All Chinese people love the “Two Sessions” period, in which unelected officials from all around the country convene in the capital to do whatever they’re told. Internet speeds go way down, moutai sales rise, and the whole country slow-claps in spontaneous state-sanctioned joy.
But the obligatory obsequy has been slightly strained this year, thanks to President Xi Jinping’s decision to eliminate his presidency’s 32-year-old constitutional term limits — effectively making the portly ’Ping China’s leader for life. Many fear this will make Xi a Mao-like dictator, surrounded by craven apparatchiks — and those concerns were certainly exacerbated yesterday, during a public forum hosted by the powerful president.
The meeting — entitled “Love the Party, Love the President, Love Life” — had gotten off to a lively start, as an 18-minute reading of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) constitutional amendments was greeted with rapturous applause by a handpicked delegation of urban gentleman farmers, Foxconn managers, and night-soil addicts.
But things took a decidedly ugly turn when a pretty waitress trembled too much and spilt some tea onto President Xi’s left knee. The normally jovial and relaxed leader exploded into unprecedented rage, shoving a pearl-handled bread knife into the attractive attendant’s jugular vein, before using his muscular paw to repeatedly slam the dying woman’s face into a table, until the wooden surface ran red with blood and brains.
Many in the audience froze at the unscripted execution, but a patriotic few sprang into action, clapping hesitantly until, finally, the entire hall resounded with confused applause. One plucky female CCP delegate even leapt astride the gore-soaked dais, so she could repeatedly drive her stiletto heels into the dead waitress’s shattered skull, only ceasing when a uniformed guard dragged the delegate away and began silently beating her with a lead pipe.
For some Western reporters, the fleeting incident was a reminder of the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution, when children turned on parents and neighbours denounced each other at violent rallies. Under Chairman Mao, few dared question the actions of the CCP, and those that did usually met bitter ends. Have those days come back? For the majority of ordinary Chinese, raised in an environment of trendy authoritarianism, the answer is no — the female delegate’s grisly demise merely confirmed their instincts that President Xi is simply a man who gets things done.
“I’m a successful businesswoman,” said Ning, a 64-year-old hutong dweller and Xi enthusiast who insists she knows nothing about what mysteriously happened to her father in 1967. “But most of my neighbours need the guidance of the CCP. So-called Western values, like speech freedom, never work in China: Liars would just spread malicious gossip about my father’s tragic disappearance.
“Soon, certain people start saying it had something to do with me,” Ning warned. “The next stop is chaos and anarchy. As the old Qin expression goes, ‘To have a really good banquet, sometimes you have to kill a waitress or two.’ Personally, I am proud of President Xi and his eternal endeavours. And I hope the day will come soon when that bitch next door doesn’t dare ask again what happened to Baba.”
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