> I'd love to have some sinophiles explain Xi's strategy, what motivated him and his cohort to accelerate their time line.

The timer on him is still ticking. He himself may well secured an n-th term, and party's temporary obedience at gunpoint..., but I feel he is very desperate, and have sleepless nights in anticipation of 2022.

Any fault of him, whether it is flagging economy, or any concession on the foreign front, or him not scoring just enough of political capital on that, would be 1000% used to undermine his position by whomever wanting to unseat him.

Unlike the oligarchates of ex-Union, CPC has very real internal conflicts. CPC's size ensures that there will never be enough posts, titles, and entitlements for every member of the establishment.

Hasn’t the corruption campaign served to cleanse the party of Xi’s rivals?

The whole of the party is his potential rival.

Xi will never be safe from the party. The moment he runs out of steam, and presents a chance for power to be taken from him, someone, out of many millions of ranked party cadres, is just ought to take advantage of the situation.

Remember, both Kruszev, and Deng were relatively small fish at the time they seized power, as was the case for power takeovers in a lot of single party regimes.

The central weakness of closed, authoritarian regimes is poor signaling.

Kruszev and Deng wouldn't have been able to seize power without substantial supporter.

The way I see it, the failure of those in power (from their perspective) was of not recognizing that well of support as it built.

Or, put another way, this is why authoritarian regimes are always paranoid: they have no objective methods for gauging public / party / military support, as dissent is always private.

(Well, aside from secret police)

That worked out so well for Stalin.

Maybe I'm missing something as my history isn't excellent. Didn't Stalin rule until his death? So in the context of this thread, yes, that strategy worked out exactly as Stalin wanted it to?

You know what, you're right, I was misremembering.

Edit: Although I still don't think the circular firing squad is a great strategy.

> My guess is Xi felt compelled to act aggressively now to head off upcoming crisises.

China is going to be facing a demographic crisis soon - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/17/world/asia/ch...

Older generation in Hongkong and Taiwan tend to identify themselves as Chinese, but the younger generation tend not to. This is mostly due to exposure to western media which rightly or wrongly accuses the authoritarian CCP government for every bad things happening within its border.

CCP leadership might still think they have a chance for true reunification, or maybe they're just saber rattling. Personally, I don't think full reunification is possible until Chinese propaganda is able to compete with American ones.

> Older generation in Hongkong and Taiwan tend to identify themselves as Chinese, but the younger generation tend not to.

I see this, but I also see the "We're [Taiwanese] the real China, and the mainland isn't" mentality as well (they'll get upset if you call them Taiwanese). It does get a bit complicated, especially if you think back to what happened during the cultural revolution and the people that stayed in mainland vs those that went to Taiwan.

Rarely will you run into anyone with this “we’re the real China,” 外省人 identity that would be offended to be called Taiwanese. Descendants of mainlanders that came to Taiwan after 1949 are a minority and Taiwanese identity is very popular here. Both Taiwanese and Waishengren will quickly point out that ROC is the original China and of course they are independent because how could they not be independent from a country that split from it. Then Taiwanese will disagree about whether China (ROC or PRC) has any right to colonize their island.

Another generation and hardly anyone will have Chinese identity, I imagine. An example I hear a lot is that the Vietnamese and Koreans also used to be Chinese.

Taiwanese, Hongkongers, and the larger Chinese diaspora still have the 華人 identity (i.e. part of the Chinese civilization).

It's interesting that you would characterize anyone who disagrees with your interpretation of Xi JinPing's geopolitical strategy as a "Sinophile." Understanding his motivations is more useful for his enemies than followers.

Like francophile, anglophile, etc. Someone who cares about those cultures, has opinions.

What term would you use?

Xi acted aggressively against Hong Kong right now because he wasn’t expecting any pushback from the US. The UK tried, but the UK isn’t powerful enough on its own.

Look at how the US responded to Chinas aggressive actions against Hong Kong. They imposed sanctions which basically treated Hong Kong the way the US did the rest of China. The punishment is exactly what Xi wanted!

> I'd love to have some sinophiles explain Xi's strategy

I'm not a sinophile, but I have pro CCP friends (we get in a lot of arguments). I think the reason to support Xi is very simple. Look at Shanghai in 1990 and 2010[0] and GDP[1]. While many are still poor in China, it is nothing to what it was in the 80's and 90's. Many families went from living in impoverished conditions to being wealthy. Living conditions improved dramatically for the average Chinese person and cities appeared out of nowhere and many of them are quite successful. This is just fact. But when you look at it through this lens it is easy to understand why people support Xi. Their lives got better. Then think back to Mao, where no line couldn't be crossed if it was for "the greater good."

It is important to keep this in mind, because it is easy to ignore things like human rights violations, racism, colonialism. I mean the same thing happened in America. It is also easier to not compare things on a spectrum but discritized (e.g. you're either "racist" or "not racist" there is no more racist or less racist)[2]. So what do you see in China? Your country is booming. You see America talking shit. You see Americans revolting and complaining about their own government. You see George Floyd. But you don't see Xianjiang. You don't see Hong Kong the same way we see it in the west (it's just a few protestors). You see "We, the powerful China are trying to help our fellow Chinese people gain a better life" and the average mainlander doesn't understand "why they don't want our help" (something my Mandarin tutor said to me). They don't see HK as successful, they see it as falling behind the rest of China.

So my understanding is that it is more about that they fully trust their government. They have real evidence to point to too. The other issue is that the viewpoint is different as well. Uyghurs are seen as terrorists and the term "reeducation camp" is not synonymous with "concentration camp" for them. There's a high level of nationalism and sense of being a part of something bigger. You can also see this in how the history of China has been taught differently through history and how the definition of "Han" has changed (as well as what "China" is and called). The terms China and Han have become great unifiers for the country and people (there's something to say to creating less racial division points). It really comes down to perception and flow of information. And I'll be honest, seeing a lot of this makes me question a lot about the flow of information we have here in America.

To be honest, watching China (and America, Africa, Europe, Russia), I've come to believe that political support more comes down to human psychology and emotional appeal than it does to logic and morals. That might be why the current state of the economy is a good predictor of the next president (not 100% accurate, but pretty good). If you weren't doing well before and you are doing well now, well it must be the leaders, right?

[0] https://i.redd.it/9rcoznoiwol21.jpg

[1] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/14997/production...

[2] I'd say that this binary thing is an important aspect (one that has also become a problem in America). But like I have friends that say that America is hypocritical because it complains about censorship in China but not about it on Twitter. There's no nuance. There's no taking into account if an individual is expressing consistent ideology (complain about censorship in China and in the US) vs hypocritical (complain about censorship in China but not in the US, or vise versa). There's also some confusion that complaining is an essential part of democracy as criticizing your government in the west is seen as a way to improve and iterate as opposed to tearing it down.

The characterization of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet being content with Chinese Communist Party rule may be an exaggeration. Furthermore, Xi's hardline was a reaction to 1) rampant corruption of the communist party as a result of market liberalization. 2) democratic movements across the world, including the Arab Spring, the 2011 Chinese Jasmine Revolution, and the Umbrella movement.

Basically Xi's nightmare is the disintegration of the Soviet Union and he's running the opposite playbook that Gorbachev used.

No contest.

I'm just a westerner reading reports from other westerners. I'm relating my perception, as gleaned from western media.

"The characterization of Hong Kong..."

IIRC, I read there's a huge swing in the self identification of HK residents from "Chinese" to "Cantonese". Slim evidence, I know. But maybe directionally correct?

"Xinjiang and Tibet..."

I didn't say that. Western media has related that ethnic Tibetans and traditional Muslims have struggled, since I began reading the news in high school (80s).

Hong Kong has some of the most anti-communist people in China, because that's where they escaped to during the Chinese Civil War/ Cultural Revolution.

> Basically Xi's nightmare is the disintegration of the Soviet Union and he's running the opposite playbook that Gorbachev used.

This is certainly what it looked like from Russia in the 90s, when China was just starting to meaningfully rise. I think Gorbachev's main mistake was that people were given political/personal freedoms before economic ones, and it was done way too quickly. After some 70 years without these freedoms, people did not know what to do with them, so a lot of bad shit happened in late 80s and "wild 90s". Economy was decimated, Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia itself was close to falling apart as well. Just read any US geopolitics text from late 90s or early 00s - they all prognosticate that Russia will be no more, salivating to divvy up the spoils. What got in the way of that was Putin, or, to be exact, Russia's national security establishment which installed Putin, since nobody knew who he was 6 months before he became president.

So the way the Chinese policy was perceived from Russia, it was something more sane. For one thing their stated timeframe for the transformation of the country (50 years IIRC, but I might be wrong), seemed more realistic. For another they started introducing capitalism first, rather than give a bunch of dirt poor people completely unrestricted political freedom a-la early 90's Russia, which could only lead to anarchy and disaster.

And I do believe they will succeed in the long term. The best analogy I have is the current obsession in US corporations with quarterly results, leading to suboptimal long term outcomes. This is what the US itself behaves like, except the "quarter" is 4 years long.

China doesn't have to worry about that, they live on a different time scale and can enact consistent policies spanning many decades. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's easier for the US to course-correct, which can be beneficial because most long term plans do not survive contact with reality. But if China gets the big picture right (which to me it seems like they do), and is able to course correct on the margins, they don't really need the randomness that the US system has.

I just wish they'd knocked it off with the concentration camps and child labor at this point. It undermines their own progress.

As to Ma, oligarchs with political aspirations need to be periodically reminded who runs the country. This is why Khodorkovsky ended up in prison for a decade. He got way too powerful, exerted a lot of ifluence in Duma, and thought taxes were optional. None of those three things were acceptable to the Kremlin.

No, that's not why Khodorkovsky ended up in prison. He gave money to Putin's opposition, that's why. As to taxes, its laughable, the ruling mafia in Russia steals $trillions from the till and not even trying to hide it.

Re-read what I said. Dude bought half the Duma by the time Putin went after him and was writing his own laws. And you're right about taxes, but do observe that taxes are only optional in Russia as long as you are an oligarch who doesn't have political ambitions. If you delude yourself into believing you can buy the parliament, they become very non-optional indeed. Selective application of justice can be a powerful thing.

> Basically Xi's nightmare is the disintegration of the Soviet Union and he's running the opposite playbook that Gorbachev used.

I find it funny by how hard people of Western upbringing try find some "higher meaning" to what villainous characters do, the more powerful, and scarier they are.

And they do not want to take the most obvious, explainative, and floating on the surface explanation, because according to them, "it can't be that simple!"

A phrase I hear often is "I don't believe in cartoonish evil characters!!!"

And that despite much of 3rd world dictators very much being such, and their actions being very well explainable by "evil guys, doing evil deeds, because they are evil, arrogant f..ks," and that being their primary motivations, with all their "roleplay" obligations, and nominal official duties coming second to that.

There's quite a lot of evidence that the CCP values social stability (their own definition of it at least) extremely highly, above almost everything else.

I don't agree with you about Westerners not seeing the villainous wood for the evil trees, but I think it's moot when there's an even simpler explanation: they do not want to lose control.

That is it, but that does not preclude arrogance, and evil nature from being a primary driver of such person at the same time as rational desire for self preservation, and, sometimes, even a rare genuine brilliance in political matters.

Take a look at Bin Rasheed, or Li.

It kind of does preclude it. Your argument seems to be "they do bad things primarily because they're just evil" and mine is "they do bad things primarily because they can't bear losing control".

I feel like you just want to make a point about the CCP being evil. Fair enough, but that doesn't really have any connection with what you were trying to say about Western critical thinking.

> Fair enough, but that doesn't really have any connection with what you were trying to say about Western critical thinking.

Western critical thinking seem to be hell-bent on thinking that some grand totalitarian regime cannot be just "dumb evil," and it must always come with some kind of equally grand conspiracy, secret agenda, maybe even some semi-valid point, as they probably think "it must take some brains, complex motive, and talent to run you evil empire at such scale."

It's beyond them to concede that their grand political theories are not the case, and the man is driven just by your regular arrogance, greed, and cowardice, aka lust for power, even if his ways of achieving those may be quite sophisticated at the time.

Let's hope USA 2016-2020 adds "failing upwards" to the list of available OTC explanations.

Even 3rd world dictators are only cartoonishly evil on a surface level. Gaddafi is a prime example. His "Amazon guard" sounds like it came straight out of a comic book. However, after a decade of civil war in Libya, it's clear that he was the only thing keeping it together in the first place.

I find my theory has a better predictive power on what Xi might do next than the simple explanation that he is villainous.

The fact that the communist party made extensive studies of the fall of the Soviet Union has been well documented.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303755504579207...

Believe or not, CCP studied French Revolution and fall of Roma, and the boom and bust cycles in 2000+ Written Chinese history... And many stuff people should be studying... Nothing fancy, just learning from history.

Western people are not misunderstanding China, they just are content with a myopic tiny view, and happy to apply whatever judgement they can at the whim of the moment.

Discussing any China related issues on HN is like arguing with mobs. You either are drowning in downvotes, like saying Mr. Xi is not just a dictator; or arguing with someone who questioned any minor details you raised as a Chinese, often make me questioning did I lose touch with China so much that a random HN visitor actually knows better than myself...