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from the the-truth-is-what-we-say-it-is dept.
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 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.