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title: "Via @[204401235:2048:Robert Wiblin] A sobering read... "For 35 years…"
date: 2018-10-31
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
---

# Via @[204401235:2048:Robert Wiblin] A sobering read... "For 35 years…

*October 31, 2018 · Facebook*

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[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/15/chinas-great-leap-backward-xi-jinping/amp/?fbclid=IwAR07eoTqouBTuPrsSbdOVkS_WH4KsVLJrEWvHZiACkuSLPmHh62oNrzW7z4](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/15/chinas-great-leap-backward-xi-jinping/amp/?fbclid=IwAR07eoTqouBTuPrsSbdOVkS_WH4KsVLJrEWvHZiACkuSLPmHh62oNrzW7z4){target="_blank"}
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Via @\[204401235:2048:Robert Wiblin\]\
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A sobering read\...\
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\"For 35 years or so---from the time Mao died and Deng Xiaoping launched his reforms in the late 1970s until Xi assumed power in 2012---China avoided many of these pitfalls and defied the law of political averages by building what scholars have called an "adaptive authoritarian" regime. While remaining nominally communist, the country embraced many forms of market capitalism and a number of other liberalizing reforms. Of course, the old system remained highly repressive (remember Tiananmen Square) and was far from perfect in many other ways. It did, however, allow the Chinese government to function in an unusually effective fashion and avoid many of the pathologies suffered by other authoritarian regimes. Censorship never disappeared, for example, but party members could disagree and debate ideas, and internal reports could be surprisingly blunt.\
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No longer. Today, Xi is systematically undermining virtually every feature that made China so distinct and helped it work so well in the past. His efforts may boost his own power and prestige in the short term and reduce some forms of corruption. On balance, however, Xi's campaign will have disastrous long-term consequences for his country and the world.\
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Perhaps the most unusual feature of the system Deng created was the way it distributed power among various leaders. Rather than let one person exercise supreme authority, as do most dictatorships, Deng divided power among the Communist Party's general secretary (who also gets the title of president), the premier, and the Politburo.\
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Deng hoped this system would ensure that no one person could ever again exercise the kind of control Mao had---since his unchecked power had led to vast abuses and mistakes, such as the Great Leap Forward (during which an estimated 45 million people perished) and the Cultural Revolution (during which Deng himself was purged and his son was tortured so severely he was left paralyzed). As Minxin Pei, a China expert at Claremont McKenna College, explains, the collective leadership model Deng designed helped weed out bad ideas and promote good ones by emphasizing careful deliberation and discouraging risk-taking.\
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Since assuming power in 2012, Xi has worked to dismantle China's collective leadership system in several ways. First, in the name of fighting corruption---an important goal and one China badly needs---he has purged a vast number of officials whose real crime, in Xi's view, was failing to show sufficient loyalty to the paramount leader. Meng Hongwei, the Interpol chief who China abruptly detained two weeks ago, is just the latest, high-profile case; his story is hardly unusual.\"\
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[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/15/chinas-great-leap-backward-xi-jinping/amp/?fbclid=IwAR07eoTqouBTuPrsSbdOVkS_WH4KsVLJrEWvHZiACkuSLPmHh62oNrzW7z4](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/15/chinas-great-leap-backward-xi-jinping/amp/?fbclid=IwAR07eoTqouBTuPrsSbdOVkS_WH4KsVLJrEWvHZiACkuSLPmHh62oNrzW7z4){target="_blank"}
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