"To spend time in #China at the end of #Xi’s 1st decade is to witness a nation slipping from motion to stagnation &, for the 1st time in a generation, questioning whether a #Communist superpower can escape the contradictions that doomed the #SovietUnion."
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
"The clips circulate abroad with the mocking caption 'West #NorthKorea,' but at home #censors vigilantly guard #Xi’s honor; a leak from a #Chinese social-media site last year revealed that it blocks no fewer than 564 nicknames for him, including Caesar, the Last Emperor, & 21 variations of Winnie-the-#Pooh."
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
"Year by year, #Xi appears more at home in the world of the man he calls his 'best & closest friend,' Vladimir #Putin. In March, after @IntlCrimCourt issued an arrest warrant for the #Russian President on #war-#crimes charges, Putin hosted Xi in #Moscow, where they described relations as the best they have ever been. Clasping hands for a farewell in the doorway of the #Kremlin, Xi told Putin, 'Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for a hundred years—& we are the ones driving these changes together.' Putin responded, 'I agree.'" newyorker.com
"In #China, as in much of the world, you can tell a lot about a place by its #bookstores. For years, readers in #Shanghai, the nation’s most cosmopolitan city, had Jifeng—'Monsoon'—which opened in 1997, just as Wang Xiaobo was breaking through. It was the city’s undisputed liberal outpost, where even the most esoteric speakers drew a crowd. But in 2017 the public library, which owned the building, cancelled the lease, citing 'increased regulations' on state-owned property. The owner, #YuMiao, scouted new sites, but, every time, the landlord got a call & Yu was turned away. He ultimately realized that 'Jifeng can’t get a foothold.' Even the farewell party, to sell off the last #books, was plunged into darkness by sudden 'equipment maintenance.' Buyers kept shopping in darkness, using cell phones as flashlights. Today, nobody would dare try to open a store like that." newyorker.com
"As in America, #China’s changing temper partly reflects economic concerns. After #Party leaders embarked on market reforms, in 1978, the Chinese economy more than doubled in size every decade. #Infrastructure was built at such a pace that China used more #cement in a 3-year span than the US had used in the entire 20th century; #Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces, has 11 airports, to serve an area the size of #Missouri. But that boom is over now. China has all the airports—& railways & factories & skyscrapers—that it can justify. The #economy grew 3% last year, far short of the government’s target. Exports have dropped, and debt has soared. #Economists who once charted China’s rise are now flatly pessimistic. @RhodiumDan, of @rhodium_group, a research firm in #NewYork, told me, 'It is not just a blip. This is a permanent new normal.'" newyorker.com
"As a matter of scale, #China is as formidable as ever: it is the largest trading partner for >120 countries, it is home to at least 80% of the supply chain for #solar panels, and it is the world’s largest maker of #ElectricVehicles. But the downturn has shaken citizens who have never experienced anything but improvements in their standard of living. People who shunted their life savings into contracts for new apartments are contending with unfinished concrete blocks in overgrown lots, because the developers ran out of money. Civil treasuries are similarly depleted, by the shutdowns required by China’s 'zero-#covid' policy; there are reports of teachers & civil servants going unpaid." newyorker.com
"#China’s present troubles are about far more than the economy. Four decades after #Deng & his peers put their country on a path of 'reform & opening up,' his successors have reversed course, in politics & in culture. For ordinary #Chinese citizens, that reversal is as jarring as it would have been for #American homesteaders if the US had retreated from the frontier. @stinkebiber, the president emeritus of the #EuropeanUnion Chamber of Commerce in China, who has lived there for >30 years, told me, 'China always had comeback stories. But not now.' He recalled addressing a roomful of students at #PekingUniversity: 'I said, "Who among you is optimistic?" It was 1/3—which means 2/3 are pessimistic at the best university in China. There’s this feeling of "What are we here for?"'" newyorker.com
"The #Party has taken steps to obscure problems from foreign inspection: overseas access to corporate #data & academic journals has been restricted, scholars are warned not to discuss deflation, &, in stock-market listings, lawyers have been told to cut routine suggestions that laws could change 'without notice.' (Instead, they are to use the phrase 'from time to time.') Officially, #China is encouraging foreign companies & scholars to return, but an expanded 'anti-#espionage' law puts a vast range of information off limits, including 'documents, data, materials, or items related to #NationalSecurity & interests.' Authorities have raided consultancies with long histories in China, including @BainandCompany & #Mintz Group, a due-diligence firm that said 5 of its #Chinese employees had been detained." newyorker.com
"The space for pop #culture, high culture, & spontaneous interaction has narrowed to a pinhole. #Chinese #SocialMedia, which once was a chaotic hive, has been tamed, as powerful voices are silenced & discussions closed. Pop #concerts & other performances have been cancelled for reasons described only as 'force majeure.' Even #standup #comics are forced to submit videos of jokes for advance approval. This spring, a #comedian was investigated for improvising a riff on a Chinese #military slogan ('Fight well, win the battle') in a joke about his dogs going crazy over a squirrel. His representatives were fined $2,000,000 & barred from hosting events." newyorker.com
"Into the #cultural void, the #Party has injected a torrent of publishing under #Xi’s name—11 new books in the first 5 months of this year, far more than any predecessor ever purported to write—collecting his comments on every topic from economics & history to the lives of women. #GeremieBarmé, a prominent historian & translator, calls it 'Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium.' 'Here is one of the great cultures of succinct telegraphic communication, & it has ended up with this tsunami of logorrhea,' #Barmé said. The system is fumbling in search of an answer to the big question: Can Xi’s #China still manage the pairing of autocracy & capitalism? 'What do you do with an economy that can’t deal with unemployment created by mismanagement?' Barmé asked. 'What do you do with people who feel their lives are aimless?' He said, 'They don’t have a system that can cope with the forces they’ve unleashed.'" newyorker.com
"Disappearances, of one kind or another, have become the backbeat of #Chinese public life under #Xi Jinping. The head of #China’s #missile force, #LiYuchao, was secretly detained sometime during the summer. His political commissar vanished, too. Under the unwritten rules of these kinds of disappearances, an official report will eventually disclose what the two men did and what happened to them, but in the meantime there was little more than a rumor that they were being investigated for corruption or, perhaps, leaking state secrets." newyorker.com
"The missing generals marked an unusually busy summer of purges. #China’s #ForeignMinister, #QinGang—last seen shaking hands with a Vietnamese official at a meeting in #Beijing—vanished at around the same time. His disappearance attracted attention; among other tasks, he had been involved in delicate dealings with the US over #Taiwan & over access for businesspeople & students. A spokesperson initially said that Qin was gone for 'health reasons,' but the ministry cut that statement from the official transcript & took to saying that it had 'no information' on him. In Washington, where he had previously served as #Ambassador, I used to meet him occasionally; he was a smoothly pugnacious presence, who liked to boast of how many American states he’d visited. (22, at the highest count.) The last time I saw him, he was about to visit St. Louis, where he would throw out the first pitch at a Cardinals game, & was nervously preparing by studying videos on @YouTube." newyorker.com
"In #Mao’s day, a purge within the #Party required skilled technicians to excise a comrade from photos. In the #digital age, it is easier; entries on #Qin vanished from the #ForeignMinistry’s Web site overnight. But the references to the minister were restored when the change attracted attention abroad, & during my visits this summer everybody was still talking about him. ... most people offered versions of the same story: Qin, who is married, had an affair that produced a child born in America, exposing him to blackmail by foreign #intelligence services. (The mother of the child was thought to be #FuXiaotian, a television reporter, who has also dropped out of sight.)" newyorker.com
"Since 2012, when #Xi launched an 'anti-corruption' campaign that grew into a vast machine of arrest & detention, #China has 'investigated & punished 4.089 million people,' according to an official report from 2021. Some of the disappeared eventually go on trial in #courts that have a 99% conviction rate; others are held indefinitely under murky rules known as 'double restrictions.' The disappeared hail from every corner of life: #DongYuyu, a newspaper columnist, was arrested last year while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, & subsequently charged with #espionage; #BaoFan, one of China’s best-known bankers, vanished in February, though his company later reported that he was 'coöperating in an investigation carried out by certain authorities.' In September, #RahileDawut, a prominent #Uyghur ethnographer who had been missing for almost 5 years, was found, by a #HumanRights group, to be serving a life sentence on charges of endangering #NationalSecurity." newyorker.com
"In addition to the disappearances, the deepening reach of #politics is felt throughout daily life. Early this year, the #Party launched a campaign to educate citizens on what Party literature habitually refers to as '#Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with #Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.' All manner of institutions—laboratories, asset-management firms, banks, think tanks—are expected to make time for regular lectures, followed by the writing of essays & the taking of tests. Some business executives report spending a 3rd of the workday on 'thought work,' including reading an average of 4 books a month. A #microchip #engineer at a university lab told a friend, 'Going to meetings every day literally eats away at the time for scientific discoveries.'" newyorker.com
#MaoWithMoney——"The over-all effect is a revival of what the late #Sinologist #SimonLeys called the 'lugubrious merry-go-round' of #Communist ritual, & a culture of deliberate obfuscation that he likened to deciphering 'inscriptions written in invisible ink on blank pages.' The return of disappearances & thought work on this scale has made clear that, for all of #China’s modernizations, #Xi is no longer pantomiming the rule of law; he has returned China to the rule of man. At his core, a longtime observer told me, Xi is '#Mao with money.' newyorker.com
"The sense that #China’s march through time has stalled is especially acute among the #young, who are contending with stagnant wages & a culture of enervating limits. For a generation raised on the mythology of social mobility, the loss of optimism aches like a phantom limb.
newyorker.com
In 2021, a 31-year-old former factory worker named #LuoHuazhong posted a photo of himself in bed, with the caption '#LyingFlat is my sophistic act,' he said, professing solidarity with the philosopher #Diogenes, who is said to have protested the excesses of Athenian aristocrats by living in a barrel. The post spread, & 'lie flattists' formed online groups to commiserate. The #censors closed the discussions, but the phrase has lingered, especially among urbanites, some of whom liken themselves to the Beat generation, which originally took the name to mean 'weary' in the face of materialism & conformity."
newyorker.com
In 2021, a 31-year-old former factory worker named #LuoHuazhong posted a photo of himself in bed, with the caption '#LyingFlat is my sophistic act,' he said, professing solidarity with the philosopher #Diogenes, who is said to have protested the excesses of Athenian aristocrats by living in a barrel. The post spread, & 'lie flattists' formed online groups to commiserate. The #censors closed the discussions, but the phrase has lingered, especially among urbanites, some of whom liken themselves to the Beat generation, which originally took the name to mean 'weary' in the face of materialism & conformity."
"#Young people raised under the #OneChildPolicy want smaller #families, because they fear the cost of supporting #kids alongside #retired parents. As a result, by mid-century, #China’s working-age #population is expected to decline by nearly 25% from its #peak in 2011."
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
"For many #Chinese #women, #political pressure on their personal decisions has fed broad disaffection. #China’s #BirthRate has plunged by >1/2 since 2016—even after the government changed the rules to let people have up to three #children. This kind of drop has rarely been recorded in a nation that is not at #war or in the throes of upheaval. The last time China reported a #population decline of any kind was 1961, when it was reeling from the famine that followed #Mao’s #GreatLeapForward. #NicholasEberstadt, a political economist who studies population trends @AEI, has described the #birth #crisis as 'internalized civil disobedience.'" newyorker.com
"Historically, young people have been a volatile presence in #Chinese #politics. In 1989, students protesting corruption & autocracy led the occupation of #Tiananmen Square. In the present moment, their distress takes other forms. For years, young graduates have streamed into #China’s big cities in pursuit of wealth & stimulation, but, in August, state media reported that almost 1/2 of new graduates were returning to their home towns within 6 months, unable to afford the cost of living. Among those who stay, some are answering advertisements for 'bedmates'—sharing a bed with a stranger—or living rent-free in nursing homes, in return for spending 10 hours a month entertaining the residents." newyorker.com
"A decade after #Xi told young people to 'dare to dream,' he now admonishes them to curtail their expectations; in recent speeches, he has said that disgruntled youth should 'abandon arrogance & pampering' & 'eat bitterness'—basically, #Mandarin for 'suck it up.' The exhortations land poorly. Young people mock the implication that they are little more than a #renkuang—a 'human mine'—for the nation’s exploitation. As a subtle #protest during #college-commencement season, graduates took to posting pictures of themselves sprawled face down, or draped over railings, in a manner they named 'zombie style.'" newyorker.com
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