/lit/ - Literature

Do the works of Xi Jinping contain any information on China's geopolitical ambitions or are they just poetry?

Xi Jinping Thought is just bullshit. Xi tries to appeal to the different political trends in China (including some dissident ones) to make himself out to be the man for everybody. But in trying to appease everyone, he only succeeds in making himself look like an idiot while exposing the fact most of his writing is ghost written. You can't reconcile Schmittian conservatism with New Confucianism, you can't mix Chinese New Left thought with the ideas of the fucking Tsinghua clique or atheism with Confucianism. neo-Maoism and authoritarian neoliberalism don't go together faggot. Xi Jinping Thought has a ultilitarian function too, it legitimizes the party "anti-corruption" campaigns Xi has used to quash rival factions in the CCP and rig votes, legitimize purges of guys like Bo Xilai, and cover up for his massive policy failures.

Xi is actually a follower of Carl Schmitt. He believes in a strong dictator leader who can cut through bureaucratic red tape and collective decision making and restore national greatness via competition with powerful external enemies. Attempts at alleviating China's rich-poor gap are foolish depoliticizing denials of the reality of friend/enemy distinction and the fact society has to have some losers. He also likes Foucault and Christian theology (depsite being a staunch atheist), believing Foucault's writings on biopower and discipline can help develop a stronger, more authoritarian state. In other words, he's your typical power hungry neolib and the point where a major CCP faction basically replaced "building socialism" with "power for power's sake" as an aspiration, the ideology of Chinese yuppies who want to be the next Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. I mean, Xi is from that yuppie Tsinghua educated faction so it figures.

Xi should resign and commit seppuku for crimes against good literature and coherent theory.

>>22275241
His elite party university staff and alums call him dim for a reason.

>>22275919
filtered

>>22275919
Damn I have no idea what you’re talking about but you sound pretty based.

Xi's "existing socialism" is basically 19th century ultraliberalism where trade unions are illegal and workers are forced to work for low wages without the right to negotiate. His entire national strategy is attracting foreign capital by keeping wages low. And MLs are still deluding themselves that the workers are in power.

>>22275919
This. So much this. (I have no idea what youre talking about, but you said it vigorously so i believe it)

>>22275919
>legitimize purges of guys like Bo Xilai
The guys wife murdered a foreigner, he used his political power to cover it up and then it blew up in his face. Not really a purge.
>he's your typical power hungry neolib
lol, lmao even.

>>22275919
Unfathomably based.

>>22276151
>>22276874
You two will be swayed by any charismatic orator like Hitler in no time.

>>22275919

>>22275919
I’m very anti Xi (as a Muslim) but you have misinterpreted him tremendously. Xi is working against the prior liberalization policies, some good evidence of this is now it is found that being a member of the communist party—Xi was only accepted after his 10th application—has a big effect on the income of working class (about 1/3 of the party; another third is retirees and students, and another management and capitalists), whereas managers and wealthy people in the party tend to have income similar to members of their vocations outside of it. Xi has also stressed the idea of asceticism among the party and turn from hedonism believing such behavior weakens discipline and the fortitude to hold out against the west. His courts have also recently ruled in favor of workers suing for overtime being legal limits.

Ultimately he is a dangerous adversary and not one to be underestimated. Definitely a convinced communist who is trying to gradually establish full socialism. Thinking of him as some degenerate clown is exactly what aids China to defeat the west (and Muslims)

>>22275919
>he's your typical power hungry neolib
What the fuck? /pol/tism speaks.

>>22275919
>You can't you can't you can't
(You) can't, obviously. He can and he did. Deal with it.

>>22277582
You're not a muslim, 4chan is haram.

I think Xi is competent, but he gets too much credit as if he is hyper-competent simply because China has been successful while Western countries have gotten so ridiculous. The world has no really great leaders and certainly no admirable leaders right now.

>>22277582
>he is a dangerous adversary and not one to be underestimated
he is so stupid that he paralyzed his whole state aparatus with cult of personality and now the country will drft towards massive systemic problems, completely ruderless since one dumb, pantsless bear can't keep tabs on everything

>>22277325
and?

>>22277716
That means that you're malleable as shit.

>>22277735
I fail to see the issue?
>nooo you have to think for yourself waawaaaa

>>22277738
There's no guarantee that you won't be swayed by Stalin or Mao either when they push the right buttons.

>>22277754
correct.

>>22277758
You're a cattle. What good is reading so much if you're a good goy?

>>22277785
do you believe to possess an immunity to propaganda? name one original thought

>>22277787
Brap on hoes.

>>22277787
>like nothing is real man so all ideas are like… equally valid man

>>22277678
This is 4channel. I don’t look at porn

>>22277712
You honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, please read the Financial Times instead of /pol/. His big big blunder was the Covid policy

>>22275919
China is legalistic, not Confucionist. You have no idea.

>>22277802
muh /pol/ - zeihan says as much. Please, if youy're going to remain in the throes of your brain rot, then kindly rope and relieve the rest of us.

>>22277582
>Xi has also stressed the idea of asceticism among the party and turn from hedonism believing such behavior weakens discipline and the fortitude to hold out against the west
Yeah, asceticism. He's made the windbreaker the new Zhongshan suit. They've also adopted wearing party flag pins if you're a party member, which I think is supposed to be partly for anti-corruption / transparency purposes, but they're also expected to behave well and set a good example. Kinda like Mormons:
https://youtu.be/GYCjexM9mvk

>>22277712
>he is so stupid that he paralyzed his whole state aparatus with cult of personality
Hard to say. There's definitely a cult of personality that has become very large, but Xi comes across as a Machiavellian figure to me who is carrying out what Gramsci called a "passive revolution" which is top-down reform of the system combined with absorbing demands from opposition groups into the system to maintain party rule. This makes him different from a populist leader. The personality cult / myth takes on more importance because the reforms are happening very fast but the "modern prince" is the party.

>>22277582
>Ultimately he is a dangerous adversary and not one to be underestimated.
https://youtu.be/4HyeJ2C-k1U?t=1760

>>22275919
TLDR?

>>22277680
I suspect the era of "great leaders" striding around the world like a colossus has passed. People just don't believe it, but leaders also try to LARP as leaders of the past. Trying to create some legitimacy with the myths and heroes of the past has always been to some extent true in politics, but a lot of it today feels like it's more about making people feel comfortable with the benevolent chairman being the Chinese version. Xi is simultaneously going to Davos to defend market globalization and he's a Maoist.

>Fisher defines the psychology of our era succinctly as “the inability to make new memories” – he describes the neoliberal creation of a need to create in people “a refusal to accept the consequences of the sidelining of government in global capitalism – a sign, perhaps, that, at the level of the political unconscious, it is impossible to accept that there are no overall controllers, that the closest thing we have to ruling powers are nebulous, unaccountable interests exercising corporate irresponsibility”. With no politics of a new kind emerging in the post-neoliberal era, the past must be dredged to create leaders who resemble differing cultural ideas of what leaders are from different areas of time and space all Frankensteined together, creating the mash-up Xi Jinping of jarring Maoist and market socialist sides, alternately proclaiming the glory of the Communist Party, warning in secret speeches of western attempts to discredit Chinese socialism, and appearing to soothe business leaders at Davos; the Joe Biden who apes folksy George Bush and Obama-era language and modern PR techniques while at once engaging in a superficial imitation of FDR’s reformist New Deal Democrat urges. The Putinist slurry of Soviet symbolism combined with violent, emotive conservative nationalism and appeals to the paternal era of the Tsar’s personal rule is often mocked, but it’s no more absurd than British prime ministers who are trying to be socially liberal Blairites with plug-in smiles, grimly puritanical ministers of austerity, and Cold Warrior iron lords and ladies all at once. But really these contradictory faces all even out to the same thing – cosplay, differing costumes for different crowds, to disguise a fundamental lack even of conservatism, an adherence to a world that like the North Korea of Kim Il-sung has disappeared without offering another way forward.
https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/2023/06/17/cosplay-politicians-capitalist-realism-in-britain-and-china-and-everywhere-else/

>>22275919
>Xi fell for the ideology meme
It's so fucking over

>>22277582
>I'm a Muslim
>Xi is a committed socialist
Fuck off Chang

>>22278075
>thesis collapses in the wake of Caesarism

>>22275919
/r/sino sisters quiet since this post

To understand Xi Jinping Thought you have to look at party politics in China in the 2000s. The CCP was divided between two major rival factions, the Shanghai Clique led by Jiang Zemin, and the Tuanpai Clique. The Shanghai Clique was largely made up of red aristocrats, the children of senior party officials, who are pro-big business, seek to further liberalize the Chinese economy, while focusing on the development of coastal cities like Shenzen and liberal social values. However, they strictly oppose a seperation of powers (an idea floated by China's Gorbachevists back in the 80s), democratization or any measure that would weaken the CCP's hold on civil society. The Tuanpai, who backed Hu Jintao, were drawn from party members who climbed the ranks and typically focused on social welfare, sticking to the party's socialist roots, addressing inequality, flirt with democratization, loosen censorship and a seperation of powers but are socially very conservative.

Xi Jinping started out as a figure in the Shanghai faction, but he decided he'd build his own clique, which has by now eliminated the Tuanpai as a force in Chinese politics. Initially, this faction was staffed by yesmen and people from his university network which made it pretty weak on policy or intellectual matters. This is why Xi Jinping Thought is so bizzare. It's simply made up of ideological positions that were conveniant for Xi to take that evolved over time. It's also why it's so inconsistent and contradictory. Xi Jinping Thought is a political tool used to legitimize Xi's rule and give him what he wants. He'll invoke party discipline and sticking to socialist values when he wants to justify getting rid of people he doesn't like. The last atheism campaign or his famous anti-corruption campaigns are a good example.

What does Xi actually believe? Well, he's power hungry and very authoritarian, even by Chinese standards, and he really loves Carl Schmitt, and leverges Schmitts criticisms of liberalism to demolish the principal of collective leadership. He wants a strong authoritarian state that will provide stability. He's hostile to political liberalism or any kind of liberal or socialist influence in politics which will weaken the nation-state by introducing difference and internal conflict. He's introduced censorship policies unseen in China. He has very clear great power ambitions, a desire to make China a super power. When it comes to economics, he doesn't seem all that different to the Shanghai Clique but he's pretty pragmatic. I'd describe him as a ruthless authoritarian pragmatist with a dictatorial bent, even by China's standards. He's a power hungry conservative and an ethno-nationalist who revives the authoritarian politcs of Marxist-Leninism but wants to stick to the economic path China's been on since Jiang Zemin held the reigns.