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Yet another one of China's elite has disappeared after criticizing Xi Jinping (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 1 month ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] Objection@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 month ago

What i find interesting is that youre so quick to criticise "the west" but when its china there is always a way out. Where you fail is you are extremely one sided while on lemmy most people i see are pretty critical of the US, china and every other entity that does a bad thing. If china does something bad, you try to explain why its actually good but when the eu wants to do some shitty thing, lemmy actually wants to change that instead of just mindlessly criticising or endorsing it.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago

I'm happy to criticize China on its actual faults, but I'm not going to jump to conclusions based on inadequate or inaccurate information. The standard for evidence is much lower when it comes to criticizing China, most of the media we consume comes from Western sources, and people just don't have firsthand experience and will believe just about anything, and so I may push back more simply because there is more bullshit to push back on.

You accuse me of "mindlessly endorsing" everything they do, but there is stuff I criticize and when I don't, I explain my reasons quite thoughtfully. What I don't do is mindlessly criticize everything they do (or are accused of doing, or assumed to be doing, without evidence) which is pretty much the standard that people expect from me. There's countless accounts on here that only ever criticize China and do so without providing explanations or justifications for it. They don't even come up with any original quips, it's all just lazily repeating "haha Winnie the Pooh" to each other with zero thought or analysis. Generally, these people could only name one or two events from Chinese history, and have no interest whatsoever in learning about or understanding their perspective, which makes having an intelligent discussion on the subject impossible.

[-] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip -2 points 1 month ago

You seem much more reasonable than most ml users and while i dont agree with you on a lot of things, i dont think downvoting evrything you disagree with is a good idea and you even responded which is more than i expected. But yeah both "sides" are guilty of this.

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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024

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