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[av_heading heading=’The Return of the Middle Kingdom?’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’18’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY JED JALECO DEL ROSARIO
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Sunday, March 4, 2018
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IN THE People’s Republic of China, there now exist plans to lift the term limit for the current PRC President, Xi Jinping. The Chinese social media met these plans with a picture of Winnie the Pooh hugging a jar of honey with the caption, “Find the thing you love and stick with it.” In response, the Chinese began blocking images of Winnie the Pooh online.
Other memes are more direct in their criticisms. Some are even accusing Xi Jinping of returning China to the Mao or even imperial era.
If Xi’s administration is serious about this amendment then there’s not much the Chinese can do to stop it. The National People’s Congress is a rubber-stamp parliament, so if Xi wants to extend his term then he has enough power and political capital to do so.
Judging by the information coming out of the PRC, opinions about the amendment seem to be mixed. Some believe that Xi is trying to extend his term, so that he can further China’s growth, eliminate corruption and strengthen its military. On the other hand, many Chinese also hold the opinion that Xi wants to indefinitely extend his term of office for purely personal reasons, much the same way Filipinos fear that changes in the Constitution will result in de facto dictators.
Presently, China’s 1982 constitution limits the president to two five year terms, but there is precedence to ignore it. Mao ruled China as a monarch in all but name, and of course, there is China’s own historical imperial legacy.
If we take their entire history as a whole, monarchies and centralized bureaucracies are the norm for the Chinese. Constitutions and parliaments are recent imports from the Western World. So the important point to remember here is that this term extension is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s the historical norm.
In analyzing trends, it’s important to look at averages. Averages don’t always offer answers, but they offer context, and in China’s case, that context involves thousands of years of imperial and centralized rule broken up by rebellions and barbarian invasions. So if Xi succeeds in extending his term, and it turns out that such an act is ultimately for his own personal ambitions then that may be a sign that China is reverting back to the pre-Deng norm.
From there, we can expect that the Chinese state will start reverting back to more familiar (i.e. imperial) structures./PN
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