The Split of Chinese Nationalism

First published on End Media

On May 1st, as the official Weibo of the news website of the Central Political and Legal Committee, "China Changan.com" posted a comparison chart, "China Ignition VS India Ignition", which ignited a war on Weibo. In this picture, the applauding message and the criticizing message confront each other, and they are evenly matched. The turning point of the matter occurred after Shen Yi, a professor of the Department of International Politics at Fudan University, reposted and commented on it, and Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, reposted and responded to Shen Yi. Shen Yi believes that there is nothing wrong with the statement of "China Changan.com", and calls those netizens who sympathize with India and criticize "Ignition" as "Mother Bitch". Hu Xijin disapproved of Shen Yi's remarks. He believed that "ordinary Chinese" had no problem sneering at India on the Internet, but it is very inappropriate for official accounts to publish this type of remarks.

Among those who are critical of the Chinese government, Hu Xijin has the "reputation" of "Hu Dianpan", that is, no matter what policies and statements Chinese officials make, he can round them up online and win "patriotic" The unanimous applause of the "camp", and sometimes the angle is tricky, people are amazed. But this time, Hu Xijin suffered the most serious rollover in history. It was not the so-called "national haters" who overturned him, but the "patriots" who were his long-term basics. These people claimed that Hu Xijin's "public knowledge tail" finally exposed. Hu Xijin didn't delete the Weibo, but the wave of criticism might have overwhelmed him, and he eventually shut down its comments.

In this series of attacks, the most striking one came from an Internet big V called "Serder Meridian". The big V's Weibo has maintained a high degree of linkage with "Eagle of God" and "Lone Smoke Twilight Cicada" for a long time. In the "Xiao Meili Incident", they took the lead in shifting the focus of the incident from "indoor smoking" to "Hong Kong independence", and led the online violence against feminists such as Xiao Meili and Zheng Churan. More recently, he has targeted the LGBT community, claiming they are misleading teenagers. On May 2, the Meridian Knights lined up with Shen Yi in a high-profile manner and launched a violent attack on Hu Xijin. Not only that, he also dug up the English comment of Global Times reporter Chen Qingqing on "Ignition" on Twitter, "It is ridiculous to make such a comparison", accusing Huanshi of "fighting" on the Internet, implying that Hu Xijin is "two-faced". ". It is worth mentioning his Weibo post: "A well-known fan asked me: Haven't you scolded Chang'an Sword before, why are you speaking for Chang'an.com now, the two accounts are a group of people, why are you scolding you? Don't allow others to scold him? Yes, the people can scold him, but the enemy can't scold him. We scold him because he is wrong, and you scold him to prove that he was right. That's the reason, it's not profound."

Such attacks by "patriots" outside the system on prominent figures within the system have drawn some attention. One of them, a former media person named Wang Taotao, made a very representative comment on this matter: "Hu Xijin represents a patriotic public opinion with an overall view and discipline; some (but not all) of Hu Xijin's siege represents people who go their own way, Undisciplined Kita Ikki-style 'patriotic public opinion'; this confrontation between the two currents of thought is inevitable, because someone wants to take the definition and leadership of patriotism away from the government. It is an insignificant online battle on the surface. Behind it is the struggle for interpretation power and leadership, if this trend of thought goes out of control, the risk of Bei Yihui's dominance of the patriotic masses among soldiers, cadres, and college students will appear, and the risk of 226 may become a reality."

Kita Ikki is the spiritual leader behind the Japanese imperialist faction, and his "Outline of the Japan Reform Act" is the ideological guide for the February 26 Incident. The concept of the "Japan Reconstruction Act Outline" is similar to that of "National Socialism" at the beginning. There are both socialist elements, such as restrictions on private ownership, labor participation in management distribution, eight-hour work system, etc., as well as statist elements, such as Advocating "the right of the state" such as foreign expansion. On February 26, 1936, some young officers of the "King Dao faction" led more than a thousand soldiers to assassinate the "regulatory faction" at the top of the government and the military, intending to coup, and ultimately failed. The participants were declared "rebels", and many were sentenced to death. The imperialist faction in the army was overwhelmed by the alliance of the ruling faction and the anti-imperialist faction. Kita Ikki and Nishida Shou, who did not participate in any direct action, were also sentenced. death penalty.

Japanese political scientist Maruyama Masao has a very in-depth research on the background, history and characteristics of Japanese fascism. In his view, the rise of fascism has the following objective factors, such as international confrontation and the urgency of war crisis ; Domestic political instability, the spread of pathological phenomena such as corruption, incompetence and ineffectiveness of parliaments and established political parties; the loss of their ability to automatically recover due to the rigidity of various social organizations; the intensification of class struggle and conflicts between political and social groups; Mass unemployment, and the emergence of a large number of elements dropped out of the original class and vocational skills organization. These crises are also manifested in the following spiritual aspects: the growing terror of the bourgeoisie in the face of the tense social revolution; the envy and disgust of the peasants and urban petty citizens for the struggle of proletarian organizations; indifference (indifference); mass media cuts off the systematization of knowledge and loses a sense of direction; doubts or despairs about the possibility of rationally adjusting political, economic, and social issues; to compensate for the despair and powerlessness of reality, look forward to the emergence of A super leader with absolute prestige.

There is no simple analogy between today's China and pre-war Japan, but in my opinion, Wang Taotao's judgment on the two kinds of patriotic public opinion is accurate. It is not the first time that personnel in the system have been besieged by "patriots". In the past year or two, Fang Fang, Liang Yanping, Wang Xiaoni, Luo Xin and other personnel in the system have been besieged by patriots, but Hu Xijin's The status is different. In Wang Taotao's words, Hu Xijin is a "patriotic public opinion leader" who not only represents a public opinion team with an overall view, strong obedience and discipline, but also has a strong social influence. His statement this time is actually "trying to cooperate with the recent exploratory diplomatic measures against India and doing foreign-related public opinion work." Hu Xijin "appears to be a media person, but in essence represents part of the authority of the government. The real essence of besieging Hu Xijin is an inevitable attempt to challenge the prestige of the government after this part of public opinion has developed to a certain extent."

Interestingly, another nationalist V Rabbit chairman with a special status was also besieged by "patriots" after expressing similar views to Hu Xijin, and he also closed the message (of the WeChat public account article). Chairman Rabbit, formerly known as Arbitrary, is a student of Fu Gaoyi at Harvard and the grandson of Ren Zhongyi, a pure-blooded third-generation red. In the 2019 "anti-extradition campaign" and the global anti-epidemic in 2020, he gained a large number of fans with extremely productive and theoretical comments. The latest "Xi'an Tour, Sino-Indian "Ignition", Japan's Nuclear Sewage, and Official Media/Voices" consists of two articles, which will be published on May 6th and 7th. It's not hard to think of his tone and why. In the first article, Arbitrary and very rare arguments are made for universal values (what he calls "core values", "ancestral values", "basic bottom lines"), although this universal value is not liberal democracy, but humanitarianism (although he didn't use the word). He even used some very Kantian words, such as: "Our moral choices are based on morality, not on the basis of material and interests." "My moral choices are consistent, and I will not be different because of the object. I will make different moral choices due to different scenarios and interests." "I will not change my moral choices and behaviors because of the other party's feedback/reaction." These words are very different from his previous words, in which he mostly stood on the sidelines. The position in China criticizes Western systems and concepts. Although some Western theories are used from time to time, they basically serve the previous purpose. In the next part, I will try to make it clear from the perspective of external propaganda strategy why on the one hand, it is necessary to distinguish between foreign governments/politicians and foreign people, and on the other hand, Chinese officials are required to be restrained and cautious, because foreign countries are all Chinese official departments. As monolithic, any inappropriate remarks by any official may cause diplomatic accidents or even affect the "national fortune".

Arbitrary articles have a very high foothold and exhort their audiences from the perspective of human morality and national strategy. Although he emphasizes like Hu Xijin that "netizens can scold them any way they want," he still reveals his disdain for these people in some places. Despised and called these people "populist" twice. Taking these two occurrences together is a rather dialectical expression. He said that some official accounts of some departments would "speak some very populist, flattering but not serious, indecent, vulgar, controversial and offensive remarks" in order to "Trumpize traffic." "One of the great advantages of the Chinese system over the U.S. and Western systems is that our politicians do not need to do things that are short-term and in the interests of politicians in order to cater to populism. Our politicians can do things that are long-term. This is our institutional advantage.” This shows that, like Wang Taotao, Yi Yi feels more and more that populism has brought a burden to the country’s long-term development.

It is not difficult to imagine that such remarks certainly cannot be bought by these "populists". "The Holy Mother", "Public Knowing", "Li Zhongke", "Kneeling Family", these words once used to criticize the "hate the National Party" hit any person like raindrops. Some people jokingly said that China's "control faction" and "imperial Taoism faction" finally took shape. Although China's nationalism has never been monolithic, and Hu Xijin and Shunhua have not been criticized from the "patriotic camp", their "public knowledge" shows that populist nationalism is becoming less and less popular in establishment countries No matter how we name these two factions, no matter how many times Hu Xijin and Shen Yi sing "Unity is Strength" (on May 7th, they reposted "Unity is Strength" issued by the Communist Youth League official on Weibo to show reconciliation. ), and no one can hide the fact that statism has split.

What the establishment statists and populist statists have in common is that both agree that the interests of the country and the nation are paramount; This may also explain why establishment statists lag in their awareness of populist statism, which they see as more emotionally patriotic patriots. Establishment statists are not necessarily people within the system, populist statists are not necessarily people within the system, but between the system and the "people", the former is more inclined to the system and the latter is more inclined "People", but the definition of "people" is up to them. This is what Jan-Werner Müller calls "moralized anti-pluralism". The words of the Meridian Knight best reveal his populist statist stance: "The people can scold him (Chang'an.com), but the enemy cannot scold him. We scold him because he is wrong, if you scold him, just scold him. Prove he was right."

The reasons for the rise of populist statism are extremely complex. Global political polarization and the deterioration of the international situation facing China are of course an important factor, but there is no doubt that the emergence and development of populist statism is closely related to the establishment of populist statism. Nationalism is closely related, which is what Hu Xijin, Wang Taotao, Yiyi and others are unwilling to admit. In the past few years, the establishment nationalists have competed on various platforms inside and outside the wall to express wolf warrior remarks in various capacities, mocking and criticizing Western countries at all levels. Hu Xijin once advocated that China should increase Nuclear weapons, it was said not long ago that the US negotiating performance in Alaska was like that of the Qing Dynasty. Not only that, but they have also defended the suppression of freedom of speech, conscience, and association, sometimes saying that China guarantees citizens full freedoms, but these freedoms "must be exercised within the country's laws", and sometimes saying that those who express dissent, believe in People in religion, founding civil societies, and running civil institutions have received foreign funds with the intention of subverting the regime. In the past few years, well-known voices have been almost eliminated from the Internet, and the few that can still be heard have to face the danger of Internet violence and grave digging. Socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, except for nationalism, other perceivable characteristics are not obvious.

It is hard for a new generation of netizens to grow up in such an atmosphere not to become nationalists. They learned to scold the "public knowledge" from the establishment statists, and they are wise about "color revolutions" and "Syriacology" (the export of democracy from Western countries to certain developing countries has caused those countries to fall into civil war and economic collapse). "To accuse everyone they don't like (such as women's rights). They even developed their own "patriotic subculture", for example, they circled patriotic fans and called China "Brother Ah Zhong". So the question is, why are more and more new-generation netizens, like these statist predecessors, not becoming establishment statists, but populist statists?

Here, I am afraid that the time factor is something we cannot ignore. Most of the establishment statists grew up in the reform and opening up, which was a period of earth-shaking changes in China. For this earth-shaking change, different people will have different interpretation tendencies. In the article "Performance Legitimacy, National Autonomy and Economic Development", Zhao Dingxin summed up two explanations for China's economic success: liberal economists believe that the success of China's economy lies in the state's abandonment of the planned economic model on the one hand, allowing the The "invisible hand" of the market dominates economic activities such as resource allocation. On the other hand, "through institutional innovations such as property rights reform, the construction of the rule of law, and the right to freely contract, it provides the necessary legal and institutional environment for the development of the market economy." State-centricists emphasize that the government consciously distorts market prices by formulating national development strategies and specific development policies to protect and cultivate uncompetitive industries so that they can become competitive in the world market. The period of 1978-2008, when China was turning upside down, was also a period of prosperity and development for Western countries. During this period, the United States and the United Kingdom turned to neoliberal economic policies. At the same time, the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe fell one after another. Francis Fukuyama took over Hegel's mantle and sang "The End of History". It can be said that it is natural for a person who has lived through this era to accept liberal economists' explanations for China's economic success. Therefore, the statists of the establishment are more inclined to the national interest between the national interest and individual freedom. Of course, they are also those who are more inclined to the state-centrism in understanding why China's economy is rising, and this tendency is not Not only are they influenced by state propaganda, but they are also a cognitive choice made by themselves.

By contrast, during the period in which populist statists were growing up, the explanations of liberal economists were either marginalized or unconvincing for them. On the one hand, this is related to the country's increased publicity and education efforts and systematic crackdown on liberal discourse. On the other hand, after the 2008 financial tsunami, China continued to maintain rapid growth, and at the same time, the industry began to upgrade, and the number of patents jumped to the top The world's first, and even leading the world's technology in some fields. China's "economic freedom index" is not too high. In 2021, it will be ranked out of 100, but its development speed is significantly higher than that of many countries ranked higher than it, which makes liberal economists explanations seem futile. To put it simply, netizens who have grown up in the new era are left with only one option. Whether they have a positive or negative attitude towards China's development, they cannot deny the role of "Chinese characteristics" in the development process.

The biggest difference between establishment statists and populist statists is whether they ever had an alternative choice in forming their understanding of the relationship between the state and economic society. Between the system and the people, the establishment statists prefer the system, but they believe that there is still a difference between the system and the people, and it is not impossible for them to understand when a part of the people has a position that is different from the system. This can explain why some of Hu Xijin's words sounded so much like public opinion. In addition to doing public opinion work, he was also familiar with another option. However, populist nationalists not only believe that the people are one, but also firmly believe that the system and the people should be one, which makes them less tolerant of dissent than the establishment nationalists, if such dissent originates from People in the system, they are even more intolerable. This is why Hu Xijin must be criticized and criticized.

On the day of May 4th, Zhang Jun of Tencent posted a Weibo: "When we are busy doing various plans to pay tribute to the youth, the youth are sleeping." In an instant, another battlefield exploded. One of the comments made China's elites tremble: "We woke up once in 1921 and blew the heads of the capitalists. In 2021, I hope we will wake up again and kill you again when we wake up. "Two years ago, Jack Ma first proposed "996 is a blessing", and the barrage of his video on station B changed from "Papa Ma" to "Here comes your worker grandpa." In the past two years, the whole Jianzhong has been talking about "involution", and the popularity of "mourning culture" has more or less revealed the root cause of this problem: because China is developing too fast, so "low desire socialization" also Faster than other countries, young people generally realize that their ascent channel is extremely narrow, and many people simply give up their efforts.

Some of those young people who were unwilling to "lie down" took up Mao Xuan. In groups where young people gather on Douban, such as the "Goose Group" and the "Freedom to Eat Melon", the group members refer to Mao Zedong as a "teacher" and quote his quotations from time to time. "Teacher" has even become the favorite theory of pink feminism Family. There is a question on Zhihu "Why more and more young people are starting to read Mao Xuan", which contains the statistics of a certain publishing house given by the answerer. The sales of Mao Xuan began to grow steadily in 2015, and they started talking about " In the past two years, sales have more than doubled. On the e-commerce platform, Maoxuan has become a hot-selling product. Two-dimensional children will use Mao Xuan's words to play tricks.

If Mao Zedong's re-emergence is somewhat accidental, then Stalin's rise in the status of young Chinese can explain some problems. The account "Russia Today RT" posted a Weibo, referring to a politician in India named "Stalin", and calling Stalin and Hitler a "dictator", which was ridiculed and criticized by young people. Some people may think that the reason why Mao Zedong and Stalin are admired has nothing to do with the left turn of young people's minds, but only because they made the country strong. However, Germany's national strength in Hitler's era was not inferior, but young people blamed Stalin on this account. Feeling very dissatisfied with Hitler. It cannot be said that it has nothing to do with the left and right of thought.

These two battlefields seem to be independent, but in fact they are connected. In addition to the shaping of the times, the change of political winds, and the "indulgence" of establishment statism, the "involution" brought about by rapid development has also promoted the rampage of populist statism. As mentioned earlier, there is an important difference between establishment statists and populist statists, that is, the political cognition of the former was formed in the reform era, and the political cognition of the latter was formed in the new era. This high probability also means that , the former shares much more dividends than the latter. In the eyes of populist statists, establishment statists like Hu Xijin are vested interests, occupying a prominent social position and high-quality social resources, but their stance is not firm, their work is not solid, and their morals do not match. must be knocked down.

What we explain in this article is the rise of populist statism as a whole, not why individual statists are more establishment or populist. This dispute was initially marked as "Hushen Controversy", which in my opinion was completely misguided. Shen Yi's Weibo post was just a whim. Although the populist statists were on his side this time, he was essentially the same as Hu Xijin, both of whom belonged to the establishment statists. The Meridian Knights, Eagle of God, Guyan Muchan and others who stood up behind him are the instigators of populist nationalism. It is said that the Meridian Knight is a former police officer who was dismissed for corruption, while Gu Yan Muchan is the head of the female worker department of the Huidong County Federation of Trade Unions. Some people have summed up the tactics they use: they are usually keen to release some xenophobic information, involving Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, in order to attract the attention of patriotic populists. Their followers are particularly good at digging graves, and they will dig up all the public social platform accounts of this "public known" to the bottom of the sky, and find evidence of their "hate the country" in the way of adding crimes. account, that is basically doomed. In the past few years, countless people have been harassed by Guyan Muchan and his followers to the point of quitting Weibo. Even Luo Xiang, a professor of Chinese politics and law who was very popular on station B, couldn't bear to leave. The Meridian Knights have recently launched several quite successful fascist jihad. Feminists, LGBT, and establishment nationalists are all within his reach, and his supporters cover misogyny, homophobia, populism, and are highly similar to Sichuan fans across the Pacific, using their favorite "faculty" "In other words, it is really "the world is hot and cold", but the world is no longer peaceful.

In the same article mentioned above, Zhao Dingxin argued that the success of China's economy lies in the autonomy of state power and the strong restraint of social forces on this autonomy. Therefore, China's autonomy is "limited autonomy", which is healthy for the development of the political system. Since the reform, China has changed from ideological legitimacy to performance legitimacy, so this restraint on autonomy is not through democratic elections, elite checks and balances, procedural decision-making and news supervision as in Western countries, but mainly comes from performance pressure. He is in danger of mentioning "populism", but he only thinks of the kind of populism that appeals to people's livelihood, or the left-wing populism, but not the kind of populism that converges left and right, or populism with nationalism. In another article, he said that in China since the reform, nationalism and authoritarianism are not compatible, so the Chinese government must suppress the overexpression of the people's nationalist sentiments. But I think his argument is unconvincing. In a sense, Chinese statism is nationalism plus authoritarianism, which can be seen from the commonalities between establishment statists and populist statists. More importantly, this framework for explaining the structure of legitimacy in China today seems to be a bit out of tune.

Arbitrarily speaking, the advantage of the Chinese system is that it can pursue long-termism without taking into account the temporary populist pressure, which may be too self-confident in the system. In my opinion, the challenge to the regime that these populist statists are emerging today is that the pressure they exert is not only about performance legitimacy, but also ideological legitimacy, and it is a combination of performance and legitimacy. an ideology. Mao Zedong Thought, which is now popular among young people, was the main source of ideological legitimacy in the first three decades, while the increasingly out-of-control demands of nationalism on their keyboards are actually an important part of current ideological legitimacy . At the same time, these two ideologies also correspond to the performance requirements, that is, the relative fairness of income distribution and the maintenance of national interests. Three or four years ago, a group of Mao Zuo youths appeared in China, but they basically disappeared after the Jasic Movement. What this group of people brought to the regime at that time was only a heavy pressure of ideological legitimacy (because most of them acted based on idealism, not for personal demands), which has left the authorities with lingering fears. Today’s populist nationalists have brought What is quadruple legality pressure, its challenges can be imagined. In "Fascist Thoughts and Actions in Japan", Maruyama wrote: "The fascist movement from below—that is, every convulsive bout of the radical fascist movement became an opportunity instead, and further promoted the fascist movement from above. fascism.” This is the real test of China’s “institutional advantage.”

Just two days after this article was written, online populists were still beating Hu Xijin, and more and more melons were being dug out of the Global Times' fields. Hu Xijin's Weibo said later that he would be ready to launch a long-range attack on Australia. After a while, I said, "Let the US turn itself into a closed country. Let them engage in extreme infighting and introversion." Regardless of whether these are just a show of peace or represent his true position, the populist nationalism will only be stimulated even more crazy by such a statement, and it will fall into a vicious circle, and the establishment nationalism will eventually suffer its own consequences.