Editor’s note for Friday, November 20, 2020

My thoughts today:

“Crackdowns everywhere” show Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 is strengthening the Party’s “grip on China” says Bloomberg, and right now the top leader is putting down threats that “revolve around the convergence of technology, finance and Hong Kong.”

One of the many parts of the ongoing crackdown that has marked Xi’s tenure, per the Wall Street Journal:  

Chinese authorities have detained an outspoken entrepreneur and taken control of his businesses, reviving a debate about the state’s dominance over private industry and rule of law in the world’s second-largest economy.

Sūn Dàwǔ 孙大午 and the conglomerate he founded, Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group, had been publicly feuding with a state-owned farm in China’s northern city of Baoding over a long-running land dispute when police detained him, members of his family and other senior Dawu executives last week.

If you’re interested in Xi and his comrades and enemies the corridors of power in Beijing, you’ll enjoy this new database from professors Victor Shih and Young Yang of the roughly 1,700 elite Chinese Communist Party members “who were or are active government officials during the 18th Central Committee (2012-2017) and the 19th Central Committee (2017-2022).”

Xi scholars may also like this “great little insider-China political story” about the supreme leaders strategy as he rose to power, summarized here by interesting China tweeter Youshu.

Our word of the day is favorably consider 积极考虑 (jījí kǎolǜ), which is what Xi Jinping says China will do with the possibility of joining the CPTPP, the trade deal that Trump rejected.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief