Fan circles and civil society under the new crown epidemic

Press: There are some differences between this version and the version circulating in other places, so I still hope to send it out in matter.

Since the new crown epidemic, the superiority of the national model has been seriously questioned. As early as late December, eight doctors from different hospitals in Wuhan cautiously issued an alert in their WeChat group, but they were summoned and "admonished" by the Wuhan police, and they were called by CCTV as "the Internet is not outside the law". The virus was isolated within the first week of the new year, but the National Health Commission, Hubei and Wuhan authorities were slow to respond, and even allowed the citizens of Wuhan to hold a "Wanjia Banquet", causing the epidemic to get out of control After the closure of the city, public transportation was stopped, and Hubei officials swore that the supplies were sufficient, but the front-line doctors had to appeal to all sectors of society for donations of medical supplies, and a large number of citizens suspected of being infected could not receive treatment and could only survive on their own. extinguish. Based on this, "New York Times" columnist Keith Dao furiously declared that the world is now paying the price for China's dictatorship.

Compared with the inefficiency and inefficiency of the bureaucratic system, some private voluntary organizations have performed well this time: some overseas students gathered quickly through the Internet to collect donations, purchase materials, contact logistics, and open up relationships in a short period of time. Masks and protective clothing were delivered to front-line hospitals; on January 31, a batch of emergency medical supplies donated by Direct Relief and assisted by Wuhan University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology's alumni association in Northern California flew from San Francisco to the Pacific Ocean, directly delivering 200,000 medical supplies Surgical masks, 27,500 pairs of medical gloves and 4,000 protective suits were sent to Wuhan Union Hospital; until February 1, Han Hong's foundation sent seven batches of materials to Wuhan, and received a total of 140 million donations. Large, but also had to suspend accepting donations.

However, the most impressive thing is the various fan circle support clubs. The volunteer groups mentioned above are either temporarily assembled, and the tacit understanding is not very high, or they are usually less active and have limited execution ability. However, the fan circle support group has a large number of people, strict organization, and clear division of labor. Anti-black, well-trained, disciplined, and at critical moments, they show amazing explosiveness. According to the ranking of donation amounts of different sites on Weibo's fundraising platform "Weibo", the top ones are basically support stations for various traffic stars (individuals or groups). And as early as January 21, the day after Zhong Nanshan announced the human-to-human transmission of the virus, Zhu Yilong's charity support station raised nearly 180,000 donations, purchased 300,000 masks, 90,000 alcohol pads and 2,000 bottles Hand sanitizer will be sent to the epidemic area on the 22nd. Cai Xukun's official fan group also raised donations, contacted manufacturers, contacted hospitals, searched for logistics, and obtained relevant certificates as soon as possible. The first batch of supplies arrived at the SF Express branch in Wuhan on the second day of the new year. Most of the fan circle support clubs started to organize donations and purchase delivery materials on January 23, and their response speed was much faster than other voluntary groups. Not only that, the donation accounts of these support associations are clear and clear at a glance, and they work meticulously to ensure that the materials are directly delivered to the hospital without going through other organizations. Some people on Weibo also joked that the TFBOYS Support Association developed a structure of "separation of powers" in the process of supporting Wuhan, and maybe Montesquieu, Rousseau and Locke will soon appear in the rice circle.

Take the "666 Alliance" as an example, this is a fan circle charity alliance composed of 27 fan groups from the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas. Fan groups gathered on different platforms such as "Bo" and "Li Ronghao Bar". Most of the alliance's members are so-called "decision-makers" in the fan circle with experience in dealing with emergencies. After they assembled, they first claimed their areas of expertise, because although different fan circle groups are fully functional, they also have their own areas of expertise. This time, the support, copywriting, drawing and overseas docking are all handled by different groups. They opened a WeChat group of the 666 Alliance to determine the medical standards for various required materials, and then mobilized various groups in the group to find the goods. If there is news from any side, they will immediately ventilate in the group. Solve together online.

This type of organization is a good combination of unity and flexibility, tacit understanding and breadth. These fan circle groups usually have contacts and have the characteristics of a kind of "acquaintance society", but their union can mobilize fans from all over the world to the greatest extent and provide more possibilities for finding various materials. Their copywriting and pictures are shared, and information is exchanged, but the funds are raised by each group itself, and how to use it is also regulated internally, and other groups do not interfere; as the solidarity unfolds, some of these groups have received funds outside Wuhan. For help information sent by hospitals in other places, after they approved the hospital information, they decided to expand the existing target and provide fixed-point assistance to these hospitals.

It is under such momentum that some people have the idea that after this epidemic, maybe the government will see the weak links in the work of government organizations and allow NGOs to develop as a useful supplement to social governance. Some people even imagine that since the influence of the fan circle is so huge and the culture of the fan circle is everywhere, maybe the fan circle can become the prototype of the future civil society. The basis of social autonomy.

I want to throw cold water on those who have these thoughts: they not only do not understand the concept of civil society, the past civil society movements in China, and the logic of Chinese political governance, but also do not necessarily understand the fan circle itself. Rather than saying that this epidemic is a good opportunity for Chinese civil society to make a comeback, it is better to say that it is a reflection of the past civil society movements.

Civil society, by definition, is the sum of social middle-level organizations within a political entity. These middle-level organizations are between the state, individuals and families, and their members can join and leave freely. According to Konhauser's theory, there are four main functions of social middle organization. First, they can take on functions that the state cannot or cannot manage, and that the family cannot relate to. Second, middle-level organizations can provide a platform for discussions within the organization, among middle-level organizations, and between middle-level organizations and the state. Third, they can promote a sense of identity and diversity of interests. Finally, the populace can deal with the national elite through the elite of the middle organization. In Andreas Wimmer's latest book, Nation-building, he also argues that voluntary organizations can help build coalitions across ethnic communities and regions to promote political integration and nation-building.

In the Chinese context, the term "civil society" has a special meaning. It once represented the eager expectation of a generation of liberal intellectuals for political transformation, as well as their frustration and confusion today. In the Mao era, the Communist Party basically eradicated clan organizations, gangs and chambers of commerce, and then brought the people under control through various organizations that penetrated into the grassroots, and no longer allowed the existence of any social self-organization that was not controlled by the state. During the reform period, the emergence of the market economy gave the public a certain space (albeit fragile) free from political interference, and some liberal intellectuals hoped that this space would expand steadily and eventually promote the democratization of Chinese politics. "Civil society" is the ideal form of this expanded space. In the formation of a civil society, the awakening of civic consciousness and the emergence of a large number of social middle-level organizations are necessary conditions. It is possible to form pressure on the ruling party and force political reform under appropriate conditions.

Xu Zhiyong, the former leader of the "Gongmeng", is the representative of this line. From 2004 to 2009, Xu Zhiyong cooperated with Guo Yushan and others to participate in a series of events with public influence, such as the Chen Guangcheng case, the Shibaobao case, and the Deng Yujiao case. In May 2012, Xu Zhiyong published "China's New Citizens Movement" in the "China Human Rights Biweekly", proposing: "The New Citizens' Movement is a political movement, and China must complete the transformation of political civilization and establish a free China with sound democracy and the rule of law. "Under this banner, Xu Zhiyong further promoted the equal rights of household registration education, the publicity of officials' property and the citizens' drinking in the same city. The "Gongmeng" under his leadership (the "Gongmeng" was renamed "Citizen" in March 2010), as a non-governmental organization, played an indispensable role in these events and trained many next-generation activists .

It is precisely because of this that Xu Zhiyong's imprisonment is a sign of the collapse of this "civil society" line. On July 16, 2013, Xu Zhiyong was criminally detained in Beijing for the crime of "gathering a crowd to disturb order in a public place". On January 26 of the following year, he was sentenced to four years in prison. The "citizen" has since disappeared. Subsequently, Guo Yushan's "Preaching Knowledge", the Army's "Yi Renping" and Li Yingqiang's "Realan University" were also forcibly closed down. These organizations were relatively more "depoliticized", and they thought they could escape the disaster. In 2015, a group of human rights lawyers who had fought alongside Xu Zhiyong were also imprisoned. In the following year, the Charity Law and the Law on the Administration of Domestic Activities of Overseas NGOs were promulgated, which basically blocked the independent living space of rights NGOs and public welfare NGOs, and an era ended.

However, the idea of "civil society" was not abandoned with the failure of the "civil society" line. Afterwards, some liberal intellectuals were still willing to use "enlightenment" and "public reasoning" to improve the "citizenship" of the Chinese people, while others began to look for more resilient types of organizations than NGOs and joined them. They no longer have expectations of promoting gradual political transformation, and they are more concerned about where new sources of order can be generated once the political order collapses. A general order that does not rely on force to maintain requires not only civil organizations that can unite a sufficient number of people and can undertake mutual aid functions, but also shared norms that allow these organizations to communicate, coordinate and cooperate. In Tocqueville's eyes, the United States in the 1830s, the former is various Christian churches, the latter is "people's feelings". Perhaps because of this, some liberals converted to Christianity. Rather than saying that they were disheartened about changing society and only wanted to save their souls, it was better to say that they re-selected a curved path to save the country.

These thoughts have not escaped the eyes of the party-state. In February 2018, the new "Regulations on Religious Affairs" came into effect. In December of the same year, Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Church, one of the representatives of the post-70s liberals, was arrested in Chengdu. At the end of December 2019, Pastor Wang was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of "inciting subversion of state power" and "illegal business operations." In the past two years, other religions have also become sensitive, it has become more and more difficult to conduct religious activities in public, and it has become more difficult to publish religious books. The meaning of the party-state is quite clear: it cannot accept the existence of organizations that are not under its control, much less allow the emergence of other organizations capable of orderly production.

From this perspective, it is much clearer to understand the chaos of governance since the announcement of the epidemic. Because some hospitals and doctors "crossed the line" to ask the public for help, and because some voluntary groups acted faster than the authorities' response, there were initially a hundred flowers at home and abroad to show solidarity with Wuhan. However, the official charitable organizations Hubei Red Cross, Hubei Charity Federation, Hubei Youth Development Fund, Wuhan Charity Federation, and Wuhan Red Cross began to monopolize aid. These government-run organizations forcefully collect donated materials, distribute them arbitrarily, and deal with the management and delivery of materials in an uncooperative or perfunctory manner, so that Wuhan Union Hospital, as the first battlefield, only received 3,000 masks allocated by the Red Cross. The Wuhan Renai Hospital under the Putian Department received 18,000 masks; Xiehe’s department staff were all rejected when they went to the Red Cross warehouse to apply for supplies, while the driver of the Hubei AW vehicle could take away a box of masks; Xiehe’s medical staff reduced surgical operations Masks are made from clothing, and protective clothing is made of medical garbage bags. However, Taobao, Wechat, and Xianyu actually have sources of donated masks. Ma Guoqiang, secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, emphasized at a press conference on January 27 that all donated materials must go through the Red Cross, in order to "unify the focal point" and "to avoid being chaotic in the current process of epidemic prevention and control. Some people or some people come to take advantage of the loopholes."

The so-called "chaos" and "loopholes" are nothing more than fear that non-governmental organizations and non-governmental charitable actions will take the opportunity to expand. Some highly influential voluntary groups have been found by some departments of the system. This is an attempt to incorporate, and it is also a form of surveillance and prevention. Although these departments may not necessarily give them clear instructions, these groups dare not. Disclose to the media the institutional obstacles they encountered in the process of helping materials, or talk about it in public to prevent trouble. In the past few days, there have been various smears against the Han Hong Foundation on the Internet, ranging from the transparency of accounts, the proportion of public welfare expenditures to Han Hong's own style of life, which is probably related to her widely circulated part of the satire of government-run charities. Not irrelevant. The Wuhan Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued an announcement on February 7, which included the following sentence: "We will deal with the protective equipment directly donated to the relevant units bypassing the Red Cross Society. The post-autumn settlement has been put on the agenda.

Under this pressure, what is the status of various fan circle groups? Although their efficiency is being ridiculed for the incompetence of the Red Cross, and their actions appear to be highly spontaneous, these groups are unlikely to be truly "social intermediaries," nor citizens to create any sense. society.

If we are not too forgetful, we should remember that last summer, various fan circle support clubs organized a large-scale collective expedition, and created "Brother Ah Zhong", the collective idol of the fan circle. In this expedition, the organizational characteristics of the fan circle with clear goals, rapid mobilization, meticulous division of labor, and strong discipline have also been highlighted. They set up technical guidance, art team, copywriting team, and translation team for the purpose of overcoming the wall and overseas publicity.

Some people think that such organizational characteristics are neutral, and they can be used both by nationalism and for the purpose of social mutual assistance, such as the anti-epidemic solidarity this time. The circles are not the same group of people, and the values between the two groups may be very different.

This statement is not necessarily true. On the WeChat public account "Wasteland Lab", there is an article "A Fan Circle Supporting Wuhan", which interviewed a girl in the fan circle, Xiao Z. Xiao Z admitted that he was a member of the rice circle expedition last year, and was proud of it. In fact, the motives of Xiao Z's participation in the fan circle expedition and this solidarity action are not fundamentally different. They both have the purpose of "renaming the girls in the fan circle" to let the public know that they also care about national affairs; in addition, Expeditions to overseas social media and solidarity with Wuhan can also bring positive effects to their idols.

The mentality of Xiao Z is very representative. In the action of participating in the fan circle, a "collective psychology" may be formed. On the one hand, there is a fanatical worship of an idol. This worship transcends all rational purposes. Energy, and when necessary, you can tear up your usual personality (for example, a normally gentle person torn with others for idols), on the other hand, there is a "sense of belonging" to join a certain group. This sense of belonging is at the same time. It also creates "peer pressure," causing participants to do things they wouldn't do outside the group. Some people in the fan circle will reflect outside the action of the fan circle, but they will still participate in these actions unconsciously, and this is the reason.

This idolatry and collectivism can easily rise to the "state," both as an idol and as the largest collective. This is why it is often said that the two groups of "fan circle" and "little pink" are highly overlapping and isomorphic, and it is also why the rice circle is usually so depoliticized, but it can be quickly politicized at critical times. Political correctness in the rice circle is not the Political Correctness of Europe and the United States. The participation of some women with feminist tendencies in the rice circle cannot change the overall "patriarchal-nationalist" tendency of the rice circle. The "fan circle language" that permeates the entire Chinese Internet has the characteristics of "low childishness" and "personification", which is not so much a reaction to "masculinity", but a kind of semantic opium.

In fact, the official organization that interacts with them (manages them) already knows all about the cultural psychology of the fan circle. After the Huoshenshan Hospital and Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan were announced to start construction, the “24 Hours of Epidemic Situation” of the CCTV channel opened the “Cloud Supervisor” function in a timely manner to broadcast the construction phenomenon live. After the comments began to personify various construction vehicles and took on the nicknames of low-level children, icons such as "fork sauce" and "vomit mud sauce" appeared on the channel soon, and fans could help their favorite "idol" vehicles. . The official Weibo account of People's Daily also launched the "Excavator Sky Group" on its own page.

This is not a compromise by the authorities on the culture of the fan circle. On the contrary, it really shows that the authorities are closely monitoring the every move of the younger generation of the fan circle. Compared with middle-level organizations in civil society, fan circle groups are not independent. On the one hand, the state controls the career development of idols they admire in China, and the official media criticizing an artist by name is enough to make the artist's career seriously regress or even come to an end. This is also why the girls in the fan circle who participated in solidarity with Wuhan tried their best to emphasize that their idols are positive energy during interviews, and they did these things to spread the positive energy of their idols. On the other hand, they often need to resort to public power and official organizations to resolve their conflicts, and it is not an accident that they "report" the popularity of the fandom to official Weibo.

Some people liken the Fanquan group to the Christian Church in Tocqueville, because the latter also has some less "liberal" characteristics, similar to the Fanquan. If the Christian church could be the organizing foundation of American society in the 1830s, why couldn't the rice circle? The difference is that although the Christian churches in the United States are rarely really far from politics, they can maintain a large degree of independence from the regime. Most of the time, they insist that religious authority is higher than political authority. They also rarely compromise easily when they conflict with their own understanding of the teachings of the Bible. In contrast, the girls in the fan circle announced early that "there are no idols in front of the country", and if there is a conflict between idols and national interests, they will "unfollow" without hesitation.

From the perspective of organizational characteristics, collective psychology, values, behavior patterns, functional roles, and independence, fan circle groups have nothing to do with civil society, but they and the state are not completely the relationship between fish and chopping blocks. For rice circle groups, the authorities must guard against them on the one hand, and take advantage of them on the other hand, which is why they have not encountered the fate of forcibly disbanding non-governmental organizations such as Gongmeng, Chuanzhixing, and Liren University for the time being. Some fans in the fan circle have opinions on some organizations representing the official government, and they are not satisfied with the way the country "caters" to the girls in the fan circle, but such dissatisfaction does not imply that they hope or can make the country develop in a more progressive direction. Rather, they want to change the purely unilateral relationship between them and the country. Even if their relationship to the country changes, nothing will really change in the country's overall environment and trends.

If things may be in another way, I am more inclined to think that the relationship between the country and the fan circle is "interpenetrating". We have not yet known the result of this mutual infiltration, but it is not impossible for the fan circle to become more nationalistic than the official one. If one day, the above-mentioned fan circle model is completely separated from traffic idols and completely politicized, it will be fine. Strange. Fanquan has a flexible figure that can easily cross Brave New World and 1984. At present, its potential has not been fully demonstrated. When it truly shows its "subjectivity", it should be when they use more extreme nationalism to counter the official. . If the fan circle can become a source of organization for the creation of a new order, the result may be the opposite of what those proponents of civil society envisioned.

There is also an optimistic possibility that most of the elements of the fan circle model are coincidences. It just happened that various talent shows invented online voting, Baidu appeared on Tieba, and Weibo developed functions such as hot search, super chat, and ranking, which cultivated the strong organization and mobilization ability of these fan circle groups. It just happened that some star chasing Some people are also patriotic, and they happen to be favored by official organizations as propaganda for good interaction between officials and the people. Everything will stop there. There are some facts here, but after 2012, the political logic will be based on the worst-case scenario.

If this fight against the epidemic can really help civil society in the future, it should be the shaping of a shared memory. Not remembering how we were "one-hearted" and "unifying" or the "cutest people" that the system sings about, but how we got where we are today, and how the people who saved lives were absurd The sacrifices made by decision makers, remember how people far away and those around you are humiliated, expelled, abandoned, and dehumanized by power, remember how a living human life perished in helplessness and despair, and remember how a righteous person was killed. Murdered by Leviathan. As Liu Shaohua said, "people who survived in China" must "pay attention to and explore history, and understand the price paid for cooperating with the shackles of the main ideology." A government that doesn't know the lessons of history will still put on a fig leaf and will still be unable to protect you and your beloved country and home."