Chinese Law Professor, Xu Zhangrun, was reportedly recently released from detention by the Chinese government. Prior to his detainment about a week ago Xu was notable as one of the very few Chinese academics, or other Chinese nationals of note, who had been allowed to openly criticize the Chinese Communist Party in general, and level particularly harsh criticisms at the Chinese Premier, Xi Jinping. I personally discovery the writings of Xu following news reports of his arrest last week.
In July of 2018, two years before his detainment, Xu wrote an essay, “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes,” where he laid out his concerns and frustrations with Xi, and specifically pointedly criticizing the abandonment of two term limits on power and the reversal of progress towards more freedoms, especially among academics and the intelligentsia. Xu’s essay, though, is much more than that. It is an exploration of why the Chinese people have tolerated the rule of the Chinese Communist Party and how Xi is breaking faith with the working people of China and leading them back to the dark days of Mao.
Below is my effort to edit down Xu’s work without losing the key points and focus of his essay. Here is a link to the original translation. Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes
Xu’s essay is well worth the read for anyone who is concerned not only about the direction Xi and the Chinese Communist Party is taking China, but the role their leadership will play in the rest of the world. My own personal fear is that we are revisiting the 1930’s and viewing in real time the consolidation of power of a modern-day combination of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler.
Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes
By Xu Zhangrun, Translated by Geremie R. Barme
Yet again people throughout China — including the entire bureaucratic class — are feeling a sense of uncertainty, a mounting anxiety in relation both to the direction the country is taking as well as in regard to their personal security…..This is primarily due to the fact that in recent years our National Orientation has betrayed the Basic Principles that I outline below…. Throughout the three decades of the Open Door and Reform era, these Principles proved to be the most appropriate political approach; they reflected a minimum consensus arrived at by the entire populace on the basis of which the country could enjoy a form of peaceful co-existence.
1. Four Basic Principles
So, then, what are the Four Basic Principles?
First Basic Principle: Security and Stability
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What we need is continued social order and a clear vision for the nation’s future…..It is important to confront increasing signs of social anomie and maintain social order, while at the same time promoting social reconciliation. Only by so doing can they vouchsafe the basic conditions of normalcy that allow the Common People to go about their daily business.
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After all, people just want to have a peaceful life, make enough for food and clothing and enjoy a measure of prosperity….. Nonetheless, this kind of stable environment and the ‘Stability Maintenance’ policies that have been developed to maintain it, have in turn generated new problems and revealed their own limitations, creating in fact deadly lesions that threaten the political legitimacy itself.
Moreover, for over three decades, in particular following the spring-summer of 1992, the ruling Communist Party has pursued economic growth or, as the formula goes ‘Devoted Itself to Development, Focused Its Energies on Construction’…..This official-popular consensus and collaboration produced the social stability and security that I have been discussing here.…It’s on the basis of this premise that the common citizenry of China accepts Your Rule.
Second Basic Principle: A Measure of Respect for Property Rights
…We went from a time when private property and ownership were regarded as the source of all social evilsand entered a period that tolerated hundreds of millions of Chinese legitimately pursuing greater personal wealth, and then on to a time when there was the prospect that property rights would even be recognized constitutionally — or as the short-hand puts it, ‘private property would be allowed into the Constitution’ This new approach liberated the natural desires of our people to seek prosperity for themselves and their families.….. In these circumstances, not only did the state enjoy massive economic growth, it also made it possible for the state to allocate appropriate funding to Science and Technology, Education, Culture, National Defense and the Military….. Of course, the average Chinese benefited as their standard of living improved. Such is the legal and legitimate basis upon which China has enjoyed such rapid development; it is also the underlying economic rationale behind why the existing political legitimacy has been tolerated by All-of-China.
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Third Basic Principle: A Measure of Tolerance of Personal Freedoms
Over the past decades, civil society has not evolved in China. Whenever there’s been an outbreak of anything approaching normalcy, it has been crushed. This has had a profoundly negative impact on the individual growth and political maturation of our citizenry.
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Today, people enjoy their liberties of social actors but not as citizens; this is particularly so in the case of the more economically advanced provinces where this has been the case for some time. What I mean by ‘the liberties of social actors’ is that in the private sphere people can enjoy limited personal freedoms, in particular in regard to normal pleasures such as eating, going about one’s daily business and personal intimacy behind closed doors. There is also latitude in regard to a range of individual choices that have no immediate political dimension….Given the brutal monotony of the Maoist years when everyone had to be careful to keep it in their pants, you can’t be that critical of the fact that people prefer to settling for normal everyday pleasures rather than perilously demanding their true rights as citizens. Again, this is a major contributing factor to why people are willing to tolerate the present political arrangements.
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Fourth Basic Principle: Set Term Limits for Political Appointees
For over three decades, and despite the evidence of a certain level of social pluralism and a measure of political tolerance, China has in fact experienced no substantial political reform. …..However, due to a Constitutional Provision that limited the highest power-holders to two five-year terms in office — and that includes both the state president and the premier — since 2003, and with the peaceful transition of leadership, the country finally experienced ten years after which the leadership showed that it was satisfied with two five-year terms in power.
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The situation afforded the people of China a measure of political certainty and it bolstered international confidence due to the fact that our country seemed to be on the way to becoming a modern polity…..For the blameless masses of Chinese — they who are as humble and as numerous as ants, the people who till the yellow earth tirelessly, their sweaty backs bent beneath the sky, those who live laboring to the end of their days just to keep their families fed, people who are absolutely powerless to resist the might of a highly organized state machine — now, finally, they had a ‘ten-year rule’; there actually seemed as though a measure had been instituted that would prevent the outbreak of yet another period of political instability. Finally, the Masses could go about their everyday lives with one less thing to worry about.
In Summation:
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….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 undermines confidence in policy continuity and sustainability.
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, both of these things have encountered the nationwide polity allowing for the ‘State to Advance while the Private Sector is Forced to Retreat’, 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….In the private sector, people have also witnessed repeated cases of official rapaciousness and the plundering of private property and wealth….Only if China manages to work through this stage will there be true peace. But, in recent times people been both critical and fearful of the meaning of the revision of the Constitution and the abandonment of term limits on political leaders…..It is feared that in one fell swoop China will be cast back to the terrifying days of Mao. Along with this Constitutional revision there is also a clamor surrounding the creation of new personality cult, something that in particular has provoked the Imminent Fears that I outline below.
2. Eight Imminent Fears
Below I offer an overview of the major causes of anxiety and panic in contemporary China under eight topics.
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)?….
The biggest winners during the decades of the Reform policies and the Open Door has been that particular 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, 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 ‘Overthrow the Wealthy, Divide the Spoils’
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Fear Two: Putting Politics Back in Command
To emphasize yet again policies that ‘Put Politics in Command’ and abandon the Fundamental National Policy in favor of developing the economy is what I mean by Fear Two.
In recent years, the gunpowder-like stench of militant ideology has become stronger…. Given this situation, coupled with an ever-increasing emphasis on Self-Criticism, 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.
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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. They now live in trepidation, ever fearful that Party ideological watchdogs 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.
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Painful memories of ‘political movements’ still linger in the minds of average citizens…..In reality, over the past decades people’s thinking has been fairly unified, and 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 Proselytizing’ on everyone.
Three: Class Struggle, Again
Starting a few years ago the official media and Party ideologues began to talk again about 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 remains fresh and the concern that it could well be re-imposed on China is real.
Given the two-term limit imposed on state leaders 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 normalized 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. Not surprisingly, there is widespread alarm.
Fear Four: A New Closed-Door Policy
Just as we at loggerheads with the United States — the representative of the 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 civilization.…..Concomitantly, relations with the West improved and moved in a progressive direction so that China would be able to ‘be integrated within the global….. If it were not for the fact that the ‘Open Door Forced Reform’, China would not enjoy the economic, social and cultural prosperity that it does today.
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….And so the folly continues understandably, inevitably.
Fear Five: Excessive International Aid
Over-investment in international aid may well result in deprivations at home…..For a developing country with a large population many of whom still live in a pre-modern economy, such behavior 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…..How can this wealth be squandered so heedlessly?
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Fear Six: Repression of the Intelligentsia
There has been a leftward turn in policies related to the intelligentsia, along with a renewed imposition of Thought Reform…. The Ministry of Education has repeatedly declared that it is necessary to intensify Ideological Education among educators. Online speculation holds that returnee teachers who have studied overseas are seen as a particular threat…..All of these phenomena contribute to an atmosphere of fear, a trepidation among intellectuals that enforced Ideological Reform is making a comeback.
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’Inappropriate Discussions’ is once more a term bandied about with a deadening effect; the result is that people are being scared into silence…..Up until recently, given the positive legacy of the last four decades — one that should be further enhanced by the concerted efforts of the next few generations — there was good reason to believe that Chinese Civilization could well enjoy an extraordinary peak of achievement in terms both of its intellectual and of its scholastic life. However, if the present policies that clamp down on free speech continue, or are extended further, these hopes will remain unrealized. China will be little more than a cultural backwater of intellectual dwarfs.
Fear Seven: A New Arms Race and the
Danger of War, Including Another Cold War
Over the last decade, Asia as a whole has for all intents and purposes entered an arms race. Fortunately, the probability of war has so far been maintained within acceptable parameters. The main issue for China is that we cannot afford to interrupt our developmental trajectory or further frustrate the Great Modern Transformation just as it is within sight of being realized.
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At the moment, as the political atmosphere of China is becoming increasingly repressive and the country is entangled in a foreign trade dispute, there is an increased possibility of an economic downturn, something that could lead to things that are beyond control and that may have various unintended consequences. In such a situation it is not unreasonable to be afraid that matters could result in some form of military conflict, be it either a hot or a cold war.
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Fear Eight: The End of Reform and a
Return to Totalitarianism
Even though the word ‘Reform’ is somewhat tarnished and, despite the fact that even rather reprehensible polities use it as camouflage, nonetheless, given the discursive environment of contemporary China and the fact that we are at a time in the country’s life when the Great Transformation requires a final push, and compared to the outbreak of some explosive revolution or a regression to a form of extreme leftism, Reform is and remains the most prudent and promising way forward. The engine of reform, however, has been idling for the last few years; if it isn’t used to propel us forward we will go into reverse…..Given the overall direction being taken people may be entirely justified in asking whether the Reform Policies and the Open Door have reached the end of their history, and will totalitarian politics now return in their stead? Who knows? At the moment, this question is of the greatest concern to the largest number of Chinese.
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3: Eight Immediate Hopes
…..Below I will confine myself to offering a series of concrete policy suggestions that I believe are of timely importance.
The First Hope: Put a Stop to Empty Grand Gestures and
Wasteful International Largesse
Average Chinese are most frequently offended by the way the state scatters large sums of money through international aid to little or no benefit…..In terms both of basic infrastructure and social facilities, as well as in regard to people’s ability to access welfare, we are confronting massive problems; our burden is great and the road ahead leads far into the distance. And I make this point without even mentioning the crisis in aged care, or issues related to employment opportunities and education.
Rural destitution is a widespread and crushing reality; greater support through public policy initiatives is essential. Without major changes, half of China will remain in what is basically a pre-modern economic state…..If this situation continues what good is it to talk about the Great Revival of Chinese Civilization?
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Why is China, a country with over one hundred million people who are still living below the poverty line, playing at being the flashy big-spender? How can the Chinese not comment in astonishment: just what is the Supreme Bureaucratic Authority thinking? Don’t They care about our own people?
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The Second Hope: Put an End to Diplomatic Extravagance
Even the most commonplace international meeting organized in China involves extraordinary levels of expense. There is no regard for budgets; fiscal waste and the heedless loss of human work hours is considerable. Such activities are content-free and superficial. It’s all about pursuing ‘Vanity Politics’ not ‘Practical Politics’, let alone ‘Hard-edged Politics’.
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As independent entities countries should aim for validation by means of their actual national strength, and thereby they can pursue their own national interest through regular international activities, while in the process also exhibiting certain values and moral probity…..To lack this breadth of understanding and devote instead considerable energy to political grandstanding, even though the Host himself might feel very smug, it is nonetheless a waste of human resources; it is the behavior of a wastrel who is careless of public finance.
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The Third Hope: End the Privileges of the Party Nobility
Elitist privileges for retired high-level cadres should be eliminated. The system of the present ‘dynasty’ allows for the state to provide inclusive retirement-to-grave care for high-level cadres according to a standard that isfar and away above that allowed to the average citizen…..People are outraged but powerless to do anything about it and it’s one of the main reasons why people regard the system itself with utter contempt. On one side of the hospital Commoners face the challenge of gaining admission for treatment, while everyone knows that grand suites are reserved on the other side for the care of high-level cadres. The people observe this with mute and heartfelt bitterness. Every iota of this bottled up anger may, at some unexpected moment, explode with thunderous fury.
The Fourth Hope: End the System of Luxury Provisioning
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The Special Needs Provisioning system allows the high-level Party nobility access to a vast range of specialty products far beyond the dreams of the average person. Apart from a few totalitarian polities, there is no other country that does this like China. Surely this is a case of ‘luxury in the extreme and shamelessness that defies description’…..And none of this even takes into account the outrage felt because a small group of Party grandees is being continuously mollycoddled by dipping into the coffers of the state.
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The Fifth Hope: Require Officials to Divulge their Personal Assets
People have been calling for a law requiring officials to gazette their assets for many years, without effect…..As cadres and government bureaucrats scale the ladder of officialdom there is a complete lack of transparency about the personal assets that accrue to their children and their families; this is a closely guarded secret hidden deep in the Party’s personnel files.
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Despite continued anti-corruption activities, boundless new cases of corruption are constantly being generated…..What is missing is a ‘Sunshine Policy’: if you have nothing to hide then implement such a policy and everything will finally be out in the open!…..Why conceal yourselves in the obfuscating mists of rhetoric and treat the Vast Multitudes of China like simpletons?
The Sixth Hope: Put a Stop to the New Personality Cult Immediately
An emergency brake must be applied to the unfolding Personality Cult…..The Party media is going to extreme lengths to create a new Idol, and in the process it is offering up to the world an image of China as Modern Totalitarianism. Portraits of the Leader are hoisted on high throughout the Land, as though they are possessed of some Spiritual Mana…..And then, on top of that, the speeches of That Official — things previously merely to be recorded by secretaries in a pro forma bureaucratic manner — are now painstakingly collected in finely bound editions printed in vast quantities and handed out free throughout the world. The profligate waste of paper alone is enough to make you shake your head in disbelief.
All of this reflects the low IQ of the Concerned Official and His craving for fame. More importantly, we need to ask how a vast country like China, one that was previously so ruinously served by a Personality Cult, simply has no resistance to this new cult, and this includes those droves of ‘Theoreticians’ and ‘Researchers’. In fact, they are outdoing themselves with their sickeningly slavish behavior…..The New Cult is clear evidence that China faces a long struggle before it can claim to be a modern, secular and rational nation-state.
The Seventh Hope: Restore Term Limits for the National Presidency
International opinion was astounded by the decision made earlier in the year to revise the Constitution and abandon the term limits set for the State Presidency. In China it resulted in widespread and profound anxiety. Overnight it seemed ‘As though we were shocked awake after a four-decade-long dream.’ Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, we had a ‘Supreme Leader’ with no checks on his power; how could people not have all kinds of strange imaginings and new fears?
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The Eighth Hope: Overturn the Verdict on 4 June
…..in light of the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of 4 June [Tinamenn Square], I would encourage Those In Power to find a suitable moment either this or next year to rehabilitate ‘4 June’ publicly. This would not only demonstrate a sincere and wise application of the principle of ‘politics embracing the political’, it would also mean that from then on there would be no need to treat the 4th of June every year like a political emergency. The authorities would clear the way for all Chinese to enjoy a peaceful coexistence, it would uplift people psychologically and benefit [the party-state] by accruing political capital to its legitimacy.
The Hopes outlined above merely articulate what one would call contemporary political commonsense; they also reflect widespread appeals and desires within the populace at large. Herein I am — to use an old expression — ‘Putting My Life on the Line Simply to Say What Everyone Knows and Thinks’.
In this vast world of great disorder, if there is no reasonable way to express such views there can then be no legislation. And, in that case, neither I nor the Masses have a way to live. What to do? Alas and Alack indeed!
4: In What is a Period of Transition
…..For China to get through this period what is of crucial importance is that the nation must continue along its chosen path of sustained internal reform while focusing on raising the standard of living and ameliorating the wellbeing of the people. What matters for China and the world is that this particular Grand Ship of State continues to catch the wind in its sails as it peacefully steers a course on the way to continued political normality.
Conflict and warfare are part and parcel of the inherently violent nature of the human animal. The Sacred Duty of politicians living during a period of historical opportunity like today is to delay or avoid entirely the outbreak of hostilities…..What is necessary in the here and now is that, no matter what the present situation happens to be, we cannot allow ourselves to deviate from the grand course of Peaceful Development…..We don’t need heedless antagonism; at all costs we must not cast aside the good hand that we have been dealt.
…..On this side of the ocean we have One who has no real historical awareness or truly modern political sensibility, let alone a moral vision that reflects an awareness of the principles of universal civilization. The One is blind to the Grand Way of current affairs and is scarred indelibly by a political brand from the Cultural Revolution. Overweening pride and official competence leads this One to bend his efforts to serve the wrong ends; talented enough to play the bureaucratic game, and doubtlessly masterful at achieving high office, but as for Guiding the Nation along the Correct Path, is worse than arrant time-wasting for there is something perverse at work.
And there, on the other side of the Pacific, a crowd of the Ghoulish Undead nurtured on the politics of the Great Game and the Cold War have taken the stage. Certainly, they have their own analysis of world affairs and a particular understanding of the cultural upheavals of today, but like their opposite number here, they lack a truly historical perspective; they are shortsighted and avaricious…..Trained in a mercantilism that favored the capitalist elite, with a personality amplified by bloated self-regard and the lifetime habits of rapaciousness, the result is a prideful quasi-imperial mindset that is coupled to heinous vulgarity.
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At this moment, taking stock of the general tenor of discussion in the Chinese-speaking world, and the mindset that it reflects, it is evident that a kind of political awareness based on civilian rationalism has come into maturity; nor is it lacking in proud righteousness. What would appear to be deficient, however, is a cultural self-awareness based on national rationality, in particular people seem to have difficulty identifying National Rationality as it relates to the political relations between nations, and National Rationality in terms of how citizens engage with their own political lives.
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Moreover, putting aside debates about identity and what ‘Being Chinese’ really means, given the present situation, there are those Prophets who each say their piece and in their proud justifications end up finding no common ground for compromise. Let me repeat my previous observation: a nation’s maturity relies on the nurturing authority of its intellectual elite, and for their wisdom to have full sway they require a freedom of spirit….. It is necessary to rejecting the misguided folly and pridefulness of any and all Absolute Authorities…..For only then, and only with the painstaking work of generations, can the motherlode of Chinese Civilization be regenerated and nurtured, its role protected and its relevance strengthened. Only then will it be possible to face unfolding possibilities with clear-sightedness, or to be able to respond calmly to immediate challenges so that we can apply ourselves to practical service in the world.
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And so that’s why I have offered here my Eight Immediate Hopes — a series of concrete policy suggestions that I believe to be of timely relevance.
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That’s all I’ve got to say now. We’ll see what Fate has in store; only Heaven can judge the nation’s fortunes.
— July 2018