China Seeks to Repeal Presidential Term Limit
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Deng Xiaoping, 1980 https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/on-the-re...
China is setting the stage for an actual dictator.
If Linus were bad at his job, you'd only have to find someone better and start pulling your kernel source from them. No civil war necessary.
- The risk that a stable leader with increasingly unlimited power will lead to stagnation, deep corruption, or war.
- The risk that a disruptive leader emerges after Xi and is not countered in time by government mechanisms (e.g. internal elections within the party).
Historic consensus seems to be that the former is the bigger danger, which is why even the CCP previously put a limit on presidential terms.
It's more about an institution vs a single man.
As a party dictatorship with routinely transitioned politicians, China's government has been fairly stable in recent times. Xi clearly isn't necessary in any regard, he's trying to make himself necessary. Hu Jintao was a stable leader that oversaw one of the fastest economic expansions in world history. He also wasn't necessary, in terms of remaining perpetually in power. Xi inherited that nicely built-up economic position. It's the policies that Xi follows/implements that will determine investor confidence, just as it was for Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin (also a stable leader that didn't need to remain in power perpetually). Xi is properly replaceable like the others, insofar as he doesn't implement political changes that forcibly make him otherwise. The power move that Xi appears to be going for, is all down to his personality, rather than necessity, which is in stark contrast with the prior two Presidents.
Even In the longer ter, individual investors may well personally do very well (be on the good side of the supreme ruler and the possibilities are very good).
But he didn't repeal a term limit. There was a two-term limit in precedent, but not in law, so FDR didn't have to repeal anything. But people saw that, and put a two-term limit in law. Any future FDR or Xi in the US will have to change the law. And yes, that will set off warning alarms in the US, if it ever happens.
Agreed.
> ... warnings won't be enough to stop it from happening.
Here I disagree. For it to happen in the US now would require a constitutional amendment. I don't see any way that would happen now. Especially since seeking one would make the alarm bells ring much louder.
Or, for it to happen now would take ignoring the constitution. I'm pretty sure that would trigger a civil war.
Either way, in the US it's much harder than just having a party congress decide that it will be so.
But then, he's 64, he has another 5 legit years, so he'll be 69 when his 2 terms end. He might not have that much time. But who knows...
Why - will such a civil war spill beyond China's borders?
An invasion of Taiwan would likely garner a similar response. Heightened tensions, international sanctions that don’t seem to do much, and yes, increased military presence in nearby allies. Outright war would be costly and endless and frankly unwinnable.
> Outright war would be costly and endless and frankly unwinnable.
I'm not sure why you think this is the case. If the US were to try to invade China, then yeah it would basically be unwinnable. But why would the US do that? They would only be trying to contain them. If they could help thwart and invasion and then shutdown the Chinese navy, then they would basically already have won by any reasonable measure.
The U.S. doesn't have much history promising Ukraine defense as it was part of the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. In contrast, Taiwan was practically there since 1949.
Taiwan's economy is multiple times the size of Ukraine's and is comparable to the likes of Saudi Arabia. To not defend Taiwan would send a very bad signal to all American allies that unless you're worth more than Taiwan, we'll sell you out. Assuming China continues to grow more powerful, this also means South Korea would be in danger as well. This is not even accounting the fact that if China controls Taiwan, China will control a majority of sea lanes to Korea and Japan. If she wished then she could interfere with oil supplies to those countries.
Plus the U.S. already goes great lengths to restrict China from acquiring U.S. technology, much of which has supply lines and partners in Taiwan. Letting China take Taiwan would mean a massive change unless you think we'll just accept that every Taiwanese company now will be forced to put backdoors for the Chinese.
I know you're joking, but ...
it was a cyber war, and it's still happening :)
North Korea is so fragile that it would follow shortly thereafter. South Korea (a US ally) would have a huge mess on their hands.
Japan (another US ally) has got an ocean to protect it, but given the huge shipping volume in the region, shiploads of refugees would try crossing anyway.
So that means that the US would have even more reason to intervene than in other conflicts.
I don't know how much Russia cares about it's eastern territory, but it's unlikely they'd sit around doing nothing.
By now there are 4 countries with nuclear weapons involved, and I haven't even mentioned India and Pakistan, who usually don't appear to be the interventionist type, but they have a common border with China. Who knows how they might react.
Basically, any war involving China is bound to be WW3 levels of bad.
In China's specific case, India and China are fighting over borders. China and the US (allies) are running into issues over resources in the South China Sea. Also Russia and the US both are increasingly their navy presence in the Pacific. It's a powder keg waiting to go off for sure.
Xi is a fine leader — I don't believe problems would start with him. More so his successor who may have decades of rule.
The Chinese communist obviously don't have a democratic mandate. But I think it would be a mistake to think that they don't have widespread popular support.
The problem with the CCP is that there is no real feedback loop. Their support is very fragile, and it would just take one recession to break it (they have no "lets throw the turkey's out" pressure valve).
My guess is that CCP is going to be popular and safe at the realm as long as growth is strong (so maybe we agree there).
People in China can only express their discontent by rioting (which happens in China, a lot). They have no other real way of communicating with officials, they can't even make sneaky jokes on the internet anymore to express their dissatisfaction. That alone is a very dangerous situation.
The point is, no matter how great Hu is as an individual the danger is that granting him perpetual unquestioned power creates a precedent for a future monster to gain a similar lock on power. In a democracy, the voters can depose a monster peacefully. In the cureent Chinese system a monster would only get 2 terms. So the question is, are you prepared to accept Hu getting power to life, at the risk of a future person to get it being a Mugabe, or Gaddafi, or Amin?
In a system with very few constraints on absolute power, is it really prudent in the long term to remove all of the remaining ones? Finally, how much can you trust the judgement of someone willing to impose that risk on his country for his own benefit?
Japan-
Shinzo Abe: 2012-current
Singapore-
Halimah Yacob: 2017-current
Lee Hsien Loong: 2004-current
South Korea-
Moon Jae-in: 2017-current
Lee Nak-yeon: 2017-current
Taiwan
Tsai_Ing-wen: 2016-current
Alternatively (with apologies for playing a bit fast and loose in terms of President/Prime Minister/Secretary - political systems come in many shapes and sizes) and note that in some of these political party doesn't make much sense - when a military strongman stages a coup and holds power for a decade and a half, is there really a ruling political party?
Japan-
Liberal Democratic Party: 1955-1993, 1994-2009, 2012 to present
Singapore-
People's Action Party: 1959 to present
Lee Kuan Yew: 1959 to 1990
Goh Chok Tong: 1990 to 2004
South Korea-
Syngman Rhee: 1948 to 1960 (interestingly, exempted himself from an eight-year limit in 1954)
Park Chung-hee: 1963 to 1979 (took power in military coup, assassinated)
Taiwan-
Chiang Kai-shek: 1950 to 1975
Kuomintang Party: 1950 to 1996, had the advantage of being a single-party state until roughly late eighties
Obviously, no: the headline is significant; east asian governments are subject to policy change and reform even within a single party rule; and this is a canard. There is a difference between indefinite rule by an abstract "party" and indefinite rule by an actual person. And China is crossing that gap.
[1]: https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/02/growth-an...
[2]: https://www.ft.com/content/8b5ae298-a065-11e2-a6e1-00144feab...
[3]: http://www.moneyobserver.com/opinion/gdp-makes-stocks-grow-f...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...
It's not a democracy, it's clearly authoritarian rule of the few, but it's not a dictatorship. There is system a that allows continuity and people change.
Xi may do fine at first. After a while the need to stay in the power affects everything he does. Government organization, military organization, economics, even foreign policy. Nobody stays in power without supporters and they except to be paid.
The explanation given in first year political science was that China is a very rare example of a successful party-based dictatorship, as opposed to a dictatorship based on an individual or family.
Plenty of my alumni from Zhejiang University founded their own companies in China. I don't think they are any different from startup founders here in SF.
The conflict had been part of keeping things moving forward, but I didn't recognize it.
----
Original comment:
I am having trouble seeing why this was brought to mind for you. Was the moral of your story, for you, that when members argue bitterly ("didn't get along at all") to the point of one of them resigning, it means things are moving along?
Okay but what reminded you of the Xi story - there was really no arguments mentioned?
If I extrapolate your lesson too far (I don't think this is what you're saying) it could be that you say, where there is no bitter member conflict, projects die? So, if the members agree that Xi should stay in power, without bitter argument, it is a sign the Party is dying?
That seems absurd. But then I just don't understand why you thought of your anecdote.
EDIT: I'd just like to understand your point.
It happens in corporations. It happens in political systems.
Take someone like Steve Jobs. He was emperor, in this example. That was particularly the case in his second stint at Apple. His personality sparked friction however, he cultivated it on purpose, constantly seeking it out. He wanted to fight over ideas and got upset when people wouldn't fight with him. Had he not done so, stagnation would be the only possible outcome given his managerial dominance, it would have led to a yes-man system, and Jobs would have been flying entirely blind (his yes-men would hide everything from him, lie to him, tell him only what he wanted to hear, etc). For example, there's a lot of evidence that eg Saddam Hussein and Hitler's yes-men regularly attempted to lie to them, hide facts from them, etc. due to the consequences.
Gates and Bezos also likewise cultivate/d friction, despite being emperor equivalents in their companies. Gates liked to aggressively challenge people to combat him on ideas. He inserted friction. He similarly would get upset if you walked away from a battle without resolution (Paul Allen describes that in his book).
Putin and Stalin as dictators and personality contrasts, crush/ed friction, and ruled by strict edict. They require/d unquestioning allegiance and obedience, seeking minimal challenges to their approaches and ideas. That's extremely common in political dictatorships. That approach can only lead to stagnation, which you have historically universally seen in political dictatorships. Obama has a good quip about this aspect of political life in his episode of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian in Cars, in terms of interacting with dictator types.
Mussolini was not different. For example whenever he went to visit a military airport, they would bring airplanes from all over Italy to increase the numbers. What he thought was part of a big airforce were in fact the same planes over and over. When he went to war with Hitler he probably thought he had a good army. In practice since the suppliers of the army where chosen through corruption and nepotism, the soldiers couldn't even get working boots.
The drive to please higher-ups/Putin is quiet strong there. See their election turnout "encouragements".
One of Bill Clinton's qualities, is he listens to everybody and speaks and engages with them on a personal level. In most cases the leader is just a judge on a excellent team. Team does most of the work.
Relatedly, could moves like this actually encourage some sort of reaction by the people against their authoritarian government?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-surveillance-came...
If the Chinese government is able to "kill" (not necessarily in a metaphoric way) any small groups organizing against the government, then it will be very difficult to change this.
If Putin succeeded in becoming a dictator in Russia, I think it's going to be easier for Xi to become a dictator and maintain his power in China.
I'm afraid it may be more likely for some of the Chinese elites that secretly hate and oppose Xi to start something up than for the population to rise at this point in time. Maybe in 20 years, the frustration in the population would bubble up and they could do something about it en mass. Or China could become a bigger version of North Korea.
The advancements in technology don't really seem to be on the people's side either, other than censorship-resistant (a key point, as not all are) blockchain technologies. But I'm not sure these P2P technologies will advance fast enough to stay ahead of Surveillance AI.
Not sure what this means... In what sense is Putin not a dictator already? Despite the illusion of free elections (almost universal in dictatorships), widespread vote tampering, the imprisonment of opponents and prohibition of alternative parties make his rule absolute.
1. USA - Trump
2. Turkey - Erdogen
3. Russia - Putin
4. India - Modi
Meanwhile Macron won a highly contested race in France against a far right candidate, Merkel did something similar.
When the democracies in the world are in such disarray and can't band together to collectively act as a check on authoritarianism, it emboldens the latter.
Even with media censorship, the Chinese government has to react to people's comments (and a lot of times, much faster and effective than western governments, contradictory to what western media wants to believe)
Often times the reactions are short term and not very good solutions either. See China's economic policies after 2008 that helped keep the economy afloat but have caused much concern from many well-known economists.
Let me just say that personally I think China has done a fantastic job of industrializing rapidly, lifting millions from poverty and destitution. I have serious concerns about the same ideas working to push China into the future though; which is why its very important to foster creativity and allow dissent even though its uncomfortable for those in power.
One thing that often comes to mind is how upto the 17th century Chines economy was the biggest and its military and Naval might were unparalleled in the history of the world (except perhaps the Romans before). Then an inward focused policy of sealing the country against contact with the outside weakened the country into destitution. So bad political policies have real consequences and this news makes me much more concerned that they will be repeated.
There are still intra-party factions. Xi’s anti-corruption drive is an effort to defang them. An arguable strength of China’s one-party system was that it had an odd sort of internal democracy, neatly contained to the party elite. Xi is disabling that internal disagreement, which bodes well for short-term stability but points, long-term, towards China becoming a normal sort of dictatorship.
When people in western governments started to form conflicting opinions, they'd say, let's create different parties and compete with each other.
When people in Chinese government started to form conflicting opinions, they'd say, let's keep the conflicts internal and unite under the same party.
Or during the Tiananmen massacre.
In both cases, for reasons unknown, thousands or more (hundreds of thousands) got slaughtered. Most had nothing to do with it.
Until recently, the power in China was divided between several people in the Standing Committee, loosely organized into two factions. The two factions alternated every several years (not based on elections but just a pre-agreed schedule). This was intended to prevent the leader from doing something too crazy even by CCP standards, like say another cultural revolution.
Now there's no alternating between factions because there's only one faction left. And, the power of the Standing Committee is much weaker. Xi has much more power than any leader for the past couple decades.
The risk of some insane decisions by Xi is therefore much greater: it's a lot more difficult for the rest of the party to stop him.
Of course, if you think Xi is a good leader, who is likely to help make China more prosperous and a more enjoyable place to live in, it's possibly a good news. But even then you should be worried about succession: how to prevent some insane leader from taking control of all this power in the future?
Let's say Xi has hypothetic son Xiao, a spoiled brat whom he's going to pass on the country in 2042. What are the chances that he'll be stopped by such a clause when he removed the terms limit in the first place?
"efficiently starting a MAJOR war"
The whole AUMF thing is probably not a good example to use.
Pretty sure Putin stays in power because people still remember Yeltsin. Today's Russia is a massive improvement on 90's Russia.
As for Xi, China isn't exactly doing poorly. Not sure why anyone would want to shake things up now.
Americans should understand, Obama would have beat Trump...
Or are you referring to his other opposition, which are paid by the US to commit crimes, and still barely get a slap on the wrist?
It is one of the few constant themes in Russia.
Regardless, it seems like the case for term-limits is stronger now, than it’s ever been.
It is my experience, and it seems logical. But I don't know if there is studies about this effect.
As opposed to the corruption coming about because of the change of power, which is how I'm afraid some people could read your comment if they skim quickly.
Assuming that's what you mean, yes it makes a lot of sense.
To put it another way, stability of power tends to allow corruption to remain hidden.
So all the people who are reaping the benefits of corruption will love the idea of Xi staying in power.
Yes. In the corruption cases the involved party is the exiting one. As it loses power it can't keep the grip on the public officials and justice is free to work again.
City councils are an extreme example, as they can hold power for decades.
> As opposed to the corruption coming about because of the change of power, which is how I'm afraid some people could read your comment if they skim quickly.
You are right. It's just that I found the concept so implausible that I didn't though about that misread.
Thank you for the clarification.
The public servants are the ones that do this, not the new politicians. These actions involve police, judges, etc.
The allegations of corruption are there for every political campaign. One party will try to discredit the other one to lower their amount of votes. It makes little sense for politicians to bring corruption cases out of a political campaign. And sadly enough corruption is usually not one of the top topics of political campaigns as all parties have some corruption cases and most voters react the most to other more divisive - and probably irrelevant - issues.
There's obviously some happy middle ground between a year or two and unlimited terms, but there are problems with both extremes.
A 2-term limit on a position with a 2-year term can be pretty hard. A 2-term limit on a 4-year term is a different matter.
It also shifts expertise out of the legislator's staff and into the lobbying apparatus.
If the term-limits are brief, then lawmakers have to frequently rely on the party's election and fundraising apparatus, and therefore feel pressure to tow the party line.
If the term-limits are extended, then lawmakers aren't as beholden to the populous, and can therefore become corrupt.
I think I first read this balance articulated (much more clearly than I'm putting it here) in a book by the economist James Buchanan.
For Congress/Parliament members, perhaps a little longer would be reasonable, but probably no more than 20 years.
Good point.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/ http://www.bbc.com/
[1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-02/25/c_136999077.htm
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-politics-corruption...
It may be the same for Xi. It is all or nothing now for the few of his remaining opponents.
Xi is scarier than others like Erdogan and Putin because he's not an outright villain, but that benign acceptance and normalization of humans rights abuses goes on while we buy phones from them and he and the party get further and further cemented into power.
That's horrifying, with a villain at least people would wake up.
The party is the power. There is no other power in China.
Besides, Hu's thought is to be put into Constitution after he had stepped down for 5 years. Xi's thought will appear in the Constitution when he is in the middle of paramount power.
Once China's middle class starts spending more on foreign goods you will see many businesses and companies cater to their needs like how the current status is to cater to the North American market.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
PS: You see this everywhere from China, Russia, India, on one end and Japan and Europe on the other. Even local governments and homeowners associations like to review old contracts as the people in power shift.
What we think of as "corruption" would be better be termed "patronage", and it is the natural and default mode of political behaviour for human beings. It is impersonal, merit and market based systems that are the aberration, historically speaking. And, in the absence of strong institutions preventing it, societies inevitably revert to being patronage-based.
For example, imagine you are interviewing two people for a job. One is an extremely well-qualified and capable stranger. The other is a mediocre candidate, but is the son of a friend of your uncle. Who do you give the job to? For many people in the world, the idea that you would even consider not giving the job to the son of your uncle's friend is heresy. And they would not consider that attitude in any sense immoral or improper. Indeed, being in a position to help yourself and your acquaintances, and instead choosing to assist a stranger would instead be the perverse choice.
In a wider sense, within patrimonial societies there is never any question of ending patronage altogether. Instead, elite patronage networks compete with each other, and "anti-corruption" drives are about the dominant patronage-network cementing power and punishing another. We often see this in countries where every change in the government is accompanied by the prosecution of the old leaders for corruption by the new, only for the new themselves to be prosecuted a few years later upon leaving office.
Xi's efforts might be presented as being "anti-corruption" in nature, but they are very much about securing the position of himself and his patronage network. If he was serious about stopping corruption altogether, he would be concentrating on reforming China's institutions to make them more transparent, more merit-based and less susceptible to centralised political control. Instead, he's removing obstacles to himself and his patrons remaining in power indefinitely.
> son of your uncle's friend
And for the point of discussion how is this any different from the privileged power structures?
Oh wait.
Whataboutism, a #1 go-to tactic in dictatorships.
2. An institution establishment requires several generations hard word.
3. Society will be more fragmented.
4. The big bomb in the future.
—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark
A lot of smart people actually deny that.
In other news: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germany-books-...
I don't know: digital rights, digital privacy, climate change? Those all sounds fairly modern to me.
> heavyweight
What other large political institution in the world says "Nope, not with our citizens" to big data, and actually sees it through?
> the demise of Europe
has been greatly exaggerated.
For your data point, I can assure you that eu govs are just lagging behind, they failed to keep pace. They will get there, trust me.
In other news, more US-centric brainwashing coming soon...
You don't need US-centric brainwashing to understand the difference between Germany, with our seven(!) major parties, and China.
There are many parallels between Germany and China. The population gets low wages in order to facilitate exports, which benefits the ruling classes and the civil servants.
The lavishly paid functionaries of the state television keep people calm.
Comparing China's system with Germany's makes a lot of sense, but you have to do it correctly. If Xi would be a chancellor with limited power in a parliament that consists of members of 6 different parties, then it would be less of a problem if he ran as a candidate in a third election.
While in China, there's a 22nd amendment inspired safeguard in the constitution, specifically to prevent another Mao-like figure from coming to power. The safeguard is being removed specifically for Xi: you can't seriously argue he's irreplaceable across the population of 1.7 billion. The country turns from being run by an authoritarian committee to a personal dictatorship.
And thus begins the decline of China.
You are welcome to illustrate with a counterpoint. Something more recent than two millennia ago, preferably.
However in an autocracy with no other clearly defined mechanism to constrain the power of a leader, term limits at least fulfil that function. The danger is that with no fixed constraints or limits on power in such a system, if a monster gains power or if power creates a monster, there’s nothing anyone can do. The question is, does the risk of that happening outweigh the risk of ejecting a capable leader from power earlier than necessary.
So even if you think Hu a Jintao is the best leader for China now and after 2 terms, the precedent could lead to someone you think is a terrible leader gaining perpetual power later.
The real checks on an autocratic leader are rivalries within the ruling party's elite, and once a leader like Xi has achieved dominance there, then amending the constitution to remove the term limit clause is trivial.
While Xi is certainly acting in his own interest to remove term limits, term limits are a profoundly anti-democratic idea. A politician that is in their final term cannot be pressured by the prospect of an election which is a, if not the, primary mechanism of democracy.
Term limits were only instituted in the United States after FDR terrified the business community by extracting taxes from the wealthy order of over 90%. This was promptly followed by the red scare as the business community fought back to destroy FDR's coalition of progressives, unions, socialists, and communists after he died. One thing they did was impose term limits to reduce electoral pressure on the sitting president by 50%.
Note that, on its face, Xi's plan is the opposite of a lifetime appointment. Lifetime appointments are bad because they reduce electoral pressure by 100%.
This is not a simple concept. Here's an example of how this system breaks down. For instance, in the United States, the Black population has a big problem because the Republicans actively attack their community which means they stick to the Democrats reliably. However, because they can't switch their votes, the Democrats ignore them. Notice that this explains the predicament of the Black community without reference to individual political personalities.
On the other side of the coin, the NRA manages to control the fealty of Republican politicians because it has major influence over voters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/us/politics/nra-gun-contr...
The politicians line up even in the face of screaming children whose friends have been murdered. That's a tough job. That must mean there are substantial incentives for them to do so.
In summary, if you rotate the politicians in the manner you suggested, you actually give the corrupting elements more power rather than less.
EDIT: I would be negligent to say that the Democrats merely ignore the black community. e.g. Hilary Clinton's "superpredator" comments in the 1990's that backed the crime bill that vastly inflated the prison population.
On the other side of the coin, imagine a Trump in his second term. If he seems to be acting against his base now, wait until he is free of electoral pressure.
EDIT: While he is acting against some elements of his base (e.g. the tax bill), Trump is making at least some evangelicals who can live with his public persona very happy: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/opinion/sunday/donald-tru...
It's probably not what you meant, but as a non-US citizen, this statement reads like (some) Americans think the entire world revolves around the US.
As an American citizen, you're absolutely right. Generally, we think everyone cares about us, and we only care about our own interests.
(The HN US crowd is refreshingly not like this, generally. But that's such a tiny portion of the population)
I am often amused and amazed that many, whom has never been to China, does not speak or read the language, has no idea about its history and culture which spans thousands of years , only read about it on mainstream media and then pretend to know more then the Chinese themselves.
It's OK for people to know things about reality. You shouldn't get offended by that.
How about an example.
Reality: Striving for safety is a good thing to do when developing a space program.
China: We strive for safety, but our situation is special and outsiders who criticize our safety don't understand our situation. We have safety, but we call it "safety with Chinese characteristics."
Here is an example of safety with Chinese characteristics. You see the rocket explode, just as western rockets often do as well. What is different is how the rocket is allowed to launch near a populated area, and how instead of having a self-destruct mechanism on failure, it is allowed to continue straight down into an area filled with houses. (Previously filled with houses, that is. Not anymore).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJ9ue6GKek
Again, the Chinese government would call this safety with Chinese characteristics ("x with Chinese characteristics" is their term, not mine). But that doesn't make this disregard of human life right. One doesn't have to be Chinese to understand that. One only has to be human. We non-Chinese humans also have thousands of years of history, you do realize that right?
So people can know it to be true whether they've been to China or not. Apparently, the Chinese government rocket scientists, who should be pretty smart Chinese people who even come from the culture that invented rockets long before anyone else, do not know as much as that.
It's easy to ask a Chinese on Twitter or Facebook or even on Youtube comment section.
And as a Chinese, I can tell you about my feeling on this: I Don't Like It.
I will one day truly respect CCP AFTER they remove themselves from The Constitution.
My understanding is that Xi wants to be in the office so Taiwan can re-united within his Presidency. This will be considered as the whole reunification of China which carries the ultimate importance in Chinese value system and history. Taiwan itself in that process is _NOT_ relevant, it is an island generating 3% of China's GDP with less than 2% of the population. However, a bold however, being able to do that implies the largely withdraw of the American influence from the west pacific. It is THE symbol of the rise of China.
He is not just asking for his 3rd term. President Xi Jinpin is asking to be the leader in charge to manage and witness the above mentioned transformation.
Vietnam? Surely those old US vietnam war veterans are going to cheer up their great grandsons and ask them to be strong when defending the same communist vietnamese government they fought against 50 years ago.
Gee, that will be an embarrassing moment.
Would you say it is more or less safe than an elected official starting up a conflict to distract people around re-election time?
> Be it Taiwan
The PRC is already at war with Taiwan, and has been for decades now. As far as wars go, it's pretty bloodless, with the PRC only saber-rattling when Taiwan purchases and places new US weapons, but other than that both parties don't want to rock the boat, because that's bad for business.
So unless some idiot tries to get in between and force the issue, it's pretty safe to assume there will be no armed conflict in the near future between the PRC and Taiwan.
China is not a democracy, not sure what are you getting at.
As for Taiwan loosing their independence and getting occupied by China. Well, that's one of the few credible scenarios for a start of WW3, so it's also not in anyone's interests.
My god that was my exact same thought. But it is hard to explain to people who dont know much about China, how Chinese values this deeply. Much more so then whatever hundred of billions that will cost them.
Having said that, I still dont see how this is going to happen, even within his life time.
Edit: I have had this argument on Twitter. With people keep calling for democracy on China or whatever. And when people like dis-sys say something that does not align with their view, they immediately thought this person is all for Communism, dictatorship, one part system. I dont know about dis-sys, but I certainly don't. What I am saying / writing, is what I think is going happen ( Analysis ). NOT what I want to happen ( Wish ). It is entirely two different things.
Taiwanese people don't value it deeply. They'd prefer to be left alone in their happy, prosperous, democratic, multiparty country.
Chinese people are highly brainwashed on the subject.