A Look at Xi Jinping and Reform in China

[Randy W]

I usually don't like the author of this article (Russell Leigh Moses - he usually seems to be full of himself) - but this seems to be a more well thought out assessment of the present administration attempts at 'reform'.

 

Is Xi Jinping Really After Reform?

 

Clearly, there are conservatives in the Communist Party who believe that the only good activists are the ones in detention. In the view of these fundamentalists, progress is best measured in the opposition that the security apparatus is able to defeat. Xi clearly believes that these forces help keep the Party safe from social attack.

 

But Xi and his people have also shown an interest in revisiting how the previous leadership dealt with social dissatisfaction. They already see “the management of society” in more flexible terms, more about assistance and innovation than supervision.

 

Xi and his comrades also recognize that the tales told by social critics aren’t necessarily untrue. But they think that the unsubstantiated stories — “rumor-mongering” — has gone too far because, in their view, it “destroys a sense of security” among citizens and harms the Party’s efforts to “accelerate the formation of shared values in the whole nation [and] improve social trust.”

 

While Xi and his comrades are increasingly anxious that social media doesn’t have enough “positive energy,” they aren’t interested in shutting down cyberspace so much as patrolling it more vigorously than their predecessors, so that Beijing remains in firm control of the narrative.

 

 

 

"they aren’t interested in shutting down cyberspace so much as patrolling it more vigorously than their predecessors, so that Beijing remains in firm control of the narrative." - this is my big point about the social media in China - the Social Media is the greatest gift on a stick ever handed to the Communist censors. It provides a sandbox for everyone to play in where they can be monitored and even controlled, all the while gaining massive amounts of brownie points for allowing democratic and open discussion. Some of the most contentious discussions have been allowed to fester openly for as a long as a week - long enough for the Western media to crow about "democracy in China" - before being shut down.

[Randy W]

Related -

Severe penalties for defamatory retweets in China

The document, released by the Supreme People's Court(SPP) and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, stipulates that people will face defamation charges if online rumors they post are viewed by more than 5,000 Internet users or retweeted more than 500 times.

If those posting rumors are repeat offenders, or if their online rumors caused the victim or the victim's immediate family members to commit self-mutilation or suicide or experience mental disorders, they may also face defamation charges.