Increasingly hard to go back to business as usual with China. And I'm not even sure Xi wants to go back to business as usual.
If you're feeling generous toward the world's most powerful autocrat, you can extend the benefit of the doubt that perhaps Xi's policies may turn out to benefit China's poorest and the ecology. But there is no doubt that Xi's anti-vax zero-covid policy has inflicted significant damage to the economy of China's middle class.
Xi has also consolidated political power for himself without setting up any form of succession. He's overseen construction of the most advanced surveillance society that has ever existed. The Chinese people enjoy less freedom now than they did twenty years ago. Maybe history will prove him right, but the historical record for these policies aren't encouraging for China.
The same thing that I'm sure happened to many Chinese people when he was in power.
Between purge and medical emergency, a purge of some sort seems more likely since the censors got involved. If it wasn't for show it'd be weird to do it in the middle of the public show too. It'd be a very powerful demonstration if that is what it was intended to be.
Easy on the hyperbole. It is extremely odd, and likely he was removed against his own volition, but he also could have been an 80yo man having a moment of confusion. Eg: Trying to take Xi's papers while the man on his left was handing Hu's folder to the 'Aide'.
It is curious we don't see the minutes leading up to the event. I've looked for the entire broadcast(after foreign media allowed in) and have only found the one version that begins after they were already trying to get him out of the chair.
Anyone have a link to an uncurated video containing the moments before the 'Aides' showed up?
Hu was apparently upset that the list of candidates was not what he had expected, since the session was to hold a simple yes/no to the entire list.
He wanted to check his list against Xi's list which is why he kept reaching for it. Apparently even his son was booted off along with various allies, like vice-premier of China. It seems it was indeed a surprise to Xi and company & a snap decision by Xi to remove Hu was made.
Lei's real talk on YT is an informed resource by a Chinese critic of CPC. NYTimes article today seems based on her (uncredited) work published earlier on YT:
West and especially the young people in the west need to wake up. No system is perfect, but that is no reason to adapt a system we know for certain to be worse.
Xi seems to have really absorbed Wang Hunigs philosophy from the book America v America and is rejecting western liberalism.
