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Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits
- purplezooey 9y agoStrange as it is, centrally planned economies are kicking the West's arse right now. We're busy electing far right faux populists (like Italy yesterday) and giving money to the rich.
- zavi 9y agoChina is a hyper-capitalist country; referring to it as a centrally planned economy is intellectually dishonest.
- adventured 9y agoNot even remotely close. Let's examine the countries in question anyway. Liberal economies: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Iceland, Taiwan, Austria Planned or otherwise heavily state controlled: China, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Sudan, Angola, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Burma, Cambodia, Pakistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Laos, Sierra Leone, Liberia Who doesn't love self-explanatory lists? And speaking of giving money to the rich. China has the highest real inequality of any nation that has ever existed in world history. They have half a billion people living on less than $10 per day, and a quarter of a billion people living on less than $3 per day, while they have over 600 billionaires, including 100 billionaires in their parliament: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-100-billionaires-according-to-data-from-the-hurun-report.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-...
- koheripbal 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if countries like Russia and China are surreptitiously inciting partisanship in the west.
- zavi 9y agoFor those who say it's OK to be a president for life because he's a competent person: he's 64 years old. Brain deteriorates rapidly with age. The most reasonable person today can suddenly start rounding up Chinese who post memes on WeChat a year from now simply because of a normal biological process. That's where you need a system in place that strips them off power very quickly. History has had plenty Mad Kings.
- koheripbal 9y agoThe biggest problem is the precedent it sets. Once Julius Cesar made himself "first citizen" and took control over the senate, absolutely NONE of his successors relinquished power back to the Senate. ...and some of them were disastrous leaders.
- arieskg 9y agoI must’ve missed the part when China became a democracy. While I hold the same fear as China continues to aggressively pursue the Orwellian path, I seldom to see model governments that makes China second think its authoritarian decision. After all, I can’t envision other governments wanting to become US—-when excluding its resources. I hope we become better so we can emerge as the role model that we once were.
- ASalazarMX 9y ago> I hope we become better so we can emerge as the role model that we once were. USA is still a role model on many areas: cultural, economic, military, etc. It was never a moral role model, although that didn't deter the government of boasting about it anyway.
- throwaway7656 9y agoEconomic role model? Are you even serious? US debt on 6th of March 2000 was 5.7 trillions. [0] Today it is 20.8 trillions. And what USA has to show for the mere 15 trillions of debt? Affordable healthcare? Free education? Absence of homeless population? Shiny new infrastructure? Thousands of kilometers of speed-rails connecting major cities? Role model. You guys are delusional. Let me tell you something like non-american. The whole world looks at you with sheer amusement. [0] https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current PS: The only economic achievement I can list is that US elites have managed to alienate with their policies half of the country, so that half decided to give country a try with some real estate tycoon who enjoys to bang pornstars in his free time. Quite an achievement indeed. 15 trillions well spent.
- ASalazarMX 9y agoAnd to think this article was written in 2000: "Clinton Forecasts Debt-Free Nation" http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=94572 http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=94572 And in 2012: "The Untold Story Of How Clinton's Budget Destroyed The American Economy" http://www.businessinsider.com/how-bill-clintons-balanced-budget-destroyed-the-economy-2012-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-bill-clintons-balanced-bu...
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- joncrane 9y agoOne of the few things that China's governmental system had going for them was term limits for their head of state. This is a very unfortunate development for the world.
- dionian 9y agoIt was just a term limit for the chairman of the party. The party never had a term limit set.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoRight, but the term limit became defacto when the presidency was merged with the general secretary position. Xi could technically remain general secretary without remaining president, but practically that is impossible at this point, so the constitution had to be changed.
- anthonyleecook 9y agoSome other disturbing signs from China: increasing military budget https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/03/06/china-splash-us175-billion-military/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/03/06/china-splash-us175-bil..., kidnapping relatives of the reporters in other countries that exposed the uigher concentration camps http://m.dw.com/en/chinese-authorities-detain-relatives-of-radio-free-asias-uighur-reporters/a-42803793 http://m.dw.com/en/chinese-authorities-detain-relatives-of-r..., China literally banned words and letter n in social media https://mashable.com/2018/02/28/china-bans-n-xi-jinping-term-limits/ https://mashable.com/2018/02/28/china-bans-n-xi-jinping-term..., China propping up dictator in Maldives and angering India https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/world/asia/maldives-china-india.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/w..., China threatens to invade democratic Taiwan over us ties https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9503126 https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9503126
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop using HN for political and national battle? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. As such discussions get more predictable (such as when people dump boilerplate political links into comment threads), they get both less interesting and more flame-prone, a double whammy of destruction for what we care about here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- drharby 9y agoIf china invades taiwan in will be a sign that China believes US leadership to be weak, and the world would follow that lead depending on the us response. If they successfully coax a response, we hurt our economic ties, if they dont, they get facevalue gains and reduce us foreign credibility. Now that i think about it...im scared for taiwan
- Apocryphon 9y agoTaiwan is a first world democracy that has at least existed with its own distinct government for seventy years. A Chinese military invasion would be unprecedented in the history of the world since WWII. I wonder what such a war would signify for the postwar order.
- pmarreck 9y agoI had no idea North Korea was a model government for China
- mannykannot 9y agoIt has been my suspicion that Singapore has been a model for China over the last three or four decades, perhaps since the end of the Viet Nam war.
- justinzollars 9y agoI'm reading a very good book called "China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Power Posture in the Post-American Era" I haven't finished it so I'll save you all from a premature review, but from what I have read so far I believe we need a more serious national conversation on China and the role that technology companies play in enabling dictatorships.
- greggarious 9y ago>I believe we need a more serious national conversation on China and the role that technology companies play in enabling dictatorships. if this interests you, I recommend reading "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" by Edwin Black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- mistermann 9y agoI also think in light of recent events I think we'd benefit from people educating themselves on the actual state of free trade with respect to China, China is far more protectionist than the US, but if we try to do something about it, it's considered to be starting a trade war.
- justinzollars 9y agoWhat is strange to me is the fact in any talk on trade: Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and The New York Times are never brought up.
- jeffreyrogers 9y agoWhy should they be?
- simonh 9y agoWhen it comes to trade what matters is whether or not you meet your treaty obligations. It's a rules based process, where you agree the rules and have some arbitration process, e.g. through the WTO. On that basis, what matters is whether China is following the rules it, and everyone else, agreed to. If you think some one is cheating you arbitrate. We made a deal. Trump is intent on blatantly breaking the rules the US has agreed to, and breaking the deals it committed to. That is important because companies invest billions of dollars based on the rules countries agree on trade. Arbitrarily change the rules with no warning and those billions of dollars of investment can become worthless and the jobs associated with them lost in Canada, the EU and countries all over the world aside from China.
- rdtsc 9y ago> The party hierarchy outranks the state one. In other countries, the ministers of finance and foreign affairs (government jobs) are usually the most important ones after the president or prime minister. In China, they are not even in the top 25. Neither man is a member of the Politburo, let alone its inner sanctum, the Politburo Standing Committee. Formally, the People’s Liberation Army is controlled by the party, not the government. It was interesting to read. Some countries have an official "balance of powers" defined in the Constitution. But even authoritarian or dictatorial regimes have an informal balance of powers. In the old Soviet Union they pretty much had the Politburo, the army and KGB. They kind of kept each other in check in strange way. Wonder where the business interests fit in the China's balance of powers. Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general.
- mortenjorck 9y agoI never really understood the relationship between the party and the state in China, but this article cleared up a lot. Having a better grasp of that relationship also makes this development all the more unsettling: > No less important, the parliament will approve what looks like a new administrative branch that merges elements of the party, government, police and judiciary into a powerful organisation called the National Supervision Commission. This will incorporate the party’s discipline-enforcement body but work closely with the courts and report to the legislature—ie, there will be no separation of powers. It will be able to interrogate, search, detain and punish any official, whether from the party or the government bureaucracy, in cases involving corruption, violations of ethics and ideological deviation. It sounds like any state check on the power of the party that existed before will be effectively neutered by this commission.
- rdtsc 9y agoI have seen in this on other countries. They have corruption, it is widespread. So what do the do? Well, of course have a new corruption fighting entity that combines elements from judiciary, executive (including police) and legislative branches. Soon enough, this becomes the new most corrupt entity. Because they monitor and catch lower level corrupt officials, who once caught, now have to pay much higher price to get off the hook.
- bigmanwalter 9y agoI would rather more terms with Jinping than Trump.
- andrepd 9y agoThere's not even a term of comparison between the two. If nothing else, Trump is an evil and stupid, Jinping is evil and smart.
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- ahtu123 9y agoI have a feeling 10 years from now Trump will be funny blip on the radar of how crazy the '10s were while Asia will be quite meaningfully transformed. I wish this was getting as much attention as BREAKING NEWS: Trump/staffer did something dumb. The (soon plausibly) richest and most populous country in the world will soon have a dictator. That's a bit scary.
- pishpash 9y agoTrump will be a blip provided a Congress willing to check his powers is elected to office, and doesn't itself go down the same path. It might be one election away from stacking of the courts and all that jazz. Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
- api 9y agoIt's part of the same larger pattern. The entire world seems to be moving toward totalitarianism to varying degrees. I have yet to encounter a really good explanation of why this trend is occurring across so many nations and cultures.
- pishpash 9y agoThe explanation is the rise of populism following a bad economic episode. What you are seeing now has been seen in the 20's and 30's. If some good social policies had been implemented and the gains well distributed in the prior decades of growth this wouldn't be happening. But humans won't learn until forced to.
- api 9y agoThat's surely valid to some extent but I don't think it goes back far enough. I've seen this trend firmly in place since 9/11 or shortly thereafter and across virtually every segment of society.
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- debt 9y agoI thought it was kind of odd when Trump joked that maybe the US should experiment with getting rid of term limits. The joke he made was clearly to enrage us leftists, but it also reeked of a man who doesn't fully grasp this new situation, which is actually scary. It was odd because China is an extremely advanced country and Xi Xinping made an extremely undemocratic, dictatorial move by abolishing term limits. So now we have the makings of a dictator leading the largest country on Earth, commanding an extremely technologically-advanced military. The cynic in me makes me think I don't understand Trump's joke because maybe he knows something I don't. The paranoid in me wonders, if Trump really is so misinformed.
- squeegee5 9y agoOutside of the west, democracy is generally held in contempt. This can be dated at least as far back as Plato. Trump isn't misinformed, he believes that democracy is contemptible. And whether he is wrong is arguable.
- FridgeSeal 9y agoIf democracy is"contemptible" by the kinds of people that run oppressive, autocratic (soon dictatorial) Orwellian surveillance states that disappear people at the drop of a hat, I'll gladly keep my "contemptible" method of governance please. At least we can (and do) peacefully and easily vote out our leaders for someone we'd rather have.
- squeegee5 9y agoLet's dissect this misplaced moral superiority by comparison. Trump's USA imprisons more people per capita than any other nation. And a disproportionately large number of those people are black men. For five decades, it has increasingly walked back checks and balances on the executive branch. NSA, on behalf of USG, has demonstrated the most complete surveillance of telecommunications on the planet. The Homan Square facility was used by CPD to disappear six thousand people. This is on a tiny scale compared to the work of the Chinese state apparatus, and it was eventually shut down. But it persisted for a decade. The USA isn't better than China by very much. Arguably, it is worse. In any case, it is a far bigger hypocrite.
- moreorless 9y agoThe Economist has a very biased reporting slant on anything China related. I try to take everything from them with a grain of salt.
- akvadrako 9y agoThe economist is completely and openly biased with all their reporting; that's why their pieces are both valuable and only part of the picture. To just scratch the surface: > Our public agenda is liberal in the classical sense. We have supported free trade ever since our foundation in 1843 when we opposed Britain’s corn laws, which sought to keep the price of grain high by limiting imports. We have continued to advocate bold policies in favour of individual freedoms, such as same-sex marriage and legalisation of drugs, regardless of whether they are politically popular, in the belief that the force of argument will eventually prevail. https://www.economist.com/about-the-economist#editorial-philosophy https://www.economist.com/about-the-economist#editorial-phil...