Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/19/cultural-revolution-2-0.html
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According to too many people I’ve known who’ve spent time working in China the above is understood as suiciide by official means.
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Only the 12th store?
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Well, at least China has gone equal opportunity - now billionaire plutocrats can also enjoy the experience of being disappeared, just like political dissidents and religious minorities have for decades. This is an innovation that I am eager to see adopted in other countries.
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In unrelated news, Chinese police station cafeterias are now serving a mysterious new dish called Billionaire Gumbo.
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Is that like another version of leaving a gun with one bullet in it on the desk and muttering “I’ll just wait outside and give you a little privacy to settle things”?
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Interesting to see China is seemingly rolling back on it’s capitalism. Though I can only imagine the people that are being disappeared must’ve been under surveillance for suspicion of… something? Trying to offshore their assets? Who knows.
Coming to the USA soon.
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Sooo - what happens to the money? Did they donate it back to the state, or what?
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This isn’t about rolling back capitalism, but about dealing with corruption. A Chinese billionaire is inherently very corrupt. (You can’t get there by honest means.) The government has been trying to crack down for some time but the corruption is so entrenched that it’s hard.
I strongly suspect the ones being disappeared are the ones without adequate political power to defend their wealth, though.
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As an American, I certainly hope so. It is exhausting watching our members of our corrupt upper echelon give each other passes on robbing the country blind and ruining the land and water for generations to come. But god help any cancer patient finding temporary relief in cannabis, eh Sessions?
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Well they don’t want to be cruel and use the 8th floor (lucky) or 14th (unlucky).
Especially if they have the capacity to expose the corruption of those WITH political power.
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Yeah… that train left the station during Mao’s lifetime.
That would be Japan, not China.
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I’m conflicted. On the one hand my empathy for oligarchs who got rich by corruption and slave-driving poor people is limited, on the other hand those that are responsible for the anti-corruption initiative are only differentiated from the oligarchs by their party membership book.
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“Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
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Well, one of the famous cases of this was Rommel, who was indirectly implicated in the assassination attempt on Hitler.
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I understand the Romans also had a similar practice.
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