Two stories out of China in the past few days — one given wide international
publicity, the other not so much — both aimed at stifling what little dissent
remains in this increasingly autocratic and intolerant society.
First the inevitable announcement that the Communist Party will agree to
President Xi Jinping remaining in office after his second five-year term expires,
removing the constitutional clause that would otherwise force him to retire.
We could all see that coming. Xi has spent his first term gradually
tightening his grip on the country. His much publicised war on corruption was
nothing more than a planned campaign to rid him of serious rivals. In a country
where corruption is endemic, he simply had to choose the right targets.
The fact he made no attempt to groom a successor as past leaders have
done finally made his intentions crystal clear. The rubber-stamp Chinese
Parliament will be no barrier to his ambitions.
The sycophants have been lined up to promote the decision, with the
usual comments about the need for “strong leadership” and “stability”. Why these
qualities cannot be found elsewhere in a country of 1.3 billion people is, of
course, not canvassed.
No amount of soothing words can hide the fact this is a power grab by a
man who, in the tradition of dictators such as Joseph Stalin and Robert Mugabe,
has convinced himself his country cannot do without him.
Some observers believe he sees himself as the Mao Zedong for the 21st
century. History tells us that Mao made a host of mistakes during his long and
unfettered leadership that threw the nation into chaos on more than one
occasion.
This appears to have been conveniently forgotten by the legislators
apparently eager to hand over supreme power to a single individual for an
indefinite period.
The second story comes out of Hong Kong with a proposal by the largest
pro-Beijing Party in the Special Administrative Region’s Legislative Council
that young people be allowed to serve in the mainland’s Peoples Liberation Army
(PLA).
In the one area of China that still maintains some semblance of
democracy, this can be seen as a convenient way of dealing with Hong Kong’s
disaffected youth who regularly take to the streets to protest at what they see
as the steady erosion of their freedoms.
Beijing still feels the need to move carefully here and its Hong Kong
agent, the Democratic Alliance for
the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, has been quick to emphasise that
service would be voluntary — but once the concept is established that could
easily change.
The PLA is no longer the
peasant force of former decades and a career could have attractions to some,
especially with incentives such as tuition subsidies for further education as a
reward for service.
As one commentator said,
it might be considered more rewarding than flipping burgers at McDonalds or
selling pay television subscriptions to people on the street.
Even so, signing up
would also require pledging absolute loyalty to the Chinese flag and the
Communist Party and this might be too much for the city’s turbulent youth to
swallow.
However, in a contest of
wills between supporters of Hong Kong’s freedoms outlined in its 1996 Basic Law
and the new iron man in Beijing, it is not hard to see who would win out in the
end.
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