The demonstrations against the zero covid strategy and the dictatorship of the Communist Party surprised Beijing. The signals sent by the power suggest a softening of health measures to appease the sling. Will that be enough?
by Frédéric Lemaître (Beijing, correspondent)
Like any self -respecting dictator, Xi Jinping is convinced that the one who holds the party holds the country. The facts have long been right. With its 96 million members (approximately one in twelve adults), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is of unparalleled efficiency in the world, physically present in the smallest district, in the most modest enterprise in this continent country. Selected among the best students and the best students, its members constitute a technocratic elite which manages the country according to the orders of Beijing.
In the dream world of Xi Jinping, the CCP knows what is good for the people, since it comes from it, and as it makes the right decisions, the people are therefore grateful to him. One of the sentences he pronounced during the 19 e Congress of the CCP, in 2017, summarizes, we can not better, his thought: “Party, State, military affairs, civil affairs, education, is , west, south, north, center, the party directs everything. “His speech delivered on October 16 when opening the 20 e congress is just as fascinating. The criticism of his predecessors occupies an infinitely more important place than the management of the COVVI-19.
The “Communist Party” was cited there over 140 times, much more than any other term. Likewise, in the aftermath of the congress, Xi Jinping did not go to a symbolic place of China in 2022 to meet its people. He preferred to take the six other CCP leaders to the depths of the Shaanxi, where Mao, from 1935 to 1949, waited for his time, in a region in the process of becoming a place of communist pilgrimage. Far from the China of tomorrow but also far from that of today, from China which suffers from the policy of zero covid, unemployment and property developers in bankruptcy.
Power isolates and absolute power absolutely isolates. Nothing better than the demonstrations against the policy of zero covid in recent weeks and against the dictatorship of the CCP in recent days has illustrated it. When Xi Jinping inspects a province – a communist leader does not “visit”, he “inspects” – everything is organized so that he meets no dissatisfaction.
All the ills of China come from the ‘foreigner
A provincial teacher recently told, one evening, around 10 p.m., her principal had called all the teachers to be present in the morning from 7 am due to an “important event”. The next day, each teacher, accompanied by a police officer, had to go to a district of his city to order each inhabitant to close their windows and stay away. Always without knowing the reason for this strange education. It was only a few hours later that she understood that Xi Jinping was preparing to “inspect” the premises and meet some handpicked residents.
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