Espionage involving China

Bellum_Romanum said:

The recent purge of top military officials from China's Central Military Commission serves as a political Rorschach test, revealing more about observers' biases than about Chinese governance itself. Anti-China hawks and Xi skeptics predictably frame these removals as evidence of systemic incompetence and dictatorial paranoia, particularly given the relentless nature of Xi's anti-corruption drive.

Yet this interpretation overlooks a crucial inconsistency: if "saving face" truly governed Xi's decision-making—as Western analysts often claim about Chinese culture—why would he publicly humiliate and prosecute officials with whom he has longstanding personal connections? The very public nature of these harsh charges suggests either that the corruption allegations have substance or that Xi's political calculus operates on principles more complex than simple face-saving concerns.

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siegecrossbow said:

View attachment 168685

“If the war is lost, the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nation. In any case only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”
— Adolf Hitler, April 1945 from Berlin Bunker.

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Bellum_Romanum said:

The recent purge of top military officials from China's Central Military Commission serves as a political Rorschach test, revealing more about observers' biases than about Chinese governance itself. Anti-China hawks and Xi skeptics predictably frame these removals as evidence of systemic incompetence and dictatorial paranoia, particularly given the relentless nature of Xi's anti-corruption drive.

Yet this interpretation overlooks a crucial inconsistency: if "saving face" truly governed Xi's decision-making—as Western analysts often claim about Chinese culture—why would he publicly humiliate and prosecute officials with whom he has longstanding personal connections? The very public nature of these harsh charges suggests either that the corruption allegations have substance or that Xi's political calculus operates on principles more complex than simple face-saving concerns.

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latenlazy said:

Well you see XJP is an autocrat so he's incompetent. If he makes a scene going after guys he elevated himself he's trying to save face and failing. If he keeps corrupt officials around which we know are corrupt because the PLA is forever and ever corrupt XJP is *also* trying to save face and failing because our hand chosen insiders will tell us the truth checkmate!

(If it's not clear my point here is that the tabloid gossip logic around this story is genuinely incoherently stupid. Without concrete facts to act as basic validity checks people can spin anything to sound authentic if they just know how to knock on the correct erogenous zones of a person's brain stem. Maybe people who want to be well informed should exercise a bit more intellectual discipline and not be so eager to fall for the psyop).

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Brainsuker said:

Interesting. But what's really going on here?

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latenlazy said:

Xi Jinping takes corruption very seriously because he sees cleaning up the party and reforming it into a high performing political institution as the most important work of his tenure, and there are still people in the system who were brought up during the era of ubiquitous corruption so once in a while a new graft ring is spotted, and this one just happened to go straight to the top of the CMC as the investigation kept tugging on the thread, unfortunately.

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latenlazy said:

Xi Jinping takes corruption very seriously because he sees cleaning up the party and reforming it into a high performing political institution as the most important work of his tenure, and there are still people in the system who were brought up during the era of ubiquitous corruption so once in a while a new graft ring is spotted, and this one just happened to go straight to the top of the CMC as the investigation kept tugging on the thread, unfortunately.

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Nautilus said:

I'm inclined to believe this interpretation since it makes more sense than a wholesale purge of military posts or some such explanation. Of course, it is a very bad thing that this took place, regardless of whether it is a good thing that they are being caught now. Some strange fellows on this forum seem to think it's normal or business as usual for the entire upper echelon of a nation's military to be culled.

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