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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this is nothing new and they're just adding the doctrines of the latest guy to the existing communist ideology education courses.

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After Mao died, the social and physical devastation wrought by his Cultural Revolution still fresh in everyone's mind, the Communist Party leadership reorganized itself with the deliberate design to prevent another cult of personality from emerging. Power was decentralized and a system of checks and balances set in place; in particular, leaders would rotate into and out of the highest offices, and not hold more than one senior office at a time. This was a largely informal system but in reality taken far more seriously than any written law.

IIRC (I'm just an occasional observer), this system broke down with Hu Jintao, Jingping's predecessor. Both men held all three senior positions concurrently. Jintao didn't have the clout to hold onto the reigns, but it's unsurprising that Xi Jingping has done so.

In any event, my point is that until recently it was impossible for any singular political figure to have as much political or social influence as Xi Jingping. Xi Jingping's rise to power is the result of what is effectively a constitutional shift (regression?) in the structure of political power in China.

That's too harsh for Hu.

Hu didn't start holding all three senior offices together. His predecessor, Jiang, did. Not that it matters anyways - China's paramount leader before Jiang, Deng, was neither head of state (President), nor head of government (Premier), nor head of party (General Secretary).

Hu is generally considered not to be power hungry. He is well-known for collective leadership (by the Politburo Standing Committee where he is the top ranking member) and is praised for stepping down from all positions voluntarily at the end of his term (Jiang kept his position as the head of military well into Hu's term)

> in particular, leaders would rotate into and out of the highest offices, and not hold more than one senior office at a time.

The rule was only on the paper. Prior to Jiang, all intermediary period leaders were forcefully removed from the office. Jiang almost managed to stay in power indefinitely, just like Xi. Hu was purposefully undermined, and politically eunuchised from the start by much stronger parties who ran the CPC behind his backs: namely the gang to whom Xi is the heir to the throne, and Jiang Zemin's one who also wanted to put their own man there. Were Hu having even a sliver of political power on the level of Jiang, or Xi, he would've tried to stay the third term too.

Really, there were really no rules in Chinese political system besides the survival of the fittest (or the most ruthless.)

I wonder what the long term consequences of that will be. In most parts of the world dictatorships don't fair that well economically.

It will go down as with any unconstrained leader figure: at some point they'll have some stupid idea (see; the great leap forward, cultural revolution) and no one is there to stop them. And of course there will be purges. Never forget about the purges. In the end, all that's left in the leadership hierarchy will be survivalist spit-lickers with barely any expertise besides in clinging to power and in not being purged.

They never added those things as a standalone subject to primary school & middle school curriculum since 1978. Not even Maoism.

what do you mean, the courses with social political education? It was always there. From my education experience in the late 80s to 00s. But to be honest no one is ever taking it seriously and it's obviously a joke to students.

No, no. Single politics course, they do exists, but never single Maoism course, single Dengism course, etc. Even in colleges and universities they're combined into one single course. This time it's different, China is having single Xi-ism course.

Please do point me to the confirmed curriculum of any part of the education system. I am not aware of any. It currently is a guide AFAIK. https://edu.sina.com.cn/l/2021-08-24/doc-ikqcfncc4747529.sht...

There has always been. This is not additional subject. Politics has always been one subject, with different text for each grade, either it is Maxism, Materialism, Deng and so on. This is not a new subject, just new text added to Politics.

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