On an unrecorded day in 1938 a Soviet economist was sentenced by his government to life imprisonment in an old monastery town east of Moscow. But in this case the condemned didn’t end up serving much of his sentence because on the same day of the ruling, Nikolai Kondratiev was taken to a park on the outskirts of the city, and executed by firing squad.
As I write this article — while sitting in a cafe in downtown Saigon — a few streets away a group of protesters have just been re-sentenced to prison for advocating publicly for freedom of speech. Rather strangely this is something that their country’s own constitution includes among its citizen’s rights, but of course these rights only really apply under certain circumstances.
At the same time, just over 1000 kilometres to the north, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is ending their annual congress in Hanoi. Giant LED screens attached to office buildings are now showing the overweight, balding party leader solemnly explaining the great job that the party has done containing the coronavirus in Vietnam.
On the 17th March 2018, the Chinese president was sitting with his back to his party delegates, about to undertake the most important action of his entire life.
He got up from his red chair, walked slowly across the red carpet, with red flags towering over him, and carefully placed two red pieces of paper into a polished red box. Accompanied with melodic applause and marching music, he quickly looked up at the crowd of photographers, gave them his characteristic half-smile half-grimace, and returned to his seat.
His red papers would be followed by thousands of others, men dressed mostly in black suits with grey ties, some wearing traditional minority clothing, often followed by a nervous bow or a nod to the cameras. The result was announced a few hours later, with 2,958 for, two against, and four abstentions. And with that Xi Jinping became China’s first president for life, effective immediately, at a congressional session where most had been expecting him to announce his successor.
