Chinese General news resource thread

[solarz]

Ah, but a through purge go after both Tiger and Flies. I'll give you a few example. Zhou Yong Kang. Chief of Internal Security. Police, secret police, public prosecution. Placed by Jiang(read Hu), removed by Xi. Has to be done. Lt. Gen Gu Junshan, Deputy Chief of the PLA's General Logistics Department. Controls the PLA's purse strings. Gone. The PLA is filled with Jiang loyalists. But as they say in China, kill the chicken to show the monkeys. Control the money, control the man. Xi has the making of a real Chessmaster. You can't just selectively target Tigers, you have to create the environment in which to hide your true intentions, and that means killing flies as well, under the general cover of an anti corruption drive.

Of cause, no one is saying that anti-corruption is bad for China and indeed, this is a hearts and mind coup for the CCP. But it's way too early to say that this is the inflection point for the CCP and they will now become the blue sky white cloud corruption free party. Indeed, that is against thousands of years of Chinese governance tradition.

Nice conspiracy theory.

 

[Doombreed]

Nice conspiracy theory.

More like Occam's Razor. What's more likely? The new Chinese leader is purging the party of loyalists to the previous leader, in order to consolidate his power and control? Or that the Leopard has changed his spots and the CCP is working on becoming the paradigm of transparency, honesty and the rule of law?

 

[Blitzo]

More like Occam's Razor. What's more likely? The new Chinese leader is purging the party of loyalists to the previous leader, in order to consolidate his power and control? Or that the Leopard has changed his spots and the CCP is working on becoming the paradigm of transparency, honesty and the rule of law?

Why not both? If the effect of killing flies and tigers allows a leader to both consolidate power and to push through reforms then I don't see what the problem is.

Especially if those reforms aim to increase transparency or at least accountability and local govt excess

Heck Occam's razor would say your explanation is the less simple one. CCP knows the threat of corruption and it is taking a dual track approach by decreasing corruption/cutting excess and limited suppression of speech, although discussion is mostly only censored when it directly seeks to mobilize against the central government. Pointing out local corruption and even criticism of individual officials (even some high ranking ones) is allowed.

 

[Doombreed]

Why not both? If the effect of killing flies and tigers allows a leader to both consolidate power and to push through reforms then I don't see what the problem is.

Especially if those reforms aim to increase transparency or at least accountability and local govt excess

Heck Occam's razor would say your explanation is the less simple one. CCP knows the threat of corruption and it is taking a dual track approach by decreasing corruption/citing excess and limited suppression of speech, although discussion is mostly only censored when it directly seeks to mobilize against the central government. Pointing out local corruption and even criticism of individual officials (even some high ranking ones) is allowed.

Could very well be both. I guess I'm just a bit jaded with the the CCP. We will see about the "reforms" once Xi loyalists are firmly entrenched. No doubt the "excesses" has gotten out of hand lately and needs to be tempered as it threatens the existance of the party itself. But I realistically only see them dialing back the corruption to a socially acceptable level.

 

[Blitzo]

Even that would be a success, in my opinion.

Corruption and rich officials will meet be completely eradicated. But it can be reduced. If it can be reduced to a level where society is more stable then I don't see how that is a bad thing

 

[xiabonan]

You need to look deeper to realise what it is.

My father was a party official who now works in a large provincial state owned enterprise. I've experienced first hand the before and after scenarios.

Large luxurious hotels and dinning places suffered greatly, party officials can no longer just sign their names and leave when they finish a dinner (the government will pay the bill afterwards), prices of a whole set of meal at a highly luxurious restaurant fell to below what used to be able to buy just two or three dishes!

Maotai, the most sought after and one of the most expensive liquor in China has seen a plummeting in both sales and prices. It was never a liquor meant for ordinary households (no one who pays with their own money will deem it worthy the price), and now demand has declined so much because of the anti-corruption drive. On a side note, my dad used to have a lot of bottles of Maotai received as gifts by different friends, now he barely has any. I'm very happy about this.

Bear in mind that Xi started his new policies not with anti-corruption drives but on rules and regulations of party officials' extravagant lifestyles.

His new rules including the clearance of extra apartments by party and military officials including those retired, including what kind of pay grade can enjoy a business class flight or a suite in hotels (the bar is now much much higher). It also includes what pay grade will get to enjoy dedicated vehicle, etc. Ever since he took office, more than hundreds of thousands of extra houses are cleared and another hundreds of thousands of government vehicles are sold or scrapped.

He even set rules on how party officials can hold weddings (for themselves and most importantly for their children), or funerals, because a lot of people use these opportunities to bribe. There has been news that a village party official was laid off for publicly holding a funeral--though he didn't receive any bribe and only invited his relatives and close friends.

This whole thing is not only limited to government officials. SOE management, university professors, military officers, as long as you're a member of the party you're under scrutiny. There has been many cases of above mentioned examples.

In fact, not only officials and party members, even ordinary workers are affected. The small items and gifts they receive during breaks and public holidays are all scrapped as well.

And this has been going on since he took office. And it's only going stronger and deeper.

If it's a political purge, why would any of the above happen?

 

[xiabonan]

The rule in political purges is that you'll have to please a bunch so that they become your loyalists while you take it hard on those being purged. Xi is basically hurting anyone and everyone's interests--those who don't deserve them that is. How is this a purge? I don't see it.

 

[plawolf]

The whole 'purge' story is just another fantasy cooked up in Washington think tanks to try to undermine and belittle China.

The 'rationale' behind the 'purge' theory is as elegant as it is baseless.

It stipulates that all officials in China are corrupt, thus by not locking up everyone, Xi is playing favourites, so the anti-corruption drive is a purge about grabbing power rather than actually trying to tackle corruption.

It completely ignores the thousands of 'flies' that are netted, and instead focus only on the exceptionally few cases of high profile individuals, and argue since none are Xi appointees, he must be playing favourites. That is a classic case of selection bias.

The theory completely discount the notion that perhaps Xi actually do want to stamp out corruption within China, so is more careful about who he appoints to key positions and how he runs them compared to other factions.

The theory and those behind it completely discount the possibly that Chinese officials could be motivated by anything other than base greed. So of course they cannot stomach the idea that Xi might be building a faction based on principles and virtues rather than money and benefits to inspire loyalty within his own 'faction'.

As the first rule of data analysis states, rubbish in, rubbish out.

By starting with a baseless, disparaging 'idealistically' driven premise, is it any wonder western theories about China all produce spectacularly bad BS conclusions?

Face it, the reality of Washington today is that idealogical purity trumps even hard concrete scientific facts.

When you have members of the US Congressional Committee on Science openly stating they do not believe or accept scientific facts from renounced NASA scientists, when hard data and the literal true isn't even enough to change minds, is it any wonder that those who say what those in power want to hear gets prominence over those who happen to be right?

Corruption comes in many forms, and in my view, the corruption of intellect is just as bad if not worse than the corruption of morals.

After all, a morally corrupted but intelligent official can still make good decisions when there isn't money involved and/or his sense of self preservation outweighs his sense of greed.

But an intellectually corrupt person who rejects logic, reason and indeed facts and evidence to pursue dogma can, and have done enormous harm and many are continuing to do enormous harm in the US. But I guess I digress...

 

[Brumby]

The whole 'purge' story is just another fantasy cooked up in Washington think tanks to try to undermine and belittle China.

The 'rationale' behind the 'purge' theory is as elegant as it is baseless.

It stipulates that all officials in China are corrupt, thus by not locking up everyone, Xi is playing favourites, so the anti-corruption drive is a purge about grabbing power rather than actually trying to tackle corruption.

It completely ignores the thousands of 'flies' that are netted, and instead focus only on the exceptionally few cases of high profile individuals, and argue since none are Xi appointees, he must be playing favourites. That is a classic case of selection bias.

The theory completely discount the notion that perhaps Xi actually do want to stamp out corruption within China, so is more careful about who he appoints to key positions and how he runs them compared to other factions.

The theory and those behind it completely discount the possibly that Chinese officials could be motivated by anything other than base greed. So of course they cannot stomach the idea that Xi might be building a faction based on principles and virtues rather than money and benefits to inspire loyalty within his own 'faction'.

As the first rule of data analysis states, rubbish in, rubbish out.

By starting with a baseless, disparaging 'idealistically' driven premise, is it any wonder western theories about China all produce spectacularly bad BS conclusions?

There isn't anything in your reasoning that excludes the possibility of score settlement and whatever else that may get thrown in into the heap other then the fact that you said is baseless.

 

[Blitzo]

There isn't anything in your reasoning that excludes the possibility of score settlement and whatever else that may get thrown in into the heap other then the fact that you said is baseless.

But what he (and others such as xiaobonan) said was a good counter against those who believe that this is ONLY a score settlement/purge.

At this stage it may well be opposing factions are being removed from positions of power, we don't have evidence to claim it concretely either for or against. However what is difficult to dispute is that the campaign has severely limited govt excess at both high and (more importantly) lower levels. And given how many more lower level officials there are than higher, one has to wonder just how many of lower tier officials are being targeted because they are part of a faction (if they are even influential enough) or if it is just a party wide campaign going after almost everyone.

If the campaign had only netted a few powerful known opponents to Xi, then the people bleating about it being purely a purge might have a leg to stand on. But clearly the campaign is far wider reaching than that, including some high level but also many low level officials and overall curbing of excess. So there is far less support for one who still wants to say it is only a purge. Like I said, xi may well be using this as a convenient opportunity to sideline opponents, but saying that is the ONLY aim or achievement of this campaign is ridiculous.