Born Red: Profile of Xi Jinping
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> he praised the creation of a holiday dedicated to the Second World War: “Victory Day of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.”
Is explicitly calling out Japan (or other countries) typical for contemporary Chinese propaganda? From my understanding, relations between China and Japan are not exactly friendly, but this seems a step towards inoculating the population with a villain-like image of Japan (if it does not exist already). What with praising Putin vis-a-vis Ukraine, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and Japan's increasing offensive military capability, I hope this isn't setting the stage for a horrific showdown in the future.
What would you consider a more neutral name?
If you wanted to evoke national pride and unity, "Victory Day of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance" describes it perfectly well, and properly taught historical context will fill in the rest. By adding "Against Japanese Aggression", you're dividing attention away from your people and putting focus on the adversary -- a very strong rhetorical device.
There is no reason to diminish the initial nationalistic message of the holiday, unless you also want the adversary at the forefront of everybody's thoughts -- an us-versus-them scenario. When people think of Independence Day in the US, we don't immediately think of the British, but rather of our collective accomplishments as Americans in declaring and building our country.
Anyway, I had no idea if this style of naming or speech was common in China, which is why I asked -- other responses have addressed the question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
This is a description by an American surgeon living in Nanjing at the time (it's horrendous):
The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages
telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief.
[...]
Last night the house of one of the Chinese staff members of the university
was broken into and two of the women, his relatives, were raped.
Two girls, about 16, were raped to death in one of the refugee
camps.
In the University Middle School where there are 8,000 people
the Japs came in ten times last night, over the wall, stole food,
clothing, and raped until they were satisfied.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
But, reading about Japanese actions in Nanjing helps understand why there are bad feelings.
Japan and China, and Japan and Korea, do not get on well. This probably has something to do with Japan having invaded and colonised both countries, committed brutal war crimes, then later denied they took place, honoured war criminals in an official capacity, and failed to teach Japan's imperial past in school such that most Japanese people had no idea that Japan ever did anything wrong.
Explaining China's propagandists and their effectiveness is complicated. They are very effective, but also they really don't have to try hard at convincing the populace, it is much akin to American exceptionalism, except there are racial and cultural tints to it.
While most of the issues mentioned in the article are not new, the tightening of the Internet is quite worrisome. Based on online comments, GFW is still passable through most VPN, although some have stopped working (banned presumably). I hope this is just a temporary crackdown instead of a growing trend, because it will be a serious blow to the economy and academia, and a step toward becoming North Korea.
And back to personality cult thing, I don't think Xi enjoys as much support as the article claimed. I mean, of course you only hear good things about him from Chinese media, because talking badly about the leader is generally done in private, which is the case for all the leaders before him.
Thanks for the input. It would help us to know what it's based on. Do you live in China? Are you Chinese?
Xi get more accepted and supported largely because he is open to new ideas. As mentioned in the article, Xi doesn't believe in implementing democracy in China in present days. His stance is not because he was told so, but from his studying and understanding of democracy and China. One might disagree with him, but one might have to admit he does have some valid points.
Second, it is very easy to bypass GFW in China. There are many tools available in the Internet. It requires only basic knowledge on Internet. The young generations have no problem in browsing websites in western countries if they really want to.
[edit]: After skimming your comments on HN, I decided to take this back: 50 cents granted.
Of course you won't see people mocking him on the surface. The regime has cracked down on pretty much all criticism on him.
> Xi get more accepted and supported largely because he is open to new ideas
This is where the hypocrisy lies. On the surface he poses to be "open" while below the surface his regime cracks down on media and tightens up control on videos/animation/publication. Also, propaganda on his "merits" are way over the top -- just short of Mao's.
> it is very easy to bypass GFW in China. There are many tools available in the Internet. It requires only basic knowledge on Internet. The young generations have no problem in browsing websites in western countries if they really want to
Lie. GFW just attacked GitHub. And AFAIK GFW is getting harder and harder to bypass every single day. The regime cuts off Google services (and throttles/cuts VPN connections) for no reason every now and then even when all you do is checking your inbox.
---
And to you, presumably a 50-cent, [citation needed].
But his support comes from things he promised to deliver, primarily curtailing corruption, among a plethora of other things. If he fails to deliver his promises, people are going to slowly change their opinions.
China and the world have been undergoing changes in a fast pace unseen before in the history of human society. It is becoming harder and harder to analyze and predict.
> As the historian Mi Hedu observes in his 1993 book, “The Red Guard Generation,” students at the August 1st School “compared one another on the basis of whose father had a higher rank, whose father rode in a better car. Some would say, ‘Obey whoever’s father has the highest position.’ ” When the Cultural Revolution began, in 1966, Beijing students who were zilaihong (“born red”) promoted a slogan: “If the father is a hero, the son is also a hero; if the father is a reactionary, the son is a bastard.” Red Guards sought to cleanse the capital of opposition, to make it “as pure and clean as crystal,” they said.
He is part of a generation that it's literally called "born red", I've heard that term before, I thought it was an analogy to being "born in Purple".
But this article has very good details though. I enjoyed reading it.
But if you're implying 'shouldn't get ads' because you pay... I can get a sub at $4 a month. Don't think that quite covers costs. So I can certainly imagine how they'd still show me ads even if I pay and accept that. The sub is geared not for removal of ads, but rather the option of reading more than the limited few articles a month you can read for free. (which is extremely easy to circumvent as they have no login system but that's another story).
I'm paying $4/month and purposely chose not to get a physical copy (which was offered for free). It's depressing if I'm not covering their costs and then some.
The New Yorker's online ads are increasingly obtrusive, including ads in the article body that are seemingly designed to be clicked accidentally (which doesn't benefit the advertiser).
EDIT: funny how this get downvoted in a minute.
Or is it simply putting his opponents to jail?
> By the end of 2014, the Party had announced the punishment of more than a hundred thousand officials on corruption charges. Many foreign observers asked if Xi’s crusade was truly intended to stamp out corruption or if it was a tool to attack his enemies. It was not simply one or the other: corruption had become so threatening to the Party’s legitimacy that only the most isolated leader could have avoided forcing it back to a more manageable level, but railing against corruption was also a proven instrument for political consolidation, and at the highest levels Xi has deployed it largely against his opponents. Geremie Barme, the historian who heads the Australian Centre on China in the World, analyzed the forty-eight most high-profile arrests, and discovered that none of them were second-generation reds. “I don’t call it an anticorruption campaign,” a Western diplomat told me. “This is grinding trench warfare.”
One of the characteristics of bureaucracies is that laws are enforced arbitrarily.
“You can see the whole Chinese propaganda machine has geared up to promote his personality,” said Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who monitors developments in Chinese media and censorship for the website China Digital Times. “It’s become over the top.”
While many Chinese welcome a strong, plain-speaking leader, critics say the zealous promotion of Mr. Xi has begun to show some of the hallmarks of a personality cult, alarming those who see echoes of the hubris that engulfed Mao."
I think XI has been in power long enough that it's safe to start to call out trends like this if they're apparent. To me it's chicken and the egg. Do you need to have this type of unassailable position if you're going to root out very powerful corrupt peers/figures? Or do you root our very powerful peers so you can have an unassailable position? Or does 1 morph into 2 after time?
I wonder about the premise: I think the widely accepted theory is that 'assailability' and corruption have an inverse relationship; that is, the less assailable you are the more likely you are to be corrupt. I think the real chicken and egg question is, 'do you need an unssailable position to root out your political opposition, or do you need to root out your political opposition to become unassailable'.
Democratic leaders are far more assailable -- they have limited power, they can be removed from office, and they are open to public attacks by the media, the public, and competing politicans -- but are considered, partly for that reason, to be less corrupt.
A friend is studying journalism. Last week he told me about 90% of western media on China follows that narrative, and around 30% of international headlines in recent months have been about China. Sad. Then again, media in China on the west is not exactly impartial and well researched, either.
The Bloomberg article was about the wealth amassed by Xi's extended family.[1] This New Yorker piece cites an article by Geremie Barme which points out that of the 48 highest-profile corruption cases, none were targeted at "second-generation reds" (aka princelings)[2]. Note that the very high profile case of corrupt princeling Bo Xilai was just prior to Xi's appointment. The ostensible anti-corruption crusade embarked on afterward was targeted at scapegoat officials "from ‘commoner’ 平民 families." Indeed, Barme's article quotes numerous princeling Party officials extolling the inherent virtue of "bureaucrats from the Red Second Generation" and their naturally-born resistance to vice and corruption (Bo Xilai is an exceedingly rare anomaly). Instead, the real danger is "Bureaucrats who come from extreme poverty in youth easily fall prey to vile excesses of corruption, whoring and gambling."
> It goes with saying that, in the murky corridors of Communist power, an impressive number of party gentry progeny, or the offspring of the Mao-era nomenclatura, have been implicated in corrupt practices, but word has it that, like the well-connected elites of other climes, they’ve enjoyed a ‘soft landing': being discretely relocated, shunted into delicate retirement or quietly ‘redeployed’. It’s all very comfy; and it’s all very much business as usual.
1. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/xi-jinping...
2. https://www.thechinastory.org/2014/10/tyger-tyger-a-fearful-...
Also, your objection isn't very convincing coming from an account created just to post that comment.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1234453/seven-subject...
"Mainland universities have been ordered to steer clear of seven topics in their teaching, including universal values, press freedom and civil rights, two university staff said, offering an insight into ideological control under the new Communist Party leaders."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/world/chinas-maoists-are-r...
"China’s Maoist ideologues are resurgent after languishing in the political desert, buoyed by President Xi Jinping’s traditionalist tilt and emboldened by internal party decrees that have declared open season on Chinese academics, artists and party cadres seen as insufficiently red."
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. We need to curb commerce with China.
This doesn't seem in keeping with what he's actually been doing vis-a-vis China's "reds", which is mostly suppressing them. For example Bo Xilai, formerly mayor of Chongqing, is probably the most prominent neo-Maoist in China [1], and Xi Jinping had him arrested. There's more generally been a crackdown on leftists across China, especially those attempting to organize within trade unions, who are seen by the leadership as potentially dangerous. In addition to certain pro-western things being taboo in universities (like supporting multiparty democracy), so are certain leftist things (like criticizing the corporate-lackey nature of the official PRC trade unions, or highlighting dangerous working conditions in factories).
[1] Famous for the neo-leftist "Chongqing model" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing_model
I don't think it is 'evil, scary'. Evan Osnos has been in China sufficiently long, as a profile journalist, to not fluff a piece.
But I get a lack of direction. The meat comes in the middle, but fizzles out without follow-through, flipping to Bo and other stuff.
But the change in normal day-to-day China since he took power, particularly the past 2 years since he took power has been stunning, particularly where it is most visible: most (not all) high end restaurants. They have little to no high receipt custom (people on seats are still there, but now not spending ridiculous amounts of money), not because their former customers were exclusively government, but no one wants the association.
Corruption could be as deep as it ever was, the fear of a Xi audit is not there, but the fear of someone proposing a Xi style audit, publicly, and the chiming in of the government in support and guaranteeing a prosecution is an echo of Mao's 1960s policies.
tl;dr: Don't be corrupt, you will be prosecuted, because people think Xi thinks so.