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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Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.
One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg
And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking
Global politics are usually framed in terms of kindergarten discourse (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) with an implication that you must provide “good guys” with boundless and unconditional support
BUT
Unconditional support is extremely corrupting, and turns the best of the best into the really nasty guys, and relatively fast
Part of the reason is that neither “bad” nor “good” guys are in fact homogenous, and present a spectrum of opinions and personalities. Which means that all of your designated “good guys” include a fair share of really, really nasty guys, almost by definition.
Purely good movements do not really exist
That is a major reason why limitless, unconditional, unquestioning support causes such a profound corrupting effect upon the very best movement. First, because that movement is not all
that purely good as you imagine (neither movement is),