It’s hilarious that capitalist rags like the economist want their lib readers to fear Xi by making him out to be some authoritarian conservative.
Also funny: central government wants local governments to invest in good toilets, the gall! How dare they support improving public services! 
Authoritarian: Asking a women’s conference to investigate healthy new ways to think of a family unit where women and men are equal and people still have babies.
Democracy: Ban abortion, lock up contraceptives, and arrest women who drive across state lines for medical care.
Democracy
“If you would have just voted harder, we wouldn’t be doing this!”, I say with my Senate majority and full control of the White House.
China has one child policy: “evil dictatorship, no freedom, mandatory abortions, oppression of women”
China relaxes one child policy & empowers families to responsibly provide for their children: “China wants women to stay home and bear children”
insert Parenti quoteWhataboutism? What about deez nuts?
The advancement of women’s cause not only facilitates individual development of women, but also promotes family and social harmony as well as the development of the country and the Chinese nation, he said.
It is necessary to strengthen guidance on young people’s perspectives on marriage, childbearing and family, he said, urging women’s federations to fine-tune and implement supportive birth policies, enhance the quality of population development and respond to population aging.
Noting that protecting the legitimate rights and interests of women and children, promoting gender equality and the all-round development of women and children are important components of Chinese modernization, Xi called on women’s federations at all levels to intensify efforts to solve the prominent problems that affect and infringe on the rights and interests of women and children.
So sinister… If you cut and paste around all the bits where he talks about advancing and protecting women’s rights.
He asked women’s federations to conduct in-depth investigations to gain insight into the thoughts and aspirations of women at the grassroots level and understand the urgent needs of the cause of women’s development.
Nooooo you can’t just ask women’s organizations to investigate and understand the urgent needs of women, you PATRIARCH!
If I don’t frame them as evil patriarchs, how will my lib readers learn to hate anything to the left of them?
Thanks for the source, I’ll give it a read
It’s basically government boilerplate either way. What matters is the material outcomes for women, which as far as i know is about the same as here a mix if good and bad. So it’s just racist hysterics by the economists. I’ll also note they don’t mention the new push against no fault divorce by right wingers in this country which is basically a right to abuse your wife law.
Also, “we should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture” actually doesn’t sound regressive or conservative, at least that little quote on its own. It sounds like Xi wants society to support pregnant people and people with children in new and better ways. Of course, we simply don’t have the context of this quote, so it’s hard to actually draw any conclusions from it. My guess, though, is that The Economist wrote this trying to make China look as terrible as possible, so my guess is that in context, this quote sounds even better and The Economist stripped the relevant context to attempt to make China sound scary and anti-feminist. Never mind that the US (and the UK) are actually in the midst of an extremely anti-feminist moment, China is scary and bad, don’t you know?
Nuclear family is the effect of traditional family model being eroded by capitalism, and is unsustainable in long periods of time as the families widely struggling to met the ends in decaying capitalist countries prove. But the traditional partiarchal family model is also outdated. I imagine in China it is even more visible than in the west, so the question of new family model is nothing weird to be stated. Cuba did it too, and the effect was the new code.
But, stated and worded like the western propaganda usually does, it sounds like some sinister social engineering and eugenics.
Oh yeah, good point, this is probably exactly what Xi was getting at. Well, hopefully China will do something as cool as Cuba’s new family code! That would make my year, honestly.
But the traditional partiarchal family model is also outdated
The patriarchal family model is, itself, a consequence of property-based legal institutions awarding husbands and eldest male heirs the lion’s share (even to the point of exclusive enfranchisement) of household capital, cash, and credit. Yes, of course men are going to dominate in a system that prohibits women from owning property or having a bank account or borrowing money.
It isn’t even that the patriarchal model is outdated. It is that the individualist consumer economy contradicts and erodes the patriarchal model. And consumerism remains as much a part of Chinese culture as it does anywhere.
I’m not even sure if Xi is that opposed to patriarchy. Certainly, he doesn’t seem shy about stacking his cabinet and senior staff almost exclusively with middle-aged and elder men. But he is quite clearly opposed to the excesses and wastefulness of consumer capitalism. And, in a country as big and resource hungry as China, it isn’t hard to see why.
The Economist’s articles are the liberal worldview distilled in a way I don’t think other propaganda outlets capture in the same manner. I think it’s rooted in its origins as a lobbying platform for the bourgeoisie way back in the 1840s
The rag had round 180 anniversary 2 september this year :(
Its continual existence is really proof the class struggle is real and it is the organ for the aristocracy of finance
It’s crazy when you think about how old and how entrenched many of these corporations are in Western society as a whole, and how influential they are in forming public opinion.
I agree with you. The Economist is its own particular kind of terrible. I think it’s the media outlet I hate the most, actually. I also hate, hate, hate that Economist articles don’t have bylines. We don’t get to know which particular ghoul wrote this particular reactionary nonsense article, so it’s just “The Economist” having terrible opinions, as usual. Fucking cowards. Put your names to your articles so I can make fun of you personally.
It doesn’t have bylines because many of them are teenagers plucked from conservative societies at universities rather than actual experts or even staff writers. It’s a cheap content mill with set stories basically.
you’ll probably enjoy this: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks
Maybe my view is marred by my US experience but it also could be related to how anti kid so many people are. Don’t have kids if you don’t want them but also people should and need to be accepting and supportive of them existing in society.
bear children
those are called “cubs”
Does this mean hexcubs are a thing?
but his power has limits
So much for my authoritarian dictatorship
So supporting the working class so they can raise a family on one income? The horrors! The horrors!
Giving maternity leave and child subsidies is authoritarian, you have to just arrest women and force them to have kids and arrest them again if the kid starves.
TOILETS ARE COMMUNISM
Piss in your sink and don’t wash your ass
i get knocked down
i get back down again
you’re never gonna knock me down
…
hey where’s my keg?
…
i take a whiskey drink
i take a chocolate drink
and when i have to pee
i use the kitchen sink
i sing the song that reminds me i’m a urinating guy
If toilets are communism, what is the nature of
? These are important questionsseems
to me. hyper individualism etc
Modi immediately cancels toilet building programs.
Gender equality has got worse since 2012
Is it tho? Or are you pulling those stats from your ass?
World’s wrongest media rag
Is abortion legal in China?
Yes, and widely available if the person needs it. There’s claims right now that they’re trying to restrict access, but even the media admits that it’s not actually bad policy, really:
They don’t even have anything to base the claim on, just a translated statement that includes “reducing abortions” in the middle of a bunch of family support measures that would intrinsically reduce incentives for abortions
Yep, much like most of Western media, they get a quote from an official or a document, and then frame it in a way that makes them look bad. They know readers won’t look too far into it and look for a proper source
I hate pinkwashing I hate pinkwashing I hate pinkwashing
It’s not even pink washing, it’s like . . . Blue tarring
