The Chinese leader seeks to restore an earlier era of ideological indoctrination and national unity—whether his society wants it or not.

The Marx and Confucius show is just one small part of Xi’s campaign to fashion a new ideological conformity in China. Its apparent aim is to foster unity in preparation for struggles at home and abroad—but with the ultimate purpose of tightening Xi’s grip on China.

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Chinese leaders “want to have a very powerful, socialist, ideological framework that can congeal the population, and this is of course under the party’s control and guidance,” Wang Feng, a sociologist at UC Irvine, told me. “What’s a more powerful way to centralize power than to control people’s thought?”

very-smart

Xi’s push for communist conformity might seem anachronistic in the age of social media and the global digital commons. But it’s only one way he is dragging China back into an older, darker time.

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returned to Cold War–style confrontation with the West after a period of fruitful cooperation

torment

reestablished one-man rule to a degree unseen since the days of Mao Zedong, the Communist regime’s founder. Now he is attempting to restore the intense ideological indoctrination of earlier years of Communist rule—the era of Mao’s Little Red Book

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in March, Xi introduced the “Global Civilization Initiative,” a manifesto in which he advocates “respect for the diversity of civilizations” and that “coexistence transcend feelings of superiority.” Countries, he adds, should “refrain from imposing their own values or models on others.”

That’s Xi-speak for denying the existence of the universal rights and values that undergird the global primacy of democracy

suswcc

strangled private education

Lol foreign investors get fucked

Chinese leaders have a long history of trying to control thought. In 213 B.C.E., the first emperor of the Qin dynasty became irritated with scholars

qin-shi-huangdi-fireball unlimited genocide on westoid "scholars"

If any china-watchers or xi-speakers want to unpack all the other bullshit 07

  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
    ·
    11 months ago

    Chinese leaders have a long history of trying to control thought. In 213 B.C.E., the first emperor of the Qin dynasty became irritated with scholars who compared him and his policies unfavorably to rulers of the distant past. His solution, so the story goes, was to confiscate suspect texts on history, philosophy, and other subjects and burn them. He did this, one ancient historian commented, “in order to make the people stupid and ensure that in all under Heaven there should be no rejection of the present by using the past.”

    "The PRC isn't real China because Mao destroyed traditions in the Cultural Revolution!!!"

    My brother in Christ, there is literally nothing more traditionally Chinese than getting rid of shitty old ideas.

    • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Chinese leaders have a long history of trying to control thought. In 213 B.C.E.,

      I don't know how to describe this but bringing up history from over 2000 years ago to make a point of a modern country having "a long history" of something feels like some form of racism. You'd never see these outlets write about a European country like that. "Italy has a long history of political conspiracies and assassinations. In 44 B.C.E., Roman Emperor Julius Casear was famously murdered by a group of senators during a senate meeting."

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        I was mostly lampooning a shitty idea with an equally absurd idea.

        The "real" culture of China is the culture of China. China can't be a "fake" China by definition and claiming so is like claiming that I'm not the real me because I don't act like I did 10 years ago. The ways that people who believe that Taiwan is the "real" China try to prove their theory is to point to some arbitrary tradition or way of doing things that's different from the PRC and claim that the PRC killed it in the cultural revolution (very rare, except maybe for small things like bowing). From a logical point of view, that doesn't make sense any more than me pointing to Taiwan and going "well if you're the real China why don't you burn books and bury scholars anymore? Huh?! Gotcha!"

        The people who argue about "real" Chinese culture also tend to conveniently forget that there are many instances in Chinese history where China (the sociocultural unit) was broken up into many competing and de facto independent polities for decades at a time, much like China and Taiwan now. It's like arguing that Shu, Wei, or Wu "weren't the real China". People would think you're insane.

        That being said, I think the funniest variant of the "real China" discourse are the ultra-fringe wackjobs who claim that Japan is the real China because they were never conquered by the Mongols.

        Also, tangentially I want to point out that it's more valid to point to Ancient Chinese history over ancient European history (like Rome) because unlike almost all modern European states (except maybe Greece?) China claims that it has an unbroken historical and cultural lineage going back to 213 BCE, and even earlier.

      • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
        ·
        11 months ago

        You'd never see these outlets write about a European country like that.

        they do literally all the time, just with positive instead of negative stuff, and to the point where other countries' stereotypes are appropriated and assigned to european ones (assuming they're positive)