11/12/2023 0 Comments Mr corner crona![]() ![]() Some are suffering “crises of belief" that are leading many to shun marriage and decline to have children. First published in 2022 and reissued last month by an academic journal, the Beijing Cultural Review, the essay, “The Five Intriguing Paradoxes of Contemporary Chinese Young People", describes youngsters who have turned against “evil" private capital and want a strong state to tame it. The work, based in part on surveys of social media, is flagged and translated by David Ownby of the University of Montreal on his “Reading the China Dream" blog.įocusing on Chinese born after the 1990s, it describes a gap between their patriotism and high expectations of their rulers, and the realities of a society that seems to them cruelly unequal, to the point that hard-working provincial Chinese can never catch up with those born into privilege. An unusually candid essay by two Chinese scholars, Fu Yu and Gui Yong, describes a crisis of confidence among the young. A decisive, though tyrannical, captain quickly becomes a liability if he repeatedly steers the ship of state onto rocks. Yet a mandate to rule based on the claim that the party is exceptionally competent, and indeed is successful because it brooks no dissent, becomes a trap when top leaders mess up. For in times of peril, dissent by underlings is a form of sabotage, like a sailor arguing with the captain of a storm-tossed ship. It unifies the masses, while turning anyone with conflicting views into an enemy within. Such talk of dangers serves more than one purpose. In speeches he talks of China’s re-emergence as a great power, and how that will involve defying a hostile American-led West bent on containment. Party ideologues hailed Mr Xi as commander-in-chief of a people’s war against covid, offering China order and safety, in contrast with squabbling, selfish, Western democracies.Īlongside boasts about the party’s governing competence, Mr Xi has offered darker calls for China to become self-reliant and learn to struggle against foreign foes. On balance, though, boasts of Chinese exceptionalism rang true for many citizens. For sure, censorship was heavy and omnipresent, and locked-down Chinese chafed against thuggish enforcement of zero-covid rules, especially as the pandemic dragged on. Day after day, the propaganda machine pumped out news of the latest covid death toll in America, backed by images of patients on ventilators in Western hospitals, recycled clips of President Donald Trump scorning science at White House press conferences, and protests in Western cities against lockdowns, mask-wearing and vaccine mandates. In this vein, the first two years of the covid-19 pandemic were a particular gift to party ideologues. When unelected governments or autocracies claim that they deserve to rule because they govern well and efficiently, political scientists talk of appeals to “performance legitimacy". ![]()
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