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TechCrunch:
"China's web scrubbers have been busy banning a collection of terms and dropping the hammer on user accounts after the Xi Jinping, the country's premier, got the all-clear to become 'President For Life' after the Communist Party moved to amend the constitution to remove an article that limits Presidential terms to two five-year terms."
BBC:
"The comments remaining on the popular Sina Weibo microblog are mostly monosyllabic statements from users simply say they "like" or "approve" the amendments.
They are likely to be from China's "50 Cent Party" - a nickname coined for internet commentators who are paid small amounts to post messages supporting the government's position.
Some posts have attracted thousands of comments - but only a few are available to view. This is traditionally indicative of online censorship by government administrators. "
China Digital Times:
"Following state media's announcement, censorship authorities began work to limit online discussion. CDT Chinese editors found the following terms blocked from being posted on Weibo: [...]"
Sources:
China's web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power
China censorship after Xi Jinping presidency extension proposal
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:20PM (31 children)
He seems enamored of Han Fei, the legalist. Look up Han Fei and what he believed. China is going to have a Bad Time (TM), and it looks like they're going to be the new world superpower, which by extensions means *everyone* is going to have a Bad Time (TM).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sulla on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:57PM (11 children)
I have recently come across a lot of folks who seem to think that China is a poor repressed country that is just misunderstood and can do no wrong. In the US it seems pretty common to blame ourselves personally for the wrongdoings of our ancestors, it is not necessarily wrong because we are the same people we were then just with a different set of inputs. In the US's time as the sole superpower and during the period of the duality of the US/USSR some terrible things were done. Will the world when China is in control be worse than that when the US or Europe were in control? For South Korea and Japan and to some extent Vietnam/Philippines the US has been a great boon, our excess wealth and desire for cheap shit brought Japan and Korea up to the levels of being fully modernized. Vietnam, India, and others are experiencing the same effects to a lesser extent. China made the decision to not allow that to happen and to repress and keep their own people in poverty - this is frightful to me. If the party leadership sees their own people as nothing, how do they see the rest of the world?
China as a superpower is frightful, if we are the same people we were 150 years ago then they are the same people they were 150 years ago. Expect to see Taiwan reintegrated as US power falls, Vietnam and China will go to war over Vietnam's independence (Extremely high troop levels and weapons deal from Pres. Obama). There is that conflict between India/China over over the Maldives (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/02/chinese-warships-enter-east-indian-ocean-amid-maldives-tensions/).
May you live in interesting times.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:10PM (4 children)
Maybe I haven't been browsing Tumblr enough because I haven't seen much of that jive talk. Who's saying it? Got a cite? Maybe an opinion column? Are they reaching back towards 19th century Western imperialism in China?
I'm sure some closely related (but not identical) sentiments are more like:
Nationalist Chinese person: The U.S. had its time at the top, now it's China's time.
Many people (in relation to climate talks): The West had its time to pollute and grow economically, now the rest of the world can have its chance.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
Oh, it's more than that...China has, if you count the Xia period, a good 5,000 *years* of history. The US has been around for not even 1/20th of that. There is, I suspect, feeling among many Chinese that the world rightfully belongs to them as the oldest still-extant civilization and inventors of, for example, *gunpowder.*
And wasn't there some emperor in the 15th century AD who prohibited seagoing voyages not too long before Columbus and co. made their trips from Spain? Because if I'm remembering that right, that may very well be why we're not all speaking courtly Mandarin right now (and believe me I am trying my damndest to learn...). Such seemingly small things are the fulcrums on which history pivots. It's scary to think about...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hartree on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:29PM
I recall that it was at least partly a political battle between the eunuchs and the Confucian scholars. The emperor who had supported the voyages died, then the next emperor restricted the voyages for a short time His successor authorized a seventh one.
Then Admiral Zheng He's (a eunuch) seventh exploration fleet got destroyed by a storm off the coast of Africa and that helped tilt the balance from exploration (expensive) to internal civil works projects (also expensive).
The winning side tried to minimize the memory of Zheng He. He was born a muslim and became a eunuch which were both great ways to be unpopular with the Confucians. (Seeing a recurring pattern of how to handle the opposition? ;) )
This likely kept the Chinese from becoming a much broader empire. Whether they would have reached Europe is speculation.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:48PM (1 child)
This is people I know in real life and not anyone that I know online. I will have to see if I can figure out what publications they read.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:28PM
I feel much better about it, now. Do you seriously imagine that they actually read?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:33PM (5 children)
For South Korea and Japan and to some extent Vietnam/Philippines the US has been a great boon, our excess wealth and desire for cheap shit brought Japan and Korea up to the levels of being fully modernized.
Huh? Japan was just as modernized at the onset of WWII as the US was, and these days it makes the US look pretty backwards (take a ride on a Japanese train or subway and then try the same in the US). Losing a big war and then being occupied set them back a bit, but they weren't some backwards country before the war.
There is that conflict between India/China over over the Maldives
Don't worry, the Maldives will barely even exist in a few decades so it'll be moot.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:35PM
Don't be a downer. They'll be the next Atlantis!
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:55AM (2 children)
"the Maldives will barely even exist in a few decades"
It might just depend on how fast the Chinese can haul in sand. It's amazing how fast some islands in the South China Sea are growing. ;)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)
Aha!! Maybe that's why they have an interest there! They're going to haul in more sand to shore up the islands, and then take a cut of the tourism profits!
Personally, I still think it'd be pretty cool to build a giant dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, and lower the water level in the Mediterranean. Imagine all the shipwrecks that would be found.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:38PM
Hey, the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the water from Niagara falls in the late 60s, so I wouldn't bet against it. Especially if the Chinese are involved. They do big projects (Three Gorges, One Belt One Road, Tibet Railway for examples).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @07:33PM
Both Japan's modernization, and Japan's intervention in WW2 were both thanks to US attacks on their autonomy.
First during the Opening of Japan by forcing them to open trade with the US, then again during WW2 by cutting off the oil shipments they needed for their war effort against the surrounding Asian States and Russia. One could daresay the modernized Japan capable of its conflicts between the 1860s and WW2 were directly spurred by the US Opening, because prior to it their xenophobia and travel restrictions kept Japanese from travelling to America for education. Go read up on it, the big surge in American based education in Japan was directly a result of American intervention in Japan, leading up to Admiral Yamamoto's warning about coming into conflict with them during WW2... himself an American collegiate graduate.
American Foreign Policy has been responsible for a *LOT* more damage than most people are aware of, and almost as much comparatively as the rest of European expeditionary activities from the 1400s to 1900s.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hartree on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:11PM (18 children)
The first emperor was also a fan of Han Fei. Along that same line, censoring the net could be seen as a form of "burning the books" and arresting/sendng to gulags any dissenters a version of "burying the scholars". President for life has similarities to a quest for immortality. (I hope Xi isn't taking mercury. ;) )
Any modern Han Fei's better be careful. The first one ended up being "persuaded" to drink poison.
(Somehow, I think this post wouldn't last long on the net in modern day China.)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:43PM (7 children)
You basically read my mind on the matter, yes. This could get ugly, in ways that only a nuclear superpower with world-leading technology can make things ugly...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:10PM (4 children)
Here's one out of left field: the focus on an economic enemy and the upcoming decreases in the cost of space travel will bring the U.S. back to the "glory days" of the Cold War, or even beyond that. It will take a rivalry with China to make the U.S. great again, and clear away the stagnation of previous decades.
g2g
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:41PM (3 children)
No. Fuck that jingoistic nationalist bullshit. Do you have any idea how close we came and how many times to nuclear armageddon playing that game with Russia? Besides which, we don't have the natural resources to pull that off any longer, nor the in-country production, manufacturing, etc. abilities.
Now if we'd been spending the last 15-20 years on energy independence, desalinization, and similar tech, and weren't beholden to half the rest of the world for natural resources, maybe this would be a workable if immoral (for the reason above) strategy. But at this point, we don't even have what we need to pull that off from a realpolitik standpoint.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:05PM (2 children)
The rest of your comment seems fine, but I have to question your bit about natural resources. How does the US lack in that? The US still produces much of its own oil for instance (and probably all its own natgas), there's no shortage of coal (though we don't use it so much, but I do think we export it); honestly I can't think of any resource the US currently lacks that it didn't lack in the past. I think we're lacking in lithium, but I don't think we ever had much of that, we just didn't need much before they invented batteries that used it. We don't have much titanium, but again we never had much of that, Russia did, so when we started trading with Russia after the USSR fell, we could suddenly get it much cheaper and make jewelry with it.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
Cobalt, tantalum, lithium, rare earths of all sorts, thorium if we ever pull our heads out and get on that...we're past the age where nothing but coal and gas matter. High-tech society needs these lanthanides, transition metals, and (with any luck) low-weight actinides in order to function.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:18PM
Cobalt, tantalum, lithium, rare earths of all sorts, thorium if we ever pull our heads out and get on that
Again, how were we ever flush with these resources? Your original post said "we don't have the natural resources to pull that off any longer", which implies that we did have them at one time. I don't think the US was ever bountiful with cobalt or thorium or lithium.
As for rare earths, I thought we actually did have a lot of those mined in the West.
High-tech society needs these lanthanides, transition metals, and (with any luck) low-weight actinides in order to function.
Explain please.
Lanthanides: neodymium is very useful for high-power permanent magnets. The rest, I have no idea. Nuclear medicine maybe?
Transition metals: this is a very large category, and even includes iron and nickel and chromium, as well as titanium, scandium, molybdenum, silver, gold, copper, etc. In fact, it really contains all the thing that laypeople would consider as "metals". Some of these the US has plenty of, others not as much. I don't think it makes any sense to say that "high-tech society" needs these, any more than to say that it needs matter.
Actinides: this is thorium, uranium, plutonium, americium, etc. Last I heard, there's no shortage of uranium in the US. Plutonium doesn't exist here because it doesn't exist anywhere in nature, it (along with a bunch of others on this list) have to be synthesized. I think americium is used in smoke detectors. We're not really building new nuclear fission plants. Why exactly do we need actinides again?
I'll give you the transition metals thing, but again that is a bit silly because of course modern society needs things like copper and iron (just as ancient societies needed them), you really need to be more specific here. The rest, I really don't see why they're so important.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:55AM (1 child)
Why? Guy been around forever and saw China through some of it's most prosperous years in the past decade as president as well as the top-wig of the military and the party. It's not like China went 180 from a democracy into an autocracy overnight. They were never a democracy at the state level to begin with and never really worked towards becoming one.
Honestly I'm not seeing anything disastrous happening any time soon. Too many well fed mouths and well lubricated pockets everywhere.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:40PM
They were very democratic, but they called it republican. I call it FAILURE, they had a Failed State. They didn't protect their Border, they had a big problem with Japan. I always say, if you don't have a Border you don't have a Country. And you could go to China, you'd think you were in Japan. The Japanese said it was Japan. A lot of Countries said it was Japan. The Japanese, believe me, didn't send their best people. They sent killers. They sent rapists. And, I assume, some good people. And the other countries said, "look what happened to China, they didn't protect themselves, this is terrible, we'll protect them." And FDR did that whole Pearl Harbor thing, he set up Pearl Harbor, as everybody knows. So he could have a war. Not just to protect China. Because the economy was IN THE TOILET. I won't swear, a lot of people were swearing over that one. And worse. And America had that war, we built a nuclear arsenal -- one of the first -- and used it on Japan. And Russia moved very strongly too. They can be very proud of that. And China was China again, it was a Country. A VERY WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE Country. So Chairman Mao -- amazing leader -- says, "we have too many parties, let's just have one party, let's call it the Communist Party." And it's been terrific for them. They call it communist, it's not communist. It's business, it's a government that puts business first. After itself, after the party. But business is right up there. And it's been tremendous for them. China's agenda is not my agenda. Obviously I'm not working for China. But we can learn so much from them. They took me to the Forbidden City, I saw things no American ever saw. So interesting!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:20PM (9 children)
Hash: SHA256
China is fucked, folks. It is hard for someone who grew up in a liberal democracy to understand what's going on there, but the basic foundational ideas can be traced to the ancient Confucian and Daoist writings. To summarize their political philosophy, the less people know, the easier it is to govern. China took this idea to the utmost limit, bested perhaps only by North Korea, but even here a comparison fails, because Kim's state is not giant, not ancient, and not open to the world.
For the entire length of its history, which spans millennia, China fought unproductive political ideas by censoring them fully. This is what book burnings were all about, and putting the intellectual class through the meat-grinder every time the rulers changed. Even to this day, unacceptable ideas such as that of democracy are impossible to discuss in writing, and very dangerous to discuss orally. The Tiananmen Square massacre provides an excellent and a very recent example. Few people in China know about it, and almost no one knows what actually took place, because China approached that particular unrest just the way it approached every unrest: murder everyone who shows up, imprison everyone who is related to those who shows up, and then keep killing/detaining everyone who dares to talk about it. This is the principal way in which Chinese government manufactures consent: its people are simply not aware of any wrongdoing, because everyone who would like to talk about it is in prison, and everyone who wrote about it is pushing daisies.
Scroll forward to today. Xi did not make himself a despot, but he had no choice: he's being guided by the ruling elite. They already know that the end is near, and the only way to put it off is by consolidating power. They are hoping that when the next civil unrest begins, a dictatorship will be able to weather it. In a sense, they are right: nothing except a dictatorship can withstand the next storm. But in a more profound way they are wrong: a strong vertical of power will not save them this time. Thanks to the communication technology which permeated their society, the power to censor fully is lost, which will prove absolutely disastrous in the near future.
We are now waiting for the next significant show of political unrest in China. It could be a province asking for independence, could be another youth-heavy action similar to the Tiananmen Square protest. Either way, the government machine will be unable to temper itself, and will do what it has always done: send in the army, and then throw thousands or tens of thousands of people in prison, including families and friends, just by association. And at that point the shit will hit the fan. The next necessary ingredient in this stew is the total censorship, which is now impossible. This time there will be videos, and they will be shared, even if Xi starts executing people on TV for that. For the first time in history, a significant portion of the Chinese population will see with their own eyes the bloodbath passing as governance, and a revolution will begin. Xi and Co will of course fight till the end by applying more and more pressure and harsh violent censorship, but it will only put oil on the fire, spinning the whole state out of control.
The recent decision to abolish the terms and pave the way for a dictatorship all but assures this outcome. The Chinese elite studied the case of the Soviet Union case with anal retentiveness, and they learned that there are two ways for an empire which relies on heavy censorship to maintain the order, once censorship fails. The comparison between Russian and Chinese empires is not strained: both rely on very heavy censorship to convince the population to submit. The main difference is that in Soviet Union people were generally aware of the censorship, and a vibrant underground dissident scene existed for centuries. China, on the other hand, managed to bury the very memory of opposing thought by burying its adherents in a thorough and exhaustive manner. But this difference has only the potential to exacerbate the Chinese showdown, when it begins, since the Chinese society is even less politically ready for a sudden and universal shift in the group-think.
The two ways are: one was blazed by Gorbachev, who should be regarded as one of the brightest, or luckiest at least, statesmen of the 20th century. Not only he was able to foil a coup attempt against himself (in Russia!), he managed to redraw the state borders over the 6th of the planet's land surface without firing a single shot. Just let it sink in. USA presented the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a victory in a cold war, with a not-so-tacit assumption it was the final outcome of USA's hard work. But this is an insanely stupid way of looking at what happened. We can all see what happens when USA tries to redraw borders of puny desert states: they go kakapuku. Another stellar example of USA/NATO helping out with border disputes is the clasterfuck in Ukraine. One cannot but marvel at the fact that armed conflicts in the post-USSR region started years after the dissolution, and that only after an ever-increasing destabilizing pressure from USA/NATO.
The price for this peaceful end was the empire itself, which is also the reason many Russian politicians strongly dislike Gorbachev's way. Their Chinese comrades are on the same page: they've studied the peaceful way with utmost care, and concluded: anything but this. The imperial ruling elite, the very fabric of the government, has charted its last, one-way trip: they will hold on to the power at absolutely any price to their own population, as China has always done. This resolution has been fermenting over the last decade or so, but now we have a clearest sign yet, this is how they will proceed. They will fortify the central pillar of power and turn the censorship to 11. The results will be the inevitable total failure of the censorship mechanism, followed by a revolution or a civil war, or both.
~ Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday February 28 2018, @12:13AM
Anonymous with signature verification, it is almost weird I haven't seen this trend yet.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @12:53AM (1 child)
I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Thanks for commenting!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:55AM
Censorship so strong he forgot any mention of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests [wikipedia.org] I'm sure that by then phones had video capabilities (/s). And it was defused but not a massacre.
Please, spare me that HK is not China nonsense. China gov is the side prevailing, with the other side getting jail terms and being unable to take part in politics for even longer.
China seems to be perfecting the hand and glove trick, and by now it's titanium fist in soft touch coating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:41AM (5 children)
Cool story CIA. The american empire is finished, thank fuck.
Whatever new geopolitical equilibrium emerges this century with Russia and China will be better, as america takes its rightful place as a 3rd world nation of cheap dumb labour.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:47AM (4 children)
I've heard that one before. Several times. In the 1960s we were going to get economically waxed by Germany. Then by Japan Inc. in the late 70s. Then the Asian Tigers a decade later. In fact, I've been being assured the US is on the path to immediate collapse most of my life.
Of course, in the time of Augustus, Livy predicted that unless it returned to its founding principles (which, by the way, didn't exist at the founding while they were rebelling against the Etruscans) Rome would surely fall. He was right. It took 500 years for the western empire, and a thousand for the eastern empire. This is why I have limited patience for those crying doom.
One day, it will be true as nothing lasts forever, but given some of the internal structural problems of China and (for all the bluster and Syrian/Ukrainian military expeditions) the shaky economic fundamentals of Russia (what's the current price of oil compared to the rate they're drawing down government reserve funds?), I wouldn't hold my breath.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:08AM (1 child)
When I'm chopping down a tree, every swing of the axe I think "is this the blow that will bring it down?" Every time, the answer is no, except for the final blow.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:14PM
Maybe, but if you keep swinging away and then pass the job to your son, and he eventually passes the job to your grandson, who passes it to your great-grandson, who finally fells the tree (with it falling on his head), as far as you were concerned the tree never really fell since you weren't even alive to see it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:23PM (1 child)
Many predictions tend to be overly optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on your point of view), and greatly underestimate the effect of inertia.
Just look at sci-fi from the 1960s or 70s or 80s: they predicted we've have giant rotating space stations and a moon base by the early 2000s, that we'd have biological androids and people moving offworld by the mid 2010s, etc. It's the same with those predictions about economic powers. Germany is indeed doing very well economically overall (#2 exporter in the world by value, just behind China), and Japan was doing extremely well but then hit a big roadblock and has now been eclipsed by China. America is not rising relative to other powers, it's falling. But like Rome, it could take a very long time for it to get really bad, or it might not ever get really awful, it might become just like the UK: a has-been that's still a decent place compared to the majority of nations worldwide to live in but not the economic and military superpower it once was.
Personally, I have a hard time seeing China having any kind of political or economic disaster any time soon. They're too important to the global economy, because they make so much stuff we use, and all the manufacturing know-how has moved there. AFAICT, the economy there is good, probably better overall for most people than it's ever been (look what is was like 30 years ago). Generally, countries are politically stable as long as the economy is healthy, because the people are happy and busy. When the economy does poorly, then you have a recipe for trouble because now there's a bunch of unhappy, unemployed people. I don't see how China fits this description, though Russia seems to.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:53PM
China is much better than Russia, but like all countries (including the US) it faces constraints. For all of the "Go West" development, they still have a major economic disparity between the east and the western regions. They have multiple ethnic instabilities (Xinjiang, anyone?). And for all of the reforms, they still have a lot of quasi state owned industries that they can't seem to shake. The big success stories notwithstanding, they still have a problem that much of the civil planning is done politically with less input from the economics than it really should have (ghost cities, anyone?)
Further, the official statistics on growth, etc. coming out of China seem rather optimistic compared to what can be monitored from outside (exports, imports of commodities, cash flows for investments). There's a lot of impetus to make it look good for Beijing when the reality is that Beijing is far far away and the local officials do what they want much of the time. Yes, Xi has made moves on tackling corruption, but it seems to mostly be hitting political opponents of him and his allies seem to be doing business, at least partly, as usual.
China is a great nation with a bright future in many ways (We hope. A bad future for China could be very bad for the rest of the world), but my point is that usually there are limits to what any country can do in the long term.