In my last few articles, I’ve touched on more general aspects of tea, but now it’s time to get a little geeky, maybe even a little wild. Today I’ll talk about a type of tea that comes up in almost every category, but whose exact meaning sometimes escapes the common drinker: wild tea.
The tea plant cross-pollinates with other plants very easily. Grow tea plants near flowers, and the offspring of the tea plant will be a mix of the two, and therefore taste a little different. This can be a problem when you are a farmer trying to produce a single flavor regularly, and therefore need all of your plants to be the same.
To prevent having a mixed-up field of similar but slightly different plants, farmers will typically clone a single plant. The cloning process is actually easier than one may think, and has been around for centuries. One way to do it is to cut off a part of the plant, and plant that small piece directly in the ground. Another way is to graft the piece onto a plant or a root system that is already in the field.
The benefit of the second method is that the new plant will be able to use the already-in-place root system, and will therefore be able to obtain a level of water and nutrients from the soil unreachable by younger roots. The benefit of the first method is that it allows many new plants to be planted at once. Farmers will often have nurseries where they are growing young clones that they will then plant into their fields when they are ready.
Cross-pollination isn’t always a bad thing, though. Farmers have also used the looseness of tea plants to create new cultivars with new flavors, or benefits not present in the original plant.
With a white tea maker — note that the tea trees in the background are a lot taller than most tea plants
Farmers and scientists sometimes deliberately cross-breed plants to create a new plant with characteristics they favor. In the tea world, such man-made hybrids are called cultivars.
Cultivars can be created to benefit farmers with such traits as resistance to pests, resistance to drought, and even optimized budding time. The majority of teas in the market of all levels are cultivars. Even most Long Jings are from a cultivar called Long Jing #43, which is very similar to the original Long Jing plant but has been slightly mutated for some of the farming benefits mentioned above. New cultivars can also be created to have a new flavor, and some of your favorite teas may actually be man-made. The famous Yan Cha Rou Gui is was actually created 40 years ago, and Anxi Tie Guan Yin was created just over 200 years ago. So are all teas these days clone and man-created cultivars? The answer is a little wild.
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You never really know what the the tea plant has pollinated with. It’s possible that a tea tree has pollinated with the tree next to it, thus creating a very similar — if not identical — plant with more or less the same flavor. But it’s also just as possible that a given tree has cross-pollinated with another nearby plant, and that the plant grown from the resulting seed will produce a significantly different flavor. This is what we call a wild tea.
Wild tea trees are most commonly found near growing fields, usually around the edges, or in abandoned fields where seeds have had time to fall to the ground and grow. What does their tea taste like?
A wild tea tree can have a variety of flavors, but it’s usually pretty similar to the mother tea. For example, compared to an non-wild Bai Mu Dan, a wild Bai Mu Dan might have a bolder, nuttier flavor, but be less sweet. Maybe it has more body, but less flavor. It is impossible to say exactly what the flavor of a wild tea will be, but I always describe it as lacking the same balanced flavor and structure as compared to a non-wild tea. Sometimes wild teas are better than the mother plant, sometimes the mother plant is better. The flavor, though, is usually so similar that it would take a side-by-side tasting or somebody telling you it was wild to know it was wild.
Cultivars are found in all different sorts of plants, not just tea. The most well-known example is wine, but apple and potato growers also rely heavily on cultivars. A wild apple tree can produce apples with all sorts of different flavors — not all good, and sometimes quite bitter. The household potato is another cultivar, and is easily cloned, as many of us learned through middle school science experiments.
There are, of course, risks to cloning, as became apparent in Ireland in the 1800s. For many political reasons, the Irish in the 1800s ate pretty much only potatoes, and these potatoes were all clones. When a fungus hit the potatoes, all of these clones were killed. In a natural, wild potato field, some potatoes would die, while others would be able to fight off the fungal invasion — but since all of the potatoes in Ireland at the time were clones, they were all susceptible in the same way, which eventually led to the Irish potato famine.
The same risk runs for tea, and all other clones. Even with this risk, though, cloning and mutating tea tree varieties have been of great benefit to farmers, and have created some of your favorite teas.
Cover image: A nursery in Taiping with baby hou kui plants (photo by the author)
This week’s photo theme is: Director’s Seat. Last month, well-known (male) Chinese film director Ding Taisheng made a controversial statement on Sina Weibo to the effect that “women can be great producers, but rarely directors.” (That’s a paraphrase from memory — his Weibo account, which had over 140,000 followers, has since been deleted.) In response, this week we’ll take a look behind the camera at the work of a few exemplary female filmmakers in China, past and present.
The standout film for us last year in China was Angels Wear White, Beijinger Vivian Qu’s second film as a director. Qu debuted in 2013 with Trap Street, “the story of a young digital map-making surveyor, working for a digital mapping company, who in his spare time helps install CCTV cameras.” Her sophomore effort, which tells the story of child sexual abuse in a small town in southern China, struck a nerve, as a real-life scandal broke out in Beijing days before its scheduled release.
Writing for Radii after the release of Angels Wear White — which won Qu the title of Best Director at last year’s Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan — documentary filmmaker Han Xia reflected:
The important point about Angels Wear White is not what kind of film it is, but how many people are willing to produce and watch this type of film. When the event only exists as words, it can be misinterpreted in numerous, demonizing ways. But when it’s presented as images, we can at least spend two hours thinking about what exactly is happening in the world around us. It will be forgotten, but never erased.
It’s the life-changing interview you didn’t know you were waiting for.
Nardwuar, YouTube interviewer extraordinaire, is notorious for pulling up on celebrities with a bag of intimately-selected gifts and a notebook full of buried, decades-old secrets. Higher Brothers, the cross-cultural Chengdu crossover act that no one saw coming, are famous for their eerily accurate embodiment of American trap music and their overall fire bars. It’s a match made in heaven.
In the course of the interview, Nardwuar asks DZ about his previous job selling insurance over the phone, calls Masiwei out on his high school rap name, and talks to Melo about the lottery ticket store his mom owns (after making him freestyle battle his translator, Lana). Psy-P was largely ignored, but what are you gonna do?
The group shares stories about seeing Kendrick Lamar for the first time on CCTV5, their go-to McDonald’s orders, and the surprising role Howie Lee played in their current mainstream success. At the end, Higher Brothers pull out their own bag of gifts for Nardwuar – spicy foods and a “Learn Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day” book. It’s a feel good vibe, check it out for yourself.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Zhibo is a weekly column in which Beijing-based American Taylor Hartwell documents his journey down the rabbit hole of Chinese livestreaming app YingKe. If you know nothing about the livestreaming (直播; “zhibo”) phenomenon in China, start here.
Survey of the Week: What’s the best way to deal with trolls?
The internet wouldn’t be the internet without bored little people saying nasty little things to each other. See for reference: every comment section under every YouTube video ever posted, and a majority of Twitter conversations. But as I’ve mentioned before, I actually get surprisingly little nastiness on Yingke considering my extremely unusual demographic status in a country that was building walls before it was cool.
Nonetheless, the unpleasant comments pop up now and then — usually in Chinese, but I do see the occasional amusing English troll message, bless their little hearts. Take, for example, this gem:
Man, you gotta try a little harder
Call me crazy, but I need insults to at the very least make sense before they start to hurt.
What I DON’T like about the trolling, however, is how agitated it gets all the audience members, who a) feel a bit defensive about their little foreigner boy, and b) worry that China loses face because the foreigner can’t tell the difference between an internet troll and an entire nation’s attitude. (Now that I think about it, it’s probably mostly the latter.)
So without fail, messages like this get followed by a few dozen people yelling for them to stop, to leave, to behave, to not embarrass China (no, really), and so on. After one particularly loud, defensive yelling session I didn’t ask for, I conducted a little impromptu survey that was mostly meant as a joke. That being said, I was still interested in the answers.
Question: How should I (or anyone) react to trolls on Yingke?
Option 1: Get mad and stop streaming
Option 2: Kick them out
Option 3: Make fun of them
Thankfully, very few people went for option 1. But surprisingly, more people went for option 3 (20-ish) than option 2 (10-ish), and a solid chunk of very clever folks (also around 20) went for the option of 先3后2 (first 3, then 2). Well played, internet.
Question of the Week: Why is your hair blond?
The better question is, how many chins is that?
Did you know that Russians have different words for light and dark blue? Apparently, this makes them observably better at distinguishing between different shades of what we English speakers would simply call “blue.”
Fair enough, I suppose: since they’ve been calling those colors by different names their entire lives, it stands to reason that they’d be better at noticing the subtle differences. And on the other end of the spectrum, some people make the case that NOT having words for colors makes people essentially blind to them; case in point, Homer calling the sea “wine-dark.” That doesn’t make any sense, until you consider that before the invention of blue dyes, there was almost nothing in nature that was blue except for, you know, the two big ones. So if you were a poet trying to get creative with describing a dark sea, you didn’t really have anything in the blue family to work with — hence, “wine-dark.”
Now, I’m not a color scientist (you can probably tell based on how I just used the term “color scientist”), but I bring this up because studying Chinese has absolutely convinced me that language has a profound impact on your perception of colors (and, you know, a million other things, but let’s stick with colors for now). There is, quite simply, not a Chinese word for “blonde.” Look it up in the dictionary, and you’ll see 金发 (gold hair), 金发碧眼 (gold hair blue eyes), 白皙 (white clear), 黄头发 (yellow hair), and other such not-quite-right-isms. When I ask people to tell me what color my hair is, I get 黄色 (yellow), 金黄色 (gold-yellow), 黄棕色 (yellow-brown), 金灰色 (gold-gray), etc.
It’s, you know, 1 o’clock-ish
And yes, obviously, blond is essentially a yellowish-brownish-and-occasionally-reddish color, but it always fascinates me how often you come across situations in the Chinese language where an actual word — that is to say, a character — for something simply doesn’t exist because it wasn’t part of China’s world back when the vast majority of characters were being created. Of course the word “blond/blonde” has all kinds of roots in old Latin and German words for yellow, but the point is, it eventually evolved into a word that all by itself means a specific sort of hair color. But unless Jackie Chan wants to accidentally invent another hair-based Chinese character, we’re stuck with “gold-yellow” in terms of what can physically be written down in Chinese to describe my foreign locks.
I know. Woe is me.
Second-Best Hair-Related Comment of the Week: your hair ‘style, so overwhelming
I think this was the sign that six weeks was officially too long to go without a haircut; assuming in this case that “overwhelming” indicates an unpleasant overabundance. And no, this STILL isn’t the last hair-related entry.
Best-Best Hair-Related Comment of the Week: you hair is dog.
Are you saying it’s like a dog’s hair? That it looks like a dog? That I’m a dog? That this is the year of the dog? Stay and explain yourself, mysterious commenter!
Video of the Week: This jump-roping dog.
Because sometimes, the internet is just the internet and that’s the way it should be.
Best Questionably-Inspiring Comment of the Week: Boy, you make much progress.
When we first met with Shi Xiaoqin, we couldn’t believe that she had just left the Chinese army. She was free-minded, vocal and funny, very different from the images of disciplined military officers portrayed in media or in popular entertainment. More importantly, she very proudly called herself a feminist.
Just before International Women’s Day on March 8th, we are pleased to interview her, and to listen to her story about how she transformed into an outspoken women’s rights advocate.
Shi Xiaoqin
Born in a small village in China, Xiaoqin puts women’s rights issues into a complex social context, which is influenced by many cultural, economic, and historical elements. Her understanding of women’s rights issues is comprehensive and in-depth, moving way beyond topical issues like sexual harassment in universities and urban working environments. Her perspective is deeply rooted in women’s livelihoods in the vast rural areas of China, and considers the broader social and economic structure of Chinese society.
Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men podcast can be found here, and you can find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.
This weekend, as Beijing emerged from its post-Spring Festival torpor, the Chinese Communist Party decided it would be a good time to mess with everyone by casually dropping a hint that we all better get used to Xi Jinping’s paternalistic grimace for the next decade or more.
China’s Communist Party has cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power, perhaps indefinitely, by announcing on Sunday that it wants to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency — a dramatic move that would mark the country’s biggest political change in decades.
The party leadership “proposed to remove the expression that the president and vice president of the People’s Republic of China ‘shall serve no more than two consecutive terms’ from the country’s Constitution,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported.
My Twitter feed is still processing the announcement, with views ranging from “this is actually a sign of weakness” to “Holy jumping Jesus fish, China’s got itself a new emperor.”
Really worth thinking about whether a third term for #Xi is a sign of weakness. “Can” he even step down? 1. Achievements? 2. Anti-Corruption Movement Enemies? 3. Who would protect him, who his 靠山? (All former Chinese leaders need protectors after they retire.)
I heard the news while in the middle of my annual Godfather I, II, and III marathon. According to some reports, The Godfather is one of Xi Jinping’s favorite movies, too. I’ve always been tempted to call bullshit on that little factoid. It seems like one of those tidbits that causes the more gullible to think “Hey, he’s just like us! He likes gangster movies and Iowa, too!” But looking at the trajectory of Xi Jinping, it’s hard not to think of the parallels with la Familia Corleone.*
That’s alright — this thing’s gotta happen every five years or so — ten years — helps to get rid of the bad blood.
The proposed change sets aside the constitutional requirement limiting the terms of the guojia zhuxi and guojia fuzhuxi (which Xinhua News Service really, really wants us to keep translating as “President” and “Vice-President”) to two five-year terms. This is a major departure from recent precedent, and a strong signal that the 64-year-old Xi Jinping will remain in power after his current five-year term ends in 2022. He’s the first leader in a generation who has had that kind of juice. Hu Jintao didn’t have it. Jiang Zemin didn’t have it.
But the move also locks in place a set of policies and direction for the country. The Global Times wants us all to believe that’s a good thing:
Over the past two decades, a trinity of leadership consisting of the CPC Central Committee general secretary, president of the nation and chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission has taken shape and proven to be effective. To remove the two-term limit of the Chinese president can help maintain the trinity system and improve the institution of leadership of the CPC and the nation.
But regular changes in leadership — like the occasional Mob war — also keep grudges from getting out of hand and open up channels for fresh blood in the ranks. In political terms, it prevents ideas from growing stale, or one person’s agenda from dominating policy and stifling new thinking. I have a hunch Xi would say, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do” — but I’m already hearing grumblings around the capital that not everybody agrees that this is in the best interest of the country.
I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.
The announcement also opens a pathway for Xi Jinping’s close ally and chief hatchet man Wang Qishan to re-emerge from temporary retirement and resume a position of influence within the Party and government. The man is 69 years old — two years younger than Donald Trump — and clearly feels like he has more to offer. Moreover, Don Corleone was nothing without his Luca Brasi. That’s why the Tattaglia’s and Solozzo went after Luca first. For the past six years, Wang Qishan has been Xi Jinping’s Luca Brasi.
My father’s name was Antonio Andolini, and this is for you!
I know a lot has been made of Xi Jinping’s background as a “Princeling.” His father, Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002), was a famous revolutionary, and contributed to economic policymaking in the Deng Xiaoping era, but the elder Xi was also purged by Mao in 1965 and buried in prison for nearly a decade before being shipped off to a Henan tractor factory until 1978. Overnight, the younger Xi went from pampered princeling to spending his formative years in Shaanxi working on a farm and shitting into a bucket. By all accounts, he accepted his fate and came out of the experience stronger, but you have to think that the memory of being powerless and wasting your youth while your Dad rotted in prison was a powerful motivation for the son’s climb to the top.
I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.
After Xi took power in 2012, it didn’t take long for him to bring his enemies and rivals to heel. Central Military Commission chairman Xu Caihou, former security czar Zhou Yongkang, and Hu Jintao aide-de-camp Ling Jihua were all investigated, expelled from the Party, and, in the case of Zhou and Ling, are now serving life sentences. (Xu Caihou died of bladder cancer in 2015.)
The effect was chilling throughout Chinese officialdom. The Party establishment has always had a Human Centipede quality to it. Powerful figures at the top eat their fill at the government trough and the benefits — and problems — flow down the chain. Xi decapitated several of these important patronage networks while appearing to get serious about the problem of endemic Party corruption.
Eventually, the list of victims included powerful regional officials like Su Rong and Bai Enpei, rising star Wan Qingliang, and high-ranking officers in the PLA like Gu Junshan. I’m guessing that Xi Jinping, with Wang Qishan once again acting as button man, still has a few more scalps he’d like to nail to his wall now that it’s clear he’s going to be around for a while.
There are negotiations being made that are going to answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems.
Xi also consolidated control of policymaking by creating “Central Leading Groups” that superseded existing institutions in an effort to become, in the words of Australian Sinologist Geremie Barmé, The Chairman of Everything. These “Leading Groups” have allowed Xi to put his mark on a wide range of policy vectors — including briefs usually handled by the State Premier and the National Security Commission — but at the expense of dividing his attention and creating a Xi-sized bottleneck for making decisions.
All my life I was trying to get up in society… where everything is legal, but the higher I go the more crooked it becomes.
One interpretation of the decision to scrap term limits is that it is actually a sign of weakness: Xi Jinping has made many enemies who might be simply waiting until Xi is out of power to serve their dish of revenge. While little mud has stuck to Xi Jinping himself or his immediate family, Bloomberg pissed off a lot of people in the Xi camp back in 2012 when they started delving into the finances of other members of the Xi Zhongxun clan. In particular, Xi Jinping’s older sister Qi Qiaoqiao and her husband Deng Jiagui — as well as another brother-in-law, Wu Long — hold vast real estate and other assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Personally, I don’t buy the “We’re weak so we’re going to stay in office a lot longer” argument. I think this has been the plan for some time, and that Xi Jinping has been steadily making moves behind the scenes to build up his power and influence and to extend his grip on power.
I also wonder whether there’s a Connie/Michael dynamic at work here. Michael was always content to lecture and then look the other way while Connie played the floozie. He had a soft spot for his younger sister — since he had her husband whacked for dropping a dime on Sonny — and for her part, Connie needed Michael to access family funds and influence.
A man in my position can’t afford to look ridiculous.
The big news on Sunday seemed to catch the censors off guard. I’m sure they weren’t told in advance, and it was no doubt hard to keep up with the wave of satire, puns, and general WTF? messages which kept popping up on my WeChat and Weibo feeds.
This morning, the powers that be seem to be catching up, but not before a few hilarious memes were born.
Durex in China reminding followers not to trust any advertising that isn’t from their official accounts after “Two rounds just aren’t enough” poster goes viral #XiJinpingpic.twitter.com/9D8VBiHBT9
The Xi Jinping era has also meant a serious chill in academia, particularly for the discussion of China’s modern history. Party journals brand critical assessments of 20th-century disasters such as the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward as “historical nihilism,” the use of history by internal rabble and foreign enemies to delegitimize the Party in the present. Deconstructing Party mythology or debunking treasured tropes of heroic martyrs or the Party’s role in the Anti-Japanese War are also being treated as political dissent. There is no room in Xi’s New Era for any awkward bits from the Party’s past. If any one thing shows that the Party, however strong outwardly, still cowers inside like a bacon-wrapped mouse at a feline meth orgy, it is the absolute inability to reflect honestly on the recent past.
Fredo has a good heart, but he is weak… and stupid, and stupid people are the most dangerous of all.
Pour one out for Li Keqiang. We hardly got to know you. Hopefully, your sentence will be simply “doomed to irrelevancy” and not Wang Qishan offering to take you out for a “fishing trip” during the next Beidaihe confab.
First of all, you’re all done. The Corleone Family don’t even have that kind of muscle anymore. The Godfather’s sick, right? You’re getting chased out of New York by Barzini and the other Families. What do you think is going on here? You think you can come to my hotel and take over? I talked to Barzini — I can make a deal with him, and still keep my hotel!
How would you like to be Wu Xiaohui right about now? Anybody able to get him to answer you back on WeChat? Now that the Chinese government has taken over Anbang, the insurance mega-conglomerate which owns — among other things — the Waldorf Astoria in New York, will Donald Trump get to pay Xi Jinping back for all of the tutelages on North Korea and world politics by briefing Xi on running a luxury hotel into the ground?
Your father did business with Hyman Roth, he respected Hyman Roth… but he never trusted Hyman Roth!
Just because Xi looks like he’s pulling a Putin doesn’t mean Xi actually likes Putin. Foreign China watchers have gotten this one wrong before. If anything, having competing strongmen in Moscow and Beijing has usually meant worsening relations between the two capitals rather than sleepovers and light experimental petting.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Speaking of crackpot dictators, I wonder how Pugsly in Pyongyang feels about all of this. If he had any sense of humor at all, he’d send Xi Jinping a nice note and jacket to the “Leaders for Life Club.” Maybe this hits too close to the nose, as I’m in Beijing and already hearing “West Korea” jokes…
I’m a little worried about this Sollozzo fellow. I want you to find out what he’s got under his fingernails. Go to the Tattaglias, and tell them you’re not too happy with our Family, and find out what you can…
One of Xi Jinping’s top economic advisors, Liu He, is heading to Washington this week, ostensibly to reduce trade tensions. But many observers — including Bill Bishop — are suggesting that the mission was really planned to give Liu He a chance to brief officials in the US about the new normal in China, and to reassure them that Xi pulling a Caesar isn’t anything to get too worked up about.
Tom Hagen: Yeah, it was once. The Roman Empire… when a plot against the Emperor failed, the plotters were always given a chance to let their families keep their fortunes.
Frankie Pentangeli: Yeah, but only the rich guys. The little guys got knocked off. If they got arrested and executed, all their estate went to the Emperor. If they just went home and killed themselves, up front, nothing happened.
Tom Hagen: Yeah, that was a good break. A nice deal.
One of my favorite scenes in Two. Couldn’t help but rewind it and imagine it with Wang Qishan and Wen Jiabao in the Tom and Frankie Five-Angel roles.
Now you come to me and say, “Don Corleone, give me justice!” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me “Godfather.”
This has been a stone in my shoe for a long time. Xinhua has insisted since 1982 that guojia zhuxi (国家主席) be translated into English as “President.” Why do we listen to them? If they want the English term to be “President,” then start calling the position zongtong (总统) in Chinese.
But they won’t, because they want to project power with Chinese characteristics to the domestic audience, while trying to normalize the Leninist system for international consumption. This fiction of “President Xi” is going to be hard to maintain when he’s 83 years old and starting his sixth term. Harder still when Xi starts wearing yellow robes and tries offering Xi Mingze to Jared Kushner as a “Noble Consort.”
Frankly, calling Xi “Godfather of China” wouldn’t be the worst idea given his paternalistic attitude toward rule, but I’m sure the international media will find a workaround somewhere between Xinhua’s bullshit and Sicilian cultural appropriation. “China’s leader” or “China’s Supreme Leader” sounds about right.
Surely he can charge a fee for such services. After all, we are not Communists.
Which makes me wonder if a name change for the Party might not be the next bombshell. Not soon and not likely (I’d say Vegas would put it on the board at a 27-1 long shot), but it would signal a clear break from the Maoist past. A change of “reign name” would also put Xi in a pantheon that goes above and beyond CCP history.
You’re getting a real reputation, Sonny! I hope you’re enjoying it!
There is always the chance that this might be too much for the urban elite of China to accept quietly. Not a big chance, mind you. Fatalism and self-preservation are strong instincts in 21st-century China. But it’s worth noting that “Yuan Shikai” is being intermittently blocked as a search term on Chinese social media.
Among the obvious censored search terms — “Constitution”, “Xi Jinping” etc — are some other interesting terms — “Winnie”, “Disney China”, “Emigrate” and “Yuan Shikai” (the first official president of the Republic of China, who proclaimed himself Emperor). via @FreeWeibopic.twitter.com/EU1Jj8uzxe
In 1915, on the advice of American political science professor Frank Goodnow, Yuan Shikai, then president of the Republic of China, decided that ordering the assassination of his political rivals, abolishing parliament, and neutering the constitution were insufficient to achieve his goals of national strength. In addition, he decided to revive the monarchy and make himself the new emperor.
Goodnow, for his part, argued that China was unsuited for democracy and required a strong authoritarian figure. While many in the Chinese political establishment agreed that democracy was not a workable solution at the time, and were even willing to acquiesce to Yuan Shikai’s dictatorial style, the idea of a new emperor was a step too far. Officials quit the government. Provinces seceded from the Republic, and within a few months, Yuan was forced to walk back his monarchical ambitions.
It seems unlikely that Xi Jinping would make this move unless he had already lined up the backing of the Party elite. There’s also a full-court press going on in the major papers today. But the concern over social media memes and search terms suggests that the Party knows this might be an issue for some people.
For the better part of 25 years, the deal was that the Party was in charge, and China would be an authoritarian state but it would also include the modern trappings of government, including some transparency and at least a head fake in the direction of accountability and orderly transitions of power. The decision to scrap term limits deals a serious blow to this “norming” of the Chinese system, not just around the world, but inside China as well. It remains to be seen how well that goes over with key constituencies.
This is NOT… WHAT… I WANTED!
I’ll just leave this one out there:
Deng in 1980: “Tenure for life in leading posts is linked both to feudal influences and to the continued absence of proper regulations in the Party for the retirement and dismissal of cadres.” https://t.co/gJSNSDtJZ9
* Many, many years ago I did the Sicilian Guide to Chinese History for my old Granite Studio blog. Sue me. I love The Godfather. Apparently, so does Xi Jinping. This was a vein too rich to not revisit the mine one more time.
