By a certain age one’s character is often writ into one’s face. Just looking at Trump’s you should see what he is. And look at Hitler’s speeches. Putin’s nature too is detectable.
But Xi Jinping is a creepy mystery. Often seeming as an empty suit, a zombie. I’ve never seen him display any emotion at all; any human feeling. His face a sleepy blank. Or maybe a self-satisfied supercilious smirk.
Shown riding in a tank in a military parade, he looked as animated as a Macy’s Thanksgiving-day balloon.
One moment was particularly telling. At a big Communist party ceremonial leader-worship fest, seated up front with Xi was his now elderly predecessor Hu Jintao. Hu was seen to crumple in some health episode. As the man was led away, Xi reacted not at all. Shrugging, as it were, with face empty, he turned his back.
All this contrasts bizarrely with Xi’s “cult of personality” gone mad. As if he has a personality. In fact, there’s no such cult in the populace. It’s all ginned up by Xi himself, asserting what must be an insatiable ego beneath that blank exterior.
He actually does see himself as a great know-it-all. Just like Trump, in fact isolated in a bubble of sycophants, Xi doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. So far his economic policies have been ruinous. Now he’s on a tear for government-run industries (not private ones) to flood the zone with Chinese-made goods. Never mind who’s going to buy them, and the fallout for the whole global trade picture.
But all of Chinese society and government are dragooned into pretending to idolatry. With a vast propaganda machine, replete with gilt-bound multi-volume opuses (no doubt ghost-written, almost literally). Deifying “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” The title’s pretentious unwieldiness belying emptiness of content.
If this is “thought,” no thanks. If these are “Chinese characteristics,” I’m glad I’m not Chinese. If this is a New Era, I’ll stay behind, thank you.
