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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
@kamilkazani
Jul 3, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
When living in Beijing in 2017-2019, I thought that the CCP would probably lose the power soon. I didn't believe it would be swept by a popular revolt, or a military coup. I assumed that once the current generation of Party leaders dies, the Party will degenerate and collapse.
Why did I think so? I hanged out with students of Peking and Tsinghua universities. And noticed that in their view the Party career was not prestigious. Founding a start-up, doing a Phd in Stanford or getting a job in Tencent was cool. Becoming a Party official - not cool at all
This wasn't because of oppositional views - such a stance was purely pragmatic. Around 1980 a talented and ambitious young Chinese hardly had any alternative to a Party career. You could not rise your social status without joining the nomenklatura.
But the economic boom created opportunities more lucrative than the Party career. Top Chinese alumni know that Party officials are poorly compensated. Yes, if you are lucky, by the age of 50 you gonna live well. But why wait if you can join Huawei and live well right now?
Therefore, current rulers of China are people who chose the Party career when there was no alternative to it. At that period, the Party incorporated the most intelligent and ambitious young Chinese. Current rulers are some of the smartest and hardest in their generation.
But the younger generations of Party officials chose the Party career when there were plenty of more lucrative opportunities to it. Most of smarter and more ruthless folk would probably choose the private sector over the Party job.
I extrapolated those tendencies to the future and concluded that there was now a mechanism of negative selection to the top Party jobs. Once the current generation of Chinese leadership is gone their places would be taken by far less capable successors
That's why I believed that a quick collapse of the Party after the death of Xi and his generation is likely. Now I think I was wrong.
The dynamics of career paths among the brightest young people of China are changing quickly. In the late 2010s the number of alumni of Peking University, who would choose a state job increased by more than 1.5 times. Meanwhile the number of those entering the tech sector halved.
Why did it happen? Not so sure. I think one of more important reasons might be that the emigration became less attractive. When I lived in Beijing a lot of the brightest young Chinese wanted to emigrate to the West. Nowadays this idea is far less popular
What does it all imply? First of all, China seems to return back to normality, and by normality I mean its historical tradition. It's cool to take an exam and become a civil servant, while being a merchant or an artisan/engineer - far less prestigious.
Secondly, we should not expect a 'natural' collapse of the Party. If the negative selection to the ruling elite continued, I would say that collapse is likely. However, if China returns back to normality - when the most capable become mandarins - I don't think it gonna happen.

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 7
In 1927, when Trotsky was being expelled from the Boslhevik Party, the atmosphere was very and very heated. One cavalry commander met Stalin at the stairs and threatened to cut off his ears. He even pretended he is unsheathing he sabre to proceed

Stalin shut up and said nothing
Like obviously, everyone around could see Stalin is super angry. But he still said nothing and did nothing

Which brings us to an important point:

Nobody becomes powerful accidentally
If Joseph Stalin seized the absolute control over the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, the most plausible explanation is that Joseph Stalin is exercising some extremely rare virtues, that almost nobody on the planet Earth is capable of

Highly virtuous man, almost to the impossible level
Read 7 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 1
Growing up in Russia in the 1990s, I used to put America on a pedestal. It was not so much a conscious decision, as the admission of an objective fact of reality. It was the country of future, the country thinking about the future, and marching into the future. Image
And nothing reflected this better than the seething hatred it got from Russia, a country stuck in the past, whose imagination was fully preoccupied with the injuries of yesterday, and the phantasies of terrible revenge, usually in the form of nuclear strike. Image
Which, of course, projected weakness rather than strength

We will make a huuuuuuge bomb, and drop it onto your heads, and turn you into the radioactive dust, and you will die in agony, and we will be laughing and clapping our hands

An old man yelling at clouds Image
Read 9 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
May 2
Fake jobs are completely normal & totally natural. The reason is: nobody understands what is happening and most certainly does not understand why. Like people, including the upper management have some idea of what is happening in an organisation, and this idea is usually wrong.
As they do not know and cannot know causal relations between the input and output, they just try to increase some sort of input, in a hope for a better output, but they do not really know which input to increase.
Insiders with deep & specific knowledge, on the other hand, may have a more clear & definite idea of what is happening, and even certain, non zero degree of understanding of causal links between the input and output

(what kind of input produces this kind of output)
Read 6 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Apr 12
There is a common argument that due process belongs only to citizens

Citizens deserve it, non citizens don’t

And, therefore, can be dealt with extrajudicially

That is a perfectly logical, internally consistent position

Now let’s think through its implications
IF citizens have the due process, and non-citizens don’t

THEN we have two parallel systems of justice

One slow, cumbersome, subject to open discussion and to appeal (due process)

Another swift, expedient, and subject neither to a discussion nor to an appeal (extrajudicial)
And the second one already encompasses tens of millions of non citizens living in the United States, legal and illegal, residents or not.

Now the question would be:

Which system is more convenient for those in power?

Well, the answer is obvious
Read 10 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Apr 5
I have recently read someone comparing Trump’s tariffs with collectivisation in the USSR. I think it is an interesting comparison. I don’t think it is exactly the same thing of course. But I indeed think that Stalin’s collectivisation offers an interesting metaphor, a perspective to think aboutImage
But let’s make a crash intro first

1. The thing you need to understand about the 1920s USSR is that it was an oligarchic regime. It was not strictly speaking, an autocracy. It was a power of few grandees, of the roughly equal rank.
2. Although Joseph Stalin established himself as the single most influential grandee by 1925, that did not make him a dictator. He was simply the most important guy out there. Otherwise, he was just one of a few. He was not yet the God Emperor he would become later.
Read 30 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Mar 16
The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.
Read 6 tweets

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