{"id":1712833,"date":"2022-10-27T07:45:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T11:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1712833"},"modified":"2022-10-27T07:49:07","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T11:49:07","slug":"austin-bay-xi-jinpings-face-assassination-of-hu-jintao-is-a-strategic-warning-for-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/austin-bay-xi-jinpings-face-assassination-of-hu-jintao-is-a-strategic-warning-for-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Bay: Xi Jinping&#8217;s Face Assassination of Hu Jintao Is A Strategic Warning for America"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Faustin-bay-xi-jinpings-face-assassination-of-hu-jintao-is-a-strategic-warning-for-america%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1712833&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/7c4f58be037960247b3053a9fa040bb2099a2748.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Former Chinese president Hu Jintao&#8217;s peculiar exit from the Chinese Communist Party&#8217;s (CCP) congress meeting on Oct. 22 has ignited global discussion and intense speculation. And given current president Xi Jinping&#8217;s war-waging aims, well it should.<\/p>\n<p>By now tens of millions of people have seen at least part of Hu&#8217;s departure video. My summary: former president Hu is seated at the front table in Beijing&#8217;s Great Hall of the People, in a VIP dais seat next to his successor, Xi Jinping. <\/p>\n<p>Action: Two senior staff members wearing surgical masks approach. A befuddled Hu rises, reaches for a paper, appears to speak with Xi, then pats former premier Li Zhanshu, (China&#8217;s third most senior leader) on the shoulder. <\/p>\n<p>Then Hu was led away.<\/p>\n<p>Xinhua, China&#8217;s state news agency and chief CCP global propaganda organ, claimed the 79-year-old Hu was &#8220;escorted&#8221; from his VIP seat after he began &#8220;feeling unwell.&#8221; CNN \u2014an iffy source\u2014 said Hu appeared &#8220;reluctant to leave.&#8221; Well, I agree with that. <\/p>\n<p>The BBC posited: &#8220;The two most likely reasons for his (Hu&#8217;s) departure are that it was either part of China&#8217;s power politics on full display, with a leader representing a former time being symbolically removed, or that Hu Jintao has serious health problems.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the BBC&#8217;s either-or, both could be true, illness and a power play. Instead of physical health problems, other commentators suggested Hu may have been psychologically shaken.<\/p>\n<p>So why the shakes from a former CCP bigshot? In dictatorships symbolic removal often precedes physical obliteration. Did the thought freeze Hu&#8217;s brain?<\/p>\n<p>Prior to Hu&#8217;s egress under duress Xi had removed Hu&#8217;s political proteges and policy enthusiasts from the CCP&#8217;s Central Committee. Denying Hu&#8217;s supporters decision-making positions consolidated Xi&#8217;s personal grip on power.<\/p>\n<p>Hu led China from 2003 and 2013, his two five-year terms ratified by the once-every-five years (quinquennial) party congress. His presidency was regarded by many Chinese &#8220;as a time of opening to world.&#8221; Chinese citizens had reasonable access to the internet. Hu&#8217;s opening echoed Deng Xiaoping&#8217;s &#8220;opening-up and reform policies&#8221; designed to create a market economy within China&#8217;s authoritarian socialist state.<\/p>\n<p>After Deng died, China&#8217;s president was expected to hold office for two terms, reflecting the CCP&#8217;s commitment to collective leadership, a dictatorship&#8217;s way of saying the system considered the opinions of senior autocrats and tried to balance the interests of party factions. <\/p>\n<p>Hu stepped down and ceded office to Xi.<\/p>\n<p>Alas. Prior to this year&#8217;s congress, Xi revised Party term limit rules. Removing Hu&#8217;s admirers and revising the rules all but guarantees Xi&#8217;s position as China&#8217;s supreme leader for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n<p>China is a face culture. &#8220;Face&#8221; is important in every culture. Think of American politicians backtracking a blatant lie to &#8220;save face&#8221; \u2014 i.e., avoid humiliation. <\/p>\n<p>Asian &#8220;face cultures,&#8221; however, take the concept several steps further. The CCP&#8217;s face culture has Mafia rules.<span class=\"column--highlighted-text\"> The CCP suffers from systemic ineptitude and authoritarian narcissism, but don&#8217;t let the world know.<\/span> The CCP face police treated Wuhan&#8217;s conscientious doctors as criminals and suppressed their warnings about COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>Charles Custer of thoughtco.com writes: &#8220;Chinese society is quite conscious of hierarchy and reputation among social groups. People who have good reputations can buoy the social standing of others by &#8216;giving them face.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Before the world Xi staged a face assassination of Hu&#8217;s reputation. No corpse to dispose. Within China Hu&#8217;s de-faced existence demonstrates Xi&#8217;s power.<\/p>\n<p>Revving China&#8217;s economy isn&#8217;t Xi&#8217;s game. War is Xi&#8217;s aim, a war to seize Taiwan that leads to a big one with the U.S. As Xi calculates, given the Biden administration&#8217;s haplessness, the war ends in a stalemate. With American weakness exposed, America&#8217;s Asian allies kowtow to Beijing and Xi&#8217;s China reigns preeminent in east Asia.<\/p>\n<p>Kowtow is so apt. With Hu&#8217;s face assassination, Xi is effectively China&#8217;s emperor.<\/p>\n<p>To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.<\/p>\n<p itemprop=\"imageCaption\"><small>Photo credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/goto\/2676197\/\" rel=\"external noopener\" target=\"_blank\">anthonychong<\/a> at Pixabay<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Chinese president Hu Jintao&#8217;s peculiar exit from the Chinese Communist Party&#8217;s (CCP) congress meeting on Oct. 22 has ignited global discussion and intense speculation. And given current president Xi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1712836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1712833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1712836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}