A top economist has joined the growing list of China’s elite to have disappeared from public life after criticizing Xi Jinping, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Zhu Hengpeng served as deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for around a decade.
CASS is a state research think tank that reports directly to China’s cabinet. Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, described it as a “body to formulate party ideology to support the leadership.”
According to the Journal, the 55-year-old disappeared shortly after remarking on China’s sluggish economy and criticizing Xi’s leadership in a private group on WeChat.
Free West Taiwan! Hopefully, the CCP built dump will implode.
Lol he does look like that fucking bear
Things are afoot in the Hundred Acre Wood.
Wait but Hexbear said that China is a democracy? Did they lie?!??
Reminds me of the Clinton Death List, where anyone tangential to Bill and Hilary who had a bad turn was allegedly victimized to cover up an even more insidious crime.
I had the most hilarious discussion with a Tankie about China a while back. They refused to accept that China is pretty much communist in name only. I pointed out that they had billionaires, privately-owned companies, a stock exchange and private property, meaning you can earn capital in China.
The Tankie actually said something on the lines of, “If you would JUST READ MARX you would know that earning capital is a fundamental cornerstone of communism!”
I mean you can still have private property under communism, it’s the capital making property that’s more owned by the workers themselves, but you can still own things under communism.
Similarly, you can earn capital under communism too, it’s just that the tools for earning said capital aren’t owned by corporations under corporations under CEOs under the 1%. It’s not a cornerstone for sure, but it’s not like communism is anti capital and growth and owning things
Directly from The Communist Manifesto:
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Tankies are just communist cosplayers.
That’s probably the smartest tankie in existence
This is actually hilarious
something on the lines of
Any time someone describes something that happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they are misrepresenting what happened 100% of the time.
Hahaha, are you saying that because it was you on the other end of that discussion? I know you love China so much that you are willing to praise their genocide of Uyghur people.
Maybe you could distill the theory for us a bit so we can decipher why “socialism” is producing hundreds of billionaires.
maybe they’re just trying to avoid dissapearing
People complain when Trump and Biden puts tariffs on Chinese products or try to ban Chinese software, or invest hundreds of billions into bringing manufacturing back to the US, but it’s like they just can’t comprehend what a horrific government China has, between an authoritarian police state and leveraging slave labor to take over global industries, they’re a huge threat to freedom everywhere.
Western media talking about “disappearances” is always the funniest thing to me. If somebody just goes like a week without appearing on TV, they can say they “disappeared,” and the audience will immediately assume that they’re in some black site with a bag over their head. If they show up the next week and tell everyone they’re fine, then they have plausible deniability since they never actually said anything bad happened to them. Of course, then you’ve got your audience primed to believe that something’s up and can write another headline like, “Questions remain regarding the disappearance of so-and-so.” Once you get a name trending, it doesn’t matter what the facts are.
I remember coming under fire from an irl friend over the “disappearance” of tennis player Peng Shuai… until she reappeared, and the International Olympic Committee confirmed that she was perfectly fine. The only evidence that anything bad had happened to her was the lack of a public appearance, but then, after making public appearances, the story didn’t die, instead each new appearance simply gave the media more to talk about, keeping it in the public consciousness and always insisting that “questions remain.”
Of course, that’s not even mentioning all the times the media doesn’t just claim a “disappearance” but just outright lies about these things. If Business Insider can’t even muster up a “detained,” it’s pretty safe to assume it doesn’t mean anything. And of course, if someone says anything critical of the government, then they are immediately absolved of any and all suspicion of having committed actual crimes - absolutely zero investigation into the charges of corruption is needed for everyone to conclude with 100% certainty that they’re trumped up.
I can’t wait to see how many downvotes I can get lmao.
I try to take such claims seriously and I think we all should, just in case there’s any truth to them and someone is actually kidnapped. Of course knowing that they may not have been. Flagging certain individuals as potentially at risk isn’t wrong per se. But I get your point about how it is a relatively easy claim to make and exploitable politically. Still, I think it should be taken seriously, just in case.
That’s perfectly fine, I just think it’s important to treat claims critically, and to understand what it actually means to say that someone has “disappeared” in this context - it doesn’t mean that their friends or family have reported them missing, it doesn’t mean that a reporter has checked their house and found it abandoned, it just means that they haven’t been on TV, and it requires a lot of assumptions on the part of the audience to conclude from that that they’ve been kidnapped or extrajudicially detained.
Guess Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was closer to the real story than the originals by Milne…
If you think the Chinese economy is bad now, wait 15 years. No amount of sending economists to the gulag will hide this disaster.
Edit: tankie downvotes are like nectar of the gods to me. Your precious CCP will wither like a plant in the desert.
Who thinks Chinese economy is bad now??
92 upvotes would suggest a lot of people.
But everything you could say about China rings just as true in Europe, in Japan and Korea, in India, in Russia…
Global populations are heading for a heavy sag, but westerners only know how to heckle the Evil Foreigners.
Funny because I’m European, and the GDP per capita levels of most EU countries are at 2008 levels.
As for a population pyramid, China will face the same problem as other countries as you say, possibly more magnified.
EU countries are filling up with war and climate refugees. And… 2008 is one hell of a year to pick as your benchmark.
read and weep little dronie
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108900118
- https://asiatimes.com/2023/07/chinas-demographic-doomsayers-cite-the-wrong-data/
oh yeah, and the problem in the US is worse 😂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_go157Rf0
Sure, China will certainly collapse, as they have said since the 1990s.
What a stark example of Mao’s legacy (look at the dip between ages 60 and 65).
I’ve already been banned from Hexbear. Bunch of assclowns over there.
Lemmy.ml next?
Why do you think Israel needs a fucking iron dome? Bunch of virgin clowns in here.
This you?
What is this supposed to show?
This is what a healthy population looks like:
Even then, it isn’t healthy, just healthier. The USA is still going to going to experience economic issues of a growing elderly population, it just won’t be as bad.
it just won’t be as bad.
glances at Ferguson
glances at Columbia
glances at the NYC subway
How bad are we talking?
I don’t see how any of that relates to a potential demographic crisis
The US have the benefit of essentially limitless immigration that they can adjust at will. On the other hand, China’s leadership, being Han supremacist, is not receptive to immigration at all.
The US have the benefit of essentially limitless immigration
glances at US immigration policy
Does it?
China’s leadership, being Han supremacist, is not receptive to immigration at all.
Wit drier than a lint trap.
Immigration definitely helps, especially compared to China. I’m just noting that there will still be some decrease in the ratio of retired workers to current workers.
Have you… have you seen how Americans have been talking about the border? Especially this election cycle? I don’t know if would characterize either party’s constituencies as “receptive”.
It’s all talk. Corpos crave dirt cheap desperate immigrant workers and will make sure neither party messes this up.
According to the United Nations, in 2019, the United States, Germany, and Saudi Arabia had the largest number of immigrants of any country
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population
Was there supposed to be some argument or statement attached to this source, or…?
You realize there’s more to immigration than the border between Mexico and the US, right?
I know they ignore it, but you don’t have to follow along with them.
50 million immigrants in the US, and that data is 5 years old. Germany comes in second with 13 million. It’s not even close. I don’t see how a demographic crisis could happen, even if they hypothetically cut immigration in half
thicc
Basically, yes. The sides are nearly parallel, which is great. Compare with China’s, which forms a steep V. Once GenX hits retirement age they are completely screwed. The CCP’s recent push for “traditional family values” and increased birth rates is no coincidence.
The birthing rates are only dropping, in 15 years all of those people will be to old to work but there are not nearly enough to replace them.
Thank you for the clarification.
Still waiting
The glorious economy is always in the shitter it seems.
Enjoy the 996 becoming 7-10-7
What gives workers even less time to be consumers, making China even more dependant on overseas markets.
What does this mean?
996 = working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week, work schedule practiced currently in many companies in China
7-10-7 = I’m guessing 7am to 10pm, 7 days a week because of worker shortage?
Old enough to remember people talking about a 4 day work week and complaining about how many bullshit jobs our economy is swamped with.
But I guess we actually do have a sever labor shortage and all that surplus manufacturing jettisoned out into the global market simply isn’t enough.
996 is a term the Chinese use to describe working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
I’ll have the Pooh Pooh platter
I said no salt!
Omg he really does look like Winnie the pooh
Truly no emperor has ever worn such fine clothes as our beloved Xi. This will absolutely never backfire on them
Oh, do they fall out of windows in China too?
No they just get sent to Lake Laogai for…reeducation.
Is that another word for disintegration?
More like re-integration by way of re-education. Forced re-education.
Pretty sure it’s Soviet Union for torture and murder 🤷
I think Russia patented that technique.
Dictator
Angyy dragon emperor uwu
