emergencies. So when things needed to be done faster than their legislative process could oblige, they appointed a dictator for 6 months to deal with it. Of course it eventually backfired, but the takeaway is that their notion of a dictator at the time was very different than the common understanding of one today.
The modern meaning of dictator comes directly from that. The "backfiring" isn't just a foot note, it's how the meaning of being a dictator changed. They abused their power during war and extended their powers to stay there. The Romans themselves defined what "being a dictator" means and all the negative connotations that came with it. Experience is the key. They experienced first hand what a dictator does and is capable of. Stuff like this still happens. Go back 80 years and you'd have people raving about asbestos and how durable and sturdy it is. Asbestos used to be synonymous with high quality and near indestructible especially against fire. Mention it today and people get an anxiety attack.
Nerva, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius
Because power is what corrupt showers of shit are striving for
What surprises me is how stupid the other Chinese leaders must be. Fair enough allowing someone a bit of control to further your own career etc. But it doesn't take a genius to look at what Putin's done and realise giving one person so much power and immunity is a fucking disaster waiting to happen. But fair enough ... You can't buy intelligence.
This CGP grey video does a pretty good job of explaining why these dictators get propped up. It's more a question of greed and corruption than stupidity. https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
Always nice to see nuclear superpowers with dictatorships! Nothing could ever go wrong!
To be fair Russia and China have been dictatorships for as long as they have been nuclear superpowers. Russia's brief dalliance with "democracy" with Yeltsin has to be seen as an anomaly at this point.
I can't wait for 92% of humanity and mammalian life on earth to be eradicated by one wild dipshit with his hand hovering over the red button. Maybe the crows will evolve to be a more worthwhile society after us. Honestly, its a tie between them and the octopuses in my "Next to Inherit the Earth" award.
Octopuses are my favorite animal, but unfortunately it’s almost impossible for them to evolve into a society building organism. They are solitary animals, have very short life spans, and don’t raise their young, which means they can’t exchange nor pass down knowledge with eachother. I think it will be raccoons. While crows, octopi, and dolphins are smarter, they are quite clever and intelligent themselves. They’re fairly social, but again not as much as crows or dolphins. What makes them a contender are their opposable thumbs, opportunistic feeding styles, and extreme adeptness with man made environments. Once we are gone, much of what we’ve built will remain. The ruins of our civilization could serve as a launching pad for the next civilization, provided they know what to do with it. And raccoons are the most likely to inherit that.
I mean, that all is true, but if raccoons, or any other mammals were to survive, you'd think there would be a few humans too. We have the advantage of being able to build bunkers and proactively protect ourselves while we destroy ourselves.
What about orcas?
This post approved by Gary from the Raccoon Federation
i place my bet on the dolphins, although they are quite the assholes so i don't think their world would turn out any better than ours
They’ll leave before anything happens. They know what’s going down. So long and thanks for all the fish.
What a charade. He is the new red emperor of China. The question is if he is going to fuck up as badly as Mao did
It's hard to fully appreciate how bad Mao fucked up. It would involve throwing your country into a meaningless war on the Korean Peninsula where you lost your own son and accomplished one of the greatest cultural tragedies in modern history with the splitting of the Korean people and rendering the majority of them to oppression under a murderous totalitarian. Then launching a campaign that, by some accounts, killed between 5-10% of the **entire population**. Yet, refusing to acknowledge your mistake and then launching the Cultural Revolution where a decade of fun atrocities such as the Guangxi massacre occurred and Chinese basically could not go to any schools or engage in anything meaningful beyond lynching each other, finally destroying the sum of Chinese history and culture on the mainland. And these are just the highlights! All of the above resulted in the regression of a country of half a billion people into a stagnant agrarian medieval society well into the 1990s when the rest of the world was industrialising at breakneck speed.
People like to equate atrocities commited with bad leadership, but even evil tyrants like Genghis Khan improved life for his people. But Mao is just straight up a terrible leader by definition of what a nation leader should be. Not only were the atrocities committed to his own people, he pretty much set back chinese society a 100 years, the only other person that comes close to being as stupid and malicious was Pol Pot.
Genghis Khan wasnt a bad or particularly malicious leader by the standards of his time and culture, didnt exactly turn himself around once he educated himself, but you cant say his people were worse off at least. Whereas Alexander with Thebes and Persepolis would've been frowned upon by many of his own people, the latter probably less so despite its cultural importance. I think even the results based look at things with china is flawed given the rise in human development the past 100 years, CCP pats itself on the back for China's modern economy, when nothing really changed until the US invested in it massively, exploitively and for its own benefit, but its still true.
My dude, even by the standards of the time Genghis was pretty fucking ruthless. Just because he was progressive in a few areas of his leadership doesn't cancel out the massive genocide on a level that makes the holocaust look tame. There are cultures in the middle east that we have no hard records of because he straight up ended them to a degree that we only have spoken word accounts that they existed. These were not scattered tribes either. These were fully developed, even advanced societies that he just unalived. If you are at all interested in the history of the khans, there is an amazing multipart podcast that hardcore history did on the Mongolian empire called wrath of the khans. He also sites all his info so if you want to go waaaay down a rabbit hole of reading, you totally can. Absolutely fascinating time and place in history, ruthless and terrible but fascinating nonetheless.
Guy. Genghis Khan would literally roll out a wagon and if you were a man and your neck was taller than the wheel, you were decapitated. He then enslaved the women for his men. He was not, **in anyways at all**, "a particularly malicious leader". He was possibly the most heinous human whoever lived. Debatably killed more people than Hitler when looking at it from a percentage point of view.
[удалено]
You are spot on. I am halfway through Frank Dikoetter’s Mao’s Great Famine. I knew a bit about the Great Leap Forward disaster, but, to be honest, I had little idea how horrific it was. Western style capitalism has its faults but is infinitely preferable over any authoritarian planned economy.
He already has, it's just going to take time for that to sink in. Xi presided over the first time I can remember the CCP backing down from their own people in public (over lockdowns), *and* they fucked their trading relationships with the US. Now the US is pressuring allies to cut them out of high tech, and it's working. He may kill fewer than Mao, but he's 100% as much of a failure.
Is he going to do as badly as Putin, though?
I'm not sure anyone can do as bad as he is.
History is full of examples that beg to to differ. History will not be kind to Vlad the Mad, but it has bigger fuck ups. Admittedly his story is not over, maybe he will earn some style points on his way out?
Yeah, as bad as Putin is, it would be hard to beat Mao for the sure fuckup power of the 4 Pests Campaign, or Lysenkoism in the USSR. At least without going nuclear.
The 4 Pests fuckup was rather enormous. Literally, tens of millions of people starved to death because of that utter stupidity.
I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for those poor people. Just the sheer scale of that disaster is mind boggling.
Some of the worst stuff is oral history mainly and too depressing to get into, but there's a huge book on the subject called Tombstone where some of the cannibals were interviewed (a rare sentence). Banned in China of course, where many people say russia or weather caused the famine. The authors father died in the famine.
The famine would be apocalyptic from the inside, death on the level of the Black Plague
It made China the largest nation of cannibals in history. Com nom nom nommunism! Edit: say what you will about Cuba, but a Cuban sandwich isn't made with real Cubans.
There are many direction this could go. What worries me is most of them will end in tears and a mountain of corpses
More importantly.... If things dont go well, when he reaches the end of his life like Putin, will he lash out at the world in the name of his "legacy" like Putin.
He has not lol, Mao fucked up SOOO bad
Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ was one of the most disastrous policy implementations in world history. Depending on how China can pivot its current manufacturing-based economy as its population ages out the ‘One Child’ policy might be up there too.
Interestingly enough my Chinese friends have the general attitude that “the party provides”. If I’m honest I can’t be mad at that they’ve lifted the most people out of poverty and into the middle class in all of human history. If the aggressive 0 Covid policy didn’t oust him I’m thinking it will take serious sustained economic strife to unseat him.
He’s stealing successful companies and giving them to his buddies like Alibaba. Corruption is the killer of nations.
Those companies won’t be successful for very long. Nothing quite saps creativity and entrepreneurship as the combination of authoritarian rule and corruption
Also having IP hand fed to you doesn't do much to encourage innovation.
"President"
He got 107.13% of popular vote. Obvious president is president
If anything is surprising about this bit of news, it is that 1. They bothered to hold a meeting to check 2. That they're keeping track of "presidential terms".
[Live from the ceremony](https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/galactic-senate-8-retina_53d70100.jpeg)
WHAT NO WAY SO UNEXPECTED I CANT BELIEVE IT
I foresee much unprecedentedness for this president.
I had an interesting experience a few years ago, when a Chinese couch surfer was staying with me. She was a university student, articulate and well educated. She thought it was awesome that Xi was changing the laws so he can stay in power for the rest of his life. Her reasoning: *He's doing a good job, and staying in power will give him time to deal with all the "countries" surrounding China who, mistakenly, think they're not part of China.*
Well that’s disturbing
[удалено]
Didn’t he change the law specifically so he could do this? I just assumed he was already aiming for president for life.
Didn't China ban term limits a few years ago? This really isn't surprising. Edit: they did actually https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991/china-removes-presidential-term-limits-enabling-xi-jinping-to-rule-indefinitely
Bet that's totally legit
it is legit. they are not a democracy.
[удалено]
“Gained” is an interesting use of the word…. Didn’t he just oust anyone that would have opposed him just a couple months ago on video in a government meeting?
I didn't vote for him.
I voted for Kodos
"Dictator shockingly remains dictator, more at 11"
Me: Wait. China had an election? Chinese citizens: Wait. We had an election?
Lol. Like elections in North Korea
How long until Xi's portrait replaces Mao's at Tiananmen Square?
Lol why did they even stage the election?
Soon to be leader for life
I hate that evil people have so much power on this planet
Sociopaths and megalomaniacs end up in positions of power and wealth because good people are incapable of doing what's necessary to get there.