Astral Codex Ten

Xi

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Xi

Article

Xi is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 14 times across 14 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 25, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “whether in Erdogan’s Turkey or Xi’s China”; “How did Xi come to power? How did he defeat those safeguards?”; “Xi’s secondary education [was cut short] when all secondary classes were halted”. It most often appears alongside China, US, America.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 14
  • Issue count: 14
  • First seen: March 18, 2021
  • Last seen: March 25, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: The New Sultan
March 18, 2021 · Original source
But even quashing conspiracy theories isn't enough. When Erdogan wasn't spinning wild stories about vast treasonous conspiracies, he got his opponents on smaller things. Ordinary bribe-taking style corruption, admittedly totally endemic in Turkey, such that any given allegation was completely plausible, becoming suspicious only because of the consistency with which people standing in Erdogan's way got accused. Businessmen and tycoons who Erdogan needed swept aside got accused of tax fraud, or sometimes just audited with such a fine-toothed comb that they agreed to what Erdogan wanted knowing it would get the audit called off. Maybe it's easy to instantly dismiss wild treason accusations; what about corruption and tax evasion? Don't we want to punish those crimes? I think Erdogan's story has me sufficiently spooked that I wonder if we should trade off our ability to catch corrupt officials and tax evaders, in favor of very high burdens of proof for those specific misdeeds. "Anti corruption campaign" seems to be a code word for "arresting the enemies of people in power", whether in Erdogan's Turkey or Xi's China. I'm not sure what to do about it without leaving corruption in place, but, uh, maybe we should leave corruption in place. Hard to say.
Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping
April 06, 2022 · Original source
When Xi Jinping first joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2008, eight of its nine members were engineers. Paramount Leader Hu Jintao was a hydroelectric engineer. His second-in-command Wen Jiabao was a geological engineer. There were two electrical engineers, a petroleum engineer, a radio engineer, and two chemical engineers (including Xi himself). The only non-engineer was Li Keqiang, an economist.
Hu was not quite as adept a politician as Jiang, and was disadvantaged by his opponent having spent ten years consolidating power (plus the secret police), so the remaining Shanghai Gangers frequently outmanuevered him. He served for ten years, then dutifully turned over power to the Shanghai favorite, Xi Jinping.
Xi Jinping was their guy. He’d made a focus of rooting out corruption in his previous posts, and had a reputation for being non-corrupt himself. He had already been a leading candidate to succeed Hu, but the Bo Xilai incident made him a shoo-in.
Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping
April 28, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
22
May 10, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023
February 20, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Most Technologies Aren't Races
April 05, 2023 · Original source
Even in the unlikely scenario where AI causes a singularity and remains aligned, I have trouble worrying too much about races. The whole point of a singularity is that it’s hard to imagine what happens on the other side of it. I care a lot how much relative power Xi Jinping, Mark Zuckerberg, and Joe Biden have today, but I don’t know how much I care about them after a singularity.
“Wouldn’t Xi Jinping put people in camps?” Why? He put the Uighurs in camps because he was afraid they would revolt against Chinese rule. Nobody can revolt against someone who controls a technological singularity, so why put them in camps?
Dictator Book Club: Putin
August 03, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk
September 18, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Dictator Book Club: Chavez
November 02, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate
April 09, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On POSIWID
April 15, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Links For September 2025
September 04, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Fascism Can't Mean Both A Specific Ideology And A Legitimate Target
October 10, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Every Debate On Pausing AI
March 25, 2026 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.