‘Put Politics in Command: go out and work with masses to see the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution through to the end.’ — Mao Zedong
Fear Three: Class Struggle, Again
Starting a few years ago the official media and Party ideologues began to talk again about Class Struggle [that is, imposing artificial socio-political categories on individuals and groups and demonising, ostracising or otherwise scapegoating them for political and economic ends]. By now, people have been anxious about this for ages. The general thrust of politics in recent times has led people to speculate about the possible revival of the farrago of Class Struggle-based Politics of the kind pursued by Stalin and Mao Shaoshan [Mao Shaoshan is a classically styled derogatory name for Mao Zedong. The author has substituted the name of Mao’s birth place, Shaoshan in Hunan province, for his personal name]. Even worse is that, given the continued pursuit of the Anti-Corruption Campaign [initiated by Party leaders under Xi Jinping from early 2013], and in particular with the establishment of this new and all-powerful National Supervisory Commission [formally inaugurated in March 2018] — a party-state institution that which will wield authority over all government employees and teachers [and use politically determined goals to exercise nationwide control] — people feel no greater security in their legal rights. In fact, its quite the opposite — they can’t help but think that these developments are an augury foretelling the advent of a form of KGB-style control [under a secretive Party bureaucracy] that will itself become embroiled in the factional politics of the Communist Party. As a result, people are panicked about the fact that we may be returning to the long-gone days of Class Struggle. This is why so many are feeling increasingly alienated from the country’s political life; the overall social atmosphere of peace and harmony is under threat. After all, memories of a political model that was based on constant, pitiless Struggle [under the Communist Party itself form 1949 to 1978, and in reality during the mini-purges of the 1980s — in 1980, 1983, 1987 and 1989, and beyond] remains fresh and the concern that it could well be reimposed on China is real.JFb免费翻墙网
Given the two-term limit imposed on state leaders [formerly stipulated by the Constitution, a regulation that would normally have resulted in a defined ten-year period of rule for Xi Jinping, but which was abandoned in early 2018] and the continuation of an orderly politics of succession within the Communist Party itself, people were hopeful that China would continue to move in the direction of becoming a normal, and normalised country, one in which both property rights and human rights would, over time, be granted appropriate expression in, and protection by, the Constitution. It was assumed that the old mantra of ‘Ceaseless Struggle’ had lost its power. But these years it seems as though, yet again, we are moving in the opposite direction [from the one we were previously headed in]. Not surprisingly, there is widespread alarm.JFb免费翻墙网
Just as we at loggerheads with the United States — the representative of the [civilised] Western World — China is engaging in renewed intimacy with heinous regimes like North Korea. China’s economic development and social progress are part and parcel of this nation’s self-advancement as a civilisation. This is a continuation of the logic of the Civilisational Transformation that has been taking place [in China] for over 150 years, one that has seen a backward nation once more participate in the unfolding global system. It isn’t something authored or directed by external forces. But in terms of practical policy, [from the late 1970s] China reinvigorated policies [and ideas] related to Reform and the Open Door [which had been integral to previous efforts to modernise the nation from the mid-nineteenth century dating from the years of the Tongzhi Restoration 同治中興 (1860-1874), and again during the Self-Strengthing Movement that was related to that restoration]. Concomitantly, relations with the West improved and moved in a progressive direction so that China would [as the slogan of the Jiang Zemin era when China worked to join the WTO put it] be able to ‘be integrated within the global community’ [and in the process accept its norms and practices]. This was brought about by fast-tracking development as part of the globalisation of economic activity. If it were not for the fact that the ‘Open Door Forced [Ever Greater] Reform’ [meaning that the pressures brought to bear on the Chinese system by its global trade policies were constantly putting pressure on the party-state to extend, often reluctantly, its internal economic and structural reform agenda] , China would not enjoy the economic, social and cultural prosperity that it does today.JFb免费翻墙网
Now, for China to buddy up to failed states and totalitarian regimes like North Korea and Venezuela not only goes against the popular will, it flies in the face of the tide of history. Indeed, it lacks wisdom. [Given the anomalies of the present situation], ordinary folk are scathing when the mock a situation in which large swathes of the cadre-ocracy and their progeny long ago squirreled away wealth in those very foreign climes [that are officially being attacked, that is, North America] and that’s why they are not overly concerned about rising tensions in the Sino-US relationship. However, if by chance there is some major slip-up [in the Sino-US relationship] China as a whole will suffer, as will the nation’s wealth, something that, theoretically at least, belongs to all the people. Regardless, the effects will be felt by ordinary Chinese men and women, they will be hurt in the pocket. What really lies at the root cause [of this hubristic behaviour of allowing tensions with the US to increase why diplomatically embracing North Korea is that the requirements of One Political Party [that is the Communists] outweigh the reasonable and rational needs of the nation. [To disguise this reality] a twisted statist logic is employed [by the party-state propaganda machine] to repress and pervert popular common sense. With no real will to pursue [the reform process] in a positive fashion, yet harboring a dogged determination to indulge in their own willfulness, [The Powers That Be] have been failing to keep up with the currents of modern thought. And so the folly continues understandably, inevitably.JFb免费翻墙网
Over-investment in international aid may well result in deprivations at home. It is said that China is now the world’s largest source of international aid; its cash-splashes are counted in billions or tens of billions of dollars. For a developing country with a large population many of whom still live in a pre-modern economy, such behaviour is outrageously disproportionate. Such policies are born of a ‘Vanity Politics’; they reflect the flashy showmanship of the boastful and they are odious. The nation’s wealth — including China’s three trillion dollars in foreign reserves — has been accumulated over the past four decades using the blood and sweat of working people, in fact, it has actually been built up as a result of successive policies and countless struggles dating from the time of the Self-Strengthening Movement [launched during the Tongzhi Restoration during the 1860s when, following its defeat in the Second Opium War, the court of the Qing-dynasty adopted the first modernising reform agenda in Chinese history. By saying this Xu, to an extent, indicates that he does not completely embrace the Communist narrative or its soteriology]. How can this wealth be squandered so heedlessly?JFb免费翻墙网
The era of fast-paced economic growth will come to an end; how can such wanton generosity be tolerated — a generosity which, in many ways, replicates [the vainglorious Maoist-era policies when China boasted that it was the centre of world revolution to] ‘Support Asia-Africa-Latin America’ [which meant that an impoverished China was generously giving aid to Third World countries in an effort to gain political advantage and counter the influence both of the American imperialists and the Soviet revisionists] that led to countless millions of Chinese being forced to tighten their belts simply to survive, and which even saw the corpses of those who had starved to death scattered in the fields.JFb免费翻墙网
Following the recent outbreak of the Sino-US Trade War, the official state media has called on the nation to ‘Overcome the Present Difficulties in a Spirit of Unity’ [共克時艱], a slogan that has been widely mocked. [The slogan 共克時艱 is a reformulation of the older expression 共濟時艱. It has been recast by online jokers as 艱時克共: ‘times are tough so we should all oppose the Communists’]. Added to that, there’s all that grand pontificating [expressed by using a common quote from an essay by the Song-dynasty writer Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹] about how ‘One should put the cares of the nation ahead of the enjoyment of the individual’. The Masses have responded by deriding such nonsense mercilessly: ‘Fuck you’, you hear people say. ‘What the hell does that have to do with anything?’ Such sentiments reflect popular sentiment; people can’t be duped like the hapless and uncomplaining subjects of yesteryear.JFb免费翻墙网
‘One must put the cares of the nation before the enjoyment of the individual’ — Fan Zhongyan
Fear Six: Repression of the Intelligentsia
There has been a leftward [that is, repressive, Mao-era-like] turn in policies related to the intelligentsia, along with a renewed imposition of Thought Reform [like that first imposed by the Party from 1952 when university professors, employees and people in the state bureaucracy were required to accept Party dogma and then to parrot it both in dedicated study sessions and publicly]. Although it has long been said that intellectuals [a broad category including many who are educated, as well as educators] are part of the working class [this was Party policy until the High Maoist years, from 1957 to 1976, during which intellectuals were regarded as dangerous ideological enemies; Deng Xiaoping championed the role and status of the educated, technocratic elite again from 1977], but when there’s the slightest policy tremor once more they are unfairly targeted, or indeed treated like the enemy.
