China's Xi gets Mao treatment on People's Daily front page

Nikkei ^ | October 27, 2017 | TETSUSHI TAKAHASHI

[TigerLikesRooster]

China's Xi gets Mao treatment on People's Daily front page

Unusually large photo shows who's the boss

TETSUSHI TAKAHASHI, Head of Nikkei's China Headquarters



BEIJING -- A day after Xi Jinping began his second term as head of China's ruling Communist Party, the party's People's Daily mouthpiece published a front-page photo of him so big that it leaves no doubt as to his prominence compared with past leaders.

No other members of the Politburo Standing Committee -- the top decision-making body -- were pictured individually in Thursday's edition of the newspaper. A long shot of the entire group appears below Xi's image.

Not since Mao Zedong has a face featured in such proportions on the front of the People's Daily, said some who saw Thursday's paper.

Though the party bans personality cults, the daily appears to be doing its part to promote Xi as a "core" leader, a title he gained last year. During the just-ended National Congress, the party further elevated Xi by enshrining a system of political thinking named after him into its constitution, placing him alongside Mao and Deng Xiaoping.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[Nateman]

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

[Nateman]

I had to enlarge the group photo to closely inspect it. I wanted to see if the mountians behind them were actual large piles of corspes.

[Nextrush]

The East Is Still Red......

[House Atreides]

Until Xi beats the time of Mao’s record swim of the Yangtze River, he’s second rate to me! /s

[mindburglar]

Xi is an idiot.

His one belt one road policy is so completely arrogant and stupid.

First of all you don’t put forth a manifesto that states how weak your country is.

The One belt road policy says China has no natural resources and nothing to offer but cheap labor and threats.

He has isolated himself from all his neighbors who don’t want to get on board with a plan that says “we will bully our neighbors into giving us the natural resources we don’t have”.

Plus 300% debt vs. GDP makes the US look like spendthrifts.

The Shanghai cabal, who have all the money, has not been purged under Mr. Clean yet.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Chinese subscribe to an extreme unipolar world with China as its center. According to this view, everybody else should exist only due to China's blessing. A great Chinese emperor should impose such order on the entire world, or the world is always in chaos and mayhem.

Xi is following this path to his glory. Ever expanding China is a manifest destiny of China for ages. China expands territorially, demographically(and economically.) Faith in such a manifest destiny is a kind of state religion deeply embedded in their culture.

This view had not been fully challenged for a long time. China's neighbors were small in their size and population when compared with China. Their domain was separated from other centers of civilization by mountains, desert, and sea, shielding China from confronting other big civilizations, except a few isolated clashes with Islam world in Central Asia where results were mixed. Now they come face to face with other big civilizations on all fronts. They have no longer prohibitive superiority to do things old way, but are gearing up now. Still the timing is wrong. As you said, their economy is going down, and they have few allies because of their mindset.

The underlying goal of recent ruling communist leaderships since Deng Xiao-ping has been "Make China Great Again." If China becomes great again, what this mean this time around is that all other countries in the world would be absorbed by China or become its pliant vassals. Geography constrained China in the past, but due to modern technology, this is no longer the case.

[Gay State Conservative]

Any video on state television of him swimming the Yangtze?

[Gay State Conservative]

Ever expanding China is a manifest destiny of China for ages.

The biggest mistake...*BY FAR*...that the world's industrialized nations/region (US,Europe,Japan) made in the 80's and 90's was to start allowing Chinese made cr@p into their ports.Were it not for that sad mistake today's rush hour in Guangzhou would feature a few buses,a few army trucks,a few Soviet style limos and 500,000 bicycles as it did during my first visit there in 1981.

[drop 50 and fire for effect]

I am curious as to how this will play out over the long term. I find it plausible that Xi’s ascendancy will generate backlash both within and outside the Party. As China is a politically closed society with limited reliable economic information available. We can only speculate on the real internal state of the economy and politics.

My sense is that the Party fears that China is fragmenting. There are seams between the coast and inland, cities and rural, Han Chinese versus ethinic minorities, etc.... To that end they are cracking down hard on non-comformity (Muslims in Xinjiang, Christians, Falun Gong, etc...)

I also get the sense that economically, China may have peaked. There is corruption and massive quality control issues across the economy. They are spending vast amounts of money to keep people employed, but are not generating value with these projects.

The Party is going to try and use coercion and force to keep a lid on things. I don’t know what would be worse, the current state or if the tensions result in an explosion.

[goldstategop]

Chinese work hard and have an entrepreneurial culture that rewards success and punishes failure.

Xi is a beneficiary of it and his hard work and sheer determination have made him China’s paramount leader.

China is becoming a First World country in many respects. Its the superpower of the future.

[dfwgator]

“Like a Boss”

[goldstategop]

The values and the culture are different.

Free markets have bought unprecedented prosperity and economic heft to a once poor country.

Its bright and industrious people have accomplished a great deal; yet a lot more remains to be done.

The dragon is awakening and before it, the world is trembling.

[Gay State Conservative]

have you ever been there? I have...several times (not that that makes me an expert).As recently as a couple of years ago (my most recent visit) I saw scenes in the southeastern part of the country (which,along with Shanghai and Beijing,is said to be the most prosperous part of the country) that I'll bet one could have seen there in the 15th Century.

Whatever "prosperity" Communist China now enjoys is due to the West's foolish need for things that are a dime cheaper than if they were made in Taiwan,Japan,Europe or the US.

Yes,ethnic Chinese people do work hard.That's seen in Taiwan,Hong Kong,Singapore and elsewhere.OTOH Chinese people in China work 12 hours a day,6 days a week for 55 cents an hour because if they didn't they,their children *and* their parents would starve to death.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Continued Chinese expansion: bad for others
Chinese implosion: bad for Chinese, but relief for others

However, the implosion is not an all-or-nothing proposition. There is a stiff overhead in maintaining imperial control over vast Chinese territory. Implosion will bring about several China's: backward hinterlands, minority regions, some well-off coastal regions. Some well-off part of China would recover and grow again. What can happen is that China is no longer a monolith. Some Chinese would be better off after an implosion, while others would lag behind.

[ifinnegan]

I forgot about the One Belt thing.

It’s incoherent except that it means All countries west of China become their vassal states.