Whether consciously or not, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping has a habit of conveying the equivalent of fractured fairy tales to Chinese citizens and the world.
Fractured Fairy Tales and Parodies
An excellent “Fractured Fairy Tale” from “The Bullwinkle Show” in Season 2 was “King Midas,” which parodied “the Midas touch” (the consequences of being granted a wish that everything touched would turn to gold), with the original written version provided here. The parody explained how turnips replaced the gold standard in Midas’s mythical kingdom due to the king’s greed.Xi’s periodic pronouncements that are reduced to slogans appear to fit that definition to a tee.
The Fractured Fairy Tale of the Year 2023
From Xi’s New Year’s address, as quoted from Xinhua on Dec. 31: “We have marched forward with resolve and tenacity,” “with solid steps,” “with robust steps,” “in high spirits,” and “with great confidence.”Hmmm. That “resolve and tenacity” waivered at the beginning of 2023 when Beijing abruptly reversed Xi’s signature zero-COVID policy, which was summarily dropped down the memory hole and never spoken of again. Never mind the damage inflicted on Chinese citizens and their economy by this unscientific policy that could be the poster child for arbitrary and unscientific CCP policies.
Do those “robust steps” associated with the achievements cited by Xi also include the massive theft of intellectual property that made many of those accomplishments happen? Xi and the CCP are silent on that, of course.
One wonders who is in “high spirits.” While that might include the 98 million members of the CCP, it is highly doubtful that the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, Falun Gong adherents, and other minority groups express similar sentiments after suffering through another year of persecution at the hands of the communist apparatchiks in the local public security bureaus (公安局; gōng'ānjú).
The Fractured Fairy Tale of Building a Community With a ‘Shared Future for Mankind’
Xi has preached this slogan since assuming power in 2012. It is tied to selling his various global initiatives, and his soothing pronouncements typically include the magic word “cooperation,” as in “economic, financial, infrastructure development and capacity-building cooperation” and “investment cooperation.” He urges that “cooperation” (undefined) is required to achieve that amorphous goal of a “shared future for mankind.”Does “cooperation” in building that community mean allowing the CCP to debt-trap a country to obtain control over natural resources, transportation infrastructure, and even the government?
Does “cooperation” mean that nations around the world must cooperate with China’s national security law and bow to Chinese leadership in all global security matters?
Does “cooperation” mean that the future global civilization must conform to the CCP’s authoritarian model that surveils, monitors, and enforces adherence to arbitrary communist diktats?
The Fractured Fairy Tale of Xi’s Concern for the People
As reported by state-run media China Daily, Xi’s 2022 New Year message contained this claim: “The concerns of the people are what I always care about, and the aspirations of the people are what I always strive for.”Concluding Thoughts
Xi has his own fractured fairy tales. Unfortunately for the Chinese and the world, they are not humorous like those from “The Bullwinkle Show” in the 1960s. His versions conform to the lesser-used definition of parody, for example, a poor, insincere, or insulting imitation of something.Is Xi serious with all of his soothing pronouncements and slogans that generally mean something entirely different than the literal definition of his catchword phrases, or is he merely laughing at us? They are fractured fairy tales without humor. More precisely, they are fractured fairy tales “with Chinese characteristics.”
