Day: September 2, 2021

Louise Xin is a Chinese-Swedish fashion designer who launched her eponymous Stockholm-based brand in November 2020 as Scandinavia’s first rental-only couture label. Xin turns upcycled materials into elaborate and colorful handmade dresses for customers to rent instead of purchase, hoping to change consumption patterns in the name of sustainability. She dedicated her digital fashion show on Aug. 31 to the Uyghurs to raise awareness about the genocidal policies targeting the predominantly Muslim minority group in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. The five-minute video presentation ended with Xin herself wearing a newspaper print coat and unraveling a banner that said “Free Uyghur: End All Genocide.” The China-born Xin spoke to reporter Nuriman Abdurashid of RFA’s Uyghur Service on Thursday about her why she decided to use couture to call attention to the plight of the Uyghurs, what inspired her to do a fashion show-cum-protest, and how she has enlisted the help of Jewher Tohti, daughter of detained Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, to draw attention to the use of Uyghur forced labor in the apparel industry. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: How did you come to use couture to promote awareness of the plight of Uyghurs?

Louise Xin: I also believe that all the problems caused by humans in this world are really based on the false belief that we are separate, that there is a “we” and a “them” — that we are Africans, Chinese, Christians, Muslims, that we are different. And that we only see the differences instead of how similar we all are and how we are to united, that there’s nothing that one person can do that will not affect someone else in the end. Everything is really connected — not only us, but also the animals in nature. And we just understood that we would not use our advantage against each other or against nature or against animals. We will understand that everything we do will come back to us. It’s with this belief that I started this plan that for me, it’s not a trend to focus on sustainability or diversity. For me it’s one and the same problem or issue. We need to do whatever it takes to contribute to a better society. With everything we do, we should leave the world a little bit better than how we found it. If everybody had the same mindset, we would have an amazing, magical world. So, for my very first fashion show I dedicated it to the Uyghur community because I’m Chinese myself. When I found out what happened in Xinjiang, it really broke my heart. At first I couldn’t believe it because it was against everything I believed in growing up as a kid. I just couldn’t understand how we can let something as terrible as this happen today in 2021, and that we’re not doing more about it.

I tried doing things with political parties and contacting the government and assistance organizations, but I got “nos” from everybody. I never felt so hopeless in my whole life, [and] I never felt so small in my whole life. And then I just stopped for a moment and [realized that] the only way I could help would be through my creativity, my fashion, my dresses. And that’s how the show came about. Today I just put up a GoFundMe [fundraising appeal] for Uyghur kids in exile. Most of them are in Turkey at the moment. I really think that if you give a person a fish they will have food for a day, but if you teach them how to fish, they will have food for life. There is this school that educates [Uyghur] kids and keeps them safe like a kind of community and family. I think it’s amazing, and I really want to support that. These kids are just like us. There’s no difference between us and them. They too have dreams and hopes. I really hope that with this GoFundMe [appeal] and with this [fashion] project that we can make their dreams come true.

RFA: What inspired you to do this kind of fashion show?

Louise Xin: It came to me when I was at a really low point in my life and I felt so sad with everything that was going on with my personal life. Then [I thought] that what the people I said I was going to help are going through is about 10,000 times worse than anything I’ve ever gone through in my entire life. [I told myself that] I could not sit there and pity myself when there’s so many people out there who don’t have even their own voice and that that had become such a strength for me. So, it gave me all the fuel and power needed to create this fashion show. For me, this has been a cause that I have been very passionate about for over a year’s time now ever since I started this brand. It’s something that is not just a trend, but something I’ve tried to educate myself about and try to do what I can do in a longer period of time.

At the same time, I spoke to a friend and told her that I couldn’t understand how other people didn’t feel as devastated as I was about the genocide [of the Uyghurs], because this is the worst thing that has happened after the Holocaust. How can people know but not care more about it? What she said was that everybody relates to different things depending on their own background. I relate to this because I come from China, and it’s so close to me. That’s why I invited all these models [to take part in the digital fashion show]. They are all come from different backgrounds and most of them made it on their own with their passion alone. They celebrate human rights causes, and because I’m using this show to raise a voice for the Uyghur community, I want them to raise their voices for what they are passionate about as well.

RFA: Even though certain apparel manufacturers know about Uyghur forced labor in the production of clothing, they have continued to do business with China. What is your message about this to the apparel industry?

Louise Xin: I would like to say that, first of all, I understand them. I understand that they have a lot to lose because at the end of the day we’re all humans and we just want to try to make a living. Behind a huge corporation, a huge brand, there’s also a person who has a heart and feelings and who cares. That very person is the person I’m talking to right now. I really hope that we can understand how powerful we actually are and that we don’t need to be afraid because if people are united they can really do so much to change [the world]. The power [of individuals] is more powerful than that of any corporation or state or anything that can be against us.

I believe that once you warm people’s hearts, everything else will [follow]. So the worst thing is that they will lose money, maybe in the beginning, if you endorse them. Maybe that’s why a lot brands are very afraid of doing that. But what can be worse than to lose your humanity? … I totally understand them. I understand that there’s a lot at stake. But I think that if we just act out of courage and face instead of fear, it will be a totally different kind of industry and totally kind of society.

RFA: Do you have any other plans to continue to raise awareness about the Uyghur forced labor issue?

Louise Xin: In doing this show, I came into contact with this amazing friend. Jewher [Tohti], with whom I’m going to have a live Instagram talk. We’re going to talk about [Uyghur] forced labor and how important it is [and] how we can use our power as a company to end [it.]. She will be talking about the importance of how we need to endorse the call to action. I really hope that as many people as possible can join this live talk because what she has to say is extremely important. I’ve learned so much about her and about this whole situation just in the two or three days after we met each other.

Reported by Nuriman Abdurashid for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

More than 100,000 Rohingya refugees who’ve been confined to camps in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state for nearly a decade are asking to be allowed to return home so they can find work and food amid the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Muslim minority group say.

Sheltered in camps near the Rakhine state capital Sittwe, the Rohingya were driven from their homes by ethnic clashes with the state’s majority-Buddhist population in 2012, and had been supported until now by contributions from the U.N. World Food Programme.

Deliveries of food have fallen off, though, due to economic disruptions tied to the spread of coronavirus in Myanmar, and the Rohingya now have trouble finding sufficient food, shelter, or work in the camps, one camp resident said.

“How can we eat when we are not allowed to work outside the camps?” asked Maung Kyaw Sein, a resident of the Thekkair-byin refugee camp, adding that he and others have now lived in the camp for around ten years.

“We want to go back,” he said. “We want to return to our old places, where we can find work and food. We can’t find any work here, and we don’t have enough rice or any other kinds of food.”

Deadly ethnic clashes in Rakhine in 2012 destroyed factories and other businesses in Sittwe, killing nearly 200 Rohingya and displacing 140,000 members of the persecuted community, who are denied citizenship and labeled illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They were settled in 14 camps west of Sittwe after their homes were burned down and their property destroyed during the fighting.

Five years after the Sittwe violence, Myanmar’s military launched a scorched-earth campaign against ethnic Rohingya villages in response to attacks by Muslim insurgents on police posts in Rakhine, burning villages, killing residents, and driving 740,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh. About 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine state, which has about 3.1 million people.

The 2017 attacks have since been described by international rights groups and foreign governments as constituting acts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”

Requests ignored

The Rohingya in Sittwe have repeatedly asked to be settled again in their former villages along the Bay of Bengal in northern Rakhine, but previous Myanmar governments—including the National League for Democracy government ousted in a Feb. 1 military coup—have ignored their requests without explanation.

Although government authorities had previously promised to build new houses for the displaced Rohingya, nothing was ever done, said one resident of the Thekkhair-byin refugee camp named Maung Maung.

“We had to move from Sittwe in 2012 to the refugee camp south of Sittwe, and our entire family now has to live in a 10’ by 10’ room, so we have a lot of difficulties,” he said.

“Government officials would sometimes come here and say they would give us a house,” he said, adding, “We asked them instead to let us go back to our former areas, but nothing has happened yet.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, another refugee said they would like to ask authorities for permission to travel freely and return to their original places of residence because of food shortages in the camps.

“In the past, we had shops and could operate our own businesses, but we can’t do anything here. We hope that the government will give us back our original places,” he said.

Myanmar military forces still guard the roads leading to Rohingya refugee camps in Sittwe, and discrimination against the Rohingya continues, local Muslim Rohingya elders say, adding that some Rohingya leave the area illegally by boat each year in attempts to reach Thailand or Malaysia, where they hope to find a better life.

Calls requesting comment from the Rakhine State Military Council on the refugees’ demands for repatriation and freedom of movement rang unanswered.

Death in detention

Ruby Alam, a Rohingya administrator in U Shay Kya village in Rakhine’s Maungdaw township, died in detention this week after being arrested by Myanmar security forces, sources told RFA. His body was brought to the Maungdaw township hospital on Aug. 31, a village administrator said on Wednesday.

“We learned that he was arrested on Aug. 29, and his body was returned to the hospital yesterday morning and then buried in the evening. That’s all we know,” the administrator said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Ruby Alam was buried at a Muslim cemetery at around 5:00 p.m., said Shwe Htoo Khaing, chairman of the Maungdaw Karuna Network Funeral Aid Association, whose group was asked by the hospital to help. “It was our duty to help them. We could not ask what happened,” he said.

Reached for comment, Nay Oo—Maungdaw District Administrator for the Military Council—denied any knowledge of Ruby Alam’s death, and no information on why he had been arrested was immediately available.  

His body bore signs of bruising on his arms and legs, and he was believed to have died of a heart attack, sources said.

‘Bengalis’

Earlier this week, Myanmar’s ruling junta instructed government employees and administrative staff in a secret memo not to use the term “Rohingya” to describe those living in the Sittwe camps or the hundreds of thousands driven by the military into Bangladesh in 2017, sources who received the memo told RFA.

Instead, the memo said, the ethnic group should be called “Bengalis,” a pejorative term referring to the group’s supposed status as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

The National Unity Government (NUG), formed in opposition to military rule, has promised to amend the country’s constitution to give citizenship to the Rohingya, who are not recognized as an official ethnic group in Myanmar.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane and Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Police in the southwestern Chinese region of Guangxi have detained a left-wing sociology researcher from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on suspicion of “subversion.”

Fang Ran, a HKU doctoral student who studies labor movements, was detained by state security police in Guangxi’s Nanning city on Aug. 26, 2021 on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power.” according to an unconfirmed social media post.

The message, apparently from Fang’s father, said he was “shocked” at his son’s detention, saying Fang Ran is a loyal member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“To my mind, Fang Ran is the kind of ambitious young person who can aid the party’s cause, definitely not a criminal seeking to harm it,” the post said.

Fang is currently being held incommunicado under “residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL)” under the guard of Nanning state security police, meaning that he will be denied visits from lawyers or family on grounds that the case involves matters of national security.

According to his profile page on the HKU sociology department website, Fang Ran is a full-time PhD student who received his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Tsinghua University, and who has worked as an intern at a non-government organization and social media focusing on labor issues in China.

His research interests include labor relations, and labor organization as well as labor movements, the profile page said.

“His current research focuses on the analysis and comparison of various approaches of labor empowerment in mainland China,” it said.

Classic Marxist analyses

While at Tsinghua, Fang was among the founding members of a group called the Modern Capitalism Research Association, which tended to favor classic Marxist analyses of labor issues.

Fang had also interviewed pneumoconiosis sufferers from the central province of Hunan after hundreds of former workers petitioned the authorities in Shenzhen over workplace-related diseases.

An employee who answered the phone at HKU on Sept. 1 said the university is aware of Fang’s detention.

“[We are] in the process of finding out more about the situation,” the employee said. “The university will provide assistance to Fang and his family when necessary.”

While many commentators have noted an apparent shift towards political practises and ideological tropes that echo the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under late supreme leader Mao Zedong in recent years, it appears that CCP leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to allow actual Maoists free rein under his rule.

Leftists, including dozens of young labor activists who tried to set up an independent labor union at the Jasic Technology factory in Shenzhen in 2018, have been detained, placed under house arrest, and silenced as part of the CCP’s “stability maintenance” regime.

A human rights lawyer who gave only the pseudonym Chen said any form of organized labor is intolerable to the CCP.

“Organized action is the thing they fear the most,” Chen said. “Once the workers get organized, they will be much stronger, and a threat to CCP rule.”

“In the 1920s, the CCP itself was involved in organizing workers and peasants against the [then ruling] Kuomintang and to fight for their rights,” he said. “So they fear that someone else will use the same methods against them.”

Tough on labor activism

Beijing-based rights activist Hu Jia agreed.

“Even if you are a student still in school or a fresh graduate, they will consider you to be anti-government if you get involved in labor movements or use your knowledge to help people,” Hu said. “[It means you are] challenging the existing system.”

A Hong Kong-based graduate student who gave only the pseudonym Mary said she had been checked by Chinese police when she crossed the border into mainland China to do fieldwork.

“We all know that there is a red line, but we don’t know exactly where it is,” Mary said. “This means that we are fearful of going to mainland China at all, whether it’s for academic research or for some other reason.”

“That doesn’t mean we won’t keep doing it, though,” she said. “Of course, there will always be students or scholars who set their own red lines [in the hope of staying safe].”

Fang’s detention comes after authorities in the eastern province of Shandong detained large numbers of Maoist activists around the country, ahead of the CCP centenary celebrations on July 1.

Police in Shandong’s Jining city ran a nationwide operation targeting leftwingers in a bid to “maintain stability” ahead of the politically sensitive anniversary, Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) quoted sources as saying at the time.

The operation, which began on May 12, was largely carried out in secret, with no information given to detainees’ families after going incommunicado.

Among them was Maoist dissident Ma Houzhi, 77, who was released from a 10-year jail term in 2019 for defying a ban on the registration of new political parties under the CCP.

The report came after the CCP canceled a conference of prominent Maoist ideologists slated for May 16, the anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

North Korea has launched an investigation into youths from privileged families who avoid mass mobilization campaigns that send thousands of young people to “volunteer” for hard labor in coal mines and rural farms, sources in the country told RFA.

North Korea, which routinely forces citizens to provide free manual labor for government projects, farm work and industry — labels the laborers as “volunteers” who willingly toil as an expression of their love for the country and its leaders.

Free labor is necessary for the cash-strapped government of a country with serious economic problems resulting from a prolonged suspension of trade with China due to the coronavirus epidemic and years of U.S. and UN economic sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

But citizens who have connections can get out of the unpaid labor drives.

When the adult offspring of high-ranking government officials failed to show up for work duty in North Pyongan province, central party’s organization and guidance department sent agents to investigate, a resident of the northwestern region told RFA.

Sources said the investigation applied only to local officials of the provincial level or below.

“Authorities began an investigation into anti-socialist tendencies in the families of local officials… here in Sinuiju since the day after Youth Day [Aug. 28],” a resident of North Pyongan told RFA’s Korean Service Sept. 1.

According to the source, in early August North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the country’s youth to volunteer for dangerous and difficult work in places like coal mines and rural farms.

“But it was reported to the central committee that only ordinary people without powerful backgrounds were forced by the authorities to volunteer, while none of the children of high-ranking officials volunteered,” said the source, who requested anonymity to speak freely. 

“Despite the party’s appeal to young people to take the lead and become young heroes by building a strong socialist state, even as the country is boxed-in by U.S. economic sanctions, the fact that the children of the officials didn’t respond to the call is seen as a serious failure as they deliberately ignored party policies by taking advantage of their position,” said the source.

The authorities are now treating their investigation into the privileged youth as a fight against anti-socialism, according to the source, paying particular attention to any anti-socialist tendencies they uncover.

Another source, a resident of South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, confirmed to RFA that authorities there were investigating the same issue.

“Hundreds of young people forcibly selected by the party and the Youth League organization have been sent to Sunchon Coal Mine and rural farms in South Pyongan province since the beginning of August … but there is no child of high-ranking officials among them,” the second source said.

RFA reported in late August that the Youth League in North Hamgyong selected 140 young people to provide free labor in coal mines and rural farms ahead of Youth Day.

Those that were selected were opposed to being sent to work under the program, for which youth from wealthy and well-connected families were not selected triggering anger among the residents.

North Korea’s Youth League organization includes all people aged 17 to 35, including factory workers, high-school and college students, and other young people not serving in the military.

North Korean state media reported Aug. 30 that Kim Jong Un met with young people who volunteered and took a photo with them.

RFA has reported on other North Korean forced labor schemes this year including mobilizing women for construction of a wall along the 880-mile Sino-Korean border, forcing students to haul gravel for school building construction and maintenance projects, and sending soldiers off to toil in mines immediately upon discharge.

Reported by Hyemin Son and Myung Chul Lee for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have ordered the American Chamber of Commerce in Chengdu to cease operations.

The chamber told members it was being forced to closed “in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations,” and would no longer carry out any activities, employees of the organization told Reuters.

It gave no reason for the decision.

However, AmCham Chengdu chairman Benjamin Wang told Reuters that it was still “in discussions” with local authorities about its registration and future direction.

He said China’s ministry of civil affairs appears to be enforcing a rule that countries maintain only one official chamber of commerce in the country.

The Chengdu chamber isn’t affiliated with the American Chamber of Commerce in China, a business advocacy group based in Beijing with offices in several other cities, Reuters reported.

The move comes one year after China shut down the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu in retaliation over the closure of its consulate in Houston.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department called on Beijing to work with the chamber to resolve any issues around its registration and future operations.

“This closure is only the latest example of how [China]’s opaque, arbitrary regulatory environment is contributing to an investment climate that is increasingly hostile towards foreign businesses,” the official said.

The move comes amid growing bilateral tensions over an ongoing trade war, Beijing’s human rights record, and the South China Sea.

The order to shut down the chamber came as the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry spoke in a video call with foreign minister Wang Yi, who said the ball is in Washington’s court if ties are to improve.

“Senior Chinese diplomats [have] urged the US to put a lid on its ‘toxic’ political atmosphere at home and stop treating China as a threat and opponent,” the Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece the People’s Daily, reported.

“Kerry’s current visit comes amid the US facing several fiascos at home and abroad, and serves as a ‘water-testing’ attempts to see if cooperation with China can be enhanced beyond the global warming issue,” the paper said.

Concerns over forced labor

Kerry’s mission was also hampered by concerns over forced labor in the supply chain for solar panels produced in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where at least 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Turkic groups have been incarcerated in “re-education camps,” prisons, and facilities enabling forced labor.

Kerry told the House of Representatives on May 12 that the U.S. had a problem when it came to sourcing solar panels from Xinjiang, in response to a question in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing from Rep. Michael McCaul.

“When you look at the supply chain, when you look at China, they dominate the critical mineral supply and solar supply chains all coming out of Xinjiang,” McCaul said.

Kerry agreed, adding: “It is a problem.”

McCaul issued a written statement during Kerry’s China trip reminding the envoy of that exchange.

“Special Envoy Kerry told our committee earlier this year that the [Chinese] supply chain for solar panels uses forced labor,” McCaul said. “The Biden Administration’s own supply chain report detailed how the CCP is using unfair trade practices to control critical supply chains, including in renewable energy.”

He said any action on climate change shouldn’t be allowed to benefit forced labor or link U.S. supply chains to China.

“Special Envoy Kerry [should not] rely on the word of a genocidal regime with a history of ignoring international agreements,” the statement said. “We must neither sacrifice our values nor forget the track record of failed commitments with the CCP.”

Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in a network of internment camps in the XUAR, where they have been subject to political indoctrination, abuse, and forced labor.

Chinese authorities have targeted and arrested numerous Uyghur businesspeople, intellectuals, and cultural and religious figures in the XUAR for years as part of a campaign to monitor, control, and assimilate members of the minority group purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A political essay by a little-known commentator has been given pride of place by China’s state-run media in recent days, suggesting a profound shift in political direction under ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping away from the pro-market policies of the past four decades, political analysts told RFA.

The essay, titled “Everyone can tell that profound social change is under way” and printed in CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily, uses the recent crackdown on China’s scandal-hit entertainment industry to argue that profound political change is afoot that will focus on easing inequality.

The essay argues that the CCP has launched a “profound revolution” with its crackdown on celebrity culture, billionaires, and the private sector generally, citing Beijing’s blocking of Ant Financial’s initial public offering (IPO) in New York in late 2020, as well as an ongoing probe into the business operations of ride-sharing app Didi Chuxing.

“China is undergoing a profound revolution … turning away from a capital-centered approach to a people-centered one,” the essay said. “It represents a return to the original aims of the CCP … and to the essence of socialism.”

“This revolution will wash all of the dirt away,” said the essay, signed by Li Guangman, columnist and former editor of the trade publication Central China Electric Power.

“Our capital markets will no longer be a paradise for capitalists to get rich overnight; our cultural sphere no longer a paradise for sex-crazed celebrities, and the worship of Western culture will no longer be a feature of our news coverage or public opinion,” Li wrote.

The article was also reprinted on Aug. 29 by state news agency Xinhua, CCTV, China News Service, the Global Times website and Guangming.com.

“While we are not trying to kill the rich to help the poor, we need to solve the problem of the growing income gap between the richest and poorest, and seek common prosperity, allowing ordinary workers a greater share in the wealth our society creates,” the essay said.

“Literary and artistic workers, film and television workers must get down to the grassroots of society, making ordinary workers and ordinary people the masters and protagonists of art and literature,” it said, adding that the ongoing political shift in China is in response to “barbaric and ferocious attacks” from the United States.

An ideological purge

Feng Chongyi, a political scholar at the University of Technology in Sydney, said Xi has been rolling out an ideological purge across every area of people’s lives since taking power in 2012.

“First they rectified the Big Vs [social media stars] of Weibo and WeChat, and now it’s the turn of the film and TV industries,” Feng said.

He said the essay suggests that a form of “fascist aesthetics” will be imposed, top down, by Beijing.

“Everyone can tell that the party is moving ahead with a monumental campaign for dominance, which is explicit about including the elements of fascist aesthetics: no feminine-looking sissy boys, a strong party spirit, a return to the red.”

“The whole of culture is about to become an amalgam of communist-style centralization and fascism,” Feng said.

Cai Xia, a former professor at the CCP Party School, said the party is launching a campaign that it hopes will ensure its political survival.

“This rectification campaign wasn’t triggered by any one thing,” Cai told RFA. “Whenever the CCP’s highest-ranking leaders fear the end is nigh, that’s when they launch an ideological campaign.”

She said the move was in part likely triggered by growing fiscal deficits among local governments, and the economic impact of the Sino-U.S. trade war.

Like the Cultural Revolution

Cai said the campaign had little to do with any genuine concern for the “people,” however.

“The more people start to hold you to account, the more you have to incite populism in the name of the people, or hatred of the rich, or foreigners, to escape from your own predicament,” Cai said.

She likened the move to those made by late supreme leader Mao Zedong, that culminated in the political violence of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which she said resulted from a campaign launched by Mao in the early 1960s to eliminate those who sought to hold him to account for the famines of the Great Leap Forward, during which hundreds of thousands of people died.

“He ignited that fanatical cult of personality among the people so as to consolidate his personal power,” Cai said. “Can you see how this is happening all over again in China?”

Yang Jianli, U.S.-based founder of the Foundation for China in the 21st Century, said Xi’s ultimate aim is to build a personal empire.

“Xi Jinping is using populism and nationalism as a foundation to build this empire,” he said, adding that there will be no “return to socialism” in any meaningful sense of the word.

“It is a profound change in one sense, but we’re not talking about a return to Marxist fundamentals,” Yang said. “Nor is it a move towards capitalism.”

“They are abandoning Deng Xiaoping’s policies on domestic and foreign affairs alike and forging a path for China according to Xi,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.