Planet suddenly notices China isn’t trendy and fab

Some updates on the Hong Kong Wen Wei Po academic-tailing story. The Communist Party’s propaganda outlet is complaining that Kevin Carrico is attacking its press freedom, and hints at taking legal action. Other comments here and here.

The hyperactive creepiness of Beijing’s Hong Kong-based officials fighting separatist hostile elements is part of a much bigger picture – the Xi Jinping Chinese Dream Vision Fantasy Win-Win Clampdown for a New Era. Several years in, and the wider world has suddenly decided to sit up and take notice. In the space of just a couple of weeks, the flow of articles declaring that Xi is leading China into a bigger mess has turned into a small flood.

Even the South China Morning Post carries an op-ed on how Year of Belt-and-Road-Glory 2018 is turning sour for the Emperor for Life. Bloomberg columns call out Xi as a counter-, or at least non-, reformist, and criticize the CCP for taking credit when China’s gains are due to the rest of the world ‘opening up’.

One writer in the Diplomat sees Xi as high priest of revivalist aggrandization and hype: ‘…all this talk of openness is just more falsehood, bluster, and emptiness’. Another zeroes in on the myth of rags-to-riches Huawei, belief in which explains ordinary Mainland Chinese anger at the evil Canadian running dogs’ capture of innocent Ms Meng. Larry Diamond – who supervised Regina Ip’s Stanford thesis for his sins – delivers a comprehensive summary of China’s situation and quandary.

It feels strange to see so many people suddenly start seeing the obvious and embrace counter-Panda-hugging revisionism. Though it takes the fun out of being an iconoclast.

For the frustrated, the anti-West-at-all-costs, the tankies (a new word!), and others left behind by common sense and history, here’s a CCP-worshipping foreigner complaining about the demonization of China (it’s this guy – haven’t heard from him for a while).

(Update: he has just written about how ‘the first emperor of China invented Keynesian economics’.)

 

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3 Responses to Planet suddenly notices China isn’t trendy and fab

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    Good old Larry!!! There’s a blast from the past!!

    Was always creeped out by his death stare when he had a column in the “Before-It-Became-The-Alibaba-CCP-Propaganda-Morning-Post”

  2. Thubten says:

    I too remember when that “American hotelier and restaurateur based in Beijing” had a column in the SCMP. Wonder where the editor who signed him up for that gig is now…….

  3. tim hamlett says:

    Anyone beside me find this bit a mite peculiar: “he came away with his own vision of Tibetan spirituality and culture in opposition to modern materialism. Since then, he has started many business ventures based around these ideals.”?????

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