Best quote from the article.
“Far more disturbing, top authorities are systematically undermining the political norms that figures such as Deng Xiaoping built in the early reform period to guard against the governance failures and horrors of the Maoist era. “
I do agree that there is a movement in that direction. I disagree that it will be embraced by Beijing completely. There are other factors that, for the most part, are transparent to Western “experts”.
In a trendy neighbourhood in downtown Beijing, the BBC news services hit the streets in October 2015 to ask people about their Sesame Credit ratings.... Most spoke about the upsides. But then, who would publicly criticise the system? Ding, your score might go down.... Alarmingly, few people understood that a bad score could hurt them in the future. Even more concerning was how many people had no idea that they were being rated.
Interesting ......”In February 2017, the country’s Supreme People’s Court announced that 6.15 million of its citizens had been banned from taking flights over the past four years for social misdeeds. The ban is being pointed to as a step toward blacklisting in the SCS. “We have signed a memorandum… [with over] 44 government departments in order to limit ‘discredited’ people on multiple levels,” says Meng Xiang, head of the executive department of the Supreme Court. Another 1.65 million blacklisted people cannot take trains.”
Yeah, there are forces in china for ‘good’ which we should rememner. I don’t think they’ve been successful though.
Thread from a twitterer I respect:
https://twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/1066499165952196608