Austere Xi Jinping has no time for games
As millions of Chinese people watched the biggest computer game tournament in the world, Xi Jinping took a key step in his plan to rule for life.
There was pandemonium in university dorms, bars and cinemas across China in the early hours of Sunday.
It was bigger than the Melbourne Cup. It was sweeter than an Ashes victory.
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.
Euphoric scenes – including a man dressed only in his underwear, running down a street carrying the flag of the winning team, Shanghai’s Edward Gaming – soon flooded the Chinese internet.
“I’m in a very magical state,” a fan in Shandong province told The Australian after a raucous night of celebrations with friends over Chinese BBQ and beers.
“My voice is very sore.”
There is a wide gulf between President Xi Jinping and the lives of the people he rules.
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.
The meeting – as earnest a gathering as the gamers’ celebrations were exuberant – is expected to issue a “resolution” to officially class Xi as one of the three greatest leaders in the party’s 100-year history. He will join the party’s two other paramount leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
I mean… REALLY happy! #Worlds2021pic.twitter.com/kCWsqgpJP5
— nicolo (@niiicolo) November 6, 2021
China’s official news agency Xinhua underlined its importance with a 12,000-word homage. “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,” Xi’s propagandists gushed in the piece that was published on the weekend.
“Under his leadership, China is becoming a powerful country, and is now entering an era of strength.”
Video games are not part of the austere vision China’s supreme leader has for his nation’s rejuvenation. His propaganda apparatus has denounced them as “spiritual opium”.
In August, China’s children were instructed not to play video games for more than three hours a week. Days later, China’s government banned “sissy men” from television.
Xi wants China’s youth to have more vigorous hobbies.
“Although Xi has little time for himself, he manages to find time for swimming,” Xinhua said in its weekend paean.
MAKE/BREAK
— Edward Gaming (@EDG_Edward) November 6, 2021
WE ARE THE CHAMPION#EDGWIN#Worlds2021pic.twitter.com/y8oZRHQP9u
Swimming, by no coincidence, was also the favourite exercise of Mao, the all powerful Chinese leader Xi continues to emulate.
“This and physical labour during [Xi’s] youth ensure that he has enough stamina to deal with affairs of the Party, government, and the military,” Xi’s propagandists explained.
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.”
Re-reading Karl Marx is not everyone’s idea of a good time in China in 2021.
More than 300 million Chinese, for example, watched the weekend’s League of Legends final in Reykjavik, Iceland, according to figures released by video streaming service Bilibili.
But the League of Legends fan in Shandong knows many are on Xi’s side when it comes to video games. “In China, so many parents think playing games is not a good thing.”
Their children have other ideas. The 20-something university student watched the more than five-hour showdown – which the e-sport’s aficionados called the greatest in its 10-year history – in a packed cinema with his friends.
Demand was so big, he had to buy a ticket from a scalper.
Many observers, inside and outside China, are alarmed about the leadership cult that Xi will elevate further this week.
They are deeply troubled by his dismantling of term limits, which has broken another key tenet Deng imposed after the disastrous Mao era.
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.
Lizzi Lee, an economist-turned-China-focused journalist, has argued that Xi’s bossy style is partly modelled on his idea of Confucian rule.
“I think Xi has this idea that he’s a grand custodian of the country. He knows what’s best for the country and what’s best for the people,” Lee told the China-focused podcast Sinica.
“I can honestly see Xi as sort of the biggest tiger mum of the Chinese society.”
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