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Comment by truth_ | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Deng was more concerned about growing silently. He cared about his people, and did not want to draw too much attention to China.

I knew Xi was a textbook dictator when I heard about him banning Winnie The Pooh in Chinese internet [0].

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...

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I don’t think the Pooh censorship was Xi’s doing, and the apparatus would have done some similar proactive censoring for the previous president as well.

Xi crossed into dictator territory when he was able to declare himself president for life. Otherwise, we’d be talking about his successor by now.

Xi never declared himself president for life, the National People's Congress simply passed a law removing term limits. Angela Merkel has been chancellor of Germany for twice as long as Xi has been president of China.

What’s the difference? Xi got the assembly to remove term limits, and the next president won’t be selected until the end of his term. Merkel has to go through national parliament elections every so often, and her party must still vote for her as chancellor after those. None of those apply to Xi.

The president of China is elected by the National People's Congress after each term. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Are you saying the national people’s congress isn’t a rubber stamp body? If you are Chinese, who is your congress person or who did you vote for in the last election?

No, I'm an American disappointed in the ignorance of my countrymen. My congressperson has been in office consecutively since 1997 with no serious challenges, and I couldn't name a single thing she's done for me in that time.

That’s fine. I’ll tel you how it works: in the USA, almost anyone can run for congress, there are primaries to sort out the top contenders for a general election. Congress people get “unelected” all the time which is how the house changes parties every so often.

In China, you are given a list of 41 names and have to select 40 of them, that one not being picked not getting a seat. Ironically enough, Xi was in that position before but his status as a princeling meant he still got a seat anyways.

That didn’t happen though. Even today you can find Winnie the Pooh memes on Chinese social media. Most Chinese people think they’re racist and uninteresting, but that’s a different matter.

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