China’s former president has gone all “Kim Jong Ill” on everyone and now the entire Internet is fighting about whether or not ex-leader Jiang Zemin being missing from a public photo-op means he is automatically dead. China “sorta” denied it and censors are furiously blocking searches of “Jiang Zemin” on its Sina Corp. Chinese Twitter-thingy. Meanwhile, papers across Asia just went ahead and reported him dead, to be on the safe side. And the entire point of this is that it’s entertaining to remember even Communism is no match for pointless Internet rumor shouting matches.
The Internet rumors spread after the 84-year-old Jiang Zemin– who held power for 12 years before handing control to President Hu Jintao in 2002 — didn’t appear last Friday at a celebration marking the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding. According to the Daily Telegraph, TV stations and newspapers in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea all reported his death, but most outlets are being more careful.
Today, China’s Xinhua News Agency quoted officials calling the reports “pure rumor.” Interestingly, they didn’t say he hadn’t died, said David Lampton, director of the China Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.
Lampton, who made clear he didn’t know whether Jiang Zemin was alive or dead — and didn’t want to speculate — called China’s response a “non-denial denial.”
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Hu's on first?
Good job! This is probably the only time I ever seen someone post a variation of "first" on Wonkette and get away with it.
Third base!
I don't know!
Maybe Murdoch can hack Jiang's cell phone to find out for sure.
Rule of threes… Lindsay Lohan will be fake-dead next.
Well yes, but her career's been dead so long it's got rigor mortis.
If Rupert hacked my phone he would only find messages from my daughter who I can't seem to get off the payroll.
"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated"
-Short Chinese Tyrant-
"The lumols of my death have been gleatry exaggelated"
Actually he died in a public swimming pool three days ago and the lifeguards haven't noticed yet.
Well, we know Casey Anthony is not to blame. She's been in jail.
Not the Yangtze??
Maybe he just felt like sitting out?
For what it's worth, Jiang Zemin roughly translates to jean semen.
I was in Korea in the mid 90's and they loved Joanie Loves Chachi over there at the time. "Chachi" means dick in Korean.
The first principle of Cartesian thought is "I tweet, therefore I am." So if the bastard hasn't tweeted/twatted in the last week that means we should send flowers.
If he gets someone to accept them on his behalf, then his inner thespian is out of hiding even if he's not.
They didn't say he hadn't died? And this is interesting Mr. Lampton? Man, the China Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University must be boring as fuck.
The walrus was Deng.
Didn't Jiang advocate lowering taxes for Kochs?
This is just another piece of crap "Made in China."
He's just pining for the fjords.
He's only mostly dead.
He's sleeping!
So I guess it's too soon to go through his clothes and look for loose change.
They'll put his in the closet, where he will fall out and scare small children.
He clearly said "to blathe".
He'll get better.
Xinhua's logic here reminds one of the great Morganbesser story in which a student asks him whether he agrees with Mao's assertion that a fact can be true and not-true at the same time. (for the record his legendary reply was, "I do and I don't").
what? isn't that Schrodinger's cat ?
The solution to the problem of Schrodinger's cat is simple – check the litter.
That's only "true" mathematically for Schroedinger's cat but no longer true if one actually looks, what Chairman Mao might have meant I have no idea, but I have no doubt Morganbesser's line is better than Mao's
Usually, if you ask a Chinese student if something is true or false, they will say "yes."
More likely it went something like "Godddamit I am 84 years old and it's hot as hell out there. I am NOT leaving this pagoda for a photo op! Tell them, I don't know, that I'm dead or something".
That's what I'd do, anyway.
what's funny is that since his family name "Jiang" means "river", the search for "river" is also banned in China,,
it's almost like, since the most terrible US President is named Bush, all rap songs with lyric containing "burning bush" is banned… oh wait …..
Students from Beijing asked me yesterday if they could get the Smithsonian website in China. I didn't know. I hope if they try it -they won't get arrested.
This is just an attempt to silence Billy Joel.
So lemme get this straight… Jiang was for being dead before he was against it, right?
They wanted to find a way around this with programming, but everyone gets mad when you crack the china.
A good pun will get you fisted everytime.
The problem with most Chinese leaders is that an hour later they are still dead.
Now I'm getting Cold War nostalgia — remember how the Soviets used to prop up some doddering old fool and then he'd not appear on the reviewing stand for May Day, then Pravda (not the new, BS tabloid Pravda either, but the original Commie party mouthpiece Pravda) would announce that he's had a cold, and then one morning there'd be nothing on Soviet radio except some dreary Shostakovich dirge, and everybody would know what happened? Yeah, Yuri Andropov, I'm talking about you.
I was in the Soviet Union when Andropov died. Weird times. Arrived in JFK on Sunday moring and it had been annouinced while we were in flight. We didn't find out about until we were through US customs. Three days earlier we were wandering around the Kremlin almost unescorted but a week before that we couldn't get into the place.
I had the same thought. This is so 1980s USSR. Which I assume means that coke is about to come back, I can dig out my velour shirts, and we will once again be at the brink of Nuclear Armageddon. But at least we have cheap Chinese Whores to look forward to in about fifteen years!
I can't wait for the Chinese equivalents of Avtograf and Yakov Smirnov.
Plenty of them now.
Andropov? Meh. Now you bring in Chernenko, then we're talking. Like the 33-day black smoke/white smoke death crisper that the Vatican plopped on the holy cushion before they found John Paul v. II, who passed the "can you fog a mirror?" test.
Poor Yuri…I think I feel worse for his brother Peekup, though.
It won’t matter either way there is a supple group of 80 year olds waiting to take over.
They have the same leadership standards as the Catholic and LDS churches, eh– make sure the boss is old enough that his death at any point can be easily explained, and old enough that the real power is the committee below him?
I hope this isn't a move on China's part to corner the zombie market.
They've also blocked internet searches for "heart attack", "Chairman Mao" and "Poontang Casserole", if that helps.
As if the great firewall is impregnable. Just as with Japanese AV girls, if the Chinese want it, they will get it.
She starred as a zombie-killing stripper in the May 2010 horror film Big Tits Zombie, a film adaption of the cult manga Kyonyū Dragon.
My curiosity wants a peak!
~
I can see the headline in Variety now: "Wangs Dang Sweet Poontang".
There is not much satisfaction in a commie’s death unless it was caused by USA drone bomb or some super secret army of American made mutant solders.
WANG WANG WANG! I just wanted the opportunity to say cock three times and make it sound Chinese.
Has Faux News tweeted about this (and then blamed it on "hackers") yet?
While Google's first suggestions for Jiang Zemin are "Jiang Zemin dead" and "Jiang Zemin death," if you post in Chinese, the first suggestion for "江泽民" is "江泽民简历" (Jiang Zemin's resume).
This suggests Jiang is not dead; he's merely out looking for a new job.
The Chinese news agency went on to report:
"While we can neither confirm or deny the passing of Jiang, we can confirm that there will be a little bit of him in all tooth paste and children's toys being shipped to America in the next few months."
The Chinaman is not the issue here, Dude.
We're not talking about the guy that built the railroads here. We're talking about the guy that used forced labor to kill thousands of his countrymen building the Chengdu-Lhasa railroad.
It was a valued fucking extraterritorial holding, & he pissed on it. Am I wrong, Dude?
and then it turns out that he's actually been dead the whole time he was alive, the end.
Why don't they just ask one of the boring guys running for POTUS? Isn't one of them supposed to know all about China?
I don't want to bother thinking of his name, because it is 98F and on the way up for the fourth fucking week or longer. (It's too hot to remember that, too.) And I don't give a flying fuck if it snowed on Inhofe's fucking DC lawn a couple of years ago, climate change is real. Like that bastard would ever move back here and do his own gardenening.
Sounds like…Cuntsman?
I tried to correct the spelling on gardening, but meta had to make his play on dirty words before I could get there.
But how correct his is about the name.
Inhofe's got important things to do, like trying to stop FAA overreach like making him take remedial flying classes just because he almost killed a bunch of construction workers (Maddow talked about this on last night's show which I was just listening to).
This is good news for John McCain.
I enjoy saying "Hu Jintao" all Chinese-like. It's strangely satisfying.
He's not dead, he was taken away bodily by Chairman Mao, ala Enoch.
To be fair, it is hard to keep tabs on the life status of more than 1.3 billion Chinese.
Give the guy a break. At 84, he has every fucking right to be dead. Jeeesh!
I'm surprised none of you have consulted I-Ching yet!
Gezundheit!
We threw I-Ching…out the window.
Shoes for industry, comrade!
this is one of the reasons I love Wonkette…it is the only place on the 'net where folks recognize Firesign Theater references.
If there's some sort of gateway (sorta like those NFL stadium tunnels) on the way into the afterlife but before you're shunted up or down, and if they allow the upstairs folks to line that tunnel, then a whole lot of Tiananmen Square tank-pancakes are cracking their knuckles right about now.
Is this Heaven?
No, Lambeau Field.
yeah, but chinese internet comments won't come close to wonkette comments.
wonkette FTW USA!!
Good lord…can you imagine what the internets would be like if Barry bought it?
Maybe the Chinese government is neither confirming nor denying because he's sorta like Dick Cheney: neither technically alive nor demonstrably dead.
Well my telephone was ringing. And they told me it was Hu Jintao.
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