10 ms·

Handling of U.S. trade dispute causes rift in Chinese leadership: sources

94 points by microdrum 8y ago

bilbo0s 8y ago
Basically the Chinese McCains vs the Chinese Trumps. This ought to be good!
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Anyone who follows Chinese politics will realize the CCP has factions just like any other large political organization. However, factional divides are usually restricted to smokey rooms and kept out of public eye. But when personal wealth is at stake, they are bound to be more riled up.
  - rdlecler1 8y ago
    And those factions have economic ties. I would expect that the sanctions lists would be exploiting those relationships. In China you have an entire village producing something like patio umbrellas or golf carts. This creates systemic risks because the US could wipe out industry of an entire village — takenit offline for six months and you can do a lot of political damage. China may be authoritarian but they are not immune to the will of the people. The Mandate of Heaven is almost an early version of democratic ideals. Lose the people you lose the mandate.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Of course. The Chinese government isn’t immune to criticism even if they try to suppress it. In fact, they know that their position is very brittle, which is why they are trying to stave off a crash/recession at any cost. Trump’s trade war is enough I think to set an economic reckoning in motion. However, it also gives the leadership a nice scapegoat if they know they can’t avoid it. That might not be good enough, however.
    - vfulco2 8y ago
      If you look at thousands of years of history, it is the power over-reach that causes a swift loss of the Mandate of Heaven. Tied to human nature. Always has been, always will be. There is no superiority to the system's design.
baybal2 8y ago
My own view: It is "a not a secret secret" that a lot of party higher ups covertly own big parts of Chinese industry, including export oriented ones. The squabble is about them being caught in the crossfire. Their message: "make peace with USA for as long as we make money." Now the talk is over them being thrown under the train. Naturally, they are frustrated by that. I want to remember that Xi Jingping himself came to power on the promise of "making party membership great again" and rode the wave of anger of minor and midtier party bureaucrats over them being sidelined during Jiang and Hu's eras. But now, he himself is busy throwing its own "powerbase" under the train.
- mc32 8y ago
  Maybe so, I don’t know. One thing is sure. Clinton’s and W’s and Obama’s illusion that eventually China would follow the example of free trade some day because that was the supposed natural progression has led to this dispute that had been brewing unattended for decades.
  - anomatopoeia 8y ago
    Xi seems to have overplayed his hand over the past few years. Instead of China quietly amassing power as it had done since the early 90s, Xi pushed China into a much more assertive role before it was necessarily ready. The US and others had looked the other way on China’s mercantilist actions in the past on a strategic gamble that China would slowly evolve into a more democratic state, with open markets, freedoms and rule of the law. This strategy had worked out well with South Korea and Taiwan as they made their transitions from poor dictatorships to wealthy democracies (and peaceful US allies). During the reign of Xi’s predecessors this did seem to be a possibility but Xi’s policies and perhaps most importantly his ascension to President for Life ended any illusion that China would make this sort of evolution. The Made in China 2025 program for example explicitly codifies what many had long assumed - that China is directly targeting the most advanced foreign industries with a state backed industrial policy. With China moving away from even playing lip service to liberalization and now directly threatening US/European interests with Made in China 2025 and other initiatives, there is no longer any reason for the US to play nice with China. Frankly if China had simply continued quietly moving forward as they had under Hu and made perhaps some nominal reforms or concessions they probably could’ve continued their plans unabated.
stephengillie 8y ago
Just a subtle reminder that China isn't a monolithic entity, but is instead made out of people, like all countries.
- microdrum 8y ago
  Except that its business model IS being a monolithic entity.
  - throwaway0255 8y ago
    Yes. The world’s largest population is relying on an unsustainable economic model, under a political system that is not beholden to or representative of its people, propped up by western nations that aren’t going to need it anymore in a post-robotics and post-automation world. That really should worry people more than it seems to.
    - Apes 8y ago
      Did you intend for this description to also nearly perfectly apply to the United States?
      - a_tractor 8y ago
        It could actually apply to every nation with a debt-based economy.
      - linksnapzz 8y ago
        ....BUT WHAT ABOUT....
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      ...if it's unsustainable, why should we worry about it, because by definition it'll be gone in a few years?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
al_ramich 8y ago
Interesting discussion on the topic. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us-china-trade-war-not-about-trade-not-about-trump-heres-what-it https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us-ch...
- striking 8y ago
  That article is interesting, but not very much so, given that it was written before the full implications of the ZTE incident were made clear (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/china-technology-zte-sputnik-moment.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/china-technolo...)
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
It seems to me that these tariffs really do make sense regardless of political orientation. The big difference between Chinese and American labor is that we place a much higher standard on human and worker rights. Chinese workers manufacture e.g. $1000 iPhones earning literally a few dollars a day, living in on-site dormitories, all the while surrounded by suicide nets to try to deter the frequent suicides. That's obviously not a great situation. Yet we, as in American companies, vastly incentivize such systems by shipping trillions of dollars worth of production to China. So we pride ourselves on more humane standards, yet send trillions of dollars to the lowest common denominator on labor that's a hair's breadth above slavery? This never made any sense to me. I think free trade is a great idea when nations are comparably developed with comparable values. But when you have asymmetric value systems, you just end up greatly rewarding the lowest common denominator while hurting the nations that place a greater value on labor rights. Anyhow, glad to see the effect of these tariffs is almost certainly going to end up favoring American interests, and perhaps even the Chinese people as well if I can be allowed a bit of optimism.
- kenmicklas 8y ago
  > That's obviously not a great situation. Yet we, as in American companies, vastly incentivize such systems by shipping trillions of dollars worth of production to China. So we pride ourselves on more humane standards, yet send trillions of dollars to the lowest common denominator on labor that's a hair's breadth above slavery? This never made any sense to me. That's because American capitalists _don't_ value human and workers rights. And to a large degree, the American labor movement doesn't either - as long as it can escape the oppression of the American capitalists at home and have cheap consumer goods as a result of the export of capital to poorer countries. The only ways to alleviate this within the capitalist system is to either decrease the mobility of capital, or increase the mobility of labor (i.e. immigration). Unfortunately, neither of these are in the immediate interests of the American working class.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- throw272109 8y ago
icu 8y ago
There is a real possibility of escalation as I doubt Trump will capitulate. Trump seems to like the pomp of a 'win'... real or imagined. I think it will come down to how quickly things escalate and if Trump runs or wins in 2020. It's possible the Chinese will hold out until then and adjust accordingly... I think the stakes are high on both sides. Thus far China has had virtually no economic push back to the transfer of jobs and wealth from the US. If the Chinese can break through, I doubt anything will stop China's accent. Likewise, if Trump doesn't persist it's possible he'll lose his voter base and it's unlikely that any other administration will have the stomach to take on China. I think it's possible that if a few other things go Trump's way (North Korean, Iran, the wall) he'll have enough voter support for a second term. I don't see a blue wave forming if that happens, nor do I see a large pool of credible Democratic Party presidential candidates emerging no matter how uncouth Trump's rhetoric. A perfect example is Ocasio-Cortez and her socialist policies who I don't see appealing to a large enough voter base.
- mc32 8y ago
  It's too early to predict outcomes. I will say the Dems putting out more Ocasio-Corteses is a gift to the Reps. The afterberners have very specific constituencies which only exist in special environments. They don't have any broad appeal.
  - heurist 8y ago
    I think their appeal is broader than conventional Democrats. Sanders won northern rural Democrats over Clinton in the primaries, which seems to indicate a precise rift that hasn't been fully elaborated: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map
    - mc32 8y ago
      Clinton was the worst possible broadly electable candidate dems could have put forward. Gephardt would have been better. She was and remains a devisive figure. Dems who broke didn't as much vote for Bernie or Trump but voted against Hillary.
Latteland 8y ago
One good thing that could change from the tariffs is finally breaking the forced sharing of intellectual property with Chinese companies before allowing production. That was supposedly going to end around the end of 2018 already. A second positive change would be ending requiring selling a part of any foreign venture to a local Chinese company, which I don't think was planned to change. But the overall idea that trade deficits were generally bad for the us is a silly idea, so wrong. The us has done a terrible job helping workers find new employment when their old factory or similar manufacturing jobs were lost to another country. It's hard to see how we'll ever do a good job on that because half the country has an ideological resistance to helping each other (social security, medical insurance, a job, those are all things we should make on our own). I can't see that these tariffs can ever bring back many factory jobs to the us. We need a strategy to find new jobs and industries. The current plan is just not going to accomplish much of anything. But, and it's a big but, lets not forget that trade between countries has a good chance of reducing the potential of wars between them. I really believe that extensive international trade between the us and china will have a good tampering effect on potential war between the two countries. Chinese building of military bases in the south china sea against the wishes of your neighbors and and asserting your power won't help anyone to trust china, but when there was extensive and growing trade between the two powerful countries war should be less likely.
- baybal2 8y ago
  >A second positive change would be ending requiring selling a part of any foreign venture to a local Chinese company, which I don't think was planned to change. It was not a requirement for many many years already, and before that on case by case basis. The list of industries in which it is still a requirement is well known. On Qualcomm and NXP, that's kinda bizarre - nor Qualcomm, nor NXP is a listed company in China, nevertheless, China orders a block on merger of their units in USA. But were they not be compliant, they could've fared worse: remember Sigmatel, they tried to bully a Chinese competitor with patent trolling, but instead got shipments of their chips tracelessly vanishing at Chinese customs. That was a death sentence for them as a company: it doesn't matter that they were selling chips to foreign companies for as the final product was assembled in China
- 8y ago
394549 8y ago
> A backlash is being felt at the highest levels of the government, possibly hitting a close aide to Xi, his ideology chief and strategist Wang Huning, according to two sources familiar with discussions in leadership circles. > A prominent and influential academic whose views have found favor in some party quarters has also come under attack for his strident views on Chinese power. > Wang, who was the architect of the “China Dream”, Xi’s vision for China to become a strong and prosperous nation, has been taken to task by the Chinese leader for crafting an excessively nationalistic image for the country, which has only provoked the United States, the sources said. > “He’s in trouble for mishandling the propaganda and hyping up China too much,” said one of the sources, who has ties to China’s leadership and propaganda system. Wang Huning is a noted neo-authoritarian ideologue and a member of China's most powerful leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee. Understanding his views gives a lot of insight into the Chinese government's current outlook: http://www.judeblanchette.com/blog/2017/10/20/wang-hunings-neo-authoritarianism-dream http://www.judeblanchette.com/blog/2017/10/20/wang-hunings-n... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-wang-huning.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/china-xi-jinpi...
- jolesf 8y ago
  Huning is one of the most underrated and understudied people right now.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Totally disagree, he survived so long just because he was near invisible, while being to some extend useful. He got great luck that his scholarly postulates happened to align with prevailing winds during Jiang's era. From then and on, he was just an obscure speechwriter and unofficial chief of propaganda, with some "strategy advisor" cred.
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    Nit in case you didn't know: Huning (or Hu Ning[1]) is his given name, and Wang is his surname. [1] really it would make more sense to write Chinese names in English in a way that reflects that they are three separate characters, e.g. Wang Hu Ning, but for whatever reason that isn't done.
Hasknewbie 8y ago
Good. Anything that rattles Red Emperor Xi is a good thing.
- umvi 8y ago
  Slightly off topic, but I read somewhere that some online video games censor anything that has the word "Xi" in it. Not sure if that is to prevent badmouthing him or to prevent Chinese political discussion altogether.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > Slightly off topic, but I read somewhere that some online video games censor anything that has the word "Xi" in it. Not sure if that is to prevent badmouthing him or to prevent Chinese political discussion altogether. They can't prevent it altogether. I don't speak Chinese, but my understanding it that it's a punner's paradise, and online political discussion in China occurs using a dense and ever-changing system of slang and puns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Mandarin_Ch...: > Xiǎo Píngzi - Students participating in the pro-democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 smashed little bottles as a means of protesting Deng Xiaoping's handling of the movement. Deng's given name, Xiaoping (小平) sounds a lot like "Little Bottle" (小瓶子, xiǎo píngzi), https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-mud_horse https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-mud_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_crab_(Internet_slang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_crab_(Internet_slang)
- echevil 8y ago
  Well, you may be glad to learn that there has been lots of rumors on Chinese websites in the past few months that Xi’s position is being challenged and he might even be in danger
  - metalliqaz 8y ago
    Ruler for life is an attractive title.
lyrachord 8y ago
Where are vandalic monkeys now? Had some one read histories and remembered latest 2 wars in 50s and 70s at Asia? It was foolish and absurdity in the extreme.
teawithcarl 8y ago
The best article on this matter, by the best journalist on China, John Garnault. http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-hopes-a-beijing-jeremiad/ http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-ho...

94 points by microdrum 8y ago

bilbo0s 8y ago

Basically the Chinese McCains vs the Chinese Trumps. This ought to be good!

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Anyone who follows Chinese politics will realize the CCP has factions just like any other large political organization. However, factional divides are usually restricted to smokey rooms and kept out of public eye. But when personal wealth is at stake, they are bound to be more riled up.
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  And those factions have economic ties. I would expect that the sanctions lists would be exploiting those relationships. In China you have an entire village producing something like patio umbrellas or golf carts. This creates systemic risks because the US could wipe out industry of an entire village — takenit offline for six months and you can do a lot of political damage. China may be authoritarian but they are not immune to the will of the people. The Mandate of Heaven is almost an early version of democratic ideals. Lose the people you lose the mandate.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Of course. The Chinese government isn’t immune to criticism even if they try to suppress it. In fact, they know that their position is very brittle, which is why they are trying to stave off a crash/recession at any cost. Trump’s trade war is enough I think to set an economic reckoning in motion. However, it also gives the leadership a nice scapegoat if they know they can’t avoid it. That might not be good enough, however.
  - vfulco2 8y ago
    If you look at thousands of years of history, it is the power over-reach that causes a swift loss of the Mandate of Heaven. Tied to human nature. Always has been, always will be. There is no superiority to the system's design.

baybal2 8y ago

My own view: It is "a not a secret secret" that a lot of party higher ups covertly own big parts of Chinese industry, including export oriented ones. The squabble is about them being caught in the crossfire. Their message: "make peace with USA for as long as we make money." Now the talk is over them being thrown under the train. Naturally, they are frustrated by that. I want to remember that Xi Jingping himself came to power on the promise of "making party membership great again" and rode the wave of anger of minor and midtier party bureaucrats over them being sidelined during Jiang and Hu's eras. But now, he himself is busy throwing its own "powerbase" under the train.

mc32 8y ago
Maybe so, I don’t know. One thing is sure. Clinton’s and W’s and Obama’s illusion that eventually China would follow the example of free trade some day because that was the supposed natural progression has led to this dispute that had been brewing unattended for decades.
- anomatopoeia 8y ago
  Xi seems to have overplayed his hand over the past few years. Instead of China quietly amassing power as it had done since the early 90s, Xi pushed China into a much more assertive role before it was necessarily ready. The US and others had looked the other way on China’s mercantilist actions in the past on a strategic gamble that China would slowly evolve into a more democratic state, with open markets, freedoms and rule of the law. This strategy had worked out well with South Korea and Taiwan as they made their transitions from poor dictatorships to wealthy democracies (and peaceful US allies). During the reign of Xi’s predecessors this did seem to be a possibility but Xi’s policies and perhaps most importantly his ascension to President for Life ended any illusion that China would make this sort of evolution. The Made in China 2025 program for example explicitly codifies what many had long assumed - that China is directly targeting the most advanced foreign industries with a state backed industrial policy. With China moving away from even playing lip service to liberalization and now directly threatening US/European interests with Made in China 2025 and other initiatives, there is no longer any reason for the US to play nice with China. Frankly if China had simply continued quietly moving forward as they had under Hu and made perhaps some nominal reforms or concessions they probably could’ve continued their plans unabated.

stephengillie 8y ago

Just a subtle reminder that China isn't a monolithic entity, but is instead made out of people, like all countries.

microdrum 8y ago
Except that its business model IS being a monolithic entity.
- throwaway0255 8y ago
  Yes. The world’s largest population is relying on an unsustainable economic model, under a political system that is not beholden to or representative of its people, propped up by western nations that aren’t going to need it anymore in a post-robotics and post-automation world. That really should worry people more than it seems to.
  - Apes 8y ago
    Did you intend for this description to also nearly perfectly apply to the United States?
    - a_tractor 8y ago
      It could actually apply to every nation with a debt-based economy.
    - linksnapzz 8y ago
      ....BUT WHAT ABOUT....
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    ...if it's unsustainable, why should we worry about it, because by definition it'll be gone in a few years?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

al_ramich 8y ago

Interesting discussion on the topic. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us-china-trade-war-not-about-trade-not-about-trump-heres-what-it https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us-ch...

striking 8y ago
That article is interesting, but not very much so, given that it was written before the full implications of the ZTE incident were made clear (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/china-technology-zte-sputnik-moment.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/china-technolo...)

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

It seems to me that these tariffs really do make sense regardless of political orientation. The big difference between Chinese and American labor is that we place a much higher standard on human and worker rights. Chinese workers manufacture e.g. $1000 iPhones earning literally a few dollars a day, living in on-site dormitories, all the while surrounded by suicide nets to try to deter the frequent suicides. That's obviously not a great situation. Yet we, as in American companies, vastly incentivize such systems by shipping trillions of dollars worth of production to China. So we pride ourselves on more humane standards, yet send trillions of dollars to the lowest common denominator on labor that's a hair's breadth above slavery? This never made any sense to me. I think free trade is a great idea when nations are comparably developed with comparable values. But when you have asymmetric value systems, you just end up greatly rewarding the lowest common denominator while hurting the nations that place a greater value on labor rights. Anyhow, glad to see the effect of these tariffs is almost certainly going to end up favoring American interests, and perhaps even the Chinese people as well if I can be allowed a bit of optimism.

kenmicklas 8y ago
> That's obviously not a great situation. Yet we, as in American companies, vastly incentivize such systems by shipping trillions of dollars worth of production to China. So we pride ourselves on more humane standards, yet send trillions of dollars to the lowest common denominator on labor that's a hair's breadth above slavery? This never made any sense to me. That's because American capitalists _don't_ value human and workers rights. And to a large degree, the American labor movement doesn't either - as long as it can escape the oppression of the American capitalists at home and have cheap consumer goods as a result of the export of capital to poorer countries. The only ways to alleviate this within the capitalist system is to either decrease the mobility of capital, or increase the mobility of labor (i.e. immigration). Unfortunately, neither of these are in the immediate interests of the American working class.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
throw272109 8y ago

icu 8y ago

There is a real possibility of escalation as I doubt Trump will capitulate. Trump seems to like the pomp of a 'win'... real or imagined. I think it will come down to how quickly things escalate and if Trump runs or wins in 2020. It's possible the Chinese will hold out until then and adjust accordingly... I think the stakes are high on both sides. Thus far China has had virtually no economic push back to the transfer of jobs and wealth from the US. If the Chinese can break through, I doubt anything will stop China's accent. Likewise, if Trump doesn't persist it's possible he'll lose his voter base and it's unlikely that any other administration will have the stomach to take on China. I think it's possible that if a few other things go Trump's way (North Korean, Iran, the wall) he'll have enough voter support for a second term. I don't see a blue wave forming if that happens, nor do I see a large pool of credible Democratic Party presidential candidates emerging no matter how uncouth Trump's rhetoric. A perfect example is Ocasio-Cortez and her socialist policies who I don't see appealing to a large enough voter base.

mc32 8y ago
It's too early to predict outcomes. I will say the Dems putting out more Ocasio-Corteses is a gift to the Reps. The afterberners have very specific constituencies which only exist in special environments. They don't have any broad appeal.
- heurist 8y ago
  I think their appeal is broader than conventional Democrats. Sanders won northern rural Democrats over Clinton in the primaries, which seems to indicate a precise rift that hasn't been fully elaborated: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map
  - mc32 8y ago
    Clinton was the worst possible broadly electable candidate dems could have put forward. Gephardt would have been better. She was and remains a devisive figure. Dems who broke didn't as much vote for Bernie or Trump but voted against Hillary.

Latteland 8y ago

One good thing that could change from the tariffs is finally breaking the forced sharing of intellectual property with Chinese companies before allowing production. That was supposedly going to end around the end of 2018 already. A second positive change would be ending requiring selling a part of any foreign venture to a local Chinese company, which I don't think was planned to change. But the overall idea that trade deficits were generally bad for the us is a silly idea, so wrong. The us has done a terrible job helping workers find new employment when their old factory or similar manufacturing jobs were lost to another country. It's hard to see how we'll ever do a good job on that because half the country has an ideological resistance to helping each other (social security, medical insurance, a job, those are all things we should make on our own). I can't see that these tariffs can ever bring back many factory jobs to the us. We need a strategy to find new jobs and industries. The current plan is just not going to accomplish much of anything. But, and it's a big but, lets not forget that trade between countries has a good chance of reducing the potential of wars between them. I really believe that extensive international trade between the us and china will have a good tampering effect on potential war between the two countries. Chinese building of military bases in the south china sea against the wishes of your neighbors and and asserting your power won't help anyone to trust china, but when there was extensive and growing trade between the two powerful countries war should be less likely.

baybal2 8y ago
>A second positive change would be ending requiring selling a part of any foreign venture to a local Chinese company, which I don't think was planned to change. It was not a requirement for many many years already, and before that on case by case basis. The list of industries in which it is still a requirement is well known. On Qualcomm and NXP, that's kinda bizarre - nor Qualcomm, nor NXP is a listed company in China, nevertheless, China orders a block on merger of their units in USA. But were they not be compliant, they could've fared worse: remember Sigmatel, they tried to bully a Chinese competitor with patent trolling, but instead got shipments of their chips tracelessly vanishing at Chinese customs. That was a death sentence for them as a company: it doesn't matter that they were selling chips to foreign companies for as the final product was assembled in China
8y ago

394549 8y ago

> A backlash is being felt at the highest levels of the government, possibly hitting a close aide to Xi, his ideology chief and strategist Wang Huning, according to two sources familiar with discussions in leadership circles. > A prominent and influential academic whose views have found favor in some party quarters has also come under attack for his strident views on Chinese power. > Wang, who was the architect of the “China Dream”, Xi’s vision for China to become a strong and prosperous nation, has been taken to task by the Chinese leader for crafting an excessively nationalistic image for the country, which has only provoked the United States, the sources said. > “He’s in trouble for mishandling the propaganda and hyping up China too much,” said one of the sources, who has ties to China’s leadership and propaganda system. Wang Huning is a noted neo-authoritarian ideologue and a member of China's most powerful leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee. Understanding his views gives a lot of insight into the Chinese government's current outlook: http://www.judeblanchette.com/blog/2017/10/20/wang-hunings-neo-authoritarianism-dream http://www.judeblanchette.com/blog/2017/10/20/wang-hunings-n... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-wang-huning.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/china-xi-jinpi...

jolesf 8y ago
Huning is one of the most underrated and understudied people right now.
- baybal2 8y ago
  Totally disagree, he survived so long just because he was near invisible, while being to some extend useful. He got great luck that his scholarly postulates happened to align with prevailing winds during Jiang's era. From then and on, he was just an obscure speechwriter and unofficial chief of propaganda, with some "strategy advisor" cred.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Nit in case you didn't know: Huning (or Hu Ning[1]) is his given name, and Wang is his surname. [1] really it would make more sense to write Chinese names in English in a way that reflects that they are three separate characters, e.g. Wang Hu Ning, but for whatever reason that isn't done.

Hasknewbie 8y ago

Good. Anything that rattles Red Emperor Xi is a good thing.

umvi 8y ago
Slightly off topic, but I read somewhere that some online video games censor anything that has the word "Xi" in it. Not sure if that is to prevent badmouthing him or to prevent Chinese political discussion altogether.
- 394549 8y ago
  > Slightly off topic, but I read somewhere that some online video games censor anything that has the word "Xi" in it. Not sure if that is to prevent badmouthing him or to prevent Chinese political discussion altogether. They can't prevent it altogether. I don't speak Chinese, but my understanding it that it's a punner's paradise, and online political discussion in China occurs using a dense and ever-changing system of slang and puns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Mandarin_Ch...: > Xiǎo Píngzi - Students participating in the pro-democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 smashed little bottles as a means of protesting Deng Xiaoping's handling of the movement. Deng's given name, Xiaoping (小平) sounds a lot like "Little Bottle" (小瓶子, xiǎo píngzi), https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-mud_horse https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-mud_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_crab_(Internet_slang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_crab_(Internet_slang)
echevil 8y ago
Well, you may be glad to learn that there has been lots of rumors on Chinese websites in the past few months that Xi’s position is being challenged and he might even be in danger
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  Ruler for life is an attractive title.

lyrachord 8y ago

Where are vandalic monkeys now? Had some one read histories and remembered latest 2 wars in 50s and 70s at Asia? It was foolish and absurdity in the extreme.

teawithcarl 8y ago

The best article on this matter, by the best journalist on China, John Garnault. http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-hopes-a-beijing-jeremiad/ http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-ho...