“If true, this represents a huge shift in Xi’s policies, if not his political st

–“If true, this represents a huge shift in Xi’s policies, if not his political standing within the CCP.”–

While I’m a decent student of chinese history at least until 1900, I can’t think like chinese leadership. I can easily think like Russian leadership. Sometimes I would love to live there long enough to internalize it. So I’m stuck, like all other analysts in the world, with working from incentives given fragmentary knowledge. 😉

So, that said … reading the ccp tea leaves is far harder than the kremlin. The kremlin is deliberate and always manipulative. It’s predictable. The CCP uses incremental suggestion that can be adjusted if it spins poorly with the population. It’s almost impossible to understand the correlation between statements, indirect statements, leaks, and rumors.

This particular ‘leak’ which was translated by Lei, is written in tone and content as if it’s CCP material, and it’s leaked in a manner that tests the waters so to speak in proper chinese cultural tradition, before doubling down and creating the possibility of blame for failure.

But given that Xi is demonstrating weight loss indicative of health problems, and that other leaks have suggested it’s pancreatic, there is some possibility that this is opposition content instead of his.

However, if we look at his demeanor both in California and afterward it has been … surprising in the least … that he is pivoting to favor his economy over strategic expansion so rapidly.

So again, reading the tea leaves, this could be honest recognition of the failure of his aggressive program and defense of the CCP rule by shifting position; it could be that he is changing his state of mind given his own sense of vulnerability within the party whether ill or not; and it could be that the opposition smells blood and is preparing the way for a change in direction; or it could be a feint by Xi or his opposition to buy time for the ancient and consistent traditional Chines strategy of ‘delay and deceive’ until the economy has adjusted and the CCP is in a less vulnerable position domestically that it can return to aggressive expansion in the hopes that less strategic civilizations (the west in particular) will dedicate it’s attention elsewhere, and restore it’s investment in china, using the west to facilitate china’s ascent.

I mean. It’s sure as heck what I would do. 😉

Cheers
-CurtD

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