[Key Politics] China's Nonviolent Non-cooperation——Talking about the recent wave of unfinished buildings that have been cut off

In recent months, there has been a wave of unfinished buildings being cut off in many places in China, that is, the owners refuse to repay the mortgage for the unfinished buildings, passively confront banks and developers, and earn a lot of money from land sales. There are many local governments in the country, among which Henan has the largest outage of water supply. This way of fighting reminds me of the classic nonviolent noncooperation.

The concept of "non-violence and non-cooperation" was coined by Gandhi during the Indian independence movement. He called on the Indian people not to do what the British colonial government expected, such as not buying British goods, not going to public schools, not paying taxes, etc., to fight colonial rule and seek independence in a negative way. Naturally, there is no such lofty ideal as India's independence and resistance to colonialism, but behind it lies the essence of non-violent non-cooperation - choosing what not to do, rather than choosing what to do.

An important concept of capitalism is credit. To give a simple example, such as automobiles, the supply-side credit is because the automobile manufacturers do not have enough funds to purchase production equipment and raw materials, so they purchase production from bank loans. After the product comes out, what should consumers do if they have no money to buy it? Consumer credit emerges as the times require: consumers obtain car loans from banks to buy cars, and pay with subsequent income, while car manufacturers can use the sales proceeds to repay the bank loans, and the rest is their profits. This is the basic way capitalist economies scale up. This model also applies to unfinished buildings: consumers take out loans from banks (consumer-side credit) to buy pre-sold homes, allowing developers to earn profits from the sale of the home with a small amount of principal (supplier-side credit).

However, this mechanism turned into a tragedy in the end: developers could not complete the construction task, they patted their butts and walked away with the pre-sale money, while consumers had to be slaves to banks for decades for housing they could not own— - The house cannot be lived in, and the loan will continue to be repaid. In addition, it is believed that the local government, which relies on land finance behind it, also earns a lot of land sales revenue. It is worth mentioning that China only has a corporate bankruptcy system, not an individual bankruptcy system—real estate companies are held accountable, the big deal is declared bankruptcy, and all debts are cleared; while individuals have to spend their lives until they pay off their arrears or die. . In short, behind this tragedy is the gang of developers, banks, and governments, using their power and loopholes to rip off the hands of the people who are just looking for a place to stay, and let the people work for their interests for decades. White labor. Whether it is tolerable or unbearable, these owners may not know the history of Gandhi's struggle, but because of this, they resolutely chose to cut off the confession, so that history and reality intersected here.

As mentioned earlier, the essence of nonviolent noncooperation is choosing what not to do, not choosing what to do. It may not be useful in democratic politics, or vote politics as some say, where protesters can take the initiative without taking too much personal risk. However, under authoritarian politics, you will be beaten by the police or mysterious forces when you gather, and you will be charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble when you petition—the risk is too great for those who take the initiative. Conversely, if you choose non-violence and non-cooperation, those in power will have nothing to do with you: if you choose to do one thing, it can suppress you with swords, guns and sticks, but if you choose not to do one thing, it will be hard for him to handcuff you. Set out to force you to do it. If you don't have children, can it remotely control your pregnancy? You lie flat and don’t work overtime. Could it be that the armed police and the police are all out to escort you into a sweatshop? Of course, there were indeed some totalitarian governments in history that could do it, but today’s China is still some distance away, and this is where nonviolent non-cooperation can play its part.

Back to the point, under the current authoritarian system, cutting off a confession is indeed a passive, non-violent non-cooperative method that is difficult to suppress. When the owners collectively cut off the supply, the first to bear the brunt is the bank as the lender. In the face of general supply failure scenarios, such as buying a completed house and not repaying the loan, the bank can enforce the foreclosure to recover the loss. However, in the face of the current situation of collectively cut off supply and unfinished buildings, assuming that the bank wants to take back the houses of tens of thousands of owners at one time, it is bound to pay extremely high administrative costs, and there may be sporadic resistance in the middle, making the enforcement a tactic. into the thorns. Taking a step back, even if the house is repossessed, it will have no auction value because it is an unfinished building. In the end, it will be reflected on the balance sheet as a lot of bad debts; In this case, why bother at the funny moment--if the developer could fulfill the contract at the beginning, why bother to face the cut off?

Second, the local government's repressive measures are also very limited. Using violent agencies to maintain stability will increase huge stability maintenance expenses. If it is overdone, it will even provoke violent resistance on a large scale, making things more difficult to handle. At the same time, if dealing with a large number of protesters, the resources to deal with other social events will also be reduced, which will also affect the stability of governance. As for the developers, it seems that they can pat their butts and leave, but this is all based on the assumption that the people are willing to work for free. With bad debts and financial turmoil calculated in hundreds of billions of dollars, banks and local governments are bound to pull the developers into the water, and the final outcome is still unknown-either the developers perform the contract, or the developers return the pre-sale money, but in any case, this is more than It is much better for the owner to do white labor for decades.

From the turmoil of unfinished housing in recent months, we have seen China's non-violent non-cooperation - cutting off confessions. The method of non-violence and non-cooperation may not be as shocking as the uprising revolution in textbooks, but its low-intensity, non-severe illegal nature allows a large number of people to participate in the resistance against the exploiters, thereby strengthening the people's organizational ability while at the same time. Expand the scale of the struggle. In the wave of supply cuts, many owners gathered through WeChat groups and offline to organize collective supply cuts and issued a joint letter, and finally let this protest spread to hundreds of unfinished properties across the country. There is no doubt that the organizational skills that the masses have gained from non-violent and non-cooperative movements such as collective cutting of confessions will surely bring inspiration to subsequent struggles, and will also cultivate the soil for the left wing to flourish in China in the long run. After all, the left wing The movement of the people is the movement of the people. When the people are scattered and cannot organize themselves, how can we talk about the left-wing movement?

Author: γ