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China Censors Social Media Responses To Proposal To Abolish Presidential Terms (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Negative social media reactions in China toward the government's interest in abolishing presidential term limits have sparked a crackdown on memes since Sunday evening. China's constitution currently restricts the president and vice-president to 10 years of leadership, meaning that President Xi Jinping would have been out of power by 2023. The Party's Central Committee proposed removing a phrase in the constitution that stated the two leaders would "serve no more than two consecutive terms," according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Authorities will vote on the proposal in March. Many took to social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo with Winnie the Pooh memes, as the animated bear resembles President Xi Jinping to some degree. Winnie the Pooh has been associated with Xi for years and this week, he donned a crown and sat on a throne, enjoying his honey pot. These memes and social media posts were then taken down, hours after the Committee's announcement, signaling that the public's reaction was more unfavorable than authorities predicted. An assortment of phrases have been filtered out by new censors, including "constitution amendment," "re-elected," "proclaim oneself as emperor," and "two term limit." The lag time between the censorship and the initial proposal indicates authorities expected the public to react less critically.
There's obviously a lot to criticize in Chinese government and politics, but the CCP's 2 term limit was actually a reasonable way of signaling that while the party wasn't willing to give up their monopoly on control they also recognized the risks and danger of cult-of-personality and dynasty and was actually interested in a rational leadership selection process.
"We're totalitarians, but its a system designed to prevent any one person from becoming dictator for life".
The fact that they are scrapping it is interesting. I'm torn between this being a naked power grab by Xi because he wants to be dictator for life, or of this is some kind of recognition that China has many problems of an existential risk nature and that they need Xi.
But it's not clear if this is because those threats (like corruption) are real or if Xi has just convinced them they are real and he's the only guy who can deal with them.
Him going for a second term? Could you point to anyone who wants that?
Trump? He didn't even want a first term. He wanted a scandal to promote the media outlet he planned to spawn from the hype around it.
Republicans? The GOP wants to get rid of Trump more than the Dems could even want to, the problem is they can't simply say that they want to get rid of the annoying orange.
So who would want to see him a second time? Let alone a third one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's some interesting revisionist history you have there. I remember the polls putting Clinton as winning by a wide margin. Could you remind me who won?
A fun little article if you think I'm wrong, feel free to post your evidence to counter mine if you'd like.
https://www.npr.org/2016/1https://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/502014643/4-possible-reasons-the-polls-got-it-so-wrong-this-year1/14/502014643/4-possible-reasons-the-polls-got-it-so-wrong-this-year
And I didn't hyperlink it for a reason, I don't like hidden links for fear of phishing/drive by malware/etc.