The Chinese leader seeks to restore an earlier era of ideological indoctrination and national unity—whether his society wants it or not.

The Marx and Confucius show is just one small part of Xi’s campaign to fashion a new ideological conformity in China. Its apparent aim is to foster unity in preparation for struggles at home and abroad—but with the ultimate purpose of tightening Xi’s grip on China.

xibe-check

Chinese leaders “want to have a very powerful, socialist, ideological framework that can congeal the population, and this is of course under the party’s control and guidance,” Wang Feng, a sociologist at UC Irvine, told me. “What’s a more powerful way to centralize power than to control people’s thought?”

very-smart

Xi’s push for communist conformity might seem anachronistic in the age of social media and the global digital commons. But it’s only one way he is dragging China back into an older, darker time.

you-are-a-serf

returned to Cold War–style confrontation with the West after a period of fruitful cooperation

torment

reestablished one-man rule to a degree unseen since the days of Mao Zedong, the Communist regime’s founder. Now he is attempting to restore the intense ideological indoctrination of earlier years of Communist rule—the era of Mao’s Little Red Book

xi-peel

in March, Xi introduced the “Global Civilization Initiative,” a manifesto in which he advocates “respect for the diversity of civilizations” and that “coexistence transcend feelings of superiority.” Countries, he adds, should “refrain from imposing their own values or models on others.”

That’s Xi-speak for denying the existence of the universal rights and values that undergird the global primacy of democracy

suswcc

strangled private education

Lol foreign investors get fucked

Chinese leaders have a long history of trying to control thought. In 213 B.C.E., the first emperor of the Qin dynasty became irritated with scholars

qin-shi-huangdi-fireball unlimited genocide on westoid “scholars”

If any china-watchers or xi-speakers want to unpack all the other bullshit 07

  • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    11 months ago

    He has reversed decades of market liberalization in favor of renewed state intervention in the economy, returned to Cold War–style confrontation with the West after a period of fruitful cooperation

    Oh, sure, Xi is responsible for 21st Century Cold War. God, for a second there, I thought it was just my government falling back into old patterns the face of waning economic influence and an inability to synthesize a new response to modern conditions. That might have been worrying. Thank goodness one man in China is responsible. I might have had to, dunno, critically examine the policy of the organization that claims to represent me on the world stage. And that sounds like a lot of work, so it’s a good thing I don’t have to.

    • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      In October, a Chinese book distributor recalled a recent reprint of a biography of the Ming dynasty’s last emperor from sellers without a clear explanation. The Chongzhen emperor, as he was known, hanged himself when his dynasty collapsed in 1644. Perhaps the book’s cover language, which advertises that “Chongzhen’s repeated mistakes” had “hastened the nation’s destruction,” could be construed as an implicit criticism of Xi amid the country’s mounting economic problems and geopolitical tensions.

      if there’s one thing you really, really cannot claim modern China does, it’s repeat mistakes. I mean fuck, even if you wanna stick to the exaggerated western historiography, they went from the failures of the Great Leap Forward to being the rising center of global production in little more than half a century. China is a country that learns from mistakes. To suggest otherwise, especially in a United goddamn States newspaper, is absurd. And to cap it all off;

      Whatever the reason, today’s censors, much like the Qin emperor, seem to prefer that readers not compare present and past.

      this is all supposition from an ocean away. There’s a million reasons to recall a textbook, Michael just wants you to know his personal hypothesis

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        11 months ago

        To claim that China doesn’t want people to compare past and present is absolutely absurd. They are constantly pointing to the warlords period or any other period of history in China going ‘look whatever mistakes we have or are making it is nowhere near as fucking bad as that.’ as well as pointing out that whenever China falls apart is exactly when outside forces come in and literally pillage the countryside. It’s literally one of the bedrocks to understanding why China has continued to maintain political cohesion even with these massive economic changes that we’ve seen. They are well aware of what the consequences are if they fail, both from their own history and from the collapse of the USSR.

        It also impossible for them not to be obsessed with the past because they literally descend indirectly from one of the oldest state government cultures ever and are literally surrounded by the artifacts of millennium of history. It is not like America where we will gladly sweep even the last decade under the rug to keep pulling the same scams over and over again. In a sane country, this article would be censored not because it’s critical of the government, but because it is just blatantly factually incorrect.

      • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        13·
        11 months ago

        multiple building collapses in NYC within the same year lenin-sleeping

        some bookseller in China makes a printing error limmy-awake

        the reach is so far you could reach the top shelf with it. “somebody gave me resting-bitch-face in DC today. MAYBE this is because America is circling the toilet and all our institutions not to mention physical infrastructure are collapsing in realtime” Actually that doesn’t work because that’s probably actually true

      • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        9·
        11 months ago

        The government has smothered Uyghur culture by destroying religious sites; curtailing the study of Uyghur culture, literature, and language in schools; and associating the practice of Islam with extremism.

        [five paragraphs later]

        Throughout the crisis in Gaza, for instance, Chinese state media have fed the public a steady stream of pro-Palestinian messaging that has contributed to an upsurge in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel discourse online. Censors could easily suppress such sentiments, but they don’t, because they help build domestic support for Beijing’s foreign policy.

        Is China cynically switching policies for different Moslem communities as it suits them, or is the author?

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          11·
          11 months ago

          There’s a video of a Palestinian ambassador talking to CGTN about his visit to Xinjiang. He speaks very positively about China’s development and anti-radicalization programs.

          That’s the key contradiction IMO. Westoids subconsciously believe that all Muslims are violent terrorists so any attempt to deradicalized Muslims in a peaceful way is seen as an attack against the core of Islamic culture. People who realize there’s a difference between Islam and terror, including Muslims, see no contradiction between Islamic culture and detadicalization.