The thing with boiling frogs, you have to do it slowly...

Since a couple of months, in the cinema next to my home, they show the head of Xi floating in a clean blue sky for a minute, before the movie and after the advertisements. The head is on the top left corner, filling 1/8th of the screen, with some blabla about the nation and stuffs like that. The same thing can be seen outside the cinema, on the outdoor screen that shows movie trailers. Floating head with *that* frowned smile that might pass as enigmatic, vaguely friendly but not exactly comforting either. It's new, I never saw this timid attempt at personality cult before since I live in China. I wonder if it's that cinema which does that, or if it's the whole China like that.

I kinda feel that some attempts at a mild personality cult are put together, little by little, slowly and discreetly. On Facebook, I saw a video in French flaunting the 2 years of Xi's rule, showing how totally awesome he was. The video of course conveniently avoided any mention to pollution, various riots, or the premise for a health care system in 2013 New Year declaration. There was those episodes with Xi eating bao zi in Beijing (it seems to be one off...). Xi's floating head was a major WTF to me.

I just dont care anymore. Even if this current regime is going to bring China back to the dark ages, who will notice???   Hong Kong people are my favorite " chinese " people by far. I dont think of them much different than I would an American or Aussie or whatever.  And what happened there these last few months has been really demoralizing. 

Its right in every Hk persons face, and they all know it. Freedom is dead. They where refused the right to vote, and slowly but surely year by year all of their freedoms they enjoyed before will be taken away. Soon facebook and youtube, then the right to protest, or even say anything.  They had this amazing opportunity to try to stop it, and it was only the damn highschool children that cared to fight for their freedom.  The vast majority didnt want any part of it. In fact they were against it because it made traffic worse  and it closed down their favorite Prada store.  

How disappointing.  Every day , i see it.  HK/taiwanesemovie stars/singers . pandering to China, because Hunan TV pays more than the HK channel. Not a single star has spoken a word about their own god damn freedoms because it would effect their bank statement.  They are whoring themselves and now I feel they deserve what they will get, 

In the end the protests stopped with a whimper and from I can see having been there recently , are all but forgotten. 

If these HKers, who I have put on a pedestal  could go down so easily, would the chinese even notice??? 

Let Xi do what he wants, ill keep earning my money till he stops giving me a visa, then ill be on to the next. 

It's still hard to say, since we're only two years into at least a decade of leadership. The guy's here to stay, so we're likely to still be in a transition period. Remember his main opponent to the throne had to be jailed, which is but a sure sign of weak legitimacy that doesn't get fixed in a month.

Plus remember politicians always do the hard stuff right at the beginning, then ease up.

Actually as long as their short term is concerned, things aren't too bad. Despite the economic slow down, trade is still going. Most countries are still buying the "we're good friends, trade with us" steamy BS and everyone seem to have pretty much accepted that China is off limits for everything but exports (and imports on foods and machineries). So far, so good.

So, yeah, I have seen every available vertical space in town being covered with propaganda that's not only dumb but also making the outside uglier, online news portals are now filled 24/7 with Xi's latest quotes that don't even make sense for the better part. Online commentors, that used to be the last genuine voice I could read on any subject, have been surrounded by obvious wumaos. More than ever it looks like a bleached dystopia, but then again, since it seems most people are content with a roof, a bowl of something and a phone screen these days, then everything's fine.

They're apparently running quite dry of technologies to steal, so they begin to close the valves on foreign corporations, foreign internet, foreign presence and foreign you name it. I'm sure this is how it was supposed to be all along: autonomy and isolation, total control. Again, stand in their shoes a minute: it's all going even better than expected. No one is struggling back, at least on the surface.

I wouldn't blame the government only. The post 80's supposedly bright, educated and modern generation is a miserable failure. The 90's are seemingly even worse. They're also to blame. They expected nothing but dreams, they demanded nothing and kept dreaming, they got nothing but the Chinese dream.

To answer your question in short, I don't think it all boils down to the changing leadership, but also to a longer momentum in things and also the realities being confronted.

There is a song about Xi and his wife. I don't know if you're aware of this.

Creepy creepy creepy.

"Those who're ignorant of history are damned to repeat it" is more than just a platitude we had jammed down our necks in high school, huh?

It's getting pretty dark- it's mainly the weird creepy infantalizing language they use about 'healthy thought ' and the fact that Xi is specifically targeting teachers and artists. This is the kind of thing I expected before I knew anything about China- I got used to thinking that things had changed-guess they're going right back to how they were again. 

Xi wants it just like in the good old Mao days. If he was as much a man as Mao was, he'd be on The Heavenly Square in his jammies and roaring his ideology to the masses. But he isn't he is probably afraid of getting cold and as an educated Chinese, that means getting "A COLD"... Mr Mao who knew the ancient secrets of Western Medicine (aka Medicine) didn't have to have such fears

Xi wants it just like in the good old Mao days. If he was as much a man as Mao was, he'd be on The Heavenly Square in his jammies and roaring his ideology to the masses. But he isn't he is probably afraid of getting cold and as an educated Chinese, that means getting "A COLD"... Mr Mao who knew the ancient secrets of Western Medicine (aka Medicine) didn't have to have such fears

I think the guy is ok.

Put it this way, some people hate Obama, not come across anyone that hates Xi.

Wenn wir diese Ebene der Dissens erhalten, ist es wahrscheinlich, dass wir den Klang der Saugnäpfe auf der Seite unserer jeweiligen Gebäude auf vielen Nächten hören und dieSchreie der alten Dame im Erdgeschoss als einen Haufen von Alkohol zubringtangeheuerter Schläger unweigerlich ihrer Mission Scheitern um unsere kritischenStimmen aufzuheben. Ermordung mit chinesischer Prägung 

-Democracy is not doing too well this days. America has domestic spies and torture

-the EU has immigration issues, where the PC left and the Skinhead right can't talk to each other. Golden Dawn is crazy, but is the Front Nationale

-The pro-Ukraine people are also fascist

-Putin is czar but won't say so.

-Where is democracy working well? India? Even Japan seems to be a apathetic states of virgins.

Oh Tempres oh mores.

I don't know. China has been having increasing problems due to people wanting more freedom and justice. While they can't really give the first one (so they have been clamping down on it by censorship), they have also been trying to at least provide the second (operation "Foxhunt" caught over 600 officials that fled China). 

Maybe these officials were all against XI and that's why they fled because they know the spotlight was coming and are all part of his personal purge. It's hard to say...

The censorship thing is really annoying but we have VPNs... I just do my thing and make my coin. I can do it from anywhere, so if he start swinging the ban-hammer on foreigners, I am more than willing to leave. 

This new leadership is not stupid.  They are fighting their war with the west - not on a military level, but on a banking and finance level.  They are doing their best to weaken the dollar around the world as the the world currency, and avoid getting sucked into east-west confrontations publicly while secretly helping Russia and other countries that challenge or defy the West. 

I personally think that within the next five years, foreigners will only be allowed as tourists in China and some serious financial collapses will force a war to erupt in Asia - perhaps Khazakstan or the South China Sea.  This current leadership of China respects  the West but doesn't fear it.