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Born Red: Profile of Xi Jinping

Tloewald 12y ago
Off-topic: as a paying newyorker.com subscriber I resent the fact that the New Yorker uses page-covering video ads, and I resent the fact that they're incompetently implemented even more (they're borked on mobile devices that are zoomed or in landscape mode).
- adnam 12y ago
  Try using readability.com
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    I don't want to block ads (I can use reader view in safari which is effectively the same thing).
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  No disagreement on crappy readability and accessibility. Never an excuse for that, it's just dumb, bad to users and even bad for business. 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).
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    I'm happy -- well, not incensed -- to get ads that are well-implemented. 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).
Dhtrnr 12y ago
In all of that text, I couldn't find why he's supposedly "china's most authoritarian leader since Mao," other than a discussion of him trying to limit corruption in local government, which is a massive problem in China. If anything, this seems like a fluff piece trying keep in step with the "evil, scary China" narrative.
- est 12y ago
  > him trying to limit corruption in local government, which is a massive problem in China Or is it simply putting his opponents to jail?
  - akfanta 12y ago
    Why not both?
  - kylebrown 12y ago
    yup, this is the relevant paragraph: > 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.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  I can't get to the New Yorker article but this is a theme starting to play out in the US Press. From March 8th: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/world/move-over-mao-beloved-papa-xi-awes-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/world/move-over-mao-belove... “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?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dferlemann 12y ago
I don't know if it's fair to compare him to Mao, as Mao's reputation is pretty bad in the west. The general feel of this article is like: oh, he's pretty cool, well, anti-corruption, but controlling, and take his job really seriously, just like HITLER! Whut... But this article has very good details though. I enjoyed reading it.
- LiweiZ 12y ago
  Mao's reputation is mixed in mainland China, too. For more than 150 years, the big and powerful nation state of mind and the weakness in reality stay as a main force behind many things we see. It's a good starting point for reasoning many issues in China. And for me as a Chinese, it's a big negative sign before anything organically good could happen back home.
  - mjklin 12y ago
    Ask any Chinese person and they will tell you: Mao was 70% right, 30% wrong. This is the official party line taught in schools.
    - LiweiZ 12y ago
      First time to hear that. If you are Chinese grown up in PRC as well, it's most likely you are younger than I am. Also, what I said is not some content directly from a specific source. Even there is some kind of "standard" from the authority in some way, the possibility that people have exactly same consensus in this regard.
    - LiweiZ 12y ago
      Well, I translated what you said into Chinese in my mind and get what those Chinese really said. In Chinese, we often use 70% and 30% as a way to indicate both sides exist but the 70% part comes with more weight. It's not to say that is exactly 70%. Their original words are probably like this: 毛主席七分功，三分过。 Just to make this expression more clearer.
    - LiweiZ 12y ago
analyst74 12y ago
I dislike the sensationalist title, which is not really supported in the article. But the article itself is quite detailed, and have many interesting insights. 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.
- iliketosleep 12y ago
  Previous Chinese leaders were respected in public, but Xi is a God-like figure. It's not just the media, a lot of normal Chinese people are very passionate about President Xi, whilst under President Hu they were simply indifferent.
  - MollyR 12y ago
    Seems like Xi is modeling himself after the God Emperor (Dune reference)
    - smilekzs 12y ago
      +1 to the Dune analogy. He basically spoke what the people wanted to hear. And it's Hitler/Stalin all over again.
      - smilekzs 12y ago
        Wow all the downvotes. 50 cents is real.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > I don't think Xi enjoys as much support as the article claimed Thanks for the input. It would help us to know what it's based on. Do you live in China? Are you Chinese?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fbx12345 12y ago
Xi's nickname is known as “慶豐包” -- qingfeng Bun
jallmann 12y ago
Did this jump out at anyone? > 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.
- LLWM 12y ago
  It's an accurate description. What do you want them to do? Pretend WW2 didn't happen? Pretend that Germany or Italy sent significant amounts of troops to invade China?
  - jallmann 12y ago
    They can certainly memorialize the event, but explicitly putting the spotlight on the opposition seems quite overt. From a propaganda perspective, it's almost a reminder that the bad guys are still out there. In the US, we don't celebrate "Independence Day From the Usurious British," we just celebrate Independence Day.
    - hawkice 12y ago
      Not a precisely fair comparison, but it's worth noting that Nazis are very much a part of the modern American understanding of Important Events. The Japanese did some horrifying things in WW2 too, not just Nazis. I guess the trouble is, Japan has changed a lot (demilitarized, notably), but since they still technically have an emperor, it's hard to have a good name for WW2 Japan that isn't "Japan".
    - LLWM 12y ago
      Seems quite straightforward to me. China wasn't involved in the larger global conflict, so to them, WW2 was just defending against an attempted conquest by Japan. I don't see aggression as an insult or a comment on the inherent nature of the Japanese, it's just a descriptor of how the war came to be. Much like the US declaring independence. What would you consider a more neutral name?
smilekzs 12y ago
To all the 50-cent trash downvoters here: you guys suck. EDIT: funny how this get downvoted in a minute.

Off-topic: as a paying newyorker.com subscriber I resent the fact that the New Yorker uses page-covering video ads, and I resent the fact that they're incompetently implemented even more (they're borked on mobile devices that are zoomed or in landscape mode).

adnam 12y ago
Try using readability.com
- Tloewald 12y ago
  I don't want to block ads (I can use reader view in safari which is effectively the same thing).
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
No disagreement on crappy readability and accessibility. Never an excuse for that, it's just dumb, bad to users and even bad for business. 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).
- Tloewald 12y ago
  I'm happy -- well, not incensed -- to get ads that are well-implemented. 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).

Dhtrnr 12y ago

In all of that text, I couldn't find why he's supposedly "china's most authoritarian leader since Mao," other than a discussion of him trying to limit corruption in local government, which is a massive problem in China. If anything, this seems like a fluff piece trying keep in step with the "evil, scary China" narrative.

est 12y ago
> him trying to limit corruption in local government, which is a massive problem in China Or is it simply putting his opponents to jail?
- akfanta 12y ago
  Why not both?
- kylebrown 12y ago
  yup, this is the relevant paragraph: > 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.
jusben1369 12y ago
I can't get to the New Yorker article but this is a theme starting to play out in the US Press. From March 8th: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/world/move-over-mao-beloved-papa-xi-awes-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/world/move-over-mao-belove... “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?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dferlemann 12y ago

I don't know if it's fair to compare him to Mao, as Mao's reputation is pretty bad in the west. The general feel of this article is like: oh, he's pretty cool, well, anti-corruption, but controlling, and take his job really seriously, just like HITLER! Whut... But this article has very good details though. I enjoyed reading it.

LiweiZ 12y ago
Mao's reputation is mixed in mainland China, too. For more than 150 years, the big and powerful nation state of mind and the weakness in reality stay as a main force behind many things we see. It's a good starting point for reasoning many issues in China. And for me as a Chinese, it's a big negative sign before anything organically good could happen back home.
- mjklin 12y ago
  Ask any Chinese person and they will tell you: Mao was 70% right, 30% wrong. This is the official party line taught in schools.
  - LiweiZ 12y ago
    First time to hear that. If you are Chinese grown up in PRC as well, it's most likely you are younger than I am. Also, what I said is not some content directly from a specific source. Even there is some kind of "standard" from the authority in some way, the possibility that people have exactly same consensus in this regard.
  - LiweiZ 12y ago
    Well, I translated what you said into Chinese in my mind and get what those Chinese really said. In Chinese, we often use 70% and 30% as a way to indicate both sides exist but the 70% part comes with more weight. It's not to say that is exactly 70%. Their original words are probably like this: 毛主席七分功，三分过。 Just to make this expression more clearer.
  - LiweiZ 12y ago

analyst74 12y ago

I dislike the sensationalist title, which is not really supported in the article. But the article itself is quite detailed, and have many interesting insights. 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.

iliketosleep 12y ago
Previous Chinese leaders were respected in public, but Xi is a God-like figure. It's not just the media, a lot of normal Chinese people are very passionate about President Xi, whilst under President Hu they were simply indifferent.
- MollyR 12y ago
  Seems like Xi is modeling himself after the God Emperor (Dune reference)
  - smilekzs 12y ago
    +1 to the Dune analogy. He basically spoke what the people wanted to hear. And it's Hitler/Stalin all over again.
    - smilekzs 12y ago
      Wow all the downvotes. 50 cents is real.
hackuser 12y ago
> I don't think Xi enjoys as much support as the article claimed Thanks for the input. It would help us to know what it's based on. Do you live in China? Are you Chinese?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

fbx12345 12y ago

Xi's nickname is known as “慶豐包” -- qingfeng Bun

jallmann 12y ago

Did this jump out at anyone? > 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.

LLWM 12y ago
It's an accurate description. What do you want them to do? Pretend WW2 didn't happen? Pretend that Germany or Italy sent significant amounts of troops to invade China?
- jallmann 12y ago
  They can certainly memorialize the event, but explicitly putting the spotlight on the opposition seems quite overt. From a propaganda perspective, it's almost a reminder that the bad guys are still out there. In the US, we don't celebrate "Independence Day From the Usurious British," we just celebrate Independence Day.
  - hawkice 12y ago
    Not a precisely fair comparison, but it's worth noting that Nazis are very much a part of the modern American understanding of Important Events. The Japanese did some horrifying things in WW2 too, not just Nazis. I guess the trouble is, Japan has changed a lot (demilitarized, notably), but since they still technically have an emperor, it's hard to have a good name for WW2 Japan that isn't "Japan".
  - LLWM 12y ago
    Seems quite straightforward to me. China wasn't involved in the larger global conflict, so to them, WW2 was just defending against an attempted conquest by Japan. I don't see aggression as an insult or a comment on the inherent nature of the Japanese, it's just a descriptor of how the war came to be. Much like the US declaring independence. What would you consider a more neutral name?

smilekzs 12y ago

To all the 50-cent trash downvoters here: you guys suck. EDIT: funny how this get downvoted in a minute.