Reviewing the above, social control based on the maintenance of public order, which as a public good, is still effective. However, in expanding to become a system of ‘Stability Maintenance’ the methods of employed to achieve social control have in effect put entire areas under quasi-martial law [in particular, the Tibetan and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regions in West China]. The system has become unwieldy as well as economically unviable, proof that this approach has exhausted its potential and is in need of renovation and upgrading. The recent Sino-US Trade War has, in particular, revealed underlying weaknesses and the soft underbelly of the system. All of this has only served to exacerbate a widespread sense of insecurity in the society at large. Prior to this, at a high-level meeting [of The Chinese Communist Party in Dialogue with World Political Parties 中國共產黨與世界政黨高層對話會 from 30 November to 3 December 2017], our Highest Authority declared that ‘political legitimacy cannot be fixed at once [neither can it be taken for granted]’. This would seem to to indicate that the Concerned Authority is aware of a legitimacy crisis. However, more recently there has been a definite lack of sensitivity in regard to this issue coupled with a tendency towards overweening self-confidence. This [attitude] has found expression in such things as the Party’s anti-poverty programs which approach policy issues by using dated methods from the era of old-style mass mobilisation campaigns [which pursued short-term political goals at great cost but for scant long-term benefit]. This undermines confidence in policy continuity and sustainability.JFb免费翻墙网
The limited protection of property rights, along with a basic tolerance of people working to strike it rich, has contributed to economic growth and enhanced the living standards of countless Chinese. But [over the last decade], both of these things have encountered the nationwide [Party] polity allowing for the ‘State to Advance while the Private Sector is Forced to Retreat’ [國進民退, that is, a Party-led government policy aimed at protecting state-owned enterprises (SOEs) not on the basis of financial realities but to guarantee the political role and power of official ideology and the cadre-ocracy. These policies became more prevalent during and after the Global Financial Crisis; calls for the reform of SOEs as part of an urgent need for China’s further economic transformation have been continuous]. In the private sector, people have also witnessed repeated cases of official rapaciousness and the [state-sanctioned] plundering of private property and wealth. As a reaction, people have increasingly wanted to promote the ‘Sanctity of Private Property’. There is now a public awareness that the logic lurking behind all of this is that ‘Power Cannot be Privately Held and Property Should Not Be Public’ [a line devised by the economist Mao Yushi 茅于軾 and inspired by the ideas of John Locke]. And so it is that the division between the public and the private is the basis for social peace, both are intrinsic to the politics of the past and of the present. Only if China manages to work through this stage [of conflict] will there be true peace. But, in recent times people been both critical and fearful of the meaning of the revision of the Constitution [in March 2018] and the abandonment of term limits on political leaders [which has, in effect, allowed State President/ General Secretary/ Chairman Xi Jinping to enjoy de facto tenure for life]. It is felt that this amounts to a negation of the last thirty years of the Reform and Open Door policy era. It is feared that in one fell swoop China will be cast back to the terrifying days of [one-man rule under] Mao. Along with this Constitutional revision there is also a clamour surrounding the creation of new personality cult, something that in particular has provoked the Imminent Fears that I outline below.JFb免费翻墙网
Below I offer an overview of the major causes of anxiety and panic in contemporary China under eight topics.JFb免费翻墙网
在此，總括而言，大家的擔憂與恐慌，主要集中在下列八個方面。JFb免费翻墙网
Fear One: Property Tremens
Is there any certainty that people will be able to protect the personal wealth they have amassed over the past few decades, regardless of how much it is? Will they be able to maintain their standard of living? Will property rights as outlined by the law really be protected by the relevant legislation? Will you be bankrupted or your family destroyed if you happen to fall foul of one of the Power-Holders (a stratum that includes bureaucrats as low down as the Committee Head of a village)? Over time, especially in the past few years, certainty about these issues has decreased, and this has contributed to a sense of panic at all levels of society. Those most concerned are the people who Got Rich First during the initial wave of economic reforms [in the 1980s]. The response of these wealthy individuals has been to immigrate. As for average members of the middle class although they don’t have to worry about basic necessities such as food and clothing — in fact, they enjoy a surplus — but like others who are just trying to live a normal life, they are also constantly worried about the unexpected. In particular, they are concerned both about inflation and devaluation, for either way their money could become worthless.JFb免费翻墙网
The wealthy immigrate for a host of different reasons: some do so in pursuit of a better quality of life, others slip away to launder money, while members of the Party nomenklatura want to put themselves beyond the reach of the law. But the most common reason for immigrating is born of worry about the safety and security of private wealth. The biggest winners during the decades of the Reform policies and the Open Door has been that particular [and peculiar] stratum of Party bureaucrat-cum business tycoon. They have milked the system with consummate skill and they make up the lion’s share of the migrating uber-rich. The official media carefully limits information [about all of this], but popular grumbling is rife and, added to that, the propagandists still time and again strum the old tune about ‘the ultimate goal of communism being the abolition of private property’ to which hysterical populists add [the old early revolutionary slogan] ‘Overthrow the Wealthy, Divide the Spoils’. All of these [mixed messages] simply exacerbate the sense of anxiety [among property owners]. Then, smack in the middle of all this anxiety it has been truly marvelous to witness the Pinnacle [that is the members of the ruling Communist Party Politburo] sitting themselves down for a collective study session devoted to The Communist Manifesto. [On 23 April 2018, the fifth collective study session of the Politburo elected by the Nineteenth Party Congress the previous October was devoted to this topic.] It’s only here and now in China that a dazzling work written by two wildly talented young authors [Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels], one that absolutely unsettled the status quo when it first appeared, can truly be appreciated as it both explains things and shakes the equanimity of just about everyone in the country.JFb免费翻墙网
[For the Authorities] To emphasise yet again policies that ‘Put Politics in Command’ [政治掛帥, a Mao-era strategy dating from the Great Leap forward in 1958 that required the nation to orient itself entirely according to Party policies; it was put in practice through mass political movements and class-based politics] and abandon the Fundamental National Policy in favour of developing the economy is what I mean by Fear Two.JFb免费翻墙网
In recent years, the gunpowder-like stench of militant ideology has become stronger. It reeks of what is [fashionable termed] ‘Taking the Lead to Achieve Discursive Hegemony’ [that is, the right of the voices of those in power to speak over all others], although in reality it is a perverse use of the public to impose ideological punishment [on private citizens]. This has already lead to a universal dread being felt in the intellectual sphere. Given this situation, coupled with a ever-increasing emphasis on Self-Criticism [that is, formulaic rituals in the work place during which people are pressured to negate openly what are deemed to be private failings and then pretend to measure all of one’s thoughts, words and deeds against the Party’s ever-changing ideological catechism], the publishing industry has already experienced severe contractions and the silencing of the media more generally is becoming worse by the day. This state of affairs is also increasingly hindering exchanges between China and the outside world. We are even seeing examples of official propaganda in which children are encouraged to report on their parents, in flagrant violation of normal ethical relations. Such an approach is a betrayal both of our traditions and of our present aspirations. In this day and age one would have thought it to be unthinkable: but this vile totalitarian mien brings to mind the barbarism of the Cultural Revolution.JFb免费翻墙网
The influence of such propaganda is seeping throughout the society, and some university lecturers have been singled out and repeatedly punished for what they say [in lectures]. They now live in trepidation, ever fearful that Party ideological watchdogs [in their institutions] or Student Spies will report them. Even more serious is the fact that local bureaucrats, afraid of making political mistakes, are being forced into passivity. In reality, China’s economic development is dependent on the political engagement and achievements of just such local cadres, men and women who are dedicated to and believe in development. While over there the remnants of the [highly politicised] ‘Chongqing Model’ [promoted by Bo Xilai 薄熙來, former Party chief of Chongqing who in 2011-2012 was in competition with Xi Jinping to lead the Party, and then subsumed by Xi’s own gimcrack policies, was a socio-political formula that encouraged political revanchism in tandem with harsh policing as part of a strategy to mobilise, manipulate and control the population] are working hand-in-glove with the ‘Three Types of People’ [三種人, or types of opportunists active in the Cultural Revolution era: Red Guard Rebels 造反派, Factional Opportunists 幫派分子 and Violent Thugs and Thieves 打砸搶分子 — these categories of extremists were denounced by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970 but in many cases they went unpublished for their deeds] in the tertiary education sector. With a sleight of hand and consummate skill they have become a burgeoning force that disguises itself as ‘New Leftism’, and they are baying for blood.JFb免费翻墙网
Painful memories of ‘political movements’ still linger in the minds of average citizens [of a certain age]. Younger people are engrossed in urban life and are accustomed to a suitable modicum of economic comfort. They have absolutely no interest in or awareness of the lurking totalitarian tendencies undergirded by the illogicality of a new, manufactured push to ‘Put Politics in Command’. If you force them to pay attention to such things it will have the opposite of the desired effect and repulse them. In reality, over the past decades people’s thinking has been fairly unified, and [as noted a number of times] the reason that the present Political System has come to be tolerated is because it has focused on economic construction, been devoted to development, and has no longer been obsessed with a constant quasi-movement mentality that constantly tried to impose ‘Political Proselytising’ on everyone. That [had eventually] come to an end or [at least] its interference in the private sphere was reduced; people knew there would be no more crazy talk about ‘preferring the weeds of socialism over the sprouts of capitalism’ [the ‘Gang of Four’ member Zhang Chunqiao’s 張春橋 1975 slogan that promoted a tolerance of the wastefulness and irrationalities of the socialist command economy over the iniquities, efficiencies and benefits of the market]. Ultimately, ‘Economic Development as the Core’ should by all rights evolve towards a core desire to pursue a constitution-based rule of law, and it is on that basis that politics and the economy should work together to build a truly modern nation; thereby the two will be like joint handmaidens at the birth of modern China. However, in the present circumstances, what is necessary is for the former [that is economic development] to be be maintained unstintingly; it is unthinkable that other plans should be afoot or that anyone could be considering a volte-face.
