CCTV FOLLIES 9.26 MAOIST MAPLE BRIDGE IS BACK

The man is at it again, summoning up the malign spirit of Mao -X marks the spot-Wang Yi's abject desire to please -A shared future (but only for humanity) -China is golden -England is trash.

Editor’s note: The paramount leader formerly known as Xi Jinping has been rebranded as X by the CCTV Follies style sheet for reasons of brevity and humor.

X “urged Zhejiang, a manufacturing powerhouse and leading innovation hub, to fully, accurately and comprehensively implement the new development philosophy and focus on building a new development pattern and promoting high-quality development.”

Local “pilot-free trade zones” are all the rage. Is the day of a pilot-free China far away?

X visited the town of Fengqiao in Zhuji, which is known since the 1960s for the “Maple Bridge model" that promotes community-level social governance.

So says CCTV, and while the news is a few days old, it looks like one of those innocuous museum visits of which the paramount leader is in ordinately fond of, and at which he inevitably expounds. But to put the Maoist “Maple Bridge” movement in perspective, some analysis by Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé.

-For decades, ‘Maple Bridge’ has shaped the Chines…