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Ahead of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi Jinping is pushing for a "new era" discourse to strengthen his personal power.  Hugo Jones, writing in The Diplomat said that the "new era"—connoting a fundamental historical shift—has been systematically fused with the persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse. Significantly, Xi calls Mao Zedong's time the 'revolution period,' Deng Xiaoping's the 'building period,' Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao's the 'reform period' while calling his term a 'whole new era.'  For the past five years, the term "new era" has appeared with increasing frequency in China's white papers, propaganda, official speeches, and public diplomacy.  From early on in his premiership, it was clear that Xi Jinping sought historical significance greater than that of his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. This was also encouraged by growing Chinese nationalism, which predates Xi, reported The Diplomat. For Xi, while the "new era" is scalable from the local to the international context, it is ultimately all about China, "It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind."  The discourse of a "new era" serves three functions. First, it bolsters the CCP's legitimacy in a domestic context. The "new era" is also used to provide the context for sensitive issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, said Jones.  Second, the discourse of a "new era" is used to empower the CCP and challenge norms internationally. The strongest example was on February 4, when Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin released a joint statement on "International Relations Entering a New Era," a major foreign policy declaration that aligned China with Russia weeks before the invasion of Ukraine.  The discourse of a "new era" is also used to challenge the US, NATO, and Western countries that belong to the "old," unipolar era of global politics. The "new era" is presented by China as the just temporality of a multipolar, post-imperial world.  Third, the discourse of a "new era" serves to reinforce the idea that the government of China, and the governance of Xi, are always thinking in the long term, operating on fundamentally different time scales to the Western world. This reinforces certain orientalist tropes that China is inherently "better" at grand strategy, reported The Diplomat.  However, despite its popularity, this narrative disguises the reality that Xi and the CCP are often as short-sighted as other regimes—the chaotic "zero-COVID" policy is just one example. This reminds us that we should take the narrative of a "new era" with a fair degree of skepticism, said Jones. (ANI)

Former mayor of Itahari Sub-metropolitan Dwarika Lal Chaudhary has joined CPN (Maoist Center). Chairman of the Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal welcomed CPN-UML leaders and cadres along with Chaudhary on Sunday morning. Chaudhary, resident of Itahari-17, was involved in politics from the student wing of UML in 1985. He became the president of UML Sunsari district in 2015 and was elected mayor of Itahari sub-metropolitan city in the local elections of 2017.

Dean Thompson has been sworn-in as the US Ambassador to Nepal. Wendy R Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State, swore him in who replaced Randy Berry. Thompson is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor. He has served as the State Department’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs and was the acting Assistant Secretary from 2020 to 2021. Prior to that, Thompson was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’affaires of the US Embassy in Bucharest, Romania. Thompson also was the Consul General of the US Consulate in Kolkata, India, the statement read. Among other assignments, he served as Director of the State Department’s Executive Secretariat Staff, Deputy Director of the State Department Operations Center, Director of the Operations Center Crisis Management Staff, and Deputy Director for Information Resources Management for the Executive Secretariat. Thompson earned a BA degree from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, a MA degree from the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, and a MS in National Security Strategy from the National War College, National Defense University. His foreign languages include Romanian and Bengali.

The Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) has decided to open electoral coordination with other political parties for the Nov 20 election. It expressed dissatisfaction with the seat distribution in the ruling coalition. Spokesperson of JSP Manish Suman said that the executive meeting held on Saturday at the party office Balkumari decided to keep the option of election coordination open. He said that the party did so after not getting satisfactory seats in the provincial and federal assemblies. It is believed that the ruling coalition has decided to give JSP 17-18 seats for the federal assembly.