Many years ago, I read a rather engrossing history of the Roman gladiatorial games. It opened with an anecdote about a Roman official approaching his superior, informing him that there was just one ship available to sail from Alexandria. Should they load it with grain for bread, or sand for the arena?
“Don’t be stupid!” exploded his superior. “Sand, of course!”
No doubt apocryphal, the anecdote nonetheless refers to Roman poet Juvenal’s lament that the once-great Roman people had sold their souls for bribes and cheap entertainment: “bread and circuses”. When push came to shove, the circus came first: the elite can get away with a lot when the masses are distracted by cheap, flashy entertainment.
Nothing’s changed.
There was pandemonium in university dorms, bars and cinemas across China in the early hours of Sunday […]
A Chinese team had just beaten the favourites from South Korea in the final of the League of Legends World Championship, the biggest computer game tournament in the world.
While the Chinese people are distracted by frivolous entertainment, their Dear Leader is up to some very dark shenanigans.
As millions of people woke up with raspy voices in China on Monday, Xi set off to preside over an elite group of the most senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party.
The party’s four-day political meeting in Beijing began on Monday. It is another key step in Xi’s plan to rule for life.
When Xi Xinping dresses up in a grey Mao suit, it’s more than theatrics for the cameras. Xi is determined to cement his place as a second Mao. Even the propaganda is the same.
“Since being elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee in November 2012, Xi has been seen as a man of determination and action, a man of profound thoughts and feelings, a man who inherited a legacy but dares to innovate, and a man who has forward-looking vision and is committed to working tirelessly […] Under his leadership, China is becoming a powerful country, and is now entering an era of strength” […]
“Although Xi has little time for himself, he manages to find time for swimming,” Xinhua said in its weekend paean.
Even that seemingly throwaway line is no coincidence. Mao staged a propaganda coup to underline his strength and vigour — and readiness to lead the Cultural Revolution — by swimming the Yangtze river in 1965. Mao followed up, two days later, by purging political rivals like Liu Shaoqi. Within a decade, up to 20 million Chinese were dead, and the country torn apart in a whirlwind of destruction, violence and even open cannibalism.
At the same time as he is imitating Mao in dress and choice of physical activity, Xi is reinforcing his claims to inherit Mao’s ideological legacy.
The young Xi, Xinhua added, also devoured as many books as he could: “In particular, he read Das Kapital three times; his reflections on the seminal work filled 18 notebooks.”
Xi is assiduously fostering the same cult of personality that surrounded Mao — and, of course, Hitler and Stalin. But Mao outdid even the latter two for staggering bloodthirstiness. Up to 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule. Billions more were brutalised.
Most likely, Xi’s thirst for power will be turned outward — witness the increased sabre-rattling over Taiwan, and at Japan, not to say the Chinese navy’s open aggression against the fishing fleets of Vietnam and the Philippines. But the first targets of his renewed muscle-flexing will almost certainly be the video-games fans celebrating this week.
But plenty in China support the strongman approach of a leader Australian Sinologist Geremie Barme long ago dubbed “the chairman of everything”.
On video games, and much more besides, they want the crackdowns to be harder.
Many of China’s older citizens made that clear in response to the Shanghai team’s victory.
“These games should be completely banned!” was one popular online comment.
The Australian
Enjoy your circuses while you can, young Chinese.
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