sohois
5d ago
I think this is a little charitable to Xi. By obvious comparison, I don't think many would deny that Mao really was a true believer in communism and in rooting out the bourgeoisie and rightists. At the same time, he grew increasingly comfortable in wielding purges against internal enemies and critics and the more he purged the more his circle of enemies and critics grew in his mind. There were a great many long time comrades and allies that ended up targets of Mao's paranoia.
In fairness to Xi, there's no evidence that he is inflicted with the madness that Mao most likely had in his later years, but I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that as he becomes more comfortable wielding purges as a weapon, he would be increasingly inclined to use them for even minor slights and disagreements. He can be both a true believer in anti-corruption and still use that as an excuse to get rid of people that were once close to him. I'd be stunned if most of his inner circle weren't already guilty of corruption in some small ways, given how endemic it was to the CCP for so many years. Especially an elder like Zhang.
sohois
6d ago
If you have read a reasonable amount of webserials then it's hard to imagine you won't enjoy PGtE. I feel like the general consensus is that it's one of the 'big three' alongside Worm and Mother of Learning in terms of quality and popularity
sohois
6d ago
I read the very first English translation by Brewitt Taylor, which was perfectly readable even though it was Wade-Giles romanisation. Per Wikipedia, a 1991 translation by Moss Roberts largely superseded that one as the definitive English localization.
It's a very dense novel with thousands of named characters. Not something I'd recommend to someone that wasn't either a sinophile or familiar with the setting through video games or other media already.
sohois
6d ago
I have to assume a few members are simply looking at who posted it and reacting off of that.
sohois
14d ago
Why would Disney have done that in the 2010s? TV was not a focus and prestige TV in particular was funded by other, more profitable ventures. The Force Awakens probably made more profit than every season of Game of Thrones combined.
sohois
22d ago
This is an extraordinarily popular narrative online
This seems like a strong claim to make without evidence. Extraordinarily popular, really? I'm sure you can find a few people posting such things but it feels like a massive weak man. Certainly I haven't seen such a narrative much at all in places like Reddit and other left wing spaces.
sohois
23d ago
Yes.
The old adage that traditional Chinese food is nothing like Western Chinese food is overblown. You can go into any restaurant in China and order Kung pao chicken, egg fried rice, and stir fried vegetables just like the West.
The difference comes because Western Chinese is mostly just Cantonese restaurants. China is an extremely large country with a long food history and there is a massive amount of regional variation. Discussions about "Chinese food" are the equivalent of talking about European food and then being surprised that not every restaurant in Germany serves pizza and pasta.
sohois
27d ago
Is that true? I'd argue one of the prerequisites for effective meritocracy is a swift and effective method of performance measurement.
In toll collecting and many other private enterprise positions, that kind of measurement is typically easy thanks to revenue. Tollbooths are simple enough that it probably doesn't work for an average and elite performer, but let's say we're comparing bad to good, one of McNamara's morons against a regular high school graduate. In such a situation, the moron would stick out within a month or less and be fired.
But for a professor? If they're bad at teaching, the university won't even care. And the only reason this Gino person was fired wasn't because of bad research, but outright fraud that took decades to unearth.
Even before the cultural revolution Mao had strategies to weed out any opposition like his 100 flowers campaign. I'd have to check my books but I'm fairly certain there were quite a few close allies caught in some of his early purges as well.
That being said, you're right that comparisons between Mao and Xi end at both being heads of the CCP. Despite my earlier statement, Xi is not a top down dictator the way Mao was. The current CCP is too large, too complex for it ever to be controlled by the whim of one man. Mao's CCP was large, but it really could be said that everything came down from the top; hence many of the more idiotic decisions. The innumerable technocrats can keep the engine of China running even if Xi was suddenly inflicted with the madness of Nero.
If there is a comparison for Xi, it's the Chinese emperors. Perhaps a one of the Qing, who wielded great empires but we're at a loss for the minutiae of the far reaches. In the first opium war, China was pretty easily beaten by a relatively tiny expeditionary force from Britain simply because the emperor never had a handle on what was happening and his delegated generals ended up in petty squabbles. So this example might reinforce the notion that Xi is trying to purge 'incompetence' rather than 'corruption' or 'opposition'.
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