Xi Goes Full Stalin with Purge
politico.eu
politico.eu
> Our achievements, however great, would be very small when divided by 1.4 billion. But a problem, however small, would be huge when multiplied by 1.4 billion.
To me this gives insight into Xi's way of thinking (and presumably his party). A problem, however small, means to be talking about problems of the individual - multiplied.
Xi may have unintentionally highlighted the fundamental difference between American and Chinese systems in a meeting intended to bridge the gaps.
This is not unexplained. Apparently the story with Qin Gang (foreign minister) is that he got compromised and sensitive information leaked to the US through him.
If so, his case is not one of 'Stalinian purge' but one of an embarrassing national security breach.
It gets even better as the rumor is that Russia tipped off China (true tip or elaborate machination?) possibly to influence its stance on Ukraine [1]
[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Analys...
Edit: a purge as practiced by Staline was to increase and solidify his personal power. There may be a similar dynamic at play here but at least in Qin Gang's case it seems to be much more complex. Simplistic and sensationalist labels prevent us from digging deeper into the interesting bit.
Comparing it to Stalin is pretty apt - communist party with a figure head trying to hold onto power. Seems like more than just one person vanished and it’s all under totally opaque circumstances.
My main gripe here is the sensationalist take on complex issues, starting with the over-the-top title.
This could have been a substantive and interesting discussion...
Edit: I tried to look past the clickbaity title to get to the interesting part, which I think to find the reason for specific people being 'purged'. Alas it is apparently not possible...
In such cases, any rational actor has to assume the worst about the party preventing the measurement, to prevent rewarding that behavior and to encourage honest measurements.
"On 17 December 1967, Harold Holt, the 17th prime minister of Australia, disappeared while swimming in the sea near Portsea, Victoria. An enormous search operation was mounted in and around Cheviot Beach, but his body was never recovered."
It clearly says his body was never recovered, so 'the facts of his disappearance' are not fully known, by definition.
Anyways, there's dozens of examples of presidents, prime ministers, ministers, deputy ministers, party leaders, etc., who've disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances. And that's just post WW2. Which anyone can find via a quick search online.
He drowned. There's nothing mysterious about it. We are not living in an Agatha Christie novel.
The point here isn't just that Li Shangfu has disappeared but that the fact of his disappearance has not even been officially acknowledged. If Lloyd Austin had been missing for months, the US government would at least acknowledge this and make some kind of statement about it.
Which is clearly not the case.
It can be supposed that the facts are known if we assume it was an entirely coincidental and unlucky day to pick for swimming in that area. But that's just a supposition. At best, an agreed upon supposition by the majority of the few hundred or thousand people who've deeply investigated the case. But that still doesn't equate to 'facts'.
>I was responding to 'The facts of his disappearance are known'.
Not to be too pedantic, but I said "the facts of his disappearance are known...insofar as anyone has been able to discover them". That is, there is no secret cabal that has additional information about what happened. The Australian government is not concealing anything. All anyone knows is what we all know: that he went for a swim in rough weather and drowned.
It doesn't make sense to write something even worse and closer to random noise.
How is that relevant to the fact the problematic officials, billionaires, athletes disappear in Xi’s government ?
The problem is the lack of transparency, hence the comparison to Stalinist purges.
I can't speak on their behalf since I am a different person.
See their parent comment:
> In a Western democracy, government ministers don't just go missing without any official explanation for their disappearance. (I am not suggesting that such official explanations are always true, but they at least exist.)
...people aren't really used to leaving their bubble and searching for information at the source, especially when the source is a foreign culture/language/platform.
Are you sure that "lack of information" isn't just a skill issue here?
For what it's worth the BBC and Reuters articles on this suggest it's cracking down or corruption rather than on people leaking to the US, though I guess none of them really know.
> Since his reign began in 2012, Xi Jinping’s endless purges have removed millions of officials
I hate clickbait titles.
I see it more likely the US gets a major electrical blackout right in the middle of winter due to some foreign state actors as a higher likelihood than WW3.
We don't know who is in this country.