The Communist Party of China: A Legacy of the Great Leap Forward, the Great Witch Hunt, and the Cultural Revolution: The Life and Times of Xi
The social control came to a new height during the epidemic. In the name of fighting Covid, 1.4 billion Chinese citizens lost their freedom of movement to the whims of the party and the prowess of the surveillance state. Millions of people are kept away from their homes, sometimes for months on end, because of rolling,drastic lockdowns in cities across China.
The Great Leap forward, an industrial reform campaign that started in 1959 caused a famine, and the political witch hunts of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution were both very damaging and aimed at some political or economic imperative. Their cumulative effect is one of the Communist Party’s greatest achievements: a near-perfect symbiosis between dictatorial government and subservient population.
Mao is very much worthy of emulating, in fact, according to the man. Marquis, a professor at the Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, gave me examples, saying: “He uses Mao’s slogans frequently. He is like him in a number of ways. At the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China” — which was last year — “he wore a very specific type of suit, a special kind of Mao suit that only Mao wore on very specific occasions. He gave his speech from Tiananmen Square, like Mao did when he proclaimed the founding of P.R.C.
The crackdown instilled discipline, loyalty and a culture of fear, stifling opposition as Xi moved to amass power into his own hands. He styled himself as a strongman, eschewing the collective rule that was alleged to have exacerbated factionalism under his comparably weak predecessor Hu Jintao. In four years, the president asserted himself as the center of the leadership, demanding that 96 million members unify their thinking, willpower and action around him.
Having risen through the ranks in the bustling coastal provinces during China’s reform and opening up, Xi would have seen no shortage of local corruption. The leadership exposed in the Bo scandal has deep rifts at the top of the hierarchy that may have made Xi fear for the party’s survival.
Xi, the most powerful and authoritarian Chinese leader in decades, has waged a sweeping crackdown to crush dissent, both within the party and in wider society.
The nationalist mission appeals to Chinese citizens more than the logic that Marxism-Leninism has to offer. The displays of patriotic pride during the Beijing Winter Olympics last February were sincere, as were feelings of wounded anger when the United States and others blamed China for the pandemic. Even though they may not be a fan of the Communist Party, Chinese people still love their country.
That outward power projection coincides with the idea that China wants to be part of a US-led world order that also includes other autocrats like Russia. Until that happens, though, the Chinese strongman’s instinct and demand for total control at home seem to have meant the erection of ever-higher barriers – in the real world and cyberspace – to keep out pesky outsiders, the perceived source of dangerous viruses and ideas.
Communist Party officials have been spreading the idea of national unity across Tibetan villages in Southwest China, that each ethnic group must unite into a single China and have a shared heritage.
Thousands of officials in Ganzi, a Tibetan region of Sichuan Province, have been paired with families to collect information and give out gifts of rice, cooking oil and beatific portraits of Mr. Xi — all to hammer home his message of an encompassing Chinese identity, from Xinjiang in the west to the contested island of Taiwan in the east.
“In the future I’ll be a member of your family, too,” Shen Yang, the Communist Party secretary of Ganzi, called Kardze in Tibetan, told one household, according to a local newspaper.
The Sitong Bridge Overpass: A Resolved, Public Protest against Xi Jinping’s Zero-Covid Policy and Authoritarian Rule
Just a few days before a crucial meeting of the Communist Party in Beijing, there was a rare protest that ended quickly against the leader of the country, who is set to be re-elected.
Photos circulating on Twitter Thursday afternoon show two banners hung on an overpass of a major thoroughfare in the northwest of the Chinese capital, protesting against Xi’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy and authoritarian rule.
“Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to be locked up and no to be free. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to a cultural revolution, and yes to reform. No to a great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” reads one banner.
CNN cannot independently verify the images and footage, but has geolocated them to Sitong Bridge, an overpass on Beijing’s Third Ring Road in Haidian district.
There were no banners or protesters when CNN arrived at Sitong Bridge. A large number of security personnel were in and around the overpass. Security personnel were also spotted patrolling every overpass CNN drove by on the Third Ring Road.
On Chinese social media, discussions about the protest were heavily censored. Some users expressed support and awe for the protest under the hashtags #Beijing and #Haidian. The Chinese pop hit was shared in a reference to the protester. The posts were quickly removed.
One mass public campaign after another was designed to bring in Chinese minds in service of the state during the rule of the Communist Party.
At an upcoming party congress, it is expected thatXi will be appointed to a third term. He will be anointed as China’s most powerful leader in more than a century, paving the way for a possible lifelong rule.
CNN wrote a story about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world in its Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-time-a-week update. Sign up here.
It is a moment that for many observers has come to define strongman leader Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on China: his visibly frail predecessor, Hu Jintao, being escorted out of a key Communist Party meeting during a five-yearly leadership reshuffle – apparently at Xi’s behest.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was inaugurated by Chinese president, Mr. Xi. Instead of the American dream, he speaks of the “Chinese dream,” which describes the collective pride that people feel when they overcome a century of disorder and colonial humiliation to reclaim their status as a great power. Gaining control over territories viewed as lost, including Taiwan, is considered key to the Chinese dream. Ensuring that China is in charge of Asia and the world is something that is done. Mr. Xi launched China’s first aircraft carrier and its first foreign military base, in Djibouti.
China sits at the top of the world, the party is on top of it, and the President sits on top of it. That’s basically the program,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Australia.
Bo Xilai was trying to ascend to the top leadership when his police chief tried to defect to the US, accusing Bo of trying to cover up his wife’s murder of a British businessman. Party leaders feuded over how to deal with the fallout. Bo was kicked out of the party in the last weeks before the change of power. Bo and his wife are today both serving life in prison.
Following his appointment as the leader of the party, Xi stated that there were many pressing problems within the party that needed to be solved.
The party had increased control of the economy, especially its private sector. His regulatory measures resulted in the downfall of the tycoons and wiped trillions of dollars off the market value of Chinese firms.
In the online sphere, extensive censorship and real-life retaliation tamed social media. Instead of being a catalyst for social and political reforms it became an amplifier for party propaganda and a breeding ground for nationalism.
When the Communist establishment lost control over society during the Cultural Revolution, it was an example of how important the party is.
Hundreds of thousands of people died in the turmoil, including the half-sister of Xi. The father was tortured. At the age of 15, he was put to hard labor in an impoverished village.
“Arguably, his emphasis on party authority, and stopping individuals who disagree with the party from criticizing (it), is a result of his phobia of chaos because of what he saw happened to himself, his mother, his father and siblings,” said Joseph Torigian, an expert on Chinese politics at American University and author of an upcoming biography on the elder Xi.
“(He) believed that to achieve political order you needed to have a powerful leader, a powerful party, not creating a system in which people had rights that went too far, because they would only abuse them and hurt other individuals,” Torigian said.
Why did the Soviet Union fall apart? The collapse of the soviet Communist Party is a topic of debate. In his speech months after taking the helm of the party, it was stated that their ideals and beliefs had been shattered.
Xi’s message to the West: A warning to China, a warning to the restraints from the west and the consequences for the non-western world
The American measures have only reinforced the fact that China is under siege from Western powers, he said.
A foreign policy was embarked upon by the president abroad. It is China’s moment, according toXi. And to seize that moment, he has to be assertive and take risks,” McGregor said.
But Xi’s starkest warning to the West came last summer, when he presided over a grand celebration marking the party’s centenary. The Chinese nation will not bebullied, oppressive or subjugated by foreign powers even if the gate of heavenly peace on top of Tiananmen is closed, said the president. His speech received a thundering applause from the crowd as he warned that anyone who dared to try, their heads would be bashed against a great wall of steel.
Since coming to power, Xi has repeatedly warned against the “infiltration” of Western values such as democracy, press freedom and judicial independence. He has clamped down on foreign NGOs, churches, Western movies and textbooks – all seen as vehicles for undue foreign influence.
Russia and China share a suspicion and animosity towards the US which they believe is intended to hold them down. They both see a new world order that better accommodates their nations’ interests and is not dominated by the West.
It’s not known how many countries are willing to join that perspective. Views of China have grown more negative during Xi’s decade in power across many advanced economies, and in some, unfavorable views reached record highs in recent years.
With China’s increasing economic and military might, coexistence with the West has given way to confrontation with the United States and its allies. Gone are the days of “hiding your strength and biding your time” – Chinese diplomats under Xi are proud warriors training fire on anyone who dares to question their government.
But, now, as Xi steps into an expected new era of his rule, that system – known today as the “dynamic zero-Covid” policy – is facing both social and economic pushback.
During China’s National Day holiday in early October, several expatriate friends and I took our young children – who are of mixed races and tend to stand out in a Chinese crowd – to the Great Wall on the outskirts of Beijing.
As we climbed a restored but almost deserted section of the ancient landmark, a few local families on their way down walked past us. Noticing our kids, one of their children exclaimed: “Wow foreigners! With Covid? Let’s get away from them…” The group quicklyened their pace as the adults remained quiet.
The Great Wall, a top tourist attraction that normally draws throngs of visitors during holidays, stood nearly empty when we went thanks to Xi’s insistence – three years into the global pandemic – on a policy of zero tolerance for Covid infections while the rest of the world has mostly moved on and re-opened.
Most international travelers have not been allowed to enter China since the country shut its borders in March 2020.
Authorities discouraged domestic travel because of the Omicron variant that was raging through various parts of the country. They are also sticking to a playbook of strict quarantine, incessant mass testing and invasive contact tracing – often locking down entire cities of millions over a handful of cases.
During the so-called “Golden Week” holiday travel and tourism spending plummeted, with tourism spending falling to less than half of the last “normal” year.
Xi, the Great Wall, and the Rise and Fall of the United States: Addressing Children’s “Flame the Foreigners” apocalypse
With a system obsessed with social stability, the measures born out of zero-covid have proven themselves to be effective means of control, which many worry will never be dropped.
The local child’s remarks on the Great Wall reflected that. In the face of mounting pressure on the domestic front, children in powerful positions take advantage of the “blame the foreigners” sentiment.
A recent history paper by a government-run research institute went viral as it upended a longstanding consensus. The authors defended the necessity of keeping national security a priority when faced with foreign invaders rather than condemning the isolationist policy adopted by the last two imperial dynasties that led to their backward turn.
Poised to secure a groundbreaking third term when the Communist Party congress concludes this week, Xi defended his hard-line reign in a sweeping speech and insisted that the party must remain united under his rule against an increasingly hostile West.
But his praise was coupled with a somber warning that the nation must stand united behind the party to cope with a world he depicted as increasingly turbulent — and hostile. He distrusts the world’s other great power even though he did not mention the United States by name.
Mr. Xi warned against dangers in the midst of peace. “Get the house in good repair before rain comes, and prepare to undergo the major tests of high winds and waves, and even perilous, stormy seas.”
Xi Jinping’s 10 Years in Beijing: A Ten-Year Engagement in the Chinese Communist Party and the Role of Market Economic Reforms
The speech by Mr. Xi, who is expected to win a third term when the Communist Party congress concludes this week, made just three references to market reforms and omitted more than a dozen others. His focus was on issues of national security, corruption, and the creation of a larger role for socialism and the public sector.
When he did talk about markets, the message was established rhetoric. He lauded “socialist market economic reform,” while also arguing that China’s economy should “give full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation.”
A professor at the party’s elite academy helped train thousands of high-ranking members. An economist was going to take China’s top economics prize. A young historian plans to teach a class about contemporary Chinese history, which includes sensitive periods like the Cultural Revolution.
The government said it would delay the release of economic data that had been expected to show continued lackluster performance.
BEIJING — Ten years ago, with more than 2,000 delegates in front of him, Xi Jinping smiled graciously when he took the helm of the most populous nation on the planet and the world’s second-largest economy.
A scholar called Ilham Tohti was paying close attention. He was happy to see the elevation of him to the general secretary of the party.
He sounded excited. He’s like, ‘I think it’s going to change now. Things are going to get better,'” says the scholar’s daughter, Jewher Ilham, who lives in the United States.
Ilham Tohti, 53 this month, is a member of the Uyghur ethnic group, which calls Xinjiang home. He was a well known activist for the Uyghur language and culture.
By some estimates, there would be a million or more people who are kept in jail. The U.S. has called it genocide. The top human rights official at the UN said in a recent report that abuses may have amounted to crimes against humanity. China does not deny any wrongdoing.
Vis’s Yoga During the Cultural Revolution: A Portrait with a Prince During a Cultural Revolution and a “Princeling”
But it comes with a cost. The economy has been badly impacted by the lack of certainty, which has made it difficult for business to plan.
Vis and his neighbors — who were effectively imprisoned in their compound — drafted a statement of protest. He recorded the recording and they played it for everyone to hear.
The lockdown started in early spring. Since it was lifted in June, Vis has pieced his yoga business back together for the most part. He says it left scars on everyone.
Vis believes that it could happen a second time. If you are bitten by a snake in China, you will be afraid of coiled rope for a decade.
A young man named Xi was sent to work in the western Chinese countryside during the turbulent Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 as a way to help pay the bills. He liked his style, so he’s known about him since then.
Zhang believes Xi understands the plight of the country’s poor because of his experience in the Cultural Revolution, and has been able to take action that his predecessors could not because he is what is known as a “princeling” — the child of revolutionaries. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a guerrilla fighter in the civil war and later a vice premier.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1127852397/china-xi-jinping-10-years-perspectives
The Xi-Kwong era: China’s role in the umbrella movement and the collapse of the China-Russian democratization movement
The situation in Hong Kong is close to being an example. The former British colony had a vibrant pro-democracy movement, an active civil society, and the people enjoyed freedom of speech.
The “Umbrella movement” was a group of people who wanted the right to vote for the city’s leaders.
The proposed law sparked more demonstrations five years later. Kwong was returning to Germany to get her master’s degree.
In 2020, Beijing took a step that would change everything — imposing a sweeping National Security Law on Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s democratization movement was decimated by the arrests that followed.
Xi has not blinked. At the opening session of the party congress in Beijing on Sunday, he said the “one country, two systems” model for running Hong Kong is a “great innovation” and that China has successfully overcome “grave challenges to its national security” in the territory.
Hong Kong was promised that it would have “high degree of autonomy” when it was returned to Britain in 1997. Critics say that China has made a mistake.
“I don’t want things like this to happen again in China and anywhere in the world,” he said. “I lost my father. My son lost his beloved grandfather. I am angry now.
These were just four people with four very different experiences under Xi. But in a country of 1.4 billion people, it is impossible to capture the national mood.
The Communist Party made a bet a decade ago that a tougher leader was needed to keep the party in power and make China stronger.
Xi has ramped up China’s ambitions for reducing carbon emissions and slowing global warming. This week, he continued those goals in grandiose language. We have to uphold and act on the principle that waters and mountains are valuable assets. But he has also allied himself with a leader whose actions are threatening to throw the global climate fight in reverse: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
This summer, China sweltered through more than two months of record-high temperatures, the country’s most prolonged heat wave since modern records began in 1961. The river dried up. Production was halted to reduce the burden on power grids. The Communist Party news outlet was told that extreme highs could become a new normal by Chen Lijuan.
The United States and China can navigate a particularly perilous period with the help of coordinated, unilateral steps back from the voluntary brink on behavior rather than limits of new capabilities.
Competition will fuel overextension abroad, where the impulse to counter every potential threat or challenge makes it difficult to focus resources and attention on achieving positive priorities and outcomes. In the United States, escalated competition could exacerbate domestic divisions and undermine democracy. Increased xenophobia and anti-Asian violence in America has led more than 60 percent of Chinese-born scientists working in the US to consider leaving the country.
As you embark upon your third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, please accept my country’s gratitude and greetings. One day, we believe that you reign will be a great blessing in the history of the US and other free nations.
Top Communist Party officials were sent to deal with the political crisis in Wuhan as anger mounted over the mishandled coronavirus outbreak in early 2020. One of them stayed three months and worked to put protective gear on health workers and hospital beds.
Ms. Sun warned deserters to be prepared to be fingered to the pillar of historical shame.
Party-Congress xijinping zero Covid intl-hnk: Where are you? Why wouldn’t you want to ride it?
As the rare woman in the upper echelons of Chinese politics, it is a role to which she has become accustomed, driving the Communist Party’s will and bearing the country’s criticism. Hanzhang Liu is a professor at Pitzer College and he said women are pushed to the frontline when male politicians don’t want to deal with a crisis.
China’s advanced online ecosystem – run on mobile phone superapps and ubiquitous QR codes – has offered arguably unrivaled convenience for consumers to shop, dine and travel. Technology is playing a part in constraining the daily life.
The system of tracking citizens with cell phone health codes is meant to give the state control over people’s movement, an unparalleled level of control that has never before been seen in China.
Across the country, basic activities like going to the grocery store, riding public transport, or entering an office building depend on holding an up-to-date, negative Covid test and not being flagged as a close contact of a patient – data points reflected by a color code.
Going out in public can be a risk in itself, as being placed under quarantine or barricaded by authorities into a mall or office building as part of a snap lockdown could simply depend on whether someone in the general vicinity ends up testing positive.
One person who lives in the city said that big data has flaws that it has control over, for example when a tracking system pinned his wife to a location close to a positive case.
He said they were able to reach a hotline and explain their situation, and returned her health code to green.
In an apparent bid to lower public expectation about any policy changes, the party has released three similar editorials in the past week, but one of them was from the People’s Daily and states that “putting people first andPrioritize life” is the essence of persistance with dynamic zero-
One of the more amusing pieces of commentary was a thread about the cost of the policy and how you wouldn’t want to ride it.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/20/china/china-party-congress-xi-jinping-zero-covid-intl-hnk/index.html
Preventing Covid-19 spread in the country and the use of the health code system in protests against the communist-democratic regime
Speaking before some 2,300 mostly surgical-mask clad Communist Party members, the new president said that the party had protected the health and safety of the people to the greatest extent.
The effects of the controls are getting sharper as they leave people struggling for access to food and medicine and grappling with lost income and a mental toll.
As the Party congress approaches, local authorities in the area have put in place controls to make sure that there are no outbreaks that coincide with it.
Ben Cowling of the University of Hong Kong said that maintaining the zero-covid strategy is more expensive now than it was a year ago.
And backing away from the policy will come with significant consequences. Allowing the virus to spread within the country of 1.4 billion would likely increase Covid-19 deaths to unseen levels in the country, experts say – and China so far has staked its policy around preventing those outcomes at all costs.
Keeping tight controls and closed borders will only delay the inevitable since the virus will stay in circulation beyond China, experts say, as well as raising elderly vaccination rates and increasing ICU capacity.
While China backed a massive vaccination campaign since early 2021, it has relied on homegrown shots, which produce lower levels of protective antibodies than mRNA vaccines developed in the West.
The council on foreign relations senior fellow said that if you don’t see preparation for the change, that means they are not planning to change their policy any time soon.
In the past the health code system has been used to diffuse protest, with petitions lost in rural banks after the health codes inexplicably turned red.
Chinese Technology and the State of the Party’s 79-Year-Old General Secretary: The Case for a Private Investigation of Hu’s Explosion
The fascinating character of the general secretary of the party during the tumultuous 1980’s was the subject of a special report by Gewirtz. They argued for China to speed up international trade, to import foreign ideas and technology, and to distance the party from Chairman Mao’s legacy.
The United States has been hostile to China in the past, and has sanctions against some of the country’s most promising technology companies. The party will probably not survive another round. China’s economy is self-hobbled because of constant Covid controls and it’s technology firms bound by American export restrictions, it has been overshadowed by nationalism and a refusal, and its diplomatic clout has been marred by a nasty dose of nationalism.
Images of two men ushering the 79-year-old from his seat and toward the exit were beamed across the world as the party’s National Congress came to a close Saturday, leading to days of speculation over whether Hu was the victim of a deliberately public power play.
With Tuesday’s footage there is speculation about what was in the document and how Hu wasn’t allowed to see it.
The footage, released by Channel NewsAsia on Tuesday, shows a series of high-level exchanges between senior party leaders, in which Hu is repeatedly prevented from looking at official documents in front of him.
The documents were put under a red folder by Li Zhanshu, the party’s outgoing number three official, who was sitting with Hu at the front table. When Hu then reaches for the documents, Li pulls them away.
Xi, who is sat on Hu’s other side, glances at the exchanges and summons a senior aide to whom he speaks briefly. A second aide is about to hurries over, when Hu speaks to an apparent nonplussed Hu.
The China Post-Congress Correlation Dispatch: Vice Premier Hu Chunhua has not been seen in a day or two
None of the footage was broadcast in China. Neither has the incident been reported in Chinese language media, or discussed on Chinese social media, where conversations around senior leaders are highly restricted.
According to the Xinhua news agency in China, Hu was “insisted on attending” the closing ceremony despite his health problems and was escorted out after feeling unwell. However, within China, where Twitter is blocked, the incident was not mentioned.
The search results were restricted to vague topics, such as “escorted away” or “leaving the meeting”, in an effort to prevent users from making references to the incident.
Hu had a time of double-digit economic growth and comparative openness during his time as president, but many of his hallmarks are gone.
The model of collective leadership and balancing influence of several party factions and elders helped Hu remain as powerful as he is now, but he was also associated with a splinter group of the communist Youth League.
The video has been viewed by some as a sign of Hu’s displeasure with the result of the Congress in which Hu’s team was stacked with his cronies and loyal allies to consolidate his power.
Premier Li Keqiang and Wang Yang, head of China’s top advisory body, both retired from the party’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee, despite being one year below the unofficial retirement age of 68. The two Chinese people are seen as close to Hu’s sphere of influence.
In an even more surprising revelation on Sunday, Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, another protege of the elder Hu (the two are not related), was dropped from the new 24-member Politburo. Once seen as a rising star being groomed for the top leadership, Hu Chunhua’s political future has dimmed under Xi.
A political scientist at the Australian National University said there was no likelihood of a public purge at the closing of the congress.
If Hu raised objections in public, he would be removed from office before foreign press were allowed into the auditorium.
Many observers were also struck by the apparent coldness of the other leaders on the stage. Many avoided looking in Hu’s direction, and few showed concern for him.
Officials in the party try to be like a machine in the party machinery, hiding their personal emotions and characteristics to help them rise through the party.
Hu rubbed the shoulder of his friend, Premier Li, who nodded briefly to watch Hu walk away. Wang sat upright and stared straight ahead, seemingly frozen in motion.
Further down the edge of the stage, Hu Chunhua did not even cast a glance toward the party elder as he passed by. Instead, he looked straight ahead with a notable frown and arms folded across his chest.
But even if the real reason for the elder Hu’s departure never becomes clear, the incident has nevertheless sent an unequivocal message about Xi’s absolute hold on power, analysts say.
Hu’s undignified exit showed that “Xi had reduced the once powerful (Communist) Youth League faction to insignificance,” said Tsang at the University of London.
The previous leader had been humiliated, according to Tsang, meaning that no one should look over his shoulder for another leader.
“When the ability to govern decreases, even in the absence of any particular policy from the top, the ineptitude, brutality, and ignorance of lower-level officials will brew disasters for the common people they rule over,” said Mr. Wu, who is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions.
From business to politics: A conversation with the founder of a Chinese tech startup with a lot of money under the zero-Covid rules
Many businesspeople have lost a lot of money under “zero-Covid,” which has shuttered cities and locked millions of people in their homes for weeks at a time as the government seeks to eliminate the coronavirus.
Despite many conversations over the years, we never talked about politics. I was surprised when he called after the party congress to talk about his “political depression.” He used to think that the Chinese were the most hard-working people in the world. Nowadays, he and many of his friends spend most of their time hiking, golfing and drinking. He said that they were too depressed to work.
Until a year ago, his start-up was doing so well that he was planning to take it public. Then he lost a big chunk of his revenues and his new hires sat idly with nothing to do when cities were locked down under the “zero-Covid” rules. He said now he has no choice but to lay off more than 100 people, sell his business and move his family to North America.
The Xi-Xi g20 Summit in Japan: a reopening dialogue between the US and China after the G20 G20
Scott Morrison had brief discussions with the president of China at the G20 in Japan in 2019. Six years have passed since leaders of the two sides met for a bilateral summit, after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met with Chinese President’s XI XI at the G20 in China.
China’s relations with these four US allies have deteriorated in recent years because of disputes over trade and the origin of the Covid-19 vaccine.
While expectations of a reset of relations are low, the meetings could serve to stave off disagreements and reopen communication lines – in ways similar to the meeting between Xi and Biden.
In an apparent signal to US allies that ideological differences shouldn’t make their ties with Beijing become unbridgeable, the Chinese leader described his country’s system of governance as “Chinese-style democracy.”
In a sign of Xi’s busy schedule, the Chinese leader and French President Emmanuel Macron squeezed in a meeting early on Tuesday, before both leaders showed up at the opening of the G20 summit.
“Xi stressed China’s position on the Ukraine crisis is clear and consistent, advocating a ceasefire, a stop to war and peace talks,” a readout of the bilat from Chinese state media CCTV said.
A readout from the French Presidency said the two leaders “reaffirmed their firm position on preventing the use of nuclear weapons” in the war in Ukraine – a line that was not included in the Chinese readout.
In recent years,France has hardened its position on China, seeing the country as a competitor and security concern.
For the majority of the pandemic Xi limited his diplomatic activities to virtual summits and video conferences, choosing to stay within China, rather than travel overseas.
Ties between Beijing and Australia have degraded over the past years, so it will be interesting to see if the two countries can repair them in person on Tuesday.
The two countries have been locked in a bruising trade dispute and diplomatic freeze since early 2020, when China slapped tariffs on Australia following its call for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/china/china-xi-g20-summit-day-1-intl-hnk/index.html
Xi Albanese: Losing a 12-year-old son in a locked-down compound: the story of a frustrated auto dealer in China
Announcing his meeting with Xi after arriving in Bali on Monday, Albanese said having the meeting alone is a “successful outcome,” pointing to the lack of dialogue at the top level for years.
“It is not in Australia’s interest to not have dialogue with our major trading partners,” he told reporters, adding that there are no preconditions for the meeting.
Australian policy expert John Lee of the Hudson Institute in Washington states that core Chinese objectives such as its South China Sea, Taiwan and South Pacific policies are fundamentally at odds with Australia’s core interests.
The afternoon of November 1st, Zhou, an auto dealer in northeastern China, was able to see his father in a video chat after his home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.
There was no warning that Covid restrictions had been imposed, and Zhou and his family didn’t live in the apartment where there were cases, he said.
The family found out the hard way, when Zhou’s father was denied immediate emergency medical help after he suddenly began struggling to breathe during the video call. Zhou and his son made a lot of calls for an ambulance, he said, and that security guards were preventing relatives from entering the building to take the elder Zhou to the hospital.
On the same day Zhou lost his father, a 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning in a locked-down compound in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, after he was blocked from being taken promptly to a hospital. Two weeks later, a 4-month-old girl died in hotel quarantine in the central city of Zhengzhou after a 12-hour delay in medical care.
Zhou said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. He turned to foreign media despite knowing the risks, even though desperation and anger were growing. CNN is not using his last name to reduce the risk.
The city is locked down: a protest against China’s zero-Covid rule, as observed by the Wechat audience in Chongqing
Workers at the biggest iPhone factory in the world clashed with security officers over a delayed bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.
And on Thursday, in the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a resident delivered a searing speech criticizing the Covid lockdown on his residential compound. “Without freedom, I would rather die!” he shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a “hero” and wrestled him from the grip of several police officers who had attempted to take him away.
These acts of defiance echoed an outpouring of discontent online, notably from Chinese football fans – many under some form of lockdown or restrictions – who have only been able to watch from home as tens of thousands of raucous fans pack stadiums at the World Cup in Qatar.
“None of the fans are seen wearing face masks, or told to submit proof of Covid test results. Are they not living the same life as we are? The Wechat article questions China’s insistence on zero- Covid, which was controversial before it was removed from the internet.
There are signs that the heat of the growing public discontent is starting to affect Chinese officials, which has caused heavier social and economic tolls.
Instead of relaxing controls, many local officials are reverting to the zero-tolerance playbook, attempting to stamp out infections as soon as they flare up.
The northern city of Shijiazhuang was among the first to cancel mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. But as cases rose over the weekend, authorities reimposed a lockdown on Monday, telling residents to stay home.
On Tuesday, financial hub Shanghai banned anyone arriving in the city from entering venues including shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gyms for five days. In the half of the city that was shut down, there were also cultural and entertainment venues.
Baiyun district was locked down this week for the fifth time, as officials extended the lock-down on where the protest took place.
In Beijing, streets in its largest district of Chaoyang are largely empty as authorities urged residents to stay home and ordered businesses to shut. Several schools moved to online classes this week.
Huang said he does not expect any fundamental changes to the zero-Covid policy in the short term. The incentive structure for the local governments hasn’t changed. He said they are still responsible for the situation in their jurisdiction.
For their part, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were meant for a pivot to living with the virus.
A disease control official told a news conference that the measures were aboutoptimizing the existing Covid policy. He said that they are not easing control or lying flat.
Zhou said the zero- Covid policy is beneficial to the majority but that it had been too restrictive at the local level.