Friday, October 15, 2021

The grey cardinal of Xi Jinping Thought




An interesting article on Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping´s "grey eminence" Wang Huning, also regarded as the CCP´s inofficial chief ideologist. I also link to Wiki´s entry on Wang, for easy reference. I don´t know who or what "Palladium" might be. One of many things I noticed in their article is the following description of Xi´s recent politics: 

>>>This intervention has taken the form of the Common Prosperity campaign, with Xi declaring in January that “We absolutely must not allow the gap between rich and poor to get wider,” and warning that “achieving common prosperity is not only an economic issue, but also a major political issue related to the party’s governing foundations.” This is why anti-monopoly investigations have hit China’s top technology firms with billions of dollars in fines and forced restructurings and strict new data rules have curtailed China’s internet and social media companies. 

>>>It’s why record-breaking IPOs have been put on hold and corporations ordered to improve labor conditions, with “996” overtime requirements made illegal and pay raised for gig workers. It’s why the government killed off the private tutoring sector overnight and capped property rental price increases. It’s why the government has announced “excessively high incomes” are to be “adjusted.”

>>>And it’s why celebrities like Zhao Wei have been disappearing, why Chinese minors have been banned from playing the “spiritual opium” of video games for more than three hours per week, why LGBT groups have been scrubbed from the internet, and why abortion restrictions have been significantly tightened.

If this is true, Xi is combining increasing authoritarianism and moralistic "Confucianism" with a kind of left-populist turn in economic matters. It also seems to imply that the present "economic crisis" in China surrounding Evergrande might somehow be engineered by the Communist Party leadership to roll back the neo-bourgeoisie. What if the Evergrande situation is a sign of *strength* rather than weakness? Then, the CCP won´t collapse any time soon...

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning

Wikipedia on Wang Huning

No comments:

Post a Comment