It's no secret that Donald J. Trump is the subject of nearly every debate in American political circles these days, and that he sits somewhere in the ring (if not at the center) of political discussions virtually everywhere else in the world. People love him or hate him, people cheer, jeer or fear him, but no one seems to be in between. I suppose that's to be expected. It's not possible for someone so brazen and bombastic with an unabashed vision of an entirely new direction for America to focus its geopolitical might to rise to the most powerful executive office in the world without stirring up a lot of discussion.
But has everyone forgotten that America's largest partner/rival (depending on the issue), with the second largest economy and largest army, where the world's largest political party has held an ironclad monopoly on power since 1949, a nation which most believed until recently (and some still believe) was on course to supplant the United States as the world's leading power, has been ruled by a man famous for far more outrageous and inflammatory claims (and shocking actions to back them up) for five years already?
I'm referring, of course, to China's Xi Jinpeng, China's self-appointed "Beloved Leader." I have lived in China since 2012, and I arrived here scant months before Xi was elected. I can say plainly that even at that time, knowing very little about the country, the change that took place upon his election was palpable. Since his rise to power (which happened much to the chagrin of China's academic elites), Xi has been unabashed in his pursuit of autocratic power and has done little to hide his dictatorial ambitions. His purge of his enemies from the ranks of the CCP (under the pretense of an "anti-corruption campaign") made very few headlines in the West, where we seem to think such things are just business as usual in China. For the record, they are, but not to this degree. As the 19th CCP Congress approached, there was much speculation about who Xi would begin to groom as his successor, since it has been a tradition since Deng for Chinese presidents to appoint a young firebreather to the Politburo Standing Committee during the CCP Congress five years after their initial appointment. However, Xi made a great show of doing no such thing, appointing no one who was in a position to succeed him and even including a warning that "my work is not done yet, and will not be finished by 2022," making it plain he has no intention to follow the "ten years then step down" tradition. And make no mistake, it is merely a tradition, not a rule. Add to this, his decision to enshrine his own name in the Constitution alongside Mao and Deng. This is not mere bluster. It means that all CCP training (which includes the Chinese Culture class that every student in this country is required to take from early childhood on up through high school) will include "the theories of Xi-ism." It's also worthy of note that Xi is the only leader China has had who lived to see himself get this honor. It was given to Mao and to Deng, but only after they died. The fact that Xi's name has been placed alongside these two, during Xi's lifetime, on Xi's own order, is telling. Try to imagine a Pope canonizing himself after sitting in the Chair of Saint Peter for five years, combine it with Napoleon snatching the crown and declaring himself Emperor, and you have a partial analogy for this. Finally, there is the fact that Chinese State Media has begun referring to him using the title "Beloved Leader," a title which they pulled out of mothballs from the Mao era. This is eerily reminiscent of North Korea, nor is that the only way in which Xi's China is coming to resemble North Korea, but I'll get to that later.
Xi's attempt (unchecked by the CCP and indeed vehemently supported by them) to establish himself as an iron-fisted dictator did not stop with laws or the education system though. It has become fashionable, thanks to a push by State-Owned media enterprises such as South China Morning Post and China Daily, for parents to teach their children to refer to Xi as "Xi Dada," or "daddy Xi." Magazines with names I can't render on this Western Keyboard (because they are in Hanzi) but which roughly correspond to Cosmopolitan or Vogue in the West (owned, of course, by the same media conglomerates as SCMP and CD, which in turn are owned by close affiliates of Xi Jinpeng) have had a long fascination with articles telling women to praise Xi for how handsome and (get this) "solidly virile" he is. Indeed, anyone whose WeChat friends list includes more than a handful of women who live or work in Beijing has been bombarded with "moments" photos fawning over Xi in an overemphasized and exaggerated manner eerily reminiscent, again, of North Korean women flocking to be photographed with Kim. There's not much of a practical reason for this, but it seems to be an attempt to indoctrinate the entire culture into not only accepting but indeed liking the fact that he holds dictatorial power over the country. Think about it. Imagine in America, if a president tried to bypass Congress (let's skip the obvious ranting from the Left accusing Trump of doing this and from the Right accusing Obama of doing it, because neither of them came close to this level). Would people accept it? No. But now, try this. Imagine the kids all viewed that man as a mix of Captain America and Santa Claus, and the women all viewed him as some mix of Johnny Depp and Sean Connery, while his political writings were seen as the equal of Thomas Paine, and he was also one of only three people to ever become, to use the metaphor again, a Saint in the National Church (and yes, in a later entry I will show how Communist Doctrine is, indeed, China's "State Religion"), and the only one to ever be canonized while alive. Now are you beginning to see why this star-powered celebrity appeal matters? His desire to be the unquestioned master of every aspect of Chinese life goes beyond political power. It is, in fact, no hyperbole to say he is setting himself up as a self-styled god.
Religious practices of any kind were outlawed in China under Mao Zedong. Over the years these restrictions relaxed, slightly. Churches were still allowed to operate, but only under the leadership of CCP-appointed clergy, who would deliver CCP-approved sermons, at services which would be closely monitored by CCP members to make sure religion "remained Chinese." Basically, sermon after sermon would teach that Mao Zedong's redistribution of wealth was doing Jesus's work of feeding the poor, as outrageous as that sounds in the West. But as Christianity expanded in China (in fact, in 2013 it was reported that there were more self-professed Christians in China than any country in the world, which should not be surprising given that this number still formed a tiny fraction of China's absolutely staggering population), its rise has begun to raise eyebrows down at Tiananmen. Perhaps this explains China's latest maneuver.
http://www.newsweek.com/china-christians-jesus-x-jinping-social-services-welfare-711090
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2119699/praise-xi-jinping-not-jesus-escape-poverty-christian
Banning religious practices is nothing new in Communist nations. From the USSR to Mao's China, and nearly every third-world holdout of Marxism in between, the refrain "we have no god but the State" has been commonplace. But China's latest effort takes that to a new level. In China's latest crackdown, not only are impoverished Christians being told "you will not receive assistance from the government if you show religious symbols." They are one-upping that by saying "you must enshrine Xi Jinpeng in the same place that you previously enshrined your God, with Qi Yan even going so far as to say God cannot heal you, only the Communist Party can. I cannot emphasize my disgust at this practice nearly enough. It is, in a very literal sense, the enforced worship of Xi Jinpeng as a Deity figure. Another official was quoted as saying "they've been tricked into thinking Jesus, not Xi is their savior." Whether you have a religious view or not, the idea of a Human Being forcing an entire nation to view him as a god should be unsettling, especially in light of the totalitarian tone that same individual has set for his entire nation.
It would be easy to say "well if they don't like CCP rule, let them leave China." Well first of all, they can't. In China it takes an immense amount of paperwork to get the government's permission to leave the country and they have been known to hunt down expatriated Chinese, even those who have long renounced Chinese citizenship and been naturalized elsewhere, to bring them back to China for punishment if they speak ill of the Party. And if anyone thinks China is going to lessen their censorship or their curtailing of free speech as the years go on, Xi Jinpeng has made no secret of the fact that the opposite is true. I'll post an entry later outlining the jaw-dropping magnitude of China's censorship later. Mmobs on social media threatening violence against a Chinese exchange student in Maryland who remarked how much freer she was to speak out in America than she was at home (marvel at the irony there; threatening violence against someone for daring to say there is no free speech in China, and justifying it by saying "there is Free Speech here and it is treason to say otherwise") to forcing messenger services to censor any posts containing the name of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate jailed for life by the CCP, censoring his name so thoroughly that few people in China have ever heard of him, jailing anyone who posts a message on social media containing the words "Taiwan" and "Independence" in the same post... yeah. That'll be one hell of an entry. For now just suffice it to say that as ridiculously, ruthlessly totalitarian as China is getting, perhaps one of the creepiest aspects of it is the fact that the CCP is keeping people within their country from even realizing they are oppressed by cutting off news from the outside world. And yet, make no mistake, the level of oppression is only going to go up from here.
I mentioned the Chinese military is the largest in the world. Well, did I mention that army has not seen combat in decades, but has more experience opening fire on civilian dissidents than any other currently existing army in the world? Consider then, the South China Morning Post. This State-Owned media outlet (a part of the HNA group, formerly only invested in airlines) posted recent editorials (by its own leaders) calling for China to take a firmer stand against "separatism," by which they mean, Taiwan's continued self-rule. It is worthy of note that the CCP has never, for a single day, held jurisdiction over Taiwan, which is the last hold out of the R.O.C. government that governed China before the CCP existed, so it's hard to see how something that has never been ruled by the CCP can be seen by the CCP as "separatist," but that effort to get myself arrested or deported will have to wait for another entry. Suffice it to say, the SCMP has taken an absolutely pleading tone in calling upon the CCP to brutally crackdown on dissent. That alone is chilling, but when coupled with this video from the same media outlet, it's even more worrisome.
https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/10155963342384820/?hc_ref=ARQCEANf1-pS9-fOIMbaEbq4ueIts3_orIWx8s1sGgp3Y1V8X5VJ0FVL_NjsMDkTCi8
Simply put, China's Army is gearing up for a fight, but it's not with the U.S. or any other foreign power. That clash, if it happened, would be the PLA Navy (which, as I will show in another entry, is an absolute joke) or its Air Force (made of cheap knock-offs and pirated Russian or American designs built from cut-rate imitation components). The fact that he addresses the Army says that he is preparing for battle against the only enemy the Chinese Army has faced in decades: the Chinese People. Note that the Oath has no vow of loyalty to the People, but only to the Party.
A blustering leader, claiming more and more power for himself, cracking down on dissent, censoring news that there is any other way, and preparing his army for battle against uprisings... when I look at all this, I see dark, dark times in China's future. I don't see much of a reason for America to fear Xi, but for the Chinese Citizenry, I weep.