Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng — China's accountability system unique

Not every decision will turn out to be the right one. But in China, when mistakes are made, adjustments follow. While this form of accountability is not perfect, it has produced a track record that is exceptional by any standard.

Interesting article coming from Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng, who are not considered government mouthpieces and have often been critical of China's policies. Chinese people seem to understand Chinese behavior, whereas most Westerners transpose their own cultural bias on their analysis of the rest of the world.

China Daily
China's accountability system unique
Andrew Sheng, distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute, the University of Hong Kong, and a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance; and Xiao Geng, president of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance, a professor at Peking University HSBC Business School and the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Business and Economics

Steve Tsang — What Is Xi Jinping Thought?

Thought experiment: Substitute the US UK where you see China, substitute the ownership class for the CCP, and substitute liberal democracy where you see communism or socialism.

China is criticized for taking steps to isolate bourgeois liberalism and democracy controlled by ownership, just as the US and UK take similar steps to demonize communism, isolate socialism, and cement the bourgeois liberal order that gives the ownership class control in place.

It is natural for those that control a society to attempt to preserve and extend the system.

Interestingly author Steve Tsang's title is "Director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies," which is in effect non-Western studies and non-white studies. The white man's burden and all that.

Project Syndicate
What Is Xi Jinping Thought?

Steve Tsang | Director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies

Dennis Etler — No, Xi’s China Is Not In Jeopardy! How Western Press Gets It All Wrong

George Magnus, the brunt of the post, is an ideologue. This would not be worth posting if it were not also the Western consensus view that missed the mark on China all along owing to assumptions that are wide of the mark — wrong model.

Fort Russ News
No, Xi’s China Is Not In Jeopardy! How Western Press Gets It All Wrong

Dennis Etler

Dion Greg Reyes — The Chinese Government Is Dominated by Scientists and Engineers

Their political elite are largely technocrats.

Qualified.

Gneering News
The Chinese Government Is Dominated by Scientists and Engineers
Dion Greg Reyes, civil engineer

Andrew Batson — What is changing about the rule of the Chinese Communist Party?

Good backgrounder. Relatively short.

From another vantage, Xi Jinping is also reformulating Chinese Communist thought. This is the underlying meaning of Xi Jinping Thought. Xi is emphasizing the continuous history of China as the "Middle Kingdom" operating "under Heaven." The CCP now holds the mantle and will only do so and can only do so as long as it possesses the "mandate of Heaven."

Debunking the "China-watchers."

Xi Jinping is moving away from the European roots of Communism in the thinking of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and V. I. Lenin, as well as its development in the USSR and European Communist parties. He is also placing strong emphasis on China's Confucian roots, which had not been done before. 

See Xi Launches Cultural Counter-Revolution To Restore Confucianism As China’s Ideology (must-read). It's not possible to understand and appreciate Xi Jinping Thought without understanding this. As a result, most of what is written about Xi, his intentions, and his reforms is a combination of blather, fear-mongering, and wishful thinking.

Note: The link is the post to Xi's speech doesn't work. Here is a working link: Xi Jinping's Speech in Commemoration of the 2,565th Anniversary of Confucius' Birth. It's a short speech that I would rate as a should-read for all and a must-read for those interested in China, international relations, and foreign policy.

It's a good speech that reveals the spiritual side of Xi Jinping, contradicting Western depictions and stereotypes, just as with Vladimir Putin. Both Xi and Putin are genuine in standing on firm spiritual ground based in values in contrast to religious belief. Conversely, the U. S. has a predominantly Dominionist cabinet.

Andrew Batson's Blog
What is changing about the rule of the Chinese Communist Party?

Andrew Batson

See also

China–US Focus
China’s Constitutional Amendment Does Not Make Xi “President for Life”

Lea Shih | Research Associate, Mercator Institute for China Studies

Ken Moak — Why China prefers its own ideology to US-style democracy

But besides all these modern factors, China rejects liberal democracy primarily because it is inconsistent with its history and institutions. During its more than 5,000-year history, China has never experienced democracy, which means it would require time to make a smooth transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. With some 56 ethnic groups and numerous regions whose interests might be at odds with one another, Western-style democracy might not only be dysfunctional but might cause the nation to implode....

Asia Times
Why China prefers its own ideology to US-style democracy

Ken Moak

Pepe Escobar — Will the Putin-Xi era supersede the Western liberal (dis)order?

Perhaps a Confucian path would be the right direction toward Eurasian integration

Asia Times
Will the Putin-Xi era supersede the Western liberal (dis)order?

Pepe Escobar

Stephen S. Roach — China as Seen from a Glass House

Good analysis excepting this:

The plight of the US middle class has been framed as a blame game, with China and its alleged unfair trading practices singled out as the culprit. Yet the evidence points elsewhere: to a dramatic shortfall of domestic saving that leaves America dependent on surplus saving from abroad to fill the gap. The result is a multilateral trade deficit, with China and 101 other countries, required to provide the foreign capital needed for the balance of payments.

Project Syndicate
China as Seen from a Glass House

Stephen S. Roach, former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, now senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale's School of Management

Andrew Batson — Centralization and the crisis mindset

Focuses on economic challenges that China faces and downplays the military threat. I think that both are involved in consolidation of power. The Chinese leadership realizes that it is considered the primary adversary of the US and the chief competitor for global influence in the future. China also perceives America as preparing to act to preserve its global hegemony economic and politically. This is about trimming the ship for economic and possibly military war.

China also perceives the US doing its best to take Russia down and the Chinese leadership also realize that US control of Russia is a stepping stone to the Chinese Western border. So don't tell me there is no significant military component here.

Actually, the American leadership is so blinded by power it can't see the obvious, which Henry Kissinger undoubtedly explained to DJT:  It would be a strategic blunder to drive Russia toward China, generating a superpower capable of defeating the US economically and militarily in the near future if not presently. The obvious strategic solution is to reverse the Kissinger-Nixon move that split China off from the USSR, which was then the chief competitor of the US. Now that China is the chief competitor, the reverse strategy should be employed.

Andrew Batson's Blog
Centralization and the crisis mindset
Andrew Batson

See also

Project Syndicate
The Double Helix of Chinese History

Denise Y. Ho

also

LK gets his marching orders from DJT.

New top White House economic advisor says China has earned a ‘tough response’

Bears out the view that Kudlow was appointed more as a skilled communicator than an economic expert (in addition to having been an early supporter).

“A thought that I have is the United States could lead a coalition of large trading partners and allies against China, or to let China know that they’re breaking the rules left and right,” he said. “That’s the way I’d like to see. You call it a sort of a trade coalition of the willing,” an apparent reference to President George W Bush’s “coalition of the willing” in the war against Iraq.

That's exactly how the Chinese leadership will view it — economic warfare. The US going on the offensive not only against North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Russia but also China. 

Asia Times
Kudlow calls for ‘trade coalition of the willing’ against China

Also

White House eyes limiting visas for Chinese studying in US: Report

Thomas Hon Wing Polin — “Xi the Dictator:” a Myth Born of Ignorance and Prejudice

Don't believe what you read in Western media. Polin explains how China's neo-Mandarin political system actually works.

The problem with Western analysis of non-Western peoples is two-fold. 

First, the West assumes its exceptionalism and attempts to impose in on the world in order to fulfill "the white-man's burden" as a rationale, but the real agenda is permanent Western world dominance. The end justifies the means, even it involves destroying countries to "save" them.

Secondly and related, most Westerners cannot think outside the box of their own frame of reference and so they completely misunderstand other peoples and where they are coming from. The result is caricature rather than actual analysis.

Counterpunch
“Xi the Dictator:” a Myth Born of Ignorance and Prejudice
Thomas Hon Wing Polin

Zero Hedge — Corruption In China Risks A Soviet-Style Collapse - Party's Graft Buster

The Chinese elite has recognized and acknowledged that the CCP has a corruption problem. Western elites, not so much.

There is another interesting point made in the article.

During the 19th Party Congress last month, Yang was asked about the anti-corruption drive and how to achieve a balance between human rights and party discipline. Yang replied that, having worked in the Tibet Autonomous Region for many years, human rights was an “interesting question”. He recounted a conversation he had with a US assistant secretary of state where he likened Abraham Lincoln freeing slaves in America to China’s actions in Tibet.

“I said in the hearts of Chinese people, Lincoln is a hero, because he freed the slaves.

On this point the Chinese people and the American people have the same understanding – this is a human rights issue.

In turn, we freed the serfs in Tibet, how come American friends cannot understand this? From Lincoln’s perspective, he should have supported China’s overturning of the serfdom in Tibet.”

No matter that the Central Tibetan Administration, usually called the “Tibetan Government in Exile” has a starkly different view….

This is really the crux of the issue between capitalism and socialism.

According to its proponents capitalism is the economic aspect of democracy and therefore integral to achieving freedom and human rights globally.

According to the proponents of socialism, the first step of liberation was freeing the slaves, the second step was freeing the serfs, and the third and final stage will be freeing workers from capitalists as the owners of the means of production.

It all depends on one's point of view.

Zero Hedge

Corruption In China Risks A Soviet-Style Collapse - Party's Graft Buster

Tyler Durden

Asia Unhedged — War of words shakes China’s policy circles over response to possible Korean war

The CP analysis says details of the Zhu-Jia face off recently surfaced in the Singapore daily Lianhe Zaobao. The island nation’s largest Chinese-language newspaper said the pair represented two distinct schools of thought on the security implications for China stirred by the North Korea crisis.

“On one front, a conservative ‘leftist’ school sees the US and South Korea using Pyongyang’s nuclear program as a pretext to reduce China’s strategic space,” CP said in a summary of the Lianhe Zaobao piece.

“A more liberal ‘rightist’ school on the opposing front emphasizes the threat North Korea poses to China, urging closer cooperation with the international community. While neither school is unified, their views regarding the origins and consequences of North Korea’s nuclear program are starkly divided,” CP added....

The "leftist" view is based on understanding US foreign policy experts and military strategists concerning US hegemony.

The "rightist" view is about China assuming a leadership role in the international community based on "fitting into" the global order, with a view of influencing it as China grows in economic power.

In my estimation the leftists are probably being more practical here, in that the Western liberal order is used as a subterfuge for advancing Western positions, neoliberalism, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism being different facets of the same position that represents itself as being based on "Western values."

Asia Times
War of words shakes China’s policy circles over response to possible Korean war

Asia Unhedged

Adam Garrie — President Xi rejects western political models in speech praising Chinese traditions

Forewarned is forearmed. Xi is determined not to fall into the same trap as Gorbachev.

Expect to see more push back against rules dictated by the West and especially the US.

Chinese people in general have a strong preference for stability and harmony. Individualism, which is the foundation of Western liberalism, is foreign to them.

The Duran
President Xi rejects western political models in speech praising Chinese traditions
Adam Garrie

Elenoire Laudieri Di Biase — China's model of democracy and pursuit of the common good

A researcher with the Institute of China Studies at Fudan University suggests that "Chinese philosophy of governance includes two concepts — "minyi" (the view of the people) and "minxin" (the hearts and minds of the people) — which means that public opinion also has a crucial role in the decision-making process....

China.org.cn
China's model of democracy and pursuit of the common good
Elenoire Laudieri Di Biase (Twitter: @ElaudierLaudier ), a sinologist from the University of Ca' Foscari, Venice and Melbourne University, Australia, is an expert on international diplomacy and psychoanalysis. She is also Senior analyst on China at the NATO Defense College Foundation.