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Comment by dak1 | Hacker News Reader

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say this is probably due to the 18th Party Congress going on in Beijing right now, and that the block will be lifted sometime in the next week, once the transfer of power is over.

I think we may see some more moderates come to power, so I wouldn't expect this to continue. Whether or not Wang Yang gets a seat in the Standing Committee will be a good bellwether though.

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Ya, its the party congress hopefully. We'll have to wait until next month for things to get back to normal, and see what the situation is at then. I'm not sure who the moderates are, and whether they even have any control in this; I've heard the dinosaurs that control censorship are fairly embedded and hidden from even the top brass.

Yeah, China tightens up things a lot around important dates and arguably this Party Congress is the most important for a decade due to the leadership change. My guess is that this is to prevent rumours/gossip from spreading quickly via channels they don't control.

To elaborate, there are 2270 delegates who will choose the next standing committee. But those delegates will have been told who to vote for. Premier Wen, former Chairman Jiang Zemin, and other powerful members will have strong opinions, and may be unhappy with the make-up of the next committee. A deal has presumably already been struck, but that doesn't mean they can't possibly have a change of heart. The current leadership is leaving, and the new ones aren't entrenched, so it's a delicate situation.

Chairman Hu retains control of the military for the next 2 years, to discourage things from getting all Game of Thronesy, but they don't want to take any chances.

Moderate fascists are still fascists.

Where can I read more?

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