The Chinese Prisoner's Dilemma (1)

Feb 29, 2020

Ever since the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a document banning the books of Yu Yingshi and Zhang Qianfan in 2014, I have had an indescribable fear, and I feel that there are many hidden worries under this prosperous era. Once the book burning and burying of scholars is started, there may be big problems. At the beginning of Xi's term in 2012, he emphasized the rule of law and the rule of law. In the discussion in the alumni group, someone said that this might be based on Shang Yang's law, and sent out two photos showing that all the behaviors of Xi Jinping were imitating Mao. Before that, I had read Gao Hua's "How the Red Sun Rose", so when he said this, I understood that if we want to learn from Mao and follow Mao's path, then many problems are inevitable, and we may eventually lead to some form of social movement - and I am afraid that it will appear in the form of no matter the cost. No matter the cost means that politics is in command, leadership is supreme, people's livelihood is not valued, and human life is not spared.

I am not saying that such a social movement will definitely occur. I am afraid that it will come back in a disguise and cause great disaster to the Chinese people. Many people think that this is alarmist and groundless, far from their lives, and there is no need to think about such a problem. But what if the probability of this situation occurring is not zero? Is there a factor that has been overlooked that will lead history to develop in the direction of Mao-style social movements, to the extreme left, and ultimately endanger the lives and even lives of every ordinary Chinese? How to discover this factor and stop it? If there is no way to stop it, how to avoid this risk?

What should we do? Just pretend that everything is fine?

Over the years, this question has been lingering in my mind. I can’t help but want to analyze and understand it again and again; I can’t help but want to understand the contemporary history that is really happening in China’s emasculated news and public opinion environment, and I can’t help but think about it... Now I seem to have finally figured it out. So I want to sort out my observations and thoughts over the years.

1. Is China's political environment turning leftward a problem of certain individuals or a historical inevitability?

I tend to think that at this historical juncture of 40 years of reform and opening up, it is inevitable that China's political environment will turn left. No matter whether it is Bo or Xi or anyone else who comes to power, the inertia of the ruling party system and the need to maintain its ruling status will choose to turn left.

The fundamental reason is that the ruling party, under the spiritual core of Mao Zedong Thought, has absorbed the historical knowledge and political achievements of the democratic thoughts in the free world that emerged after the French Revolution, and has realized that if the civic consciousness that has already sprouted in Chinese society is allowed to continue to develop and the thoughts of the emerging middle class demanding social transformation are allowed to take root, China may turn right; if it turns right to a certain extent and develops various forms of civic organizations and leaders, it will produce checks and balances on the ruling party and even threaten it, and China may have to transition to a democratic direction. In the eyes of the ruling party, this is digging its grave. Therefore, the formation of these thoughts, the budding of civil society, and the various self-organizations developed by the people must be suppressed in the cradle, and those that can be incorporated must be incorporated, and those that cannot be incorporated must be disbanded. Bo and Xi have very different educational experiences, but Bo also turned left in Chongqing, singing red and fighting black, and absorbing the assets of private entrepreneurs. I remember that when Bo stepped down, he discussed with his friends in Shanghai that if Bo came to power, he would probably create WG 2.0; unexpectedly, the two ended up in the same place. Although Bo failed in the political struggle, many of his governance ideas seem to have been adopted and continued by Xi, including the innovation of the Internet and electronic surveillance system.

Bo and Xi both grew up in the Mao era, and their youth was spent in the years when Mao's spirit and governance policies swept across China. Qian Liqun said in the introduction to "The Mao Era and the Post-Mao Era":

"Mao Zedong Thought has dominated the way of life, basic thinking and behavior of one-third of the Chinese people in the world for half a century. Mao Zedong used his thoughts to transform the reality of China and the world and the spiritual world of the Chinese people completely consciously, and established a complete set of social life organizational structures from the central government to the grassroots level in accordance with his thinking mode. It is not only an ideological existence, but also a material and organizational existence.

...Mao Zedong Thought has in fact fundamentally changed the way mainland Chinese people think, feel, behave, and even speak in an extremely comprehensive and thorough manner, and has left a deep imprint on the national spirit, character, and temperament, forming the culture and spirit of an era. We can only truthfully call it "Mao Zedong culture."

...It is indeed a new culture outside of traditional Chinese culture. After a long period of organized, planned and guided indoctrination, this Mao Zedong culture has formed a national collective unconsciousness and a new national character in mainland China. "

Bo and Xi's generation witnessed the Mao era, and Mao's influence on them may be at the level of "ideological stamp". As the "great leader, great mentor, and great helmsman" of their youth, Mao's idol status that was almost deified was also the role model for their generation to have the opportunity to aspire to the highest power. For us, Mao exists in movies, TV shows and books, but for them, Mao exists in their flesh and blood, and is the core of their spiritual DNA.

So history has come to a rhyme in our time: when the Red Guard generation was old enough to become national leaders, the reform and opening-up development supported by Deng had also reached a self-contradictory crossroads; so this generation of leaders did not hesitate to seek solutions for this new era in Mao Zedong Thought and decisively turned left.

The inherent contradiction in the era of reform and opening up is that the ideology of socialist countries and the free market economic development model are incompatible. First, the theoretical ideas of governing the country are not self-consistent and self-contradictory; second, the demands of the middle class that have grown up under the waves of urbanization, globalization, and informatization for civil rights have impacted the current system; third, the demands for structural reforms in the economic field caused by the unbalanced development of the economic structure have also begun to impact the political system. Therefore, when reform and opening up reach a certain level, this contradiction has accumulated to a certain extent, and the original path can no longer be taken, and the previous balance can no longer be sustained.

The first contradiction is that the theoretical theory of governing the country cannot be justified. I believe that for readers who have read this far, I don’t need to say more. For example, the preamble of the Constitution states that China is a country "led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants." In fact, after decades of rapid economic development, the ruling party has represented the interests of the bureaucratic capitalist group, and the nature of the party has long changed. If this country is led by the working class, then shouldn’t the working class establish a political party representing its own interests and elect candidates representing the party to compete for local and national leadership positions? Article 35 of the Constitution also stipulates that "Chinese citizens have freedom of speech, publication, assembly, association, procession and demonstration," but in fact, there is no such freedom. The more reform and opening up, the more cooperation and cultural exchanges with the free world, the more comprehensive and in-depth understanding people have of the concept of "freedom." They are infected and influenced by freedom in philosophy, jurisprudence, history, art and other aspects, and realize the importance and sacredness of freedom. Moreover, when the granaries are full, people will know etiquette, which is also something that people will begin to pay attention to and think about after economic development reaches a certain level. In the early morning of the day of Li Wenliang's national funeral, the hashtag "#Iwantfreespeech" appeared on Weibo, but was deleted soon after. The concept of "free speech" was introduced into China with the reform and opening up, and is not endogenous to Chinese culture. Our traditional logic is that the king is the king, the minister is the minister, the father is the father, the son is the son, and the problem is because of corrupt officials; as long as the corrupt officials and treacherous ministers are dealt with, the problem will be solved; we cannot look for the reasons in the system and the leaders.

Therefore, the first and second contradictions are two ways of expressing the same problem; their essence is that there is no way to carry out reform and opening up in certain economic fields while completely avoiding cultural reform and opening up and exchanges with the free world in the non-material and non-economic fields. When people gradually realize the great significance of the basic values of freedom of speech, separation of powers, and the inviolability of private property, which are regarded as the norms of the free world, in real life and the operation of modern society, they will naturally generate a trend of thought and power to promote change. This is ultimately because the market economy has developed naturally on the political foundation and value system of the free world, while for China it is borrowed along the line of "Chinese learning as the body, Western learning for practical use"; when this "useful" market economy develops and grows to a certain extent, it will produce a rejection reaction with Mao Zedong Thought, which is "the body".

For those working in the financial industry, I don’t need to say much about this third contradiction. “Structural reform” is a topic that has been mentioned for many years but has never been truly promoted. Foreign investors have gone from expectation to disappointment to oblivion, and it is almost no longer mentioned. I don’t want to talk about economic issues for the time being, because it is not clear in a few short sentences. Due to the administrative and judicial systems, there are problems with our capital and resource allocation system, resulting in the dividends of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and economic reform policies still flowing into the hands of companies or private groups that do not create value. I am afraid that more economic problems will appear in the next decade.

These three contradictions have accumulated over the past few decades of reform and opening up. I believe that the country's top leaders have long seen these contradictions, and they see them more clearly and deeply than I do.

Before the anti-corruption campaign was launched in 2013, Wang Qishan recommended the book "The Old Regime and the Revolution" to provincial and ministerial officials for reading. This incident was also mentioned in the editor's preface of the book published in the mainland. I was shocked at the time. It turned out that Wang Qishan had already thought about the problem I was thinking about. What I was thinking about was how and under what circumstances social reforms that promote democracy and freedom occurred in other countries. And I believe that the ruling party's perspective is that if we follow the reform and give people more freedom, what will be the benefit to us and what will be our fate? Tocqueville mentioned in "The Old Regime and the Revolution" that Louis XVI was a more enlightened monarch than Louis XIV and XV. He had given the French people more freedom at the time, making France the freest country in Europe at the time, but he was still sent to the guillotine by the people during the Great Revolution. Therefore, after reading this book, I began to worry about the direction of China's political situation. If the ruling party believes that giving people more freedom may lead to a violent revolution and send itself to the guillotine, then any rational person in that position will do everything possible to stifle this force that may lead to change. Later I saw Chen Pokong's comments on this matter in 2013. My interpretation is consistent with his, and I agree with his analysis.

This is a bit like the chain of suspicion in "The Three-Body Problem". The ruling party believes that civil society will destroy itself, so it must first destroy the civil society that has not yet been formed. For example, the Liren Rural Library, which is introduced on Wikipedia. At that time, one of the local governments actually expelled the local Liren Library on the grounds that "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" involved religious issues. I have been to the poorest villages in China with other NGOs. What people there lack is information and knowledge. Donating money to build schools cannot solve their problems. Even if you have money, you can't buy books to enlighten the people and sufficient educational resources. Liren Library was sending enlightenment books to children in the mountains, but was forced to retreat by the government; the founder Chen Kun and his girlfriend Ling Lisha were arrested at the time because Ling Lisha printed 500 copies of materials about the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong at a copy shop in Beijing.

In an open letter issued when the Liren Library ended its operations, it said:

"The authorities' suppression of opponents is against national law, justice and conscience, and is a huge harm to the transitional society."

"We have long stated that our actions over the years have proven that what we are interested in is education, the growth and future of concrete Chinese youth. China will inevitably transform into a society that is more in line with human nature and the laws of nature. In this process, there will inevitably be changes in power. The Liren Library has no intention of paying attention to recent power changes. It just hopes to cultivate more "healthy and normal modern citizens" with independent thinking, clear rationality, and free personality for future social construction. Your persecution of the Liren people has no effect on alleviating the pressure faced by the regime, but it has caused real harm to the transformation and reconstruction of society. Your crimes today will be judged by justice in the future."

It can be seen that civic organizations such as the Liren Library did not know that they were to be destroyed. This chain of suspicion between the ruling party and civic organizations is different from the Three-Body Movement in that the ruling party was determined to destroy the other party, while the other party did not know that the other party had already started to kill, nor did they understand the other party's thinking, so there was no such "suspicion", and they even still expected and actively sought to cooperate with organizations within the system to promote the goal of social transformation - so when they went to the copy shop to print materials for the Hong Kong Occupy Central movement, they did not expect to be arrested.

The emergence of private NGOs like the Liren Library is also a clear proof of the existence of the second contradiction discussed above. In addition to the Liren Library, there are also social investigation journalists, human rights lawyers, independent media professionals such as Shen Yongping who filmed documentaries such as "A Century of Constitutionalism", etc. Their voices, deeds and even names no longer exist inside the wall, but I believe that history will definitely remember them. Their blood and tears have forged the monument of our era.

Therefore, the authorities’ turn to the left is an inevitable choice in the face of the endogenous reform force of the people turning to the “right”. This is due to both greed for power and fear of the people. As Qian Liqun pointed out:

"The absolute power of the one-party dictatorship established during the Mao Zedong era, which is unconstrained, unrestricted, and unsupervised, is the lifeline of the current Chinese rulers. They will never give up the one-party dictatorship system established by Mao Zedong. Specifically, there are three points that will never waver. First, the people will never be given freedom of speech, association, and publication. There may be some relaxation, but the ban will never be lifted. Especially in association, the Communist Party must be the 'only one'. The reason why the Kuomintang collapsed so quickly in 1949 (in fact, the corruption of the Communist Party today is no less than that of the Kuomintang back then) is because there are opposition organizations like the Communist Party. People who are dissatisfied with the Kuomintang will choose the Communist Party. Now, no matter how dissatisfied people are with reality, they have no one to pin their hopes on, and can only hope for the reform of the Communist Party. Secondly, the party controls the army and the party commands the gun. The army will never be nationalized. This is also an iron principle set by Mao Zedong. Third, the party's authorization system, power must be authorized by the party, and elections cannot be implemented to grant power to the people. These three points will never waver. Under the premise of not shaking these three core principles of Mao Zedong culture, there will be great flexibility..."

Therefore, it is inevitable that the ruling party has begun to turn left and seek tools from Mao Zedong Thought to maintain the stability of the regime at this time of the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up. No matter who comes to power, they will make the same choice. Those warriors who want to promote social transformation but can only fight alone and cannot unite with the vast majority of Chinese people are so vulnerable when facing the ruling party. At the least, they will be imprisoned, and at the worst, they will be crushed to pieces. And those who expect the ruling party to show leniency, respond to the voices of citizens, and implement Article 35 of the Constitution should not have any more illusions. Whoever is committed to promoting the implementation of Article 35 of the Constitution is a hostile force in the eyes of the ruling party and a fundamental destabilizing factor for the crisis regime. This is also the dilemma of people at both ends of the "chain of suspicion". Once this chain is formed, as long as one end begins to feel that the other side wants to kill me, then the two ends will inevitably fight to the death, and there seems to be no room for a handshake and a peaceful solution in the middle. The other end of the chain is the great and glorious party, and the other end of the chain is a small number of awakened citizens who are scattered and scattered. This is the first dilemma of the Chinese people today.

(To be continued, the planned contents are as follows)

2. Is a centralized political system the historical choice of the Chinese people?

3. Is China’s national destiny still trapped in the feudal dynasty’s cycle of order and chaos?

4. Have we reached a historical breaking point?

5. The Chinese Prisoner’s Dilemma

6. What can we do?

refer to:

The New York Times reported on Liren Library

https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20141211/c11detentions/

An open letter from Liren Library

http://www.chinadevelopmentbrief.org.cn/news-16604.html

Chen Pokong: Why did Wang Qishan recommend "The Old Regime and the Revolution"?