IS XI JINPING LOSING "THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN"?

Particularly in Chinese history, enormous events have begun with a very small spark.

From the New York TimeS:

“The fire began with a faulty power strip in a bedroom on the 15th floor of an apartment building in China’s far west. Firefighters spent three hours putting it out — too slow to prevent at least 10 deaths — and what might have remained an isolated accident turned into a tragedy and a political headache for local leaders.

“Many people suspected that a Covid lockdown had hampered rescue efforts or trapped victims inside their homes, and though officials denied that had happened, angry comments flooded social media and residents took to the streets in the city where the fire erupted.

“Now the episode in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, has unleashed the most defiant eruption of public anger against the ruling Communist Party in years. In cities across China this weekend, thousands gathered with candles and flowers to mourn the fire’s victims. On campuses, students staged vigils, many holding up pieces of blank white paper in mute protest.

“In Shanghai, some residents even called for the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, to step down, a rare and bold challenge.”

The trigger for the current wave of protests are the draconian zero-Covid restrictions and the tragic consequences they have for ordinary people across China, the authoritarian spirit those measures articulate, and the way in which they have become identified with Xi and his personalist conception of rule. In Chinese history, the Emperor - which Xi has now become - is always responsible for all that happens.

The threat of a public health disaster is as real in China in 2022 as it was in China and the rest of the world in 2020. The disastrous dilemma that Beijing faces today is the result of the failure to contain the pandemic outside China in 2020 and 2021 and Beijing’s staggering failure to strengthen its own defenses against Omicron.

The fact is that the Chinese Covid vaccines are not as effective in immunizing the population, particularly the large population of old people, as are Western vaccines. China had hoped to use their vaccines as part of a diplomatic offensive to gain further support in the developing world, but those nations have turned down further use of Chinese vaccines and are seeking Western vaccines.

The Chinese government cannot risk a situation in which large numbers of older people die from what is seen as something that could have been prevented, but for governmental incompetence. Chinese society venerates the old and Xi cannot be seen to have killed them. Vaccination rates among the elderly are dismally low, because people are turning away from the government vaccines they see as ineffective.

Hong Kong faced a similar challenge in early 2022 and the result was a public health disaster. Cumulative Covid mortality in Hong Kong surged to alarming levels, according to what I was told by two fellow members of the International Fraternity of Plastic Model Builders who live there.

The protests this weekend are not only against the lock-downs, but against the government’s inability to provide an effective alternative. This is the kind of protest that leads a Chinese government to lose “The Mandate of Heaven.”

What is at stake is not merely Xi’s obstinate insistence on his zero-Covid policy, but the question of whether Beijing is willing to consciously and publicly take the risk of a pandemic outbreak that will likely cause mass death and a fundamental challenge to China’s fragile health system if there is any lightening of the restrictions. The Chinese healthcare system is very fragile, particularly outside the major cities, where a majority of the population still lives.

A major increase of deaths - particularly among the elderly - would be a disaster for Xi. It would also be a disaster for China, because it would mean a return to the nightmare of Wuhan in February 2020, or New York in March 2020. The government would then be forced to respond with even more draconian lockdowns and a desperate fight to save its hospitals. The situation is not one of caprice, but of disastrous impasse. There is no obvious escape strategy.

These events make it obvious that Xi made a big mistake demanding another term. In a non-democratic system, a change in leadership is one of the few ways to mollify public sentiment. If a successor was now in power, they could make noises about "brand new days" and buy themselves enough time to let it blow over. But by staying in office, he made it clear to everyone that what it is now is what's going to be. Desperation is growing as the walls are closing in on people, both figuratively and increasingly, literally. Desperate people are impossible to rule, at least long term.

Right now, trust is a crucial issue because the Chinese internet is flooded with trolls and surveillance accounts that are either spreading disinformation or trawling for leads on behalf of China’s security services. This has spread beyond The Great Firewall of China; protests and vigils not just in China but around the world are now being shadowed by Chinese security personnel.

Enraged by the government’s censorship of criticisms about the Urumqi fire, one WeChat essayist wrote a satirical piece titled “Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good: Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good!” The body text mimicked the form of a normal WeChat essay, but replaced all the characters and images with the character “Good.” Although censors promptly deleted the essay, it sparked a round of creative imitation, with others substituting various characters into the “Good” essay’s template. Many of these were also scrubbed by censors.

There are reports that when police asked the protesters not to chant “no more lockdowns”, they instead chanted: “MORE LOCKDOWNS!” “I WANT TO DO COVID TESTS!” This is an example of Chinese weaponized passive aggressiveness.

The courage, imagination and dark humor of the protestors is inspiring.

There’s an aspect of this that affects us here: China is conducting a cyber-attack on Twitter in order to stop the spread of news about the protests. Chinese bots are flooding the platform with fake posts about escort services and gambling. Not having a functional trust and safety team atone of the main global communications platforms turns out to have real-world consequences.

I’m sure Xi is amused by the immense usefulness of the idiot Elon Musk.

Perhaps the preface to “Nahan” (Call to Arms), the collection of short stories by Lu Xun in the years after the May Fourth Movement, who was described by Nobel laureate Kenzaburō Ōe as "The greatest writer Asia produced in the twentieth century," is a good way to think of what is now happening in China.

“Yet I could not erase all possibility of hope, for hope lies in the future. I could not rely on my own present evidence for its lack, to refute his assertion that it might exist one day.”

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