In the Midnight Hour, Xi Cried "Mao, Mao, Mao"

[Darzin]

On 10/26/2017 at 6:52 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Please tell me we are seeing a push back to the Confucisian ideals of Imperial China and not the potential for a second "Cultural Revolution" in an effort to purge China of decadent "Western" ideals?

That won't happen even members of the party aren't ideologues the way they were in the past. The amount of  applied communist ideology is negligible at this point in time. China is more uber capitalist then America in a lot of ways business and money triumph over all. Yes the students have to study marxism at the university I work at but for most of them it's their least favorite subject as the content is not relevant to their lives. That's not to say Chinese don't support the government most of the people here are content with the system. Sure they might have individual gripes but the government has raised people up from starving peasants to a nice middle income economy in a few decades. And at least for the Han they don't really feel much oppression. As for Xi staying another term he very well could, but they fact that most people here think he won't does give me a pause, it would be quite a shock to they system if he stayed. 

[Yukle]

3 hours ago, Darzin said:

That won't happen even members of the party aren't ideologues the way they were in the past. The amount of  applied communist ideology is negligible at this point in time. China is more uber capitalist then America in a lot of ways business and money triumph over all...

It's hard to say what they are, really, they've kind of branched into a hitherto unheard of ideology.

State-run businesses tend to loosely follow the Communist road-map, whereas private businesses don't. But, and this is a huge but, those private businesses are disproportionately owned by the extraordinarily wealthy Communist Party members who reinvested the funds they earned through corruption.

Their businesses are part money-laundering, part power-grabbing enterprises. Power is not really vested into any particular body, but spread across a series of powerful families, powerful businesses, government companies and the Communist Party. So many people have figured out ways of leveraging power that it is difficult to tell who is truly in control.

Even for Xi, as powerful as he is, he'd know that he can only afford to step on two or three toes here and there before he is either deposed, accidentally disappeared or, most likely, quietly retired into reputable but impotent retirement. He will devote his remaining years to preventing this happening, but it means conceding to his advisers (and therefore his sponsors to power) without ever letting anybody know who they are.

A huge cultural difference for us and China is the idea of the "man behind the curtain." Until 1911, China had several thousand years of dynastic rule and the idea of losing and gaining the Mandate of Heaven. That entire philosophy didn't just disappear overnight. Culturally, the country is not, and does not expect to be, ruled by just the man on the throne. There are those behind the curtain, whispering the advice, and they hold as much power as the Emperor.

Xi is an emperor in all but name - as was Mao - but both men were also answerable to a group of powerful keys to power who are always weighing up what there is to gain by keeping the current man in charge. The parliament unanimously voted to give Xi extraordinary legal powers, but there is a great deal of power in China that isn't legal. It's not illegal, either, it's just culturally accepted as the true power that whispers to the legal apparatus what it is supposed to be doing.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, Yukle said:

It's hard to say what they are, really, they've kind of branched into a hitherto unheard of ideology.

State-run businesses tend to loosely follow the Communist road-map, whereas private businesses don't. But, and this is a huge but, those private businesses are disproportionately owned by the extraordinarily wealthy Communist Party members who reinvested the funds they earned through corruption.

Their businesses are part money-laundering, part power-grabbing enterprises. Power is not really vested into any particular body, but spread across a series of powerful families, powerful businesses, government companies and the Communist Party. So many people have figured out ways of leveraging power that it is difficult to tell who is truly in control.

Even for Xi, as powerful as he is, he'd know that he can only afford to step on two or three toes here and there before he is either deposed, accidentally disappeared or, most likely, quietly retired into reputable but impotent retirement. He will devote his remaining years to preventing this happening, but it means conceding to his advisers (and therefore his sponsors to power) without ever letting anybody know who they are.

A huge cultural difference for us and China is the idea of the "man behind the curtain." Until 1911, China had several thousand years of dynastic rule and the idea of losing and gaining the Mandate of Heaven. That entire philosophy didn't just disappear overnight. Culturally, the country is not, and does not expect to be, ruled by just the man on the throne. There are those behind the curtain, whispering the advice, and they hold as much power as the Emperor.

Xi is an emperor in all but name - as was Mao - but both men were also answerable to a group of powerful keys to power who are always weighing up what there is to gain by keeping the current man in charge. The parliament unanimously voted to give Xi extraordinary legal powers, but there is a great deal of power in China that isn't legal. It's not illegal, either, it's just culturally accepted as the true power that whispers to the legal apparatus what it is supposed to be doing.

What would happen if Xi were to attempt to claim an "imperial" mandate?  Would that be rejected by the Chinese people?

[Yukle]

8 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What would happen if Xi were to attempt to claim an "imperial" mandate?  Would that be rejected by the Chinese people?

That's really hard to say. It would probably clash with their veneration of figures such as Mao and Sun Yat-Sen.

In some respects, he has all of the authority and power of an emperor anyway. The public votes within the Parliament may make it seem like votes are unanimous, but it's more accurate to say that what actually happens is that votes are done behind closed doors by those in power, and if they know they can't agree, they won't hold a vote. If they can reach an agreement, they make it essentially unanimous to show unity.

Xi's attempt to claim an imperial title (de jure, rather than de facto which is what he has) may require him to formally proclaim that China's state-sponsored atheism is over; the emperors were always tied to religious tradition. China is tolerant of religion anyway, but it might be too much at once to actively embrace it. To suggest that the government needs to change its ways can invite claims that it is not infallible, and there's only so much that you can do at once.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 hours ago, Yukle said:

That's really hard to say. It would probably clash with their veneration of figures such as Mao and Sun Yat-Sen.

In some respects, he has all of the authority and power of an emperor anyway. The public votes within the Parliament may make it seem like votes are unanimous, but it's more accurate to say that what actually happens is that votes are done behind closed doors by those in power, and if they know they can't agree, they won't hold a vote. If they can reach an agreement, they make it essentially unanimous to show unity.

Xi's attempt to claim an imperial title (de jure, rather than de facto which is what he has) may require him to formally proclaim that China's state-sponsored atheism is over; the emperors were always tied to religious tradition. China is tolerant of religion anyway, but it might be too much at once to actively embrace it. To suggest that the government needs to change its ways can invite claims that it is not infallible, and there's only so much that you can do at once.

Interesting.  It is fascinating to me, as you point out, that China had a massive Civil War to throw out the government that eliminated the Chinese Emperor to replace it with a De Facto emperor.

[GAROVORKIN]

13 hours ago, Yukle said:

That's really hard to say. It would probably clash with their veneration of figures such as Mao and Sun Yat-Sen.

In some respects, he has all of the authority and power of an emperor anyway. The public votes within the Parliament may make it seem like votes are unanimous, but it's more accurate to say that what actually happens is that votes are done behind closed doors by those in power, and if they know they can't agree, they won't hold a vote. If they can reach an agreement, they make it essentially unanimous to show unity.

Xi's attempt to claim an imperial title (de jure, rather than de facto which is what he has) may require him to formally proclaim that China's state-sponsored atheism is over; the emperors were always tied to religious tradition. China is tolerant of religion anyway, but it might be too much at once to actively embrace it. To suggest that the government needs to change its ways can invite claims that it is not infallible, and there's only so much that you can do at once.

 

Didn't they refer to Mao as the Red Emperor ?

[GAROVORKIN]

14 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Interesting.  It is fascinating to me, as you point out, that China had a massive Civil War to throw out the government that eliminated the Chinese Emperor to replace it with a De Facto emperor.

 

Throughout  their history they've  had a numerous  dynasties come in and kick out the old rulers when things got unstable or the rules could no longer rule.  For Example , The Ming Dynasty was supplanted the by Manchus around 1668 and that was the one that was overthrown in 1911. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

27 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

Thought their history they had a numerous   dynasties come in and kick out the old rulers when things got unstable or the rules could no longer rule. . For Example , The Ming Dynasty was supplanted the by Manchus around 1668 and that was the one that overthrown in 1911. 

But they didn't replace the Manchus with a De Jure Emperor.  They went De Facto instead.  That's a fairly big switch.

[GAROVORKIN]

The big problem for China is its banking system and its underlying weakness combined with a  rather large property bubble . There ther is question of how much a drag the star owned companies are going to be in the long term.

[Yukle]

11 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But they didn't replace the Manchus with a De Jure Emperor.  They went De Facto instead.  That's a fairly big switch.

 

11 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Didn't they refer to Mao as the Red Emperor ?

In some ways, I can't blame China. It'd be a bit like if somebody said to me to remake Australia's government right now. There'd be some things that are just so culturally normal to me I wouldn't think of even knowing that they could work any other way.

The idea of executive power being concentrated into one person, and then several important ministers below that, all the way down to voters is just part of how I view culture. That it could be done any other way would be hard for me to consider. Why not have no single ruler of the executive, what's wrong with removing that singular office? Why not allow common people to enter parliament and join the debate whenever they want? Why vote for legislators, why not make it like jury duty and simply pick 100 people at random to serve for a year as a civic duty? Why have a system of independent state governments within a larger whole? Why do electorates stop at state borders, why not make them overlap to help reconcile trade issues? Do I extend certain powers only to citizens, or to any resident? Do I keep qualifications on voting, such as a minimum age?

There is just so much to consider, and the effects of any one change are unpredictable. Like any successful coup, the Chinese revolutionaries had a leader waiting in the wings to assume power once the Emperor was gone, but this by necessity meant that much of their governing apparatus remained just as it was.

I think the same would happen if I took over Australia, or if any of us rose to power in our own countries through a revolution.

[GAROVORKIN]

1 hour ago, Yukle said:

 

In some ways, I can't blame China. It'd be a bit like if somebody said to me to remake Australia's government right now. There'd be some things that are just so culturally normal to me I wouldn't think of even knowing that they could work any other way.

The idea of executive power being concentrated into one person, and then several important ministers below that, all the way down to voters is just part of how I view culture. That it could be done any other way would be hard for me to consider. Why not have no single ruler of the executive, what's wrong with removing that singular office? Why not allow common people to enter parliament and join the debate whenever they want? Why vote for legislators, why not make it like jury duty and simply pick 100 people at random to serve for a year as a civic duty? Why have a system of independent state governments within a larger whole? Why do electorates stop at state borders, why not make them overlap to help reconcile trade issues? Do I extend certain powers only to citizens, or to any resident? Do I keep qualifications on voting, such as a minimum age?

There is just so much to consider, and the effects of any one change are unpredictable. Like any successful coup, the Chinese revolutionaries had a leader waiting in the wings to assume power once the Emperor was gone, but this by necessity meant that much of their governing apparatus remained just as it was.

I think the same would happen if I took over Australia, or if any of us rose to power in our own countries through a revolution.

Henry Puyi  last emperor of China died in obscurity 1967.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

China is Already the World's Top Superpower