So what's new? China sometimes murders people. What can be done? Boycott Chinese products? There aren't enough people who will give up their favorite electronics to make a difference, and most diplomatic currency is used on trade deals, Taiwan, and various disputed islands.
What ultimately motivates Xi and the Party? What are their objectives?
Are they simply doing whatever they think will increase China's relative power? And they think unity — suppression of multi-culturalism and dissent — will serve that interest? Or have they gamed out a strategy for 50 or 100 years that's more subtle, and this totalitarian BS is just a phase they'll outgrow?
According to the former PM of Australia, Kevin Rudd:
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1. The centrality of the party, keeping the party in power for the long term, as well as Xi's power within the party;
2. Consolidating the internal unity of the country;
3. Maintaining sustainable economic growth to ensure a continued increase in Chinese living standards, breaking though the "middle-income trap," while balancing now against a parallel requirement for environmental protection now demanded by China's urban elites;
4. Keeping China's 14 bordering countries in a benign, and preferably supine state;
5. On China's maritime periphery, projecting its regional naval and air power, politically fracturing U.S. alliances in Asia, and ultimately removing the United States from the immediate region militarily;
6. Leveraging its economic power across China's vast continental periphery, causing Eurasia, and in time the Middle East and Africa to become accommodating to China's economic, foreign policy, and security interests;
7. and Reforming parts, but by no means all, of the post-war international rules-based order over time to better suit its interests, and to better reflect China's domestic values rather than those of the post-war consensus.
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What ultimately motivates Xi and the Party? What are their objectives?
Are they simply doing whatever they think will increase China's relative power? And they think unity — suppression of multi-culturalism and dissent — will serve that interest? Or have they gamed out a strategy for 50 or 100 years that's more subtle, and this totalitarian BS is just a phase they'll outgrow?