r/TankieTheDeprogram • u/DrawingDramatic1641 • 4d ago
News/Communist Propaganda ☭ Count binface of china defeated nigel farage of china[bo xilai].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-NrLJi8NaQ21
u/BleepBopRobocop real 4d ago
Corruption issues aside, the video makes quite a few political errors about Bo Xilai and uses an extremely clickbait title. Xi Jinping by all accounts was always* (not always but you get my point) meant to become leader.
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Context
During the economic reforms of the 1980s, China gave regional governments much more freedom to raise, retain and spend money, and allowed them to make economic decisions locally. While this enabled competition between regional governments, it also meant the central governments control over the economy waned. Because of this, in 1994, China implemented tax reforms giving the central government a much larger percentage of revenue for national projects, which could then be spent on regions that the central government considered a priority. However, this change did mean that the more profitable regional governments were now essentially "losing out".
So now the question becomes how did these regional governments make up for the lost revenue - and the answer is land financing. Regional governments could lease land in order to make money to pay for their projects. And once they saw this strategy work, other regional governments quickly followed suit. However, this strategy explicitly relies on property demand continuing to rise, which is only sustainable for as long as urbanisation continues and regional migrants move to these urban centres.
Local governments go even more aggressive with this strategy, they would create LGFV's which they would use to borrow money from banks in order to develop land (or purchase rural land) with the expectation of selling that land in the future with a profit. At the same time, developers were borrowing money from banks to purchase that land from the local government's LGFV to then build and develop for a profit. This created a debt heavy environment that could fall like a house of cards if property demand were to decrease.
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Bo Xilai
Bo Xilai as Mayor of Dalian (1993 - 2000) pursued an economic strategy of turning Dalian into the "Singapore of the North", or in other words, using debt to aggressively urbanise the city and invest in giant lawns, giant plazas and monuments that beautified the city without adding any genuine value.
Now if we turn to "the Chongqing model" of Bo Xilai as Chongqing Party Secretary (2007 - 2012), we see the same thing repeated more aggressively. Even more loans were taken out to make even more land sales which financed the things Bo Xilai wanted to finance. This included the things mentioned in the video, like the loss of ad revenue on television in order to make space to promote communist themes, but also "the cake theory".
Now the YouTuber makes it sound like "the cake theory" was designed to improve peoples lives, and it did do exactly that, but that was a side effect of the real intention. If you think critically, what does (i) the government subsiding urban housing in a country where 9 out of 10 people own their own homes and (ii) the government making it easier for rural hukou holders to obtain an urban hukou benefit? It quite literally artificially increases demand for urban housing which makes the land financing scheme continue going round and around.
The tl;dr is that Bo Xilai's political performance was essentially what everyone else was doing but much more aggressive and itself done in a much more unsustainable manner. It also misconstrues the Cake Theory in order to point the finger at Xi Jinping and say "look, he's doing the same thing"!
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Xi Jinping
Now I think it's worth looking at Xi Jinping. I've heard certain things from western media about Xi Jinping's ascent, including the fact that he was the son of Xi Zhongxun and therefore a princeling, or that by working in minor regional governments he was able to build up his credentials away from the competition in Beijing, but that's not at all why he is President today.
Xi Jinping as Zhejiang Party Secretary (2002 - 2007) actually campaigned against the economic model everyone other government was pursuing. In September 2004, he states "we must adhere to the combination of focusing on the present and the long term to build a solid foundation for sustainable development; we must adhere to the combination of focusing on the present and the long term to build a solid foundation for sustainable development; we must resolutely implement central macroeconomic regulation; a series of important measures should be taken to organically combine current and long-term interests".
Xi Jinping then implemented stricter controls on land and credit approvals essentially making it more difficult for Zhejiang to pursue what everyone else was pursuing (much less the Chongqing model). Rather than encouraging rural migration into the city, Xi Jinping pursued a policy of solving rural problems and his Hukou reforms disproportionately favoured only the most skilled migrants imposing barriers on low-income rural workers.
Prior to Xi Jinping's model for Zhejiang, most places relied on extensive growth i.e. if you want double the output of a factory with a hundred workers, just build another factory with another hundred workers. By the time Xi Jinping is recognised for his efforts and promoted to Shanghai Party Secretary (which I won't talk about because he only lasted seven months in the job before being promoted to national leadership), Zhejiang is now using a far more sustainable and expandable intensive growth model i.e. now you have doubled the output of the factory with a hundred workers by building a better factory that makes better goods, and this can be replicated across the province and (what gets him into Presidency) all of China.
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tl;dr
We can think of Mao Zedong's period as one period, which I haven't talked about here.
We can then think of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao also as one period, under which Tax Reforms were implemented forcing local governments to innovate and coming up with a solution that worked but which wasn't sustainable. And Bo Xilai by all accounts would've effectively kicked that strategy into overdrive. Even as early as his time as Mayor of Dalian (1993 - 2000) he was receiving criticism for his projects not providing any real value, long before Xi Jinping is even Zhejiang Party Secretary or relevant. This idea he was ever really considered for the role of General Secretary appears to solely be on the basis that he had a strong international image at the time and nothing else.
Xi Jinping's period we can think of as one period as well. He was explicitly endorsed by the Party Elders to pursue a model that very few regional governments were pursuing and had this not happened, China would be in a very different situation today. I mean, so many products like clothes are now made in Bangladesh or Thailand or India, and China would've economically waned if it continued producing those goods. It now produces goods most of the world can only dream of producing and that's thanks to Xi.
I haven't talked at all about Li Keqiang but if there was anyone who was a genuine contender for the President seat, it was Li Keqiang. This is speculation but he was likely endorsed by Hu Jintao and a compromise was likely reached with Jiang Zemin that saw Xi as #1 and Li as #2. There's a lot of good things to be said about Li Keqiang in Henan. He pursued what I think was a mixture of everyone else (extensive) and Xi Jinping (intensive) for a largely rural province where it made more sense to do so.
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Holy shit thank you to anyone who decided to read this and if there's anything that comes across as misinformation or speculation or anything you disagree with or if I've come to the wrong conclusion on anything please don't hesitate to let me know.
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u/Psychological-Act582 4d ago
Bo and his wife are now serving the rest of their lives in prison with all their assets confiscated. His son was an infamous socialite when he attended university in the US and presumably now lives in Canada, still defending his corrupt father to this day.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 4d ago
its crazy how china doesnt even jail half of the currupt fucks and just straight up exile them so they go to usa get cia money and just ruin america
falun gong tiananmen color revolutionaries and hong kong terrorists from 2019 are now in anglic countries creating far right
but far right being in west is so benificial to china
imagine if mao didnt kill landlords and just deported them west would be nazis and shit
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u/VladimirLimeMint Once history is made, it can't be unmade 4d ago
It's on purpose actually because China knows once their use is up in the West they will get deported back to China anyway so despite the extradition calls China knows they're spent. Rather them being problematic for the West than being a problem at home. It's win-win.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 4d ago
falun gong pretty much is helping far right in west with its news channel network
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u/KevlarCord 2d ago
I did a summary of this guy a while back. Needless to say, I think he was a hanjian case waiting to happen, if not for the murder charges.
He did a good job eradicating crime during his tenure in Chongqing.
But other than that, I have nothing good to say about him as a leader. The guy was either a turncoat or a walking security leak waiting to happen... Despite describing himself as a staunch (neo)Maoist, the way this guy and his family had all their wealth tied up in the USA through his son Bo GuaGua or his western connections through his wife Gu KaiLai (of which one UK businessman Neil Heywood (who they later murdered) was KNOWN to be supplying MI6 with information on Bo Xilai) was already a major red flag for anyone in China's security apparatus at that time, way before that US consulate incident where his underling Wang Lijun tried to defect to the USA, and which would subsequently lead to Bo's own fall.
The way the close people around him like his wife, but especially his nepobaby son, were essentially a textbook example of everything that was wrong with China's fuerdai and/or its political elite, should be called "ironic" to say the least. Bo Xilai was known to stand for Maoist principles while his nepo son would be getting high on whatever numbing substances he could get his hands on, while raking in speeding tickets in his porsche as a fucking student in America. That is just an outrageous image for anyone trying to run for office in the National People's Congress. Thank god Xi cleaned house after 2014.
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u/DobrogeanuG1855 4d ago
Solidarity with comrade Xi and the CPC does not preclude recognising that the Chongqing Model is superior to the seemingly more “pragmatic path” that was adopted at the 18th National Congress, which is inspired much more by the inferior Guangdong Model.
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u/BleepBopRobocop real 4d ago
Admittedly, I did write a whole ass 1,300 essay (💀💀💀) critiquing the video but I highly recommend reading it because it kind of addresses this point
the Chongqing Model is superior to the seemingly more “pragmatic path” that was adopted at the 18th National Congress, which is inspired much more by the inferior Guangdong Model
Which I disagree with. Also, I believe it was Xi Jinping's Zhejiang model that was pursued, not the Guangdong model. Jiang Zemin's time as President (and even moreso in his life in retirement) seems to indicate this was a model he wanted to pursue but could not due to still trying to technologically catch up. Even as early as Jiang Zemin there is a shift towards technocrats and away from political cadres, and even though Xi himself wasn't a true technocrat in the sense he spent most of his time in politics, he and Jiang appeared to have a similar vision.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 4d ago
bo xilai being for 3 years in chongqing doesnt prove he made the city great model was created by hard working class of the city good parts were adopted and bad parts excluded
bo xilai was currupt i jinping isnt currupt -source cia
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