My Chinese coworker sent me this news article eight days ago:

Screenshot of the short article.

She felt sick about it. In a break with the political norms that Chinese leaders had respected since the post-Mao era of reforms, Xi Jinping was giving himself an unlimited number if presidential terms. As it stands he currently has absolute power over the Communist Party of China, which has absolute power over the country, and no political rivals, therefore no one to question or reverse his decisions.

I haven’t researched the history or politics of China as much as I have that of the Middle East but I already took it for granted that China is an authoritarian state, so when I heard that the leader who already had absolute power in China planned on giving himself the privilege of staying in office for life I wasn’t surprised, and I could help but be slightly confused about why my colleague found this turn of events so shocking. Nevertheless I empathized, myself having only just fifteen months ago suffered from the disillusionment of watching an empty, talentless man-child get elected as America’s president. She then showed me the reactions people were having on highly censored Chinese social media and I was amazed by the lengths that locals had to go to avoid triggering censorship.

A common symbol for depicting President Xi is Winnie the Pooh, apparently because some of his critics see the lovable bear as their leader’s animated doppelganger. Below you can see a Weibo account called Disney China (why do I doubt that they have Disney’s permission to use that username?) relating Xi’s love of power to Pooh Bear’s love of honey.

Absolutely dripping with sarcasm. I still can’t believe that some Western expats here patronizingly claim that Chinese people don’t understand irony.

Here’s another image nodding to Xi’s self-coronation that someone posted in Pooh code:

Posted with the following comment: “普京连任有利于国家统一，毕竟党的名字就叫统一俄罗斯党”

Another method of avoiding (or rather postponing) deletion was to post comments about Russia rather than China. The following snarky comment accompanied the King Pooh Bear picture above:

[edited Google translation] “Putin’s reelection will be conducive to the reunification of the country. After all, the name of the party is called United Russia.”

Some Russia related questions went further, boldly testing the limits by asking if it was possible to thwart the president’s power grab.

Pretending to ask a question about Russia in order to ask about China.

“I would like to ask one question. If Russia’s news networks announced that the constitution was being amended to include ‘the president can be reelected indefinitely,’ is there any way for the broad masses of the Russia people to oppose or actually prevent the decision of this amendment?”

Trying to refresh this page revealed just how quickly the Chinese censorship apparatus can target such posts.

The post was deleted shortly after.

The question was erased from he internet. What question?

Others made appeals to Chinese history, seemingly in order to accuse the Chinese president of hypocrisy. One person took stills from a famous, Communist Party-approved 2011 film “The Founding of a Party” to make a point.

Shots from The Founding of a Party (2011).

“To be emperor in the Republic, is to make a mockery of the Republic. […] Students, feudalism and republicanism are fundamentally incompatible things. If you want to save one you must first destroy the other. Down with Pu Yi (the last emperor of China)!”

I don’t know how long this picture was allowed to stay, but if it was deleted, it would be ironic to see the Party driven to delete screenshots of its own propaganda film.

The advantages and disadvantages of Xi Jinping’s continuous rule are a topic for debate. Clearly, however, that debate won’t take place in China.