Chairman Jian

 

Anyone still professing the aged, but never quite dead, Wade-Giles system may be relieved that this post is not a very belated praise of the generalissimo, toasting yet denigrating his name by giving it the title of the upstart usurper Mao (and the pinyin translation which, to his name like the PLA to Taiwan, never quite mastered it). Rather, and not too unexpectedly, we may either rejoice or commemorate the great decade or so when the destiny of China was (safe)guarded by this man known to history as the great Deng's successor, chairman and president Jiang Zemin. 

He was the first president to hold the job since Mao, and thus the longest, until Chairman Xi may yet follow in the term whose end, and indeed beginning, he will not enjoy the benefits of, as the People's Assembly convene the following spring. And in this post, and from this post - now one of real significance associated with it in the post-Enlightenment era, to the extent that "communist" nations must follow in this - he reshaped China from the draperies of yet-breathing Deng's power base. 

It was the ninth of June which made him who he was, and thus also confirmed his fate to die in a China far from those words of Lincoln he was reportedly fond of quoting; "... of the people, by the people, and for the people." But even as Mike Wallace, another fallen giant of that generation, struggled to hold onto his senses as he quipped and questioned his defiance, the fact that this statesman mastered the English tongue was indeed something. The question was, could this alliance, forged in the heat (!) of the Cold War to savour the destruction, in their lifetime, of the Soviet Union, last? 

The Autogolpe - from the opposition benches

 

The notion of coup d'etat was indeed sure to be mentioned. 

Less certain, but issued with a clarity that leaves little wiggle-room, is the notion of the autogolpe, not merely as a comfortable alternative but the only alternative to the militant takeover deemed now both a frequent opportunity, as well as definitively unattainable (the vast, vast majority of Americans in this Trumpist America being never-Trumpers, after all) 

The India Problem

 

A momentous event, as expected as the proclaimed first place of the Chinese economy, but perhaps not so soon, was ever the ascent of old India to the place of first nation among the nations, the proverbial "largest" country in the world. And while this entire subcontinent - sub to a continent of continents - is substantial and rich in its geographical, topographical and climatological features, as well as the only home to the tiger and other species, it is the equally crammed and convoluted home of one point near four billion human beings, a number superadded and enlarged and reproduced (mostly) by a factor of four since independence in 1947. It was this independence which saw the breaking of the back of Britain's empire, Attlee's premier achievement (over the instating of the NHS, or the decimation of the same by introducing fees for dental care to pay for his Korean War effort) and the accomplishment of creating an India, singular sense, with a single language and administration. For this, maybe Attlee indeed may deserve as much credit as Nehru, if not as much recognition, and on the back of this process we find the long road now crowned by the most populated country in the world, finally, having an elected government by, for and because of its own people. 

This most ancient of nations, however, has never been taken seriously in the same manner as old Zhongguo. 

This Great Democracy of ours

Bar a pluck of - mainly belated - words concerning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and particularly its simultaneously violent and (as far as coups go) pathetic afterbirth, I have generally kept quiet since my equally un-ubiquitous, but generally well-chosen comments of 2016. And largely this is a deliberate choice but, like so many things, deliberate by the shove of slovenliness. 

And here we stand, at this great, if not the first, precipice of democracy versus the candidates of good and, if not national salvation, preservation and continuity of an existent decency.