Two years ago, the Chinese Communist Party, completely dominated by its 64-year-old president Xi Jinping, would drop term limits on the presidency. After Mao's lengthy dictatorship, the Party moved away from one-man rule toward a consensus system where power was shared by a handful of high-ranking Party officials. This worked until the ascent of Xi, who was declared "core leader" as state media increasingly sung his praises. He has consolidated power and now with the end of term limits he becomes, in effect, president-for-life. A new emperor.
In China's vast neighbour to the north, we have recently seen similar developments, perhaps inspired by Xi. The Russian parliament is proposing constitutional changes that could leave Vladimir Putin in power until 2036. He is currently required to step down in 2024 when his most recent term ends. If, as is highly likely given his grip on the nation, the constitutional court gives its blessing to the changes and they are backed in an April referendum, he could be president until he's 83, essentially for life. A new tsar.
When the former communist regimes in these two giants came to an end, with the death of Mao in China and the collapse of the Soviet Union under its own dead weight, some of us had great hopes that democracy might root itself in both. Instead it seems as if the tumultuous revolutions that birthed communism, and the carnage and oppression they engendered, ultimately changed nothing. Just passing chapters to be endured. They were ruled by dictators before, they are ruled by dictators now, and they were ruled by dictators in between. Plus ça change.
3 comments:
We're witnessing history unfold, Bill. I once had to spend a few hours on a floating logging camp. The frame buildings, dating to the 30s were being renovated. The plaster had been removed and the lathe revealed the buildings used Vancouver newspapers for insulation. That gave me a chance to scan old editions of the Vancouver Sun as I waited for the weather to die down so our float plane could get in. I read the pre-war articles about Japanese conquests in China or Hitler's Anschluss.
I wondered what readers of the time must have made of what, with hindsight, were such seismic events.
We seem to be embarked on a new era of seismic events, probably just as incapable of discerning their significance as were those Vancouver Sun readers in their era. We can see what is happening but not how it will play out, what will impact our lives and what won't.
Interesting times, Bill.
Even more seismic, Mound. Hitler threatened European civilization; global warming threatens human civilization.
True enough, Bill. On my blog I have, for some years, queried whether we were missing the point on these worsening threats - our resilience to respond to them effectively.
It struck me that, as part of neoliberal doctrine, we have so tightly honed our economy, stripping it of apparently non-essential costs and regulations, that we created our very own Achilles' Heel that would leave us at the mercy of every chaotic, disruptive event that might ensue.
I'm coming to think my concerns were/are well-founded.
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