We need to start ignoring Donald Trump’s narcissistic babbling and pay attention to the other guy in the room.
Xi Jinping.
In this new era of personenkultus, if the US is reflected in the jingoistic word-porridge of Donald Trump, can we say the Chinese red panda of peril is mirrored in the steely gaze of Emperor Xi?
Before we start, let’s not fall into the Netflix documentary trap of presenting a short series without a satisfactory ending. Herewith, I acknowledge that the Book of Xi has many chapters yet to be written.
Think of this as another round of hors d’oeuvres, maybe live sea urchin slowly drowning in red wine vinegar.
Of course, I have nibbled Xi before.
Some of my readers are from China: Welcome, and I love you all, but if you are a spook for the CCP then please don’t abduct me and harvest my organs!
Jokes of course! Haha aha!
That said, symptomatic of Xi’s China is a dour and uncompromising attitude toward levity and humour. Xi himself is described by former classmates–all now reduced to catfood–as ‘boring‘ but also ‘precocious‘.
But I’m bravely less interested in Xi’s appreciation of my perilous humour than I am the orbit of his intellect. How does he compare with Orange Jesus across the Atlantic?
To begin with, entry-level IQ for the public service in China starts at 140 and, unlike America, outside of corruption you can’t buy your way into government.
The same study showed Finns to be significant outliers, with PISA scores averaging 548 versus 500 for the rest of the OECD countries…
You know, just sayin’
Anyway, Xi worked his way to the top from agrarian farm worker, and so is probably entitled to have a dour and uncompromising attitude toward those who didn’t, hence his infamous purges.
As a result, no shortage of catfood in the provinces. But you’d also think a cleaner public sector.
Xi’s purges mean there are no convicted criminals (Naughty Navarro), sex pests (Grabber Gaetz), or bigoted psycho-conspiracy-theorist-influencers (Loony Loomer) feeding misinformation to the great leader.
Trump also had purges, but only to fill government with techbro billionaires and cronies. Go look it up.
He also hired a lot of bimbos, but only those prepared to go under the knife for his preferred look — the ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ (Lara Trump, Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Laura Loomer, etc.,)
How about book-smarts?
Educationally, Xi Jinping is a fully-fledged professor with a PhD in Economics, whereas Donald Trump (whose daddy bribed UPenn to get him admitted) was described by his teacher Prof. William T. Kelley as “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
BTW, just for a second compare Trump’s b&w photo to the one I posted above of Xi. Look at their expressions. Now go look up “entitled fuckwit” in the dictionary.
Often the clearest window into a person’s mind is through their writings. Xi’s has bibliography on Wikipedia page here with a link to his doctoral dissertation A Tentative Study of China’s Rural Marketization, here.
Trump has written … nothing. Even the seminal ‘The Art of the Deal‘ was ghostwritten by somebody else (Tony Schwartz). Maybe his tiny hands handicap him in some way? But to say he doesn’t write at all is yugely wrong.
Oh does he write:
But clever is as clever does, not says, so perhaps the extremely stable genius Trump’s first term results compare favourably to Xi, who has held office since 2012?
Trump first, because the numbers are in.
Plus he stacked the Supreme Court, don’t forget that. Hmm, I wonder if his emphasis on tariffs is compensation for the 178,000 manufacturing jobs lost in his first term?
How accurately would a socialist (with chinese characteristics) system publicly report on Xi’s results, do you think? The Emperor dealt with COVID by welding people into their units to die, so as to the economy and stuff who would know.
I mean, we’re talking about goddamn socialism, aren’t we? Donny should win this easily, right?
But here’s what Reuters report:
Emperor Xi quieted Tibet, reclaimed Hong Kong, interned a million Muslim Uyghurs and continues to menace Taiwan.
He universally imposed Xi Jinping Thought, brutally chilled free-enterprise, slowed the economy but also raised household incomes.
Xi mercilessly quashed dissent and raised the height of the “Great Firewall of China”.
China leads the globe in green technology, and under Xi the air quality has dramatically improved.
Under Xi the Gini coefficient (index of income inequality) improved as he eliminated extreme poverty.
Xi has created the greatest navy the world has ever seen.
Hmm.
There’s one other area which probably needs review, and that is how Donald Trump compares with Xi Jinping as the moral compass of a nation.
tl;dr
… but this is what ChatGPT reckons:
Perhaps the answer is as simple as this:
I have no qualm critiquing Donald Trump because I know he won’t have me assassinated, but critiquing Xi Jinping makes me a teeny-weeny bit worried that my organs will end up in a freezer.