Excellent analysis Tuvia. As you have noted in previous posts "telling China's stories well' includes recruiting the resources of gullible and ill informed foreigners.
I admire your creative approach to historiography, but I suggest grounding it in actual history.
"A lesser-known fact is that the perpetual leader dons a fourth, equally important hat: China's Storyteller in Chief" is imaginative nonsense. Like 90% of the world's governments, China has no term limits. And since Xi had eliminated poverty, housed 93% of people in their own homes, reduced serious crime 30%, doubled China's military power, and more than doubled all real incomes, including pensions, in his first two terms, he was given a third term. Just as he would have been in any country on earth. Why would anyone with such a record need to invent stories?
And "Deng Xiaoping, transformed a backward and starved 挨饿 China into the world’s second-largest economy" is simply counterfactual. Deng was the biggest bungler in PRC history. After Mao drove China's takeoff (its real GDP) faster than any country has ever done for 20 years, doubled the population, ended death by starvation (including during America's 1959-61 Grain Embargo) and ended serious crime, Deng so mismanaged the introduction of capitalism that, by 1989, the entire country had had enough. Students marching into Tiananmen Square carried banners reading, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as the cat resigns".
Just why Deng had anything to do with the matter is unclear, since his portfolio was defense.
Excellent analysis Tuvia. As you have noted in previous posts "telling China's stories well' includes recruiting the resources of gullible and ill informed foreigners.
I admire your creative approach to historiography, but I suggest grounding it in actual history.
"A lesser-known fact is that the perpetual leader dons a fourth, equally important hat: China's Storyteller in Chief" is imaginative nonsense. Like 90% of the world's governments, China has no term limits. And since Xi had eliminated poverty, housed 93% of people in their own homes, reduced serious crime 30%, doubled China's military power, and more than doubled all real incomes, including pensions, in his first two terms, he was given a third term. Just as he would have been in any country on earth. Why would anyone with such a record need to invent stories?
And "Deng Xiaoping, transformed a backward and starved 挨饿 China into the world’s second-largest economy" is simply counterfactual. Deng was the biggest bungler in PRC history. After Mao drove China's takeoff (its real GDP) faster than any country has ever done for 20 years, doubled the population, ended death by starvation (including during America's 1959-61 Grain Embargo) and ended serious crime, Deng so mismanaged the introduction of capitalism that, by 1989, the entire country had had enough. Students marching into Tiananmen Square carried banners reading, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as the cat resigns".
Just why Deng had anything to do with the matter is unclear, since his portfolio was defense.