It's also worth reading the leaked 2009 US diplomatic cables about Xi published by Wikileaks. They're cited by the BBC story and give a lot of background. The source is from a former close friend of Xi who is currently a professor at a U.S. university.
Familiarity with the West and Taiwan
------------------------------------
25. (C) Based on personal experience, the professor noted, Xi
is very familiar with the West, with a sister in Canada, an
ex-wife in England, a brother in Hong Kong, many friends
overseas, and prior travel to the United States. As far as
the professor can discern, Xi's family and friends have had a
good experience in the West. The professor contrasted Xi's
experience and attitudes toward the West with those of people
sent to the United States by their work units, such as the
nationalist and sometime anti-U.S. Tsinghua University
scholar Yan Xuetong. Xi was the only one of his immediate
family to stay behind in China, the professor noted,
speculating that Xi knew early on that he would "not be
special" outside of China.
26. (C) Xi is favorably disposed toward the United States,
the professor maintained, and would want to maintain good
relations with Washington. The professor said Xi has "no
ambition" to "confront" the United States. During Xi's visit
to Washington, D.C., in 1987, he told the professor that he
had no strong impressions of the United States. Although Xi
was not particularly impressed by the United States, he had
nothing bad to say about it either. Xi took a detached
stance, as if observing from a distance, viewing what he saw
as just a normal part of life, not strange, the professor
said.
It's rather remarkable to read this about a current leader of a nation like China. I've always enjoyed reading autobiographies because figures often relate a personal evaluation of those they worked with. A sort of mini biography within an autobiography. I feel like these sort of evaluations often tell you much more than an "history" book can tell you about a person.
For example, Albert Speer wrote that although Adolf Hitler had a very well established reputation of being impatient and intolerant of mistakes in the public sphere, he apparently was totally opposite in private. Speer wrote that even if a civil servant's work was completely inadequate Hitler would simply send it back until it was acceptable. If this failed he'd just move the person to another role and ask someone else to complete it.
You may enjoy Lee Kuan Yew's biography, The Singapore Story, and to a lesser extent his more recent Conversations with Tom Plate. There is a lot in common between Xi and Lee's thinking and way of doing things.
Reading the BBC and Wikileaks texts, the events fit neatly in the "Singapore experiment with a billion citizen" narrative which the PRC has been doing since Deng Xiao Ping, ethnocentrism excepted.
Good to know. But I bet Xi is able to hide a lot of his real thoughts and feelings from many, esp. someone is in the US. I would suggest to read some information about his father's experience in those movements(运动). And you'll have a better idea why many of his family are outside of China. And how strong and capable he is to be able to reestablish everything from the bottom.
25. (C) Based on personal experience, the professor noted, Xi
is very familiar with the West, with a sister in Canada, an
ex-wife in England, a brother in Hong Kong, many friends
overseas, and prior travel to the United States. As far as
the professor can discern, Xi's family and friends have had a
good experience in the West. The professor contrasted Xi's
experience and attitudes toward the West with those of people
sent to the United States by their work units, such as the
nationalist and sometime anti-U.S. Tsinghua University
scholar Yan Xuetong. Xi was the only one of his immediate
family to stay behind in China, the professor noted,
speculating that Xi knew early on that he would "not be
special" outside of China.
26. (C) Xi is favorably disposed toward the United States,
the professor maintained, and would want to maintain good
relations with Washington. The professor said Xi has "no
ambition" to "confront" the United States. During Xi's visit
to Washington, D.C., in 1987, he told the professor that he
had no strong impressions of the United States. Although Xi
was not particularly impressed by the United States, he had
nothing bad to say about it either. Xi took a detached
stance, as if observing from a distance, viewing what he saw
as just a normal part of life, not strange, the professor
said.
I think the best thing is to just disable pre in mobile.
Dang, looks like adding white-space: normal; in pre and pre:hover in the css can make things much better for mobile web users. Can we consider it? Demo on Firefox nightly https://i.imgur.com/j4qvqfo.png
The first line makes code blocks in HN comments word-wrap (while still preserving whitespace otherwise); the second lets them expand to the width of their containing comment.
That works great, thank you! I never realized uBlock could do CSS modification like that, though in hindsight it is probably a simple enough extension of how the thing works in the first place.
I have written a bookmarklet that sets the viewport width to 800px (I wrote the bookmarklet on a Mac and have iCloud sync it over to my iPhone). It’s as easy as changing an attribute of a meta element. Makes the font size a bit small though.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BEIJING3128_a.html
I found this section quite interesting.