Tiny Crack Appears In China

Original:

The backlash is growing against Xi Jinping in China and around the world

Material wealth has a marginal diminishing return. When you live in poverty every new dollar you receive makes a relatively big difference to your circumstances. Once wealthy, as the saying goes, 'how many yachts can you water-ski behind?'. The transitions and adaptions to these new circumstances are one of the things that make life interesting and challenging. China has clearly undergone a transition. At the same time it's wholehearted adoption of the Statist philosophy has always been patent.

But, with the help of Western financiers, it has added material wealth in the familiar Statist two-step of managing the benefits of freedom for the purposes of theft, in the form of taxation, with political dominance, to ensure those benefits only serve to expand State power and control. Then it's just a question of narrative management to ensure the State comes out looking like the champion for 'freedom' ('we made you wealthy didn't we?') or 'the oppressed' ('where would you be without us?') according to the particular political requirements of the moment.

Xi Jinping epitomizes this Chinese State as you might expect. If his image ceases to fulfill the role of representing the sacrifice of personal responsibility and development to the 'greater good' of the State, he will be replaced by another symptom, who perhaps reflects it in a slightly less unflattering (to the individual) light. However distinct most commentators would have you believe they are, Statists are still Statists at heart:

Until ordinary people confront the Statist within themselves it makes little difference what puppet happens to be the repository for all their hopes and dreams (and delusions). If some are perhaps finally questioning the pervasive centralization of power in the form of one man, it might be worthwhile considering what the true source of that power really is. Restoration in the belief in personal, individual judgement and the strength to ignore those who claim power and control over you will take more than a mere face change at the top.