[Wolfenstein98k]

1) Yes, but that's slowing by all external measures

2) Yes, but as with the agreements with my state (Victoria), those are fleeting and mostly gesture - the tide is turning against China since these wheels were set in motion several years ago

3) President for life? How isn't it a dictatorship? How is the leader replaced if the populace does not like him - and how do they make that known, when you can't even use an open communication platform like Clubhouse in China?

[8note]

Dictators have broad powers -- the tenure is orthogonal. You could have a dictator who's in for a year

[webmaven]

> Dictators have broad powers -- the tenure is orthogonal. You could have a dictator who's in for a year

Technically you're right, but typically the highest priority for a dictator is to extend their tenure, indefinitely if at all possible, by exercising those broad powers.

Making a foundational set of laws dictator-proof is actually a hard problem. It is kind of like designing a programming language that is deliberately Turing-incomplete. You're trying to make abusing the system impossible, without crippling the desired functionality.

[Ericson2314]

The population can't but other high level party officials could perhaps. The CPP also has had much internal drama over centralization, the Xi pro-centralization faction could also loose out more broadly if there was a power struggle.

IMO dictatorship / monarchy is a funny thing because after a certain scale the person at the top simply cannot be an absolutely power in the same way because there's too much going on. I think there more reasonable things to look at are:

- How many extra luxuries does then nominal ruler get, and do they "distract" from their power/responsibilities. (Perhaps there is even a strict luxery power trade off? not sure.)

- How is centralized is the bureaucracy, e.g. how many people outside the capital have power greater than those in the capital.

[labster]

Being President for life is not automatically a dictatorship. The Republic of Venice elected its Doge for life, as does the modern day state of Vatican City. Certainly it would be easier for the Pope to steer the barque of St. Peter if it were. And yet if you pay attention to the church there’s plenty of infighting and politics, enough that the Pope has to take years to gather enough political capital to act. Both of these countries are functionally oligarchies, I’d say.

That said the way in which Pooh Bear uses the anticorruption law to silence and jail political rivals is definitely evidence of dictatorship.