Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: October 19, 2023, 06:17:13 pm »Eurocentrist Xi's reading list:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/behind-authoritarian-mask-real-xi-160000968.html
Of course we have a duty read Western authors (in order to know the enemy so as to more efficiently defeat it), but we should not enjoy reading them, much less boast about enjoying them (as if personal Westernization is something to celebrate!).
We can tell even without knowing him in person:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/is-putin's-russia-duginist-autocracy/msg8418/#msg8418
Continuing:
See? China never thought of itself as "feudal" until colonial-era Western academics started telling them to do so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
but it is no surprise that Eurocentrist Xi accepts the progressive narrative. In reality, China's system was not feudal at all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry_in_China
https://www.yahoo.com/news/behind-authoritarian-mask-real-xi-160000968.html
Quote
myth making has been an equally important component of Xi’s push for preeminence – his public image is clearly a priority.
‘I have many hobbies, the biggest of which is reading. Reading has become a way of life for me,’ Xi told reporters in 2013, weeks after becoming President, after name-checking eight Russian writers – including Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy – whose works he claimed to have read.
Two months later, Xi charmed Greece’s Prime Minister by saying he read many works by Greek philosophers during his teenage years. When Xi visited France the following year, he boasted about reading Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Sartre, and more than a dozen other writers. State media feted Xi as an erudite leader, publishing lists of his favourite books and cajoling citizens to emulate his love for learning.
The publicity blitz set tongues wagging among Xi’s fellow ‘princelings’, as descendants of revolutionary leaders and senior officials are known. Many among them concluded that Xi’s outlandish claims of literary prowess betrayed deep-seated insecurity
Of course we have a duty read Western authors (in order to know the enemy so as to more efficiently defeat it), but we should not enjoy reading them, much less boast about enjoying them (as if personal Westernization is something to celebrate!).
Quote
‘Xi is not cultured. ... one princeling who has known Xi for decades told me.
We can tell even without knowing him in person:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/is-putin's-russia-duginist-autocracy/msg8418/#msg8418
Continuing:
Quote
Xi promised to build a system that could transcend China’s feudal past
See? China never thought of itself as "feudal" until colonial-era Western academics started telling them to do so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
Quote
Feudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire: especially in the Carolingian Empire in 9th century AD, which lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure[clarification needed] necessary to support cavalry without allocating land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.[34]
...
In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the Ancien Régime, or French monarchy. This was the Age of Enlightenment, when writers valued reason and the Middle Ages were viewed as the "Dark Ages". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the "Dark Ages" including feudalism
...
Some later Marxist theorists (e.g. Eric Wolf) have applied this label to include non-European societies, grouping feudalism together with imperial China and the Inca Empire, in the pre-Columbian era, as 'tributary' societies .[53]
but it is no surprise that Eurocentrist Xi accepts the progressive narrative. In reality, China's system was not feudal at all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry_in_China
Quote
The "gentry", or "landed gentry" in China was the elite who held privileged status through passing the Imperial exams, which made them eligible to hold office.