tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4251777016037497783.post4248534743710224205..comments2023-12-14T20:02:51.470-06:00Comments on The Heavy Anglophile Orthodox: The errors of Chinese liberalism and of Chinese neoleftismMatthew Franklin Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233216128641267240noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4251777016037497783.post-37021736793486723612012-12-17T11:32:58.981-06:002012-12-17T11:32:58.981-06:00Hi John! Welcome back!
Indeed, Yeltsin did have ...Hi John! Welcome back!<br /><br />Indeed, Yeltsin did have that oft-ignored iron-fist element to him; yet you are right that Western media tend to ignore it, for the primary reason that it was never brandished in their direction. Putin, on the other hand, while of course never being a perfect head-of-state in any case, at the very least he paid down Russia's sovereign debt and made the lives of ordinary Russians rather less than the utter hell that it was under Yeltsin (the median standard of living in Russia having <a href="http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=804651" rel="nofollow">doubled</a> during Putin's first eight years). And yet we are constantly inundated with the idea that he is somehow a neo-Tsarist (oh, if only!), or a neo-Soviet revanchist, or otherwise an evil-evil-dictator.<br /><br />I still distrust somewhat Putin's (rather historically ironic) Bonapartist leanings, but he is far and away to be preferred to any other meaningful alternative on offer in Russia.<br /><br />In China, the situation is slightly different. The CCP has grown distressingly neoliberal of late, particularly with the purge of Bo Xilai, and I would eagerly welcome any shift away from that direction. That shift does not seem to be forthcoming under Xi Jinping, and the favourable reaction of China's right-liberals to his Shenzhen trip puts me more than a bit on edge. I just thought it was worth mention in passing that China's right-liberals are not long-suffering freedom-fighters, as they are often typecast by the mainstream Western media.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4251777016037497783.post-70014615153922318452012-12-16T17:11:54.961-06:002012-12-16T17:11:54.961-06:00Great post. Your description of the Chinese right-...Great post. Your description of the Chinese right-liberals reminds me of Yeltsin in the 1990s. Most Westerners remember Yeltsin as a boozy clown, but in 1993 he illegally dissolved parliament and then subsequently used military force to back what was essentially a right-liberal coup d’etat. <br /><br />But that was all forgiven, because Yeltsin let the oligarchs and Western capitalists run rampant, despite the misery inflicted on the ordinary citizenry. Now we are supposed to hate Putin, whose main crime seems to be that he didn’t let the Russian oligarchs and their Western allies do whatever they wanted to do. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com