Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang used to be Xi Jinping’s secretary.
I think I just watched the end of his career.
His loyalty and service to Xi may keep him out of jail. He’d be lucky with that outcome.
Shanghai’s governor should probably leave the country now and seek asylum somewhere without an extradition treaty with China.
The local authorities in Shanghai are unable to cope.
Party volunteers and the military are being mobilised. Eventually they will reach the grassroots/neighbourhood-level and bolster overwhelmed neighbourhood committees.
“Do not travel to the PRC’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), Jilin province, and Shanghai municipality due to COVID-19-related restrictions, including the risk of parents and children being separated.”
It’s not good when students in China start hanging banners and call for freedom.
“We want deliveries, we want to go off campus, we want freedom!”
Reportedly at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Intriguing political science/state capacity case study about to play out.
Hypothesis is Shenzhen/Guangzhou will handle #lockdown better than #Shanghai because grassroots workers are part of a meritocracy, not a patronage-based system.
This study explains why China can not abandon the zero covid strategy and also why Shanghai covid statistics are completely false. straitstimes.com/singapore/heal…
Here is the Singapore study showing higher risk of severe COVID in patients vaccinated with Sinovac.
Until China has its own mRNA vaccine or chooses to import them, Beijing will continue to pursue a zero covid strategy featuring lockdowns and isolation for positive tests.
This video is right out of dystopian science fiction - drones monitoring people stepping outside their front door during lockdown, prompting them to shuffle back inside.
I doubt this recording will survive long on Weixin. Gov’t disfunction and dissatisfaction with the test-driven quarantine system is driving people to resist.
Comparison to the GPCR is debatable, but the deprivation, red armbanded volunteers, street-violence, suspicion of “positives”, denunciation and reporting on peers are evocative.
The scale of societal disruption is much smaller, however. No posters, rallies, or PLA either.
What’s missing in all the reporting and analysis of the Shanghai lockdown is the palace politics led by Xi in the run up to the 20th Party Congress and whether the #Lockdown plays a role.
炮打司令部
Online outrage focused on the mayor's instinctive fear and reaction not touch anything. We seem to have forgotten the 2020 admonition: "wash your hands" & "don't touch your face."
I suspect some outrage also stems from the overflowing fridge and hoarding.
I wake up to DMs, and find a twitter feed full of unverified rumors about Xi Jinping under arrest in a palace coup.
It appears to be a complete falsehood at this point, but the spread of the rumor indicates belief in its plausibility.
The claimed source of the information is an “investigative journalist” named Zhao Lanjian who tweeted that 60% of China’s flights have been cancelled, which is an indication of a coup.
@ELuttwak might agree that flight cancellations are not the opening phase of a coup.
I don’t follow “Zhao Lanjian” on Twitter, and when I looked for his account, I could not find it.
Falungong media is amplifying the rumor which makes it suspect too.
Zhao has written several articles for New Tang Dynasty TV, which is a Falungong outlet.
@jamescrabtree A 2018 piece I wrote was probably the first to publicly analyze the "Overall Defense Concept", which was a new approach that prioritized asymmetric capabilities to defend Taiwan in the littoral and on the beaches, rather than a defense-in-depth strategy. warontherocks.com/2018/10/hope-o…
@jamescrabtree The dilemma for Taiwan is having a conventional force that is effective in grey zone coercion, like what we saw during Speaker Pelosi's visit. Taiwan needs big ships and manned fighter planes to intercept and shadow the PLA's big ships and planes.
This Sunday morning tweet garnered some good discussion (and no trolls!), including several DM requests for more insights and explanation why I think strategic stability is slipping away.
We can debate what stability means and whether the security dilemma enhances or undermines deterrence, but I’d rather not. That's too academic/theoretical for Twitter.
I'd rather look at what’s happening, and what isn't happening.
The U.S. plans to spend $1.5 TRILLION to update its nuclear weapons and delivery systems - $15.6 billion spend in FY2021.
New nuclear warheads, B-21 bomber, Columbia-class submarine and Trident II upgrade…
Hong Kong is facing a potential brain drain crisis.
Successful professionals among others are making their way to Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo and elsewhere in response to the HKSAR’s mismanagement of crises and Beijing’s overreach.
“Beijing’s sweeping national security law and subsequent crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong has spooked some employees of international law firms, asset managers and banks.”
“Government agencies including the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong [and others] have phoned banking and asset management executives who have relocated to rival cities including Singapore and Tokyo, according to three people with direct knowledge of the calls. “