Beijing to Chinese Citizens: Watch Yourselves

American Interest ^ | April4, 2016 | Staff

[C19fan]

Xi Jinping’s China is doubling down on its 70s nostalgia, reestablishing a Maoist system of social control that aims to have a policeman on every block and an informer in every social network. The Financial Times reports:

[C19fan]

President Jinping is a Mao wanna be. He got caught red handed as part of the leaks of the Panama Papers.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Iblab Tufuzz has sent you a friend request.

[faithhopecharity]

Same for America today, starting especially on “progressive” college campuses

[dfwgator]

Yep, Academia has taken their inspiration from the Cultural Revolution.

[Gay State Conservative]

During my first visit to China (in 1980) I had a spooky interaction with a government official which could only mean that I was being closely watched and monitored while there.The details would take time to explain but that's the only logical conclusion I could make...and the people traveling with me (all Westerners) agreed.It didn't involve arrest or anything...it involved currency exchange.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Explains why Job #1 for any Chinese with half a brain is to find some other country to live in.

[ifinnegan]

Xi is quite a thug.

What is the Panama Papers?

[Pelham]

Panama Papers: 7 things to know

[Disambiguator]

Explains why Job #1 for any Chinese with half a brain is to find some other country to live in.

A lot of them are ending up in my parent's neighborhood in the South Bay Area (Silicon Valley). They don't seem to mind the real estate prices there (all listings feature the letter M).

[Gay State Conservative]

Explains why Job #1 for any Chinese with half a brain is to find some other country to live in.

Hong Kong,although actually part of China now (since 1997) has is own set of laws,including residency laws,and issues its own passports.They have a huge problem with mainland Chinese trying to enter and stay illegally.The South China Morning Post (published in Hong Kong) has a story on this subject just about every day.

[tbw2]

There was a TED talk in the past year how China has learned from the video gaming industry, creating a social network score based on social conformity to the regime. If you share their Tweets and say positive stuff about the Communist party/government/China, get points. Get a high score, you get preference for a visa to visit Hong Kong and other government papers.
The insidious side is that your friends’ scores can pull you down, so your friend posting the duck in place of tanks in the classic Tianamen Square photo hurts your ranking. You either apply social pressure to them to boost your score, which is what the government wants, or you unfriend them online, which isolates the politically correct opinions and limits their influence, which is what the government wants.

[Buckeye McFrog]

IMHO social media was CREATED specifically FOR imposing this type of social control over the masses.

It’s happening here too. Don’t doubt me.

[DoughtyOne]

[WMarshal]

I wonder if this new repression is a result of trying to prepare for a meltdown of the Chinese banking system. For westerners the Chinese are odd ducks politically but they are a very ancient culture and even the Maoist purges did not eliminate the Chinese “government culture” or even drastically change it from the days of the Emperors - same drivers and thinking with a heavy coating of Marxist dreck.