Opinion | What the East and West can learn from a Chinese comedian’s PLA joke that backfired

Earlier this month, a joke about two stray dogs and a popular Chinese military slogan – from a speech by President Xi Jinping – was deemed an insult to the People’s Liberation Army, causing an uproar in China that landed the comedian and the company that represents him in trouble. The company has been fined millions of yuan and the police opened an investigation into the comedian.

Nationalistic Chinese netizens defended the harsh punishments, with some claiming such disrespect towards the military would not be acceptable in, say, the US, either. Opposing this view, some liberal observers in and outside China claim the crackdown was a key moment that could herald a new cultural revolution.

To some liberal observers, the harsh official reaction paints a picture of intolerance, the cause of which is leadership worship – ignoring the fact that Xi himself refuses to be placed at the centre of any personality cult.

This view is also too simple. Chinese civilisation has always had its centralised political culture. Chairman Mao Zedong did not create the personality cult; he merely transported what existed in traditional culture to modernity. Ancient nations that have not gone through strong political and cultural modernisation are inclined towards top-down political order.

This does not mean the old system is the right and eternal approach. In Western countries, the ancien régime was replaced and refined to give rise to modern governance, one of Xi’s stated goals. The Chinese leadership has to decide whether it wishes to confront the process as undergone in the West, or embrace it.