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Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

economist.com

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Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#161

Post by krapp »

cptskippy wrote: post #132
drraid0 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But Japan has been mostly, um, "inert" and peaceful since WW2. China's history since WW2, to this day, has been one of one atrocity after another. Things seem to be getting worse with Winnie the Pooh declaring him eternal president. Also, if Japan was Asia raping in WW2, China is China-raping now.

Japan is still bound by article 9 of it's constitution but let us not pretend that they haven't been trying to get rid of that article or sent their defense force to play war in the middle east "strictly for defensive purposes". That being said; between the two, China today is more like Japan during WWII than Japan today is.

>but let us not pretend that they haven't been trying to get rid of that article or sent their defense force to play war in the middle east "strictly for defensive purposes".

The PM and his party (the LDP) in coalition with the Komeito party have been trying to push that for years, without success. Mostly because the Japanese people don't seem to support it.

And to be fair, revising Article 9 and not going on a romp through the Middle East is also an option. I can see the rationale for doing so, besides right-wing nationalism on Japan's part.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#162

Post by freech »

jerf wrote: post #53
freech wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have. What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

Having a card up your sleeve is still valuable, even if nobody knows it is there, because it means if you have to pull it out all of a sudden, it's there. Taiwan would be my A#1 pick for "country most likely to secretly have nuclear weapons" because while everyone around China has reason to be nervous at one level or another, Taiwan's clearly got the best one. "The world" as a whole is also a bit jumpy about nuclear…

So china invades Taiwan, Taiwan nukes them, and then? China decides to nuke them of the map instead?

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#163

Post by Dolores12 »

darawk wrote: post #158
Dolores12 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What make you think that being under monarchy Europe would yield different result? China is a great example of being a communist state where people's life is getting better and better. Political stability is a key to economic growth.

China is only growing economically to the extent that it's relaxed its socialist, authoritarian policies. As soon as it reasserts them, all that growth will go away. The fact that people's lives are improving is not sufficient evidence that the government is benevolent. There is only one thing that reliably predicts human behavior: incentives. The incentives of the communist party are much more weakly aligned with th…

I must be missing something, top reply in this post shows exactly opposite - there is no relaxation of authoritarian policies. They tighten freedoms to be stable.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#164

Post by pishpash »

api wrote: post #17
ahtu123 wrote: post #11

I 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.

It'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.

The 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.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#165

Post by JBlue42 »

pishpash wrote: post #154
ahtu123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. Russia and China have their most keen global political leaders in a generation and the US is infighting.

The US is infighting because the electorate wants to be infighting. When the citizenry is so sheltered and content to know nothing about the world this is what happens.

>When the citizenry is so sheltered and content to know nothing about the world this is what happens.

I thought we were supposed to learn that lesson after 9/11?

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#166

Post by rdtsc »

mortenjorck wrote: post #117
rdtsc wrote: post #7

> 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, n…

I 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 Nat…

I 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.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#167

Post by mercer »

natecavanaugh wrote: post #99
jyrkesh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naively, and based on historical data, I agree with point #1. What worries me about China is that they've had no problem--politically or technologically--collecting massive data sets on their citizenry via a level of mass surveillance that's never been reached AFAICT. On top of that, they're investing hard in artificial intelligence, and the benefits will ultimately be reaped by whoever's in charge of the datasets (i…

I remember reading an intro to Orwell's Animal Farm that discussed Orwell's ability to see the dystopian use of technology, but couldn't see how it could liberate a citizenry from totalitarianism (like the shortwave, for example). I think the same of this high level tech as well. I could be wrong, but I think individuals do desire freedom and agency, and as long as that desire is there in some, it's going to be hard…

I do hope you're right.

One of my 'in the realm of possibility' dystopian fears is that a totalitarian regime figures out how to (chemically?) keep their society docile. Ideally the populace would still be creative, to an extent, but that might not even be necessary, or compensated for by stealing innovation from other places.

One could argue that this is already sort of happening in many places, without there being a big conspiracy behind it, I guess.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#168

Post by rdtsc »

adventured wrote: post #23
rdtsc wrote: post #7

> 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, n…

> Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general. For about ~15 years before Xi fully consolidated power, that's how things routinely worked. It was run almost entirely on a bribery to get things done approach, in the business sphere. Xi has moved the system/party on to new goals, with the business realm no longer having the same high o…

Thank you that was a good read. A nice perspective from someone who is considered "Western" but has studied and knows Xi well.

There was an interesting point made, that even though personal freedoms are being curtailed, party is consolidating its power, and ideology is emphasized more, those who reach economic prosperity will somehow demand or seek freedom and will push back. I think that's been the promise of Western-style capitalism + democracy -- we get some market capitalism going, with all its ills but that's ok, soon enough democracy will arrive.

But what if it is doesn't. What if this authoritarian mode can lead to a more efficient and effective system. (More brutal of course for individuals). That point was slightly touched in in regard to military, quoting a Bloomberg contributor, James Stavridis, a four star general ("a military under a single long term rule might have an advantage of set of figures that keep getting reshuffled every 4 years). But what if it is also economic efficiency too.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#169

Post by golergka »

jotm wrote: post #116
golergka wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of friends of mine worked as hardware engineers in Russian military (or, to be exact, some subsidiary). They later moved on to Intel and Nvidia, and overall you can consider them quite capable CPU engineers (I never got the hang of what exactly they were doing, and a lot of it was under NDA). While working there, they got less than $10k annually. If they would be able to get H1B, it's my understanding they'd…

Expenses are also lower, right? Basics like housing, food, utilities. Even in the west few actually need the bloated budgets they say they do. "Oh I can't live on 60K/year!". Give me a break.

Depends on the quality of life you're aiming at. Rent is certainly cheaper than in SF, NY and London, but isn't that far off from other american and european cities. Still, you can't compare even rents easily, because while european and american renters usually talk about one-bedroom apartments and sometimes don't even mention a common room, here apartments are measured in rooms (not bedrooms) and in my experience are usually smaller. Personally, I pay about $1k for one-room apartment, but it's 15 minutes walking distance from the office, in a very nice neighborhood, furniture and a view; typical rate would be $500 per month or so.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#170

Post by pas »

gdubs wrote: post #106
pas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the sentiment over WWI that it was only a matter of time and casus belli? If not an assassination then a border skirmish or something else.

I mean, part of the motivation of getting rid of nukes is that 'it's only a matter of time' before someone decides to use them. Nuclear weapons have been around for less than 100 years, so it's not a lot of time to draw conclusions from about how likely Nuclear War is over N years.

Nukes have been used already in war. So I fully agree and would welcome a global disarmament.
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