In Confucian terms, reverence for a dead ancestor is at the very root of ‘Xiao’ or filial piety. Any transgression is a mortal sin, and this is what Xi Jinping has committed by trying to replace Mao’s Thoughts with his own. And he has done it with uncharacteristic haste for a Chinese, offending another ancestor, Deng Xiaoping, who had wisely counselled his successors to ‘bide their time.’
While Chinese power and influence has grown day by day over the past two decades, it has neither the military nor, more importantly, the economic strength of the United States of America to brazenly challenge that power, even within its own waters. Undoubtedly, China can do so one day, but that time is not today. The rush to force the issue was a personal choice, for personal power and aggrandisement. Xi’s colleagues are waiting, with characteristic Chinese patience, for one misstep to lead to another and bring about his downfall, when they will quickly re-write China’s current history, showing Xi to have always been unworthy, and relegate him to the same dustbin where Lin Biao and others before him reside.
The prolonged protests of the democracy movement in Hong Kong offered the Chinese authorities many lessons on how to tackle such youthful enthusiasms in the context of a modern well-to-do society, but Xi’s impatience pushed for a closure, and the questions first raised in Tiananmen Square were left hanging over China’s future.
Authoritarian disregard for consultation and compromise have raised alarm bells in Taiwan and hardened softening positions. Xi’s latest word that ‘reunification will happen’ is nothing short of an unnecessary threat. Chinese Airforce encroachment of Taiwan’s airspace is also needless sabre-rattling. This bullying has only increased Chinese resolve in Taiwan that they will not be bulldozed into submission like compatriots in Hong Kong. With more circumspection, Xi could have achieved much more.
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