I’ve spoken to some Tory MPs who were just at a meeting of One Nation Conservative MPs - who sit more to the centre wing of the party. The word on everyone's lips was "xia hai" or "dive into the sea". It meant quitting your old job in a state company and plunging into private business. I remember the day one of our assistants came into the BBC office, handed in his ID and declared, "I'm off to Shenzhen", the boom city on China's southern coast. http://irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru Now China is saying it out loud, and its "wolf warrior" diplomats, named after a patriotic action film franchise, are going on the verbal offensive. In China this is hugely popular. In 2013, an image went viral appearing to show a room of university students in Bangkok taking test papers while wearing "ear flaps" - sheets of paper stuck to either side of their head to obscure their vision. Many responded by creating homemade contraptions out of cardboard, egg boxes and other recycled materials. That certainly seemed to be the case under Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao - corruption was on the rise and his authority was being openly ignored and even challenged. In 1992, Deng - who had remained China's "paramount leader" - declared that the party should allow "some people to get rich first".  It does not sound too dramatic, but it was another decisive break from Maoism. Revolutionary austerity had been shown the door.

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Pub: 24 Oct 2022 14:44 UTC
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