I saw on another board, a lot of Chinese people seemed pretty pissed about Xi removing term limits. But I don’t know if they were representative.
Is this seen as a Putin style move where Xi wants to be a perpetual dictator? Is China doing well under Xi, or would it do well under almost anyone? With all the other forms of oppression in China, why is removing term limits necessarily worse than anything else there?
I think the point is that it doesn’t matter what the Chinese people think. Period.
Can’t speak for the mainland Chinese themselves, but I suspect this will just be another temp increase in boiling the frog. A more noticeable turning up of the heat dial knob, to be sure, but still nothing that will lead to widespread dissent. That frog will go from medium-rare to medium. Maybe well-done by 2030.
I was under the impression China was slowly marching towards more individual freedom. Was that a totally wrong assumption? Generally as a nation becomes more wealthy and educated, it becomes less authoritarian. And I’d heard China has more freedoms now than in the 80s.
According to my wife, who is mainland Chinese, Xi jinping is broadly popular in China. The average Chinese likes him. The average life has improved under his watch, and the rampant corruption has been at least somewhat cleaned up (and conveniently removed his political rivals). It removes uncertainty if he extends another term. Pretty much a nothing burger because Xi Jinping has popular support. Frankly, if democracy in China is a goal of the people, there are a lot more priorities than whether there is a term limit.
Wesley - you are correct. Individual freedoms have increased dramatically in China. And I write this as a person that spent years in the impoverished Chinese countryside in the 1980s, ~20 years total, and have personally witnessed the transformation to today. The overlooked story is that for the first time ever in Chinese history there is wealth accumulation among the peasants (peasants can still be painfully poor), and their standard of living has increased. It’s a tough life, and something like 200 million Chinese are migrant workers. But they can also afford to get lawyers, take their cases through the legal system, get education, etc.
I think there is a lot of projection going on here. Yes, in the US, if the two term limit were to be changed, that would probably be viewed broadly as enabling a dictator. 2 term limit has been in place since Roosevelt passed, correct? So, something like 7 decades. China’s 2 term limit was put in place after Deng Xiao-ping, or since the 1980’s.
secondly, Chinese don’t share the same belief and/or history in democracy. The “deal” since China opened to the West was “you can get rich, but don’t question the Chinese Communist Party as the leader of China.” Governing 1.4 billion people is a different equation than governing 300 million from a logistical and execution point of view (ignore whether democracy is the “best” solution, or the “least bad” solution). Parachuting in an American style democracy would end in tears. There is always the Indian democracy example of a very large population, and no one needs to point out that China has left India in the dust economically in the past 4 decades.
There is also the still a not inconsequential risk that China could devolve into civil war without a strong central government. Remember there was basically 100 years of civil war/anarchy across most of China that only ended in 1949.
Interesting POV. I have a few questions though.
GDP growth rates in China were around 10% for decades, and have now dropped to 7%. They may drop to 4-5% within a decade. Are these issues causing any problems in China or are 7% growth rates still considered acceptable? Are people getting angry and upset about the lower growth rates or are people still seeing their standard of living go up?
Is Xi competent at his job, or would any halfway competent official be able to oversee the growth rates seen in China? I know moving from Mao to Deng saw radical reform, but since then does the president really have much power in setting policy, or would the Chinese system continue to improve and advance pretty much no matter who is in charge, just so long as the person in charge is a realist and not an ideologue.
How have freedoms gotten better in China in the last few decades?
Is environmentalism being taken more seriously there? Holding polluters accountable?
7% growth rates are the envy of the rest of the world. 
7% still will allow China to grow it’s way out of banking bad debt and other issues. Trending toward 5% is going to cause pain.
China has a very serious problem with 1) labor rates becoming non-cost competitive and 2) the greying population (that old one child policy is really gonna bite China in the ass). That said, China and manufacturers are investing big time in automation and robotics. The world’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn(who makes about 1/2 of ALL Apple products, as well as a boatload of other stuff) is going to robotics. It is kinda funny that the linked article says 10,000 factory line workers will lose their jobs this year, but during the peak manufacturing season Foxconn employs ~1.5 million workers. Really, the choice facing Chinese manufacturers is to automate or not be cost competitive. Double edged sword because once automation gets to a high enough level, then one could move manufacturing anywhere globally (as long as the supply chain supports that). This will not happen overnight as 1) no other country has China’s manufacturing scale, 2) greying of the population still has a decade or so before really becoming a problem.
I see that standards of living are generally going up. Housing is a real challenge, and you’ll notice that Xi Jinping keeps enacting policies to make housing more affordable.
The average Chinese eats much better than they did a few decades ago. Generations are adding inches to their height (milk fed kids that get enough protein, of course this also leads to things like the oceans being over fished).
Xi Jinping is viewed as *very *competent. It is not viewed as regardless of who is sitting in Zhongnanhai (the seat of power in Beijing) that the State will prosper. Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao was viewed was not nearly as tough as Xi Jingping, nor as visionary. Xi is quite the realist. Again with the caveat that he took out his corrupt rivals and probably left in his corrupt allies for a net gain in reducing corruption. The Chinese do not hold the view that things would be pretty much the same regardless of who is president.
Freedoms. Hell yes, freedoms have gotten exponentially better in China in the last few decades. Peasants can leave the land, the intrusive household registration system is a nuisance rather than what controls your life, work units are no longer then main employer, people can afford lawyers and the court system actually wins for the little guy occasionally, people can travel internationally if they have the visas and the money, can have more than one child, etc etc. It is a huge difference from the 90’s.
Environmentalism. Improving but a long way to go. The thing is, no matter how much power you have, how much money you have, can control the traffic is the capital so you don’t get stuck in traffic, you still have the suffer from the horrendously polluted air in Beijing, and much of the rest of China. This is not something that can be ignored. The air pollution simply is terrible even if you are the President of China. Things are improving but still a lot of “we are a developing country and can’t afford to protect the environment.” And its tough with so many people as well.
If Chinese per capital CO2 or other measures was anywhere near the US, the world would be in much worse shape.
The US also conveniently ignores that the US “exports” pollution. Moving manufacturing from Detroit to China does not reduce overall pollution, and probably results in a net increase given that Chinese standards are not as high as the US. Yet those manufactured products end up back in the US. It would be really interesting to see the per capital CO2 numbers if one equalized for what was manufacturing exported to the rest of the world.
Hope this answers your questions…
Ever since Washington voluntarily left the presidency after two terms, the two term limit was seen as the standard. Roosevelt running for a third term, which was unprecedented, was the thing that inspired the term limit. So the limitation of two terms though not legally binding before then was universally agreed to. So it is a bit misleading to treat the amendment as a break from tradition.
I’m not sure if Mao had terms, but if he did he certainly served more than two. Unlike Washington.
This is not wholly correct. Grant attempted a third time. So did Cleveland. Couldn’t get the party’s nomination. Teddy Roosevelt sort of did, but it would have been only his second time being elected, so I could understand him not counting. I think Wilson planned to, but had a stroke.
Couple of things. First off, like Putin, Xi is very popular with a large percentage of the population. It’s hard for some to grasp that, despite everything Putin is still VERY popular with the Russian people. Well, Xi is very popular with most Chinese. Even with all of the repression and heavy handed-ness of the CCP, Xi is seen as a good and strong leader.
As for the term limits, I think the only ones REALLY pissed at this point are those in factions opposed to Xi’s. But Xi is a juggernaut at this point. This latest congress had his ‘thought’ enshrined in official CCP political doctrine. No one since Mao has been so regarded.
No, they haven’t gotten less authoritarian. Look at their move in Hong Kong for instance. They are still arresting/imprisoning/using for spare parts political dissidents and those who oppose the party…hell, afaik, they are still arresting Falun Gong members as well as house Christians and, of course, Weigers (Uighur). They have actually cracked down on things like VPNs and even dissident thought on message boards and the like and there is a continual censorship thing where Chinese net users create hidden meanings in words and the censors try and figure them out and ban them (at one point I recall that Winny the Poo was banned because folks were using that to represent Xi and I guess he didn’t like it). What has gotten better, however, is the standards of living for many in China, and while those in Hong Kong and the like are unhappy I think overall the Chinese people are ok with having an authoritarian CCP as long as the economic landscape continues an upward trajectory. That’s the unofficial bargain after all…the Chinese people accept the CCP and the CCP bring prosperity. It will hit the fan when/if that doesn’t continue ever upward. It’s one of the reasons that, in the past at least, the CCP was ok with local officials cooking the books, so to speak, to make things appear better than they might have been. It’s also why the CCP encourages folks to jump into bubbles and also have loans that would be considered very risky here in the west, and why China has a real debt issue that they are trying hard to grow their way out of. Their one road one belt initiative is especially risky wrt loans and a return, but for now it’s putting a lot of Chinese workers to work and keeping Chinese companies in the black, at least if you don’t look at the red in the debt ledger.
Apparently, one single Chinese woman was being pestered by her mother to “get married before Xi’s term runs out.” She then joked online that she can now breathe a sigh of relief.
XT, you make some excellent points. That said, I would humbly disagree that China is less authoritarian, at least for the average Chinese. Sure, if you want to challenge the right of the CCP to rule, China has gotten more authoritarian. Or to put it a different way, the Chinese government has fully embraced big data/AI without privacy safeguards. The lack of privacy safeguards has always been the post 1949 way, it’s just that now it is a lot more efficient.
Again, go back to the central tenet of “don’t question our right to rule, and we will let you get rich/leave you alone.” Anonymous Netizens, Falun Gong, house Christians and Uighurs all challenge that base tenet.
No, I agree…I didn’t mean to imply they aren’t very authoritarian today, especially wrt what you are talking about. Hell, they are planning to implement a scoring system that will take into account social media posts as well as a bunch of other things that most westerners would be shocked by, and have even pressured western companies into toeing the party line, even outside of China. And certainly the CCP is still pretty brutal wrt those who cross them.
I guess what I was getting at is, compared to the cultural revolution or great leap forward days it’s not quite as bad as it was in the past…but then, as you say, they didn’t have the tools they do today to really put into play some of George Orwell’s concepts on a large scale. And you are right…if you do cross them (even in seemingly obscure ways as with Falun Gong or some of the weird things folks have been brought in for posting on their social media) it challenges the whole leave you alone and get rich concept.
My son’s partner and his family are from China and he always points out to me that often you can say pretty much anything in China, as long as it’s a private conversation. You can even criticize aspects of China…as long as they aren’t in public and aren’t about the CCP as a whole (i.e. you could criticize a local corrupt official). That wasn’t always true though, and there was a time when even saying something to someone else was a good way to have a sign hung around your neck while a bunch of children beat you to death in front of a large crowd.