"Communist China Now Have A President For Life?" Topic

Is that what Xi Jinping is about to become?

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I guess that his military and territorial expansionist measures aren't stopping any time soon. Nor the new maritime Silk Road.

Dan
PS. And maybe he also wants to stick around to make sure that the internal social changes get implemented:
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A mere formality.
Just like Putin goes through the farce of running in an election.

Yes.

But this is the latest example, among the major powers. And the one we are most economically addicted to. And the one our leaders are always extra careful when speaking to.

Dan

You may not know it, but many western democracies do not have term limits for presidents or equivalents (like PM's). Andrea Merkel has been Germany's chancellor since 2005. The late Maggie "Iron Lady" Thatcher served as Britain's PM for over 10 years (1979 – 1990).

The US is the exception, not the rule, in discouraging politicians from seeking office for life. After FDR, that is.

It is distressing when "our leaders" have to be "extra careful when speaking to" their leaders. Such acts of politesse and, dare I say, diplomacy, are very troubling indeed. These foreigners might get ideas. The horror.

Really, Begemot? You know I meant more than most.

I bet we won't ever see our brave leaders of the West speak to Xi Jinping the way they do Vladimir Putin.

Dan

"You may not know it, but many western democracies do not have term limits for presidents or equivalents (like PM's). Andrea Merkel has been Germany's chancellor since 2005. The late Maggie "Iron Lady" Thatcher served as Britain's PM for over 10 years (1979 – 1990)."

Yes, but they CAN be voted out of office by the will of the people. He'll be there until he dies unless there is a coup. Big difference.

And Maggie Thatcher was "deposed" by her own party before she had to face the electorate. The British and American systems are not comparable in that way.

He'll be there until he dies unless there is a coup. Big difference.

Not quite. He still has to be re-elected by a simple majority vote by the National People's Congress, which represents, nominally if not in reality, the will of the Chinese people.

If a vote of no confidence results in the next election of the NPC, he'll be deposed just like Maggie.

Not all democracies have to be "western-style" democracies. It smacks of arrogance to expect other countries to be just like us.

How does one get on the National People's Congress?

Is it only stockholders who get to vote for that corporate board of directors?

28mm Fanatik: "Not all democracies have to be ‘western-style' democracies."

Lol. The Communist Party elite (and its seat-fillers) in a one party government that bans all opposition and controls all aspects of the media, does not constitute a democracy. It's not even a representative one.

Whitewashing what they really are, while nitpicking on the various variants of actual democracies is getting old.

Dan

Bang on, Dan.

Whitewashing what they really are, while nitpicking on the various variants of actual democracies is getting old.

Not whitewashing or nitpicking at all. Democracies come in different forms and levels of participation. We're programmed culturally to think of democracies as liberal democracies in which individual rights are sacred, but there are other less representative forms of democracies (but democracies nonetheless) in which the people value central authority and societal order over unchecked individual rights or "mob rule."

In China, the local party bosses elected by the people form the National People's Congress. They're still empowered by the electorate.

It's not called "People's Republic of China" for no good reason.

We should all do well to shed our biases and see the world beyond our own myopic prism.

"It's not called "People's Republic of China" for no good reason.
I would advise that you see the world outside of your own myopic prism."

Thanks for that!

I guess that the DPRK is also a democracy? It is, after all, what the "D" is supposed to stand for in the name of North Korea.

I just want to get an idea of how diluted is the definition of "democracy" in your own personal "myopic prism".

Dan

Okay, point taken on the DPRK. But China is still a form of democracy (albeit more limited than we're accustomed to in western liberal democracies) if you examine its institutions and political mechanisms more closely.

The Chinese people do have a say in who gets elected, unlike the poor Norks.

An example of different styles of democracies is Athens (free) and Sparta (authoritarian) in ancient times. Think of us as Athens and the Chinese and Russians as Spartans.

Just because they're different doesn't mean they're bad. If we don't learn to co-exist peacefully and accept each other for who we are, then like Athens and Sparta we may end up having our own version of the Peloponnesian War.

China has a form of government, but I don't see how anyone can call it a form of democracy. The corporate state owns the people and no one is allowed on the board without the approval of the stockholders (party members).

Kinda like "you can have your choice of vegetables". What are the choices? – Corn – you can have it or not.

This may be of interest:

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"Communist China Now Have A President For Life?"

Or… for death.

Behold the new military budget for Xi Jinping's China:

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Dan

Wow, he's having a "Toilet Revolution!":

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Dan
PS. On official CPC slides, his body really looks tiny. :)
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I think these Chinese students in Western universities (300,000 Chinese foreign students in the US universities alone) have a different point of view:

不是我的国家主席 ("Not My Chairman")
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I hope they aren't planning on traveling to China any time soon. :)

I wonder if this is going to end up turning into another Tiananmen Square crackdown. Would be interesting to see. Or maybe his push for a stronger military is in part for dealing with something major of an internal nature.

I'm sure some idiot will try to call this poking of the communist dragon a racist thing too. But don't they always?

Dan

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It's probably worth pointing out that the ideological differences between different members of the Chinese Communist Party are more extreme than the official platforms of the Democrats and Republicans in the US.

But declaring Pres-for-Life seems a bit odd, even for China. I mean, I honestly expected that a declaration of President-for-Life would have been immediately followed by a single gunshot.

To me this means that all or most of the military and expansion projects that have been initiated or continued during his term are very likely to see fruition, for good or bad.

The maritime Silk Road will go as planned; the pipeline to Gwadar (Pakistan) will likely continue; the string of naval bases all the way to the Atlantic will be completed; they will buy more of Africa; citizen "trust scores"* will happen; the "Red Army Schools"** will become widespread; China will increase its U.N. peacekeeping role; China's forces in Afghanistan will likely remain and expand activities, etc.

Which also means that the SCS artificial islands are there to stay and the acquisition of those international waters and the intrusion into the EEZs of nearby nations is pretty much a permanent thing.

No one with any real power challenged that aggressive expansion in 2009 when the SCS islands were first proposed, nor when the islands started being built in 2012. And China is going to treat that entire area as its own territorial waters.

Dan
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China will try.

I imagine that the USN will end up with a near-permanent presence there, probably leasing space in Haiphong Harbor (for extra ironies). If not, Subic Bay.

Or both.

Haiphong Harbor?

Lol. Why not Taiwan? Now THAT would be a real statement! :)

Dan

Wel, well, well.

At least we know what Emperor Xi is afraid of … Western freedoms:

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The "useful idiots" (Lenin's term, not mine) among us can remain in denial, or not, but there's clearly no place for them in Xi's world. So they might want to stop defending him and his ambitions already.

Dan
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Leasing space in Taiwan means really picking a side in the One China discussion.

Haiphong or Subic lets the US stay out of that particular fight if we need to.

I mean, I'm pretty sure that the Vietnamese would be happy to have US Sailors spend lots of money…

From a Hong Kong paper. I guess they're already expecting Xi to be around as President for a very long time.

Dan

He was born in '53, so he's only 64 now (birthday is June 15). I'll give him 20 more years in office, probably no more than 30 (all those diplomatic dinners cannot be healthy for you).

Maybe less if he shows blatant signs of Alzheimers/dementia.

I've gone over many old pictures and I can't get over how much he looks like his uncle Xi Zhongkai (R). More than his father Xi Zhongxun (L):

Father and son in 1978:

Yep, he really look exactly like his uncle.

About the new personality cult (cult of Xi), and fears that it might spawn a new wave of Red Guard mobs, ironically, like those who went after his father:

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Dan
PS. Here's his father, Xi Zhongxun, being shamed during the Cultural Revolution: