552 Echoes in the abyss, where is the return journey? |Xiao Han

Beast Press: Continuing the thoughts caused by re-reading Li Jingrui's "Survivor's Notes: Stranger in the Plague" , this article will introduce Li Jingrui's husband Xiao Han. Li Jingrui recalled:

"Xiao Han and I fell in love and got married quickly after we met, and a new world came crashing down. It was a mixture of happiness, fear, and the road ahead.

At first, we only talked about literature. Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Shen Congwen, Maugham. I bought him Li Er's "Colorado" and Norman Manea's "On Clowns," and he told me to watch Brodsky's "Children of Civilization." I read literary works with a strong political connotation, but I seldom connect it with the blue sky and white sun outside the window. I fell in love with a university teacher who was talking about June 4th in class, but I didn't realize the abyss that might be hidden behind it. We went to Houhai for a drink on a midsummer evening. We saw the light shining on the water, but we quickly retreated. For a period of time, the light and the darkness were in harmony, and there was an ambiguous shadow in the middle, and we lived there.

Uncontrollably, the topic radius slowly expands, and literature can no longer be filled with love, because life is just like that. He mentioned Liu Xiaobo, I checked it out, oh, he is a poet, but his poems are average. He mentioned Wang Juntao, and I checked again. Oh, the defense attorney is Zhang Sizhi, I know Zhang Sizhi. He mentioned Xu Zhiyong and Teng Biao, yes, I know them, I am a reporter, and a reporter should know about the Sun Zhigang case. He focused on Guo Yushan, and I focused on checking. Oh, he studied economics and participated in two NGOs, one called Chuanzhixing and the other called Gongmeng. He was a fat man.

One day in July 2009, we went to eat Mister Pizza. On the first floor of Carrefour in Tongzhou, he answered the phone, hung up a few minutes later and told me: Xu Zhiyong was taken away.

At that time, unlike now, I already had a complete answering procedure for the matter of being "taken away": Taken away by whom? National security or police station? Are there any procedures? What is the procedure? Summoned or Detained? Administrative detention or criminal detention? What is the charge? The maximum sentence for this crime is how many years? Have you signed a power of attorney in advance and hired a good lawyer?

At that time, I just said dumbly: Ah... what should I do then?

Just like every time a friend was "taken away" later, everyone began to discuss what to do. But in fact never really find out "what to do", they have prison, we only have faith, morality, and love. Thinking of this, I was terrified to death.

I was afraid that Xiao Han would even go to prison one day, but there was nothing he could do. I'm 27 years old, and it's hard to find a man in love. I can't give up my current love for a terrifying possibility. However, I am also a weak person. The biggest physical pain I have experienced in my life is only to have my wisdom teeth pulled, and I would shed a few tears when I cut vegetables.

I forgot what "how to do" after that. It seems that Xiao Han packed a black car and ran around looking for someone to sign the open letter. It seems that Guo Yushan called in the middle of the night, and the two men chatted for five hours. I woke up several times in the middle, and saw that the night outside the curtain was getting less dark, and I turned my head and fell asleep again. Later, Xu Zhiyong came out.

After the second half of 2010, the environment deteriorated a little bit. It's not how good the environment was before, but it's always been like this in recent years. When we thought things couldn't get any worse, we found out that they were a little worse.

Before that, our families were generally living a normal life. Xiao Han is a university teacher and publishes articles in the media from time to time. Although his blog is always deleted, he always stays there. Occasionally, someone from "above" reminds him through the school not to speak on certain issues. But these reminders come and go, but they don't prevent us from immersing ourselves in married life, walking a long way to eat skewers at twelve o'clock in the middle of the summer in the middle of the night. Brush with sauce. We walked home after we were full, the night wind was sultry, and the moonlight shone down the road ahead. We deliberately didn’t look at the heavy shadows on both sides.

When the situation changes, we don't always realize the danger. It may be because of dullness. More likely, when there is an elephant in the room, people who have not been trampled to death for a while are prone to selective blindness. Knowing that the flood will come to life eventually, but when the water level is only slowly increasing, we were still swimming happily at first, and then we thought that as long as we climbed to the heights, we could struggle to survive, but we forgot that there is a ceiling above our heads, we are already close. vertex.

Xiao Han's blog was shut down. Suspended by school. Weibo accounts keep getting deleted. One day we went to Kong Yiji and friends to have dinner on Liangguang Road. As we approached the finish line, a Santana without a license plate forced us to stop the black car. Two men dragged Xiao Han out of the back seat and stuffed him into their car. I stood on the side of the road for a while in a daze, the noise of the car was loud, the smoke was exhausted, everyone in the road was irritable, what just happened was the whole world to me, but the whole world did not see it small us. I decided to continue to eat, and I wanted to eat more. After eating a bowl of rice, I ordered another bowl of rice.

He came home at two in the middle of the night, full of energy, ate a lunch box of fried buns that I had packed for him, told me that they put a black hood on him, went to an unknown place, and talked with him a few times. When he was an hour old, he put on a black hood and sent him home again. He didn't suffer, and he smoked a lot of their cigarettes. I had nothing to say, so I could only ask him, "Are the steamed buns delicious? What kind of stuffing?" I never went to that Kong Yiji shop again, although there was my favorite Dongpo Pork in it, every time I went to Chongwen The door is subconsciously trying to avoid the right turn intersection. In a certain summer, a man drowned under the Guangqumen Bridge. At that time, we were in our hometown in Sichuan, and the news broadcasted the rescue of him live. We just watched as he was overwhelmed by the flood and died. In a city that doesn't rain a few times a year, he died in a torrential rain. The real world has long written parables, and we unfortunately have a role to play in it, and there is no way to escape it.

At the end of April 2012, the police came to raid the house once, and Xiao Han was taken away for eight hours. The house raiding process was like a nightmare that was repeatedly rehearsed. There was nothing beyond my imagination. I didn’t know what to fear at the moment. I just kept flipping through a Garfield cartoon like a neurotic. Garfield said, Look at the bright side, at least Mondays only happens once a week (think good, after all, there is only one Monday in a week). I thought, where's the bright side, if Monday is ahead. A policeman seemed to have forgotten his identity. First, he felt that there were so many books at home, and then he asked me "how much money do graduates from famous universities earn?" Finally, when he saw Xiao Han's calligraphy on the desk, he said, tsk tsk. After complimenting him for a while, he said, "Yo, your husband is really literate, look how beautifully written this word is". I was confused again and didn't know how to face him. No matter what, I felt guilty, either against my emotions or against my upbringing.

Most of the time, the glory of "dissidents" only exists in Weibo and Moments. Their existence means that there are still so few people in this country. It would be ridiculous to keep those who read aloud in the current Chinese discourse system. values, such as freedom or justice, we cross them briskly and fulfill our moral obligations with retweets and likes, but they really have to face such a life without a way out. After Yu Shan and Xia Lin were arrested, some international media reported their stories one after another, but I know that the reports will become less and less until they disappear. The cause for which they paid a heavy price was made of ice. The knife has its sharp moments, but "era" is too hot a word, they will eventually melt, and there will be no trace.

Xiao Han: China 2018, where is the return journey?

Inscription

Our silence is our own funeral in advance;

Turning his head and closing his eyes, it was the graveyard he dug in advance.

foreword

I have always liked "Nineteen Ancient Poems". There are many famous lines in it that people are familiar with. One of them is "Life is a lifetime, and it is like dust." As a Chinese, people who have been reincarnated in this land for thousands of years, perhaps Can feel this feeling. Let’s not talk about the distant history, let’s just say that in the past six years, Chinese people can hear the echo of the cracked beams in the hustle and bustle of death in almost all fields that have something to do with life, such as politics, economy, culture and even diplomacy. This sense of tossing, powerlessness, and impermanence is especially shocking to a large number of middle-income urban residents-those who have been pressed at the bottom and have never been allowed to move before, this shock will be delayed by the long-term numbness occur.

As someone who has long been devoted to the study of power and the search for ways to tame it, I feel more humiliated than angry and sad about this situation. Due to the total loss of the publishing platform, I have gradually become numb and blind to many evils from the initial inability to speak. This avoidance is like the dissection of himself in Hafner's memoir "The Story of a German (1914-1938)", where he, like countless others in the era of the Third Reich, pretended that the concentration camps did not exist. However, the truth is that concentration camps exist, just like in Xinjiang now, they exist. Avoidance doesn't make it non-existent, it only increases the speed at which a country falls into the abyss.

The humiliation forced me to write this text, it was originally just a monologue of mine, and it was published publicly because I did not believe in Kant's so-called inner freedom, and preferred Hannah Arendt's opinion, public Freedom in life does not exist if it cannot be manifested externally. In public life, the so-called inner freedom is often just a fig leaf for cowardice and cynicism, and the public release of this monologue is to tear off my own fig leaf.

I hope that after I no longer pretend that I can't see the elephant in the house, I can continue my previous and present thinking, and I will not feel at ease in the humiliation.

what happened in the past six years

As early as the end of 2009, during the first season of the Li Zhuang case, I was shocked that the Chongqing model at that time might be the future model of the CCP trying to lock China. :

Continue to strengthen ideological control. Although the CCP’s own ideology has gone bankrupt, they still hope to be able to come back to life, even if there is no hope, they will struggle;

Intensify efforts to crack down on all organizational and disorganized forces with the characteristics of civil society, including religious beliefs, press and publication, laws, NGOs, and all other social existences that the CCP considers to be jeopardizing its rule;

Further search for the middle and upper economic classes, and some of the proceeds are used to buy off the enslavement of the bottom;

Expand the military and prepare for war, follow the path of militarism, and launch wars to relieve difficulties when the regime faces serious crises.

In short, it is nothing more than to further strengthen the CCP's control over all fields, including politics, economy and culture, and keep its expectations of tyranny over China forever. The fall of Bo Xilai has nothing to do with the overall situation. In the second half of 2012, when the current leader of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, took charge of the political situation in China, this path became increasingly clear, until now the whole country is full of chicken feathers, because their actions are much more stupid than I could imagine at the time.

I have no way of knowing how all this happened, I can only list the phenomena of the past six years.

In a totalitarian country like China, pseudo-politics has long been alienated to the point of becoming the soul of life, and everyone's life is more or less eroded by it. There are basically no people in China who have nothing to do with politics, even if some people think that they have nothing to do with politics. It's irrelevant - our pathos lies in presenting politics as tied to pseudo-politics, which is the very nature of totalitarianism, which is fundamentally anti-political. Therefore, political changes will directly and even comprehensively affect all aspects of people's lives.

In terms of internal affairs, the economic policy of the party to advance and the people to retreat is behind the CCP’s attempt to further control the economy politically; and the overturned policy crushing of private enterprises is a panic under the contradiction between economic control and economic downturn. Some netizens ridicule. Yes, it was the domestic violence scumbag man kneeling and begging for mercy after carving the word "love" on his chest with a fruit knife. There is no sincerity at all; behind the merger of national and local taxes, the blood pump of the CCP's finance is increasing its power; Xi Jinping's personal movement to create gods is an extraordinary effort by the political dictatorship in tightening the noose; the super-luxurious reception of the G20 summit in Hangzhou the previous year was the political heroin dreamed of by all countries; the frozen real estate market was a multi-target shooting , not only wants to maintain financial stability, but also closes the door and kills pigs for the future real estate tax collection campaign; and in the past six months, the State Administration of Taxation has reneged on local tax policies, and it is even more powerful for the unbridled collection including the entertainment industry. Unrestricted and reckless behavior ; since last year, taking Beijing, the most evil district as an example, the violent deportation of migrant workers and migrants in the city has put some citizens in a situation where slaves are inferior; local governments have changed their orders and forcibly removed the plaques of businesses and shops , has become a political psychosis almost like madness; the continuous mainlandization of Hong Kong has continued unabated; the repressive tyranny of Tibet and Xinjiang has reached the point where people can hardly breathe, and the situation in Xinjiang is especially shocking. The issue of concentration camps is becoming a topic of great importance to the UN Human Rights Commission. At the same time, the elimination of all voices and actions against tyranny has intensified. In the past six years, the CCP has comprehensively improved its totalitarian capabilities with the help of technological upgrading, and has carried out pervasive monitoring and suppression of people’s public life, news, publishing, The law, NGOs, and other healthy forces with a slight civil society nature are on the verge of desperation under the heavy blow of continuous violence.

In terms of diplomacy, despite the financial strain caused by the topsy-turvy economic policies, the continued expansion of the bureaucracy, and the extravagance of fiscal expenditures, the country has still arbitrarily distributed money internationally without basic rationale for many years, making various exchanges. International hooligans, ignoring the urgent needs of domestic public services. Internationally, due to the long-term non-compliance with the WTO and the enmity with the West, and the inability to deal with the trade war provoked by the United States, international relations continue to deteriorate along the “Belt and Road” and ease their weakness.

In this situation of rapid deterioration in all fields including politics, economy, culture, etc., the so-called military reform is based on military expansion and preparation for war, from the adjustment of military regions, the change of military region names, the construction of aircraft carriers, and the use of Chinese warships in the high seas and disputed waters. The swagger is increasing domestic and international tension.

At this point, the CCP's arrogant international bully face is ready to come out.

CCP's purpose

It has been nearly a hundred years since the CCP made its fortune in the 1920s. In the past 100 years, from the moment it was born, the CCP has never changed its basic image - a kleptocratic group that relies on cruelty, tenacity and shameless unscrupulous means to finally steal state power.

No matter thieves, gamblers, or bandits, they have never cherished the things they got for nothing, such as stealing and robbing.

Before 1949, the CCP used all means to steal its power, including collaborating with international autocratic and totalitarian forces to bring wolves into the house. This was true for the Soviet Union and Japan as well. In the areas controlled by its puppet regime, it extorted money from the people. This was the case in the Soviet area and in the northwest. The same is true - even growing opium, subsidized by drug manufacturers and dealers.

After 1949, the CCP finally got its wish and stole state power. After ascending to the throne, the CCP first established its prestige with nationwide massacres such as suppressing rebels and land reforms, and then gained the support of the people at the bottom with fraudulent measures to delay the army, and soon turned its face and denied it . The so-called socialist transformation, that is, the public-private partnership in the cities and the people's communalization in the countryside, are two melons growing out of the same vine. These atrocities started with big capital and foreign capital, and gradually expanded to small businessmen, farmers, intellectuals (anti-Rightist), and finally even their own government officials at all levels (Cultural Revolution)—20 The communist regimes of the 20th century are keen on the cannibalism of the purge-style, which has not stopped since the founding of the CCP. Internationally, the CCP's isolation and ideological diplomacy have been carried out simultaneously, which has led to huge losses of national interests for a long time. The CCP's tyranny with hostility and killing as its basic style developed to the point of madness in the Mao Zedong era, so that the country's political terror, economic collapse, miserable people's livelihood, and bad international image.

After the death of Mao Zedong, a rare tyrant in ancient and modern China and the West, after a short period of stagnation, Deng Xiaoping came to power. After 1978, he pursued the so-called reform and opening up with limited opening of the country and limited relaxation of internal affairs, which aroused the tremendous creativity and vitality of the Chinese people. In the past ten years, huge wealth has been accumulated rapidly, and by 2010, China has become the second largest economic power in the world in terms of GDP.

For the CCP, China’s current global economic status is not what Deng Xiaoping dared to hope and foresee in the era of Deng Xiaoping, nor was it designed by Deng Xiaoping. The so-called “chief architect of reform” is not in line with the facts. . Deng Xiaoping's achievement lies precisely in the fact that he has no designs. Designs are the product of a planned economy, and an economy with such a huge size cannot be a product of a planned economy. The planned economy is only responsible for creating famines, not wealth .

The role of the rulers is to maintain a fair market. Creating markets is the business of entrepreneurs and consumers, not the rulers. Marxist believers who are hostile to the market and are keen to distort or even destroy the market with power, they only believe that power will bring wealth - just as robbers believe in robbery to get rich, even if they fail 10,000 times because power replaces the market, they will still go to the 10,000th. Zero and one experimental base sprint, just like the current Xiongan unfinished project. And since the Communist Party has been tyrannical, no matter what the state is governed by, at least those tyrants at the peak of power at all levels have fully tasted the pleasure of power that distorts and even outlaws and replaces the market, and they are addicted to it.

The huge wealth is at your disposal, the addiction to power is difficult to get rid of, and the people in China are deeply servile (I can see a lot of factual servility caused by being accustomed to being enslaved from myself), these three factors will naturally become the blood and nourishment of totalitarianism. Since Deng Xiaoping, the path of China, which seemed to be like seeing flowers in a fog, became instantly clear: the CCP, as a giant Leviathan, and a huge number of Chinese self-made slaves, this match made in heaven pushes the CCP into a new totalitarianism with Chinese characteristics the path of ideology.

Of course, this path will never lead to liberal democratization and constitutional reform, which is not only obvious to all, but also sadly in line with China's historical tradition. This old empire, which is notorious in ancient and modern history for its eastern despotism, has had several attempts to modernize since modern times, but they all failed miserably.

The Westernization Movement in the late Qing Dynasty was the earliest attempt, but the theory of Chinese style and Western use, which only learned the utensils without changing the system and people's hearts, failed to transform the old system, and the Qing Empire was unavoidably destined to withdraw from the historical destiny. The political modernization attempt of the Republic of China, because of its unpredictable and throbbing, and because it has never worked hard to study the experience of foreign countries and absorb the lessons of other countries, plus the country has no republican foundation and the international situation is changing, it is not only not. By 16 years it failed. As the French popular psychologist Gustave Le Pen pointed out as early as 1912, it is impossible to try to establish a republic in a place where there has never been a republican tradition. Under the international tide in which two totalitarian forces on the left and right are rampant, and because of China's own weakness and the hypnotism of its utopian dream, and because of the ambiguity and self-contradiction of the ideological and political systems of the allies in World War II, this land has finally suffered. Bad luck, did not survive being conquered by communist totalitarianism.

From the perspective of Chinese historical tradition, the CCP's conquest of China is like the change of dynasties in ancient times, but it is just another historical cycle; but from the perspective of global history, the CCP's conquest of China conforms to the trend of the other half of the world except the United Kingdom, the United States and Western Europe. It wasn't until 1989 that a trend began to falter.

China's misfortune is that the timing of the connection between its pace of modernization and international political currents is always tight.

At the end of the 1980s, when the global communist totalitarianism was receding, the Chinese were still searching for a path aimed at food and clothing, and all the so-called reform ideas were only a corresponding low-level demand. The gap opened by the so-called "opening" was only enough. Bringing in a little bit of food, the massive liberal democratization movement outside the country is one after another, and the Chinese can neither see it from a distance nor close it. It can neither effectively influence China's reform in an institutional sense, nor can it be silenced at the level of people's hearts. In China, at most, a small number of Chinese people have the illusion that "we can also embark on the path of liberalization, democratization and constitutional reform" - even if it was just an illusion, it was shattered in the June 4 massacre.

Even more unfortunate is that the above-mentioned turmoil is not over yet, and China and the world have entered a new turmoil immediately as agreed in advance.

After more than 30 years of following the so-called “reopening” route for food and clothing, China has transformed itself into the world’s second largest economy, and the rags have been replaced by purple and red robes. For a long time, the Chinese who had to endure the enslavement of power in all dynasties have always had a gluttonous pursuit of wealth, because this is the only thing that is most likely to be inescapable in precarious existence. Just like the Jews, this is just A refugee rationale handed down by history and family experience. This wealth-hungry refugee rationale has not only opened up a path for the individual Chinese to become rich through hard work, but also brought the entire country a path to prosperity, although this kind of prosperity has also been greatly reduced by the Communist Party's tyranny and profligacy. It is undeniable that this country's economy has a rich and prosperous side, no matter how serious its internal crisis.

At the same time, the emerging third wave of political democratization encountered a global cold winter and began to enter a low ebb. In many emerging democracies, due to various reasons, the democratic system is not running smoothly, which has brought problems in various aspects including politics, economy and people's livelihood. Therefore, the comparison between a non-democratic China and these failed emerging democracies, both in China and internationally, has aroused great interest in people, and people have become interested in the pros and cons of the "Chinese model" and democratic systems. various disputes. Even some serious researchers have come to the conclusion that the Chinese system is superior to the democratic system due to the lack of comprehensive and real research materials, and the "Chinese model" has become the institutional model favored by some people. Not only are emerging democracies suffering from various political, economic and cultural crises on a large scale, but many countries that have entered the democratic system earlier, including the United Kingdom and the European continent, also suffered from economic weakness and numerous social problems due to other reasons. This has led to the re-emergence of their populist forces, and these phenomena have also turned into foreign aid that supports the superiority of the "China model" to some extent - because the CCP has always been extremely good at using external propaganda to cover up in addition to suppressing any anti-tyranny forces. China's domestic problems make the country seem to have always been peaceful.

This false comparison between China and the world not only allows many ignorant citizens to unilaterally understand their own economic achievements and ignore their costs, but also allows the CCP to demonstrate the legitimacy of its tyranny through the legitimacy of its economic performance. This gives strong confidence to the CCP's long-term tyrannical rule of China - they sincerely believe that their long-term tyranny crimes against the people are right. After Xi Jinping came to power, he did everything possible to overturn Mao Zedong's erroneous merits and demerits that Deng Xiaoping had set the tone for decades ago, and wanted to restore Mao Zedong's rare tyrant back to the altar. This is not just Xi Jinping's establishment of his own dictatorship. The stamp of legitimacy that the dynasty needs is an illusion brought to him by economic performance in recent decades. Xi Jinping is trying to use the current economic achievements to prove that the CCP has always been a great man who never makes mistakes - all crimes are just explorations, and it doesn't matter how miserable the countless people are "explored" at least for them.

Since the 20th century, the concepts of freedom, equality, democracy, rule of law, constitutional government, and republic have become the consensus of global political ethics. Even all totalitarian countries have to put their cloak on themselves, just like the so-called "socialism" that fills the streets and alleys of China today. core value". The intention of Xi Jinping's regime is to steal the day and fill the content of its own servitude, hierarchy, autocracy and totalitarianism under the name of freedom, equality, democracy, and the constitutional republic. This approach is no longer a red-necked confrontation with a counter-attack and arguing, but a condescending upstart conquest of a magpie's nest, which completely relies on the current share of the Chinese economy in the context of economic globalization. . Due to economic reasons, this so-called "China model" of "freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and constitutional republic" is very deceptive to a large number of people at home and abroad.

It is precisely under the cover of the legitimacy of this economic performance that the CCP scoffs at the road to liberal democracy and constitutionalism, not to mention that this is not their ideal in the first place, not only is it not an ideal, but also their worst enemy. To this end, the CCP, taking advantage of the huge economic advantages that still exist, wants to compete with the Western liberal democratic constitutional government led by the United States. This is the last piece of the puzzle in ensuring the CCP’s long-term tyranny of China in the era of globalization.

The likelihood of the CCP's success

Can the CCP achieve the above goals? Although it is a matter of opinion to answer this question, it is a matter that takes time to test. But for many people, including me, especially the Chinese who bear the brunt, it is not this matter that is more urgent, but our own anxiety, which includes both our security anxiety and our ethical anxiety. , the two kinds of anxiety are intertwined and indistinguishable from each other. The work of analyzing the possibility of the CCP's above-mentioned tyranny strategy occurred with the above-mentioned anxiety.

If there was no sudden change in the international situation represented by the Sino-US trade war this year, the CCP’s above-mentioned tyranny strategy would have been very successful at least on the surface. The wishful thinking of the CCP before. The double turmoil of the Xi Jinping regime in both domestic and foreign affairs has severely hit the domestic economy and international image. Especially in this era of globalization, the practice of making enemies and rogue regimes in diplomacy has also seriously backfired on domestic affairs. , especially in the economic field. Coupled with the blind administration caused by unrestricted power, excessive government spending, but defiance of economic laws and lack of cherishing the confidence of entrepreneurs, the extortion and expropriation have further intensified, and the tide of enterprise closures has come quickly. Under the internal and external attacks, the Chinese economy has begun to enter a downward channel. .

If we take the ancient Chinese dynasties as a historical mirror, we can clearly see that the current situation of the CCP’s tyranny in China is quite similar to the middle stage of the ancient empire. The mid-imperial stages of China's past dynasties are usually related to the huge wealth that had to be adopted in the early stages of the empire. For example, in the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, the middle period of the empire usually began between 60 and 70 years after the opening of the empire. After decades of peaceful accumulation, the national power of the empire is generally at its most prosperous and prosperous stage at this time. It will also be a phase where an empire starts to go into downhill mode. There are many reasons why it began to go downhill. One is wealth that makes the ruler look forward to self-confidence and look at the world, ranging from throwing money around and spending money like the earth (such as Emperor Qianlong), or starting wars and wasting the country (such as Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty). ); secondly, with the rapid expansion of the bureaucracy, the previous policy of light rationing and low taxation was unsustainable, so they collected heavy taxes, levied indiscriminately, and exhausted the waters to fish, and domestic production and the market were facing a crisis; thirdly, the bureaucracy Wealth growth has also begun to enter a comprehensive corruption mode. The entire society is shrouded in power. If people want to survive and develop, they must live in harmony with the government through obedience and bribery, and the country begins to fall into the quagmire of national corruption.

The above-mentioned mid-imperial syndrome, which was common in Chinese history, is also unfolding in China today. In ancient dynasties, because of their backward technical means and highly closed economies, the corruption and economic consequences brought about by unruly power were often not so quick and explosive. Under the premise that there is no foreign invasion, even if the economy is stagnant and people's livelihood is difficult in the middle period of the empire, it often takes hundreds of years to completely disintegrate from the middle period of the empire to the end of the empire. With the current global economic integration, the presentation of the consequences of the Mid-Imperial Syndrome in contemporary China may be very different from that in ancient times. As for how it will break out, further observation is needed, and it is difficult to draw conclusions suddenly.

Including now, there is another extremely important phenomenon in China's economic tradition, that is, the problem of corruption economics. The so-called economics of corruption means that corruption plays a pivotal role in economic development. From an economic point of view, under a specific time and space background, it is not a proposition that can be simply concluded as right or wrong, because of the ethical evaluation and abstraction of specific matters. There is always a tension between the overarching ethical evaluations of the For example, an innocent person is wrongly accused of being a murderer. According to the normal process, he will be executed, but his family will pay bribes to make the case retrial, and the innocent person will be released. How to conduct an ethical evaluation of this kind of behavior that uses bribery to circumvent the evil law? For another example, when Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, they relied heavily on bribes to be rescued during their exile. Is such bribery wrong? Is it ethically reprehensible? Similar problems - usually less extreme, occur in all authoritarian countries. Since the reform and opening up to now, a large number of entrepreneurs in China have been restricted by bad laws and have to use bribes to lubricate the control channels, so as to obtain certain privileges compared with other regulated persons under the bad laws and earn wealth. Should others ethically condemn them, thereby in fact justifying the equality of slavery, or support them ethically, thereby de facto ignoring other competitors who are constrained by wicked laws? Such an ethical dilemma cannot be easily assessed.

In addition to the difficulty of ethical evaluation of individual virtue, corruption also has a dilemma in the evaluation of economic ethics. Corruption in the form of bribery and bribery, on the one hand, breaks through the inherent bad law control, opens up the market, and contributes to a prosperous economy; on the other hand, it also allows the regulator to benefit from the destructive control of the market. , which also became an incentive for them to abuse their power to disrupt the market. Sadly, however, the growth of China's economy is closely related to these corruptions. It can even be said that in the post-Mao era, without these corruptions, the market would not be able to break through power control and monopoly; without these corruptions, the Chinese market would not be able to prosper.

However, the fact that moderate corruption can lubricate authoritarian control channels does not mean that corruption is a panacea in the autocratic system model. Corruption itself erodes the economy not only by creating unfair competition, but also by breaking all economic rules so that healthy markets cannot be built. At the same time, corruption will also follow the market law of corruption, and start the competition within the corruption itself. Therefore, the cost of consumers will increase with the increase of corruption costs, and the living cost of sharing corruption costs will continue to increase until people can no longer afford such a market. As a result, authoritarian regimes almost always try to balance corruption and the resilience of the economy, but no authoritarian regime since ancient times has been able to achieve and maintain such a balance - if such a regime ever existed. The balance of physical health is also achieved by the common market and the corrupt market in the dynamic economic operation, and will return to a non-equilibrium state at any time due to the continued operation of the market and corruption itself. The final economy of the autocratic regime will follow the externality of corruption. expansion and brittle disintegration. Since there is no stable state of this equilibrium, it is of no practical value to study this equilibrium for creating a good economy. The corruption cost caused by the corrupt market, under arbitrary power, does not have a stable pricing mechanism. Then there can be no corrupt equilibrium.

Successive Chinese regimes have struggled to maintain a balance between corruption and stability, but have never succeeded. When rulers find that the corrupt privileges of the ruling class are counteracting the rule itself, they often conduct expedient anti-corruption and campaign-style anti-corruption. Due to the non-neutral nature of the bureaucracy, this anti-corruption campaign has never escaped the fate of a purge-style factional struggle, ancient and modern. The current Xi Jinping regime’s anti-corruption campaign, no matter how aggressive it is, is still political cleansing. As institutional, functional and structural corruption, even if it may temporarily dormant under high pressure, it is still impossible to change the system, let alone eliminate it. , as if a machine gun shot at a mosquito swarm, its effect can be imagined. Especially under the economic principles of corruption analyzed above, when corruption is contained, it will seriously affect economic growth in many cases - the anti-free market regulation and monopoly under autocracy, once corruption loses the lubrication of the control channel, The market will be seriously sluggish, and the economy will inevitably suffer as a result. However, as mentioned earlier, fighting corruption is still allowing corruption, and no one can solve the equilibrium that the CCP desperately needs.

The existence of the above-mentioned serious problems does not immediately lead to the conclusion that the CCP cannot achieve its long-term stability and tyranny over China. China is such a giant economy, its territory is equivalent to the whole of Europe, and its domestic demand market is even larger than that of any relatively independent economy. Even under an autocratic system, if the ruler does not mess around, it is still possible to maintain a minimum order in a closed country - as long as it does not return to the Mao Zedong era when even the domestic market was completely banned. As for China's domestic anti-authoritarian forces, as long as there is no serious economic crisis, it is difficult to condense the forces that can change China.

Generally speaking, China is still a country where its people are comfortable with slavery, partly because of the cultural genes of traditional slavery, and partly because of the CCP's long-term persistent tyranny and its brainwashing of generations. The proportion of Chinese people who have the concept of freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, constitutional government, and republic is very low among all citizens, and even fewer have thought deeply about these concepts and specific systems, especially when these concepts are in the After a long-term policy eradication, it has become a field with high threshold and very narrow, less and less people are interested.

If international factors are excluded, and only based on China’s own situation, the CCP’s long-term tyranny over China is not only not impossible, but even more possible; even due to the huge size of China’s territory and population, if international factors do not have a profound impact and change China At this point, the CCP may still tyrannize China for a long time. At least measured by the small lifespan of individual human beings, it may not be possible to see much hope.

Where is China heading?

Just like the Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty, they were anxious about where China would go. During the "Cultural Revolution", Mr. Yang Xiaokai, who was only a middle school student at the time, once wrote his "Where is China Going?" "The article was imprisoned. In his later life, whether he was in prison, or in a foreign country, or became the economist closest to the Nobel Prize among the Chinese, even in the last years of his life, Mr. Yang Xiaokai never stopped. Consider the question marks of this middle school age.

Today, this question is once again a source of anxiety for many Chinese: Where will China go?

Maybe no one can answer this question, but it has been nearly 180 years since China was kicked into modern times by the British in 1840. In these 180 years, has a generation of Chinese people lived their lives in peace? No, not even a generation. Excluding the ten years of the Second War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in the past 170 years, the sporadic international wars (such as the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Korean War) had an impact on people's livelihood mainly as indirect economic burdens. In addition, the direct disaster brought to the Chinese by the rulers of their own countries, whose power lacks institutional constraints, is the main one. Among all these disasters, the disaster that the CCP has brought to this country is a disaster of the Nth power. In addition to the immediate and complete annihilation of life, property, and freedom it has created, it has also destroyed China's surviving good public sentiment. is fundamental and devastating.

From the era of Deng Xiaoping to the era of Hu and Wen, the power of civil society has sprung and developed due to economic development, but this momentum, whether in the era of Deng Xiaoping, the era of Jiang Zemin, or the era of Hu and Wen, was only under difficult circumstances. Struggling development has entered its final stage in the late Hu-Wen era, and in the Xi Jinping era, complete dormancy is already at its best, if not dead. Obviously, while creating the conditions for its own long-term stability and tyranny, the CCP also creates all the foundations for the fragile disintegration of this society, leaving no hope for China at all in the future.

Civil society so weak that it has almost disappeared, and its hidden liberals, may not be able to take on the role of future crisis moments. I have to admit that in the long history of China, normal political ethics have never been formed. In Chinese history, the only thing people agree with is the tradition of violent conquest, never compromise and win-win situation. It is in this tradition that the cancer of the Great Unity was formed, and it has poisoned this land for thousands of years. The unified characteristics of "nine dogs and one mastiff" made it impossible for all dynasties in China to retain any large-scale benevolence, compromise, credit and other virtues that are full of human warmth. It became all dirty, cruel and evil. and shameless ultimate sanctuary. The Great Unification has washed away the fragile remnants of political virtues and permanently wiped out any large-scale nobility in the long history. It has led to the elites who have held power in successive dynasties in China, almost never taking responsibility for the future of the country and the nation. Due responsibilities, and the CCP, a regime that pursues materialism, lacks the spirit of responsibility even more than any dynasty in history.

Whether the elites of a country can have a sense of responsibility for the country and the nation is often the fundamental reason for the country's ability to say goodbye to the quagmire or even hell. In the history of China, there have been dozens of global dynastic revolutions over thousands of years, and there has never been a responsible political elite that exists as a class. Because of this, this country has repeatedly been in authoritarian hell. reincarnation. Don't talk about ancient times, just talk about modern times. A truly responsible elite should be able to realize that in this era of nation-states, it is necessary to ensure the individual human rights of the people, and at the same time, how to ensure a just resolution of disputes and a peaceful order when sovereign interests and human rights diverge; If this situation cannot be achieved for a while, what preparations should be made to achieve such a goal, and what is the legitimacy and legitimacy of the expedient measures, if the expedient measures will damage civil rights and human rights, how to make up for it... and so on , these issues should be considered by a responsible political elite. For example, like Franco, when he knew that his dictatorship was brutal, he spent more than 20 years carefully cultivating a democratic king who was ready for future democratization transformation, turning a blind eye to social forces. The moderate rise of the middle, at the same time bloody suppression of the ultra-left forces, played down ideological differences and emphasized the unity of Spain.

But obviously, there is no such self-denying and self-contradictory tyrant in China, nor does such a political elite exist. China's political elite has always only done two things: one is extortionate, exploiting civil rights, arrogant and domineering in front of the people ; There is another one, that is, in front of tyrants, they are willing to wag their tails and beg for pity, and they dare to carry out even absurd policies. Such so-called political elites naturally do not have any sense of responsibility and mission for the future of this country. China has never had a tyrant like Franco who is responsible for the future of the country. At least their actions are just pure tyrants without any sense of national responsibility.

The CCP was able to conquer China, just as the Kuomintang conquered China after the Northern Expedition, it was only the result of winning and losing. The sinologist Levinson once analyzed why Hu Shi's ideals failed in his book "Confucianism in China and Its Modern Destiny". He saw very accurately that because the liberal spirit that Hu Shi believed in required people to arrange their lives in a rational way, And this has no soil in China and is incompatible with Chinese tradition. This perspective is similar to Gustave Le Pen who pointed out that the Revolution of 1911 was bound to fail because China never had a republican tradition. Many people think that liberals are weak, but they don't know that liberals are inherently "weak". They must first be reasonable, there must be many things that cannot be done, and there are many bottom lines that cannot be broken through. "Weakness" is liberalism Those who seem incompetent (especially the individualists among them) actually maintain the basic qualities that a normal human world must possess. Even when violence has to be used, it must be defensive, and it should be done in moderation, which is still incompatible with China's political tradition.

It is not easy to cultivate such a liberal spirit, it requires the continuous efforts of generations in a peaceful environment - China has never had such an environment, but it is very easy to destroy. Pie overturned. Merely fighting against the masses is enough to make them submit, commit suicide, or surrender, which has been proven in the Mao era. Therefore, it is completely unrealistic to expect liberals to steer the country's ships in the Chinese context. They have neither the strength, the ability, nor the opportunity, or even the will. Among all the factions of various social concepts, liberals are overwhelmed in terms of numbers and ability to act, because the foundation of popular sentiments it needs is too huge, and China does not have such a huge foundation of popular sentiments. A republic without a "republican" cannot exist, just like the Weimar Republic of Germany.

The future of a constitutional republic under the rule of law, freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law will not lead to the future. Whoever dominates will have similar results - including short-lived democratization movements that cannot be consolidated (unprepared democratization movements are usually difficult to consolidate), whether they are rising now The ultra-left Maoists, or any other new force that may grow and develop, or the current CCP. China will still be in the midst of the traditional populism and dictatorship. If the current CCP does not operate well, it will lead to economic and social collapse, which will inevitably lead China to enter the era of mob - it is difficult to determine when it will break out, and the era of mob will last several days Millions to hundreds and then dozens of candidates to choose a new Mao Zedong. Of course, this new Mao Zedong will undoubtedly be worse than the current CCP - the final outcome of populism is always dictatorship. This is of course the worst outcome, but when the Chinese dynasties went up and down, has there ever been a time when it was not the worst outcome? ——The unification itself is already the worst result.

As long as the tumor of the traditional unified concept is not eliminated, the rule of "the cruelest wins" will continue, and it will never be relegated to the historical relics of "the west wind, the mausoleum of the Han family". The only suspense is the next A round of time. "Where is the return journey? The long pavilion is even shorter." Li Bai's "Bodhisattva Man" may express the desolation and confusion of the Chinese people before this historical crossroads.

Born into this world, what should I do?

My job is to study constitutionalism. However, this has become the most embarrassing dragon slaying technique in China today - even the word constitutionalism is no longer allowed to appear in the media.

In fact, there are countless equally ridiculous existences in this country, such as reflecting on history. What problems do we need to go to history to reflect? All the problems that can be found in history, are not all ready-made, hanging in front of our eyes? Isn't all that we are going through the most worthy of reflection and shame? Does it take the Maoist era to find it?

The CCP treats Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, independent churches and their followers, the lawyer industry, the press and publishing industry, the entertainment industry, private entrepreneurs, street merchants, and migrant workers… Continued mass and wanton violence, all of this, if only we were willing to open our eyes:

Xinjiang has been disconnected from the Internet for several years. How far is the distance between the so-called education camps and the concentration camps?

Can't we see that hundreds of Tibetans have continued to set themselves on fire over the years?

Can't we see how fast Hong Kong is sinking in land?

Can't we see the CCP's long-term threat to Taiwan's military reunification?

Can we not see the lawyers who have been arbitrarily detained by the CCP police since the "709" Incident in 2014?

Can't we see the police's long-term and especially recent mass arrests of hundreds of independent Christians in Chengdu?

Can we not see the weak girls who were expelled from Beijing by the police overnight in the cold winter and twelfth lunar month at the end of 2017?

Can't we see the shops whose facades have been inexplicably cemented by the administrative authorities over the past few years?

Can't we see the plaques of shops that have been inexplicably demolished by the administration in the past two years?

Can't we see that the authorities are going after the tax cuts promised three years ago?

Can't we see that the authorities are doing all they can to destroy the show business world through the almost hatred of the tax law?

...

Do the CCP tyrants in this session know what they are doing? How much do they have to hate this country and this nation before they need to treat the people like this (like Mao Zedong hated this nation and nation, he must create a famine unprecedented in world history to show his hatred)?

Is all this not enough, not enough for all of us who pretend not to see and understand, to reflect, and need to go to the far depths of history to find material for reflection?

Exactly one hundred years ago, in November 1918, Liang Shuming's father Liang Ji and Liang Juchuan committed suicide because he could not bear the pseudo-republican chaos that followed the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The world is not as optimistic as Mr. Liang Shuming's answer to his father: "I believe that the world is getting better day by day." The history of the world is far more complicated than this single-threaded view of history. Camus repeated a simple truth in almost all of his important works: Fighting against darkness is not because fighting will win, but because fighting is the only meaningful way of existence for people living in darkness. At least from an ethical point of view, whether it is possible or impossible to do it knowingly, there is a suspicion of overly utilitarian consequentialism. I think that knowing what to do and doing it is the real moment of life.

Suddenly I thought of the poem "Try to Praise the Incomplete World" written by Polish-American poet Zagayevsky after "911". The last two lines can express my mood after writing this article at this moment:

"The leaves swirl on the wounds of the earth"

"And the soft light that disappears and reappears"

December 8, 2018 First draft

Finalized on December 17, 2018

2019: Echoes in the Abyss | Xiao Han

Why raise your eyebrows in surprise,

Be like the windshield wipers on a car,

Drive away the inexplicable sadness from the face,

Let the distance no longer be blurred.

——[America] Joseph Brodsky

one

On the evening of February 22, 1942, Zweig, who had lived in the humid mountain city of Petropaulis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for less than a year and a half, left his judgment to the world, he said, "My own language speaks. The world, for me, has perished. And after my spiritual homeland, Europe, has been destroyed, I have nowhere to rebuild my life from scratch." Then Zweig and his wife Lot both took poison and committed suicide.

The suicide of Zweig and Lotter, like Mr. Liang Juchuan's self-depositing water pool in 1918, has always been a distant and twilight sound left to the world by history, echoing the era behind them for a long time: "Will this world be okay?"

Since the second half of 2017, I have never seen a traditional private breakfast restaurant in Beijing. I often think of the restaurant downstairs of a family of three from Anqing, Anhui Province. It has been open for more than ten years. Their children have long since gone from being pregnant to elementary school. The steamed buns, fried dough sticks, soy milk and wontons I used to eat early in the morning, including them The hard work of rushing into the dark has disappeared in the uniforms of the urban management and the profits of the demolition company. I don't even know where they are now. One night at the end of that year, my wife and I drove to Pi Village, a few kilometers away. The night there, in addition to the standard smog in Beijing and the freezing cold gushing out of the dark alleys, also exuded a strange silence, like in Liao Zhai. Midnight Wilderness. The boys and girls who rush to the urban and suburban shabby rental rooms every day are basically gone, and they can't sleep in this cold world, just like we can't either.

In 2019 this year, it has been 77 years since the Zweig couple committed suicide, and it has been 100 years since Liang Juchuan committed suicide. During this year, China and the world continued to sink into their respective walls, accelerating their descent into the abyss. In global terms, it is not just China and the United States that continue to confront each other - we do not know how long the temporary detente agreement will last, and the resistance of the Western world to China is also intensifying. The chaos that preceded the war is the new normal - aside from the chaos in Venezuela and Brazil, there have been riots even in Chile, considered the star of South America. In terms of China, the continued economic downturn is a commonplace. The tragic pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong that has lasted for half a year and the concentration camps where millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been deprived of their freedom have become even more frightening. In front of them, the continuous destruction of the private economy by the CCP, and the demise of the publishing industry, journalism, lawyers and other industries caused by the ideological noose, all seem less terrifying.

Over the past 70 years, the inexplicable policies adopted by the party-state towards ethnic minorities are being depleted one by one. The Chinese were originally citizens with relatively weak racial awareness. Through the efforts of the CCP, not only did many “ethnicities” needlessly be differentiated, even ethnic groups that did not exist before were forcibly created—such as the Zhuang ethnic group, in order to adapt to the so-called great national unity. ideology . This kind of broken-window strategy in ethnic policy has not only failed to create the so-called great national unity, but has artificially created many ethnic divisions that did not exist in the first place. On the one hand, for the so-called national unity, the CCP does not hesitate to flatter all ethnic minorities. The CCP deliberately gives them many privileges that are different from those of the Han people, except that minority students will be admitted to universities, set up halal cafeterias in all universities, built mosques in various places, and harassed the Han people. During the genocidal family planning tyranny, it also encouraged ethnic minorities to have children and created reverse racial discrimination; on the other hand, in order to maintain stability, Uighurs, Tibetans and other ethnic groups were deprived of the basic personal freedom that everyone should have, and they were deprived of living according to their own customs. Freedom, they will be subject to more restrictions and inspections even when they stay in hotels in the mainland, creating meaningless hatred. It is absurd that these two sets of ethnic policies, which were originally slapped in the face of each other, were carried out at the same time, in the same place and at the same target. Montaigne said, "Wagging your tail and begging for pity is the same thing." In the CCP's ethnic policy, we have found almost the most perfect case. After 70 years of unremitting efforts by the party-state, at least the Tibetans and Uyghurs have finally entered a stage of incompatibility with the Han. I don't know which other ethnic groups have similar hatred of being buried alive. Originally, racial hostility was a by-product of communist totalitarianism, but unfortunately it has become a huge political cancer independent of the "totalitarian-freedom" conflict. Slaves who have endured the same enslaver for many years do not focus their energy on dealing with the totalitarian, but Busy killing each other.

A choice between miserable and worse or even extremely miserable - in fact, there is no choice, but it is naturally going to be extremely miserable. This is a common phenomenon in human history, both in China and the world. In dynastic China, it was difficult for the common people to have enough food and clothing. If they were lucky enough to meet an emperor who was a little normal enough to feed everyone, the people would generally not be able to enjoy it for a few years. The emperor of the Chinese Empire had to hold back and not struggle. It's a matter of embarrassment for them. Eating enough has always been an exception in China, just like the last 40 years. Sooner or later, the emperor of the prodigal son will appear on the stage. For this, the Chinese are actually very used to it - if there is no war, it is time to burn high incense, right? Two days ago, I told my wife that after reading all kinds of history books, I felt that the ancient saying "I would rather be a dog of peace than a chaotic person" is really true. In any case, war is the most terrifying thing. My wife said that when I was very young, my dad told me this. In fact, turbulent times are more than just war years. Under the government's "modernization of the ability to govern 'you'", Chinese people are basically in a state of civil war between the government and the people, and there are few times that are not turbulent times.

two

After several years of strong suppression, the CCP has expelled all liberal public intellectuals from Weibo, and an army of whistleblowers made up of young pink fans has assisted the party-state in accomplishing this cause. My Weibo has been reincarnated for ten years, and I have used 343 accounts. Now it is difficult to apply for a new account. The accounts bought online are also restricted and cannot be used. With the basic demise of journalism, major social news is left with only a few media outlets covering it from time to time, and the rest are almost dead. Little pink people don't understand, in a country that has eliminated news and criticism, disaster will come at any time.

After the initial struggle, with the loss of the platform, I also gradually lost my voice in public life. Hong Kong Democracy Movement, Xinjiang Concentration Camp Incident, Taiwan Election Campaign, Brexit, US House of Representatives Impeachment Trump, Huawei 251 Incident, Vice Chairman of Peking University Student Union forcing his girlfriend to death, takeaway boy murdering in rage, Dr. Yang Wen being massacred..., or Dazzled, or heartbroken, but in the end did not speak, more than enough power. For me, the main cause of aphasia is not even the loss of public platforms, but the more fundamental reason is the sense of absurdity and helplessness that "the big guys have been talking together for decades, why are they talking back and forth". Thus, the previous impulse and habit of speaking frequently on public affairs disappeared, and the pleasures of accompanying my daughter, reading and writing—searching for the possible experience of human good life in history took its place.

For the past six months, I have taken my daughter to and from the nursery every day, and she is only at home two days on weekends. We often see people and sights on the road, and every time my daughter sees a truck, she exclaims excitedly, "Truck!" Once, we saw a speeding truck with a group of construction workers sitting on the open body. , looking at them with dark skin in the bleak cold wind in the late autumn, I said to my daughter, "Baby, those uncles are very hard, there are many injustices in this world, you should be kind to them when you grow up. Okay?" she said , "Okay!" I know that my daughter still doesn't understand what hardship is. There is no hardship in her world, only Xiaomei sleeping on the belly of Chinchilla, and Aisha and Xuebao, but I hope she will in the future It is necessary to have the ability to maintain one's own survival, but also to be merciful to the suffering of others.

When I had no children before, I knew that I would love children very much. Now that I have a daughter, I know that I love her so much. Let the child come into this world, I am somewhat apologetic to her, but I still feel that maybe I can make up for it by loving her with all my strength. In addition to taking care of my life, I will try my best to cultivate her into a good person with the ability of freedom and love. Maybe more important.

A few months ago, my wife who had just read Naipaul's "The Kingdom of the Believers" said with emotion that, in general, the entire human race is rotten. I used to think that China was particularly bad. After reading this book, I felt that maybe we are not. worst. In the last month, the British historian Mazor's "Dark Continent: Europe in the 20th Century" and Lowe's "Savage Continent: Europe after World War II" (especially the latter one) surprised me with 20th-century Europe. It's a hundred times worse than what I've ever known before. From a plague of ideas such as religious divisions, sovereign competition, ethnic cleansing, and class struggle, human beings are really racking their brains to find the pleasure of cannibalism. Although in terms of population, the creativity of the death of a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in China is equal to the total number of deaths in Europe over the past few hundred years, but Europe is still shocking, because after all, it was the most civilized land of mankind.

I know that it seems nonsensical and even ridiculous to use the great mirror of history to reflect the present life, but I still have some kind of fear about tomorrow. The daughter will grow up, she will have many friends, can she and her friends continue to enjoy peace after we have all loved her the most? ——In fact, it is still unknown whether we can escape the war ourselves. What would they do if they suffered a lot of injustice? Would it be dangerous if they fought? The history of this world, the yesterday and today of this world, and the tomorrow of this world are closely related. The abyss of today is not the plain of yesterday.

three

At the request of a certain media, I wrote a long article about the Berlin Wall in the first half of the year - this year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shortly after the submission, due to well-known or unknown reasons, the media was purged, and the draft was in vain, but this did not prevent us from going to Berlin on November 8. My wife and I wanted to experience that wall of history, albeit a ruin.

On November 9, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin was as cold and gloomy as its history. That week was Remembrance Week in Germany, and on the 9th, there were mass gatherings and commemorations as usual, and we rushed from the "Berlin Alexanderplatz" residence in Deblin to the Brandenburg Gate to find a huge crowd -- but obviously we couldn't fit in them. So we hurriedly continued our own tour of the pre-war world that was stamped with history.

The trip to Berlin did not leave me with too many good memories, it was an overly heavy place, I visited various museums for several days in a row, the art category only accounted for a quarter at most, and the rest were Nazis and East Germany. The sinful history of the times. The remains of the Berlin Wall are perhaps the most memorable of these sinful histories, as there are subsequent additions to the wall, including a huge painting of Brezhnev kissing Honecker in the East Side Gallery.

As I get older, I lose more and more of my youthful conviction in many issues, like my teeth, which I could use to open a beer bottle 10 years ago, but now it's hot and cold. It hurts, I can't bear any hardcore bites. Intellectuals may be a particularly divisive group, and differing attitudes to public issues are enough to generate excessive hostility. For example, the struggle between left and right still exists in the global intellectual community (I am right in politics and economics, and left in culture). Brainless idiot. Motivation theory and intelligence quotient theory are both taboos in debate. In fact, just as the left is not as stupid as the right thinks, so the right is not as frosty as the left thinks. They just look at the world from different angles, have different ways of solving problems, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. In mature democracies, it's usually too far left and right back, and too right back left. Tocqueville's great-grandfather, Malezeb, was a lawyer who fought for the freedom of the people before the king and the king's rights before the mob, but his life ended at the guillotine. I think such a person is fair, although of course it usually ends badly.

Of course, no one of my friends will speak up for the government - unless the government really does good things beyond their responsibilities, which is obviously unlikely, but this kind of agreement does not prevent there will be differences, such as the people My views, and especially my outspokenness, have been annoying for years on whether or not to criticize, whether to criticize Islam, whether or not to criticize political correctness. So, the conflict came suddenly. At a party in Berlin, when the differences of opinion turned into an attack on me personally (I drank too much that day, I couldn’t remember who they were, and I was lucky to forget it), I also took advantage of the situation to laugh at myself, Save the scene from the edge of embarrassment. It is inevitable that there will be arguments or even quarrels between friends, but with realistic exchanges as the bottom line, as long as the conflict is not too intense, there is always a way to avoid becoming hostile.

Some time ago, on the Hong Kong issue, I had a disagreement with a long-time friend. While I support Hong Kong people's pursuit of democracy, I cannot agree with the violence against ordinary civilians - whether it is from protesters or from the CCP pretending to be framers, which he believes is inevitable in democratic social movements, and the victims are only Can admit to being unlucky. I think the rule of law is the bottom line. No matter who violates the law (of course, it should be a good law, not a bad law), Iraq should be punished by law based on due process. No matter how grand the label of democracy movement is, it should not become a talisman for crime; The defense of crime is self-contradictory with the democratic movement. Just imagine, if I were a family member, relatives, friends or even himself of the person whose whole body was set on fire, would I think this has anything to do with the democratic movement? There is a German film called "Berlin Women", which is about the rape of German women by Soviet troops at the end of World War II. Historically, between 1945 and 1947, two million German women were raped by the Soviet army, so when the German army finally retreated, the residents of the eastern front also fled west. People were afraid of the Soviet army, and the Soviet army would not be because of fighting the Nazis. Not hooligans anymore. Whether or not a rogue is ultimately determined by behavior, a Western proverb says that if a living creature looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, then it is a duck. While we are preventing patriotism from becoming a refuge for rascals, it is equally necessary to prevent democracy from becoming a refuge for rascals. The party-state has built too many shelters for rogues and villains, and we don't need any more.

Fortunately, this disagreement has not troubled us. Friends for decades have had different opinions not once or twice. However, I know that some of my more reserved friends will be both disapproving and nonchalant about me holding such a view, thinking that I have no support for the Hong Kong democracy movement but being critical. I don't want to defend myself, and I know that no matter what kind of exercise, it's normal to have flaws, but it's really impossible to call the scar on a beautiful woman's face a beauty mole.

Four

If you want to find a keyword for 2019, there must be different opinions. In my information world, the most received information this year is "reporting" - usually a professor of a certain university is reported by a student with a "sense of justice" because of what he said in class, and the class is suspended. . Reporting is a good word, and it refers to the actions of ordinary citizens to correct illegal and criminal phenomena in a society governed by the rule of law. But just like Zhao Xinmei said in "Besieged City" when evaluating the university tutor system, "It is really beneficial to think about China, and the world is invincible. When a foreign thing comes, it destroys another." In a society under the rule of law, not only has not In a country where even the rulers go all out to prevent people from successfully establishing a society under the rule of law - reporting becomes quite complicated. On the one hand, it reflects part of the civic spirit, such as the reporting of crimes such as murder, theft, robbery, rape, etc. that are usually regarded as crimes by the world; on the other hand, two common whistleblower phenomena in totalitarian societies become The ethical terminal disease of the whole society, one is to use power to quickly cut off obstacles for self-interest (for example, some opposing movie star fan groups on Weibo report that the other star is unpatriotic, etc.), and the other is students who have been poisoned by lying teaching materials to borrow power Weed out teachers with different views and teaching materials. The latter two situations have always existed, but at least ten years ago, reports were often despised by people (now they are also despised by many people, but those who despise have no public influence), which is synonymous with violation of the morality of the rivers and lakes. , and now, it has become a common method for many young people to deal with their teachers, whether using it to obtain credits or use it to retaliate. This shows that even if the society does not necessarily encourage this kind of behavior, the government encourages it to be very effective. Some young people learn from the government to have the Chinese dream, no matter whether it will become a nightmare for others, at least they are very happy and have the realistic effect of super VR. . Therefore, the illusion is the beauty, and it doesn't matter if you recognize the thief as the father and the father as the thief, and all the black and white are reversed.

My wife and I often discuss these students who "report" teachers, and inadvertently worry about whether my daughter will be affected and become such a shameless person in the future. A friend's son became the only child in the class who did not join the Hitler Youth League in middle school, which is equivalent to the fact that the middle school students in Nazi Germany did not become members of the Hitler Youth League (in the Nazi era, 98% of the youth in the country were Hitler Youth League members), Often referred to by us. However, my wife and I don't think it's a big deal to be a member of the Young Pioneers or even a party member. Among my mentors and friends, there are many party members who don't like their party very much. Change their party's sand-doping action. A coat trademark does not determine a person's character. What the body does in the clothes can reflect a person's true virtue. This is the case in the public domain and private domain. Of course we don’t want our children to grow up and become unrecognizable, but everyone has their own life. Children are not accessories to their parents. A daughter will paint her future life according to her own will. As parents, The only frame of reference that can be provided is that you don’t become someone you despise. If the torrents of society swept our child away, perhaps our own hut was washed away because we were too fragile, and we didn't hold her close.

five

Chinese liberals are like wandering souls - the word "youling" was originally used by Mr. Yu Yingshi to describe Confucianism in the 20th century - but now Confucianism is flourishing. Sinologist Levinson once talked about why Hu Shi's liberalism could not survive in China in "Confucianism in China and Its Modern Destiny". He believed that this was because China did not have this tradition and the Chinese were not used to it. I quite agree with his point of view. The liberalism of contemporary China has almost been squeezed into a portrait under the attack of the government and the people. But this does not prevent me from continuing to be a liberal. As Wang Xiaobo said, intellectuals can only be liberals. In the 1980s, someone wrote to the Youth Daily and asked, "The road of life, why does it get narrower and narrower?" China's road has become so narrow that it seems that it is at best only a gray line of grass and snakes in the future.

Liberals have the same heavy body as anyone. Whenever my wife and I go to a place, after enjoying the local food for the first few days, I start to miss the food in my hometown. It is said that the stomach is the most "patriotic". Even if liberalism is attacked by its homeland, it may not necessarily become a cosmopolitan. To be a cosmopolitan is a very difficult and painful thing. It is a wart on a heavy body. Even if a natural cosmopolitan like Zweig is ultimately destroyed by depression, Hacking's novel Living Freely says that the exiles "gain the sky but lose the earth" are accurate feelings. When Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he pleaded with the Soviet authorities not to expel him, and he would die if he left Russia. Think of Thomas Mann's younger brother Heinrich Mann's desolate life in exile, and then think about Brodsky's favor, anxiety and early death in the West, even if he carried "German culture" with him like Thomas Mann. The great exile knows that world citizenship may be an overly lofty ideal.

This can explain why so many smart people are still standing under the wall of danger even though they have seen the impending disaster; it can also explain why many people now see the country's accelerated decline, still eagerly don't go. A fluke, as well as the fear of the unknown, are enough to make people collide head-on with the high-speed train of fate and shatter their bones.

Some time ago, the Huawei 251 incident continued to ferment. More and more people realized that even if you go to school 985, your work is still 996. If you offend the company, you will be 251. If you defend your rights, immediately 404. A friend told me that once she bought two cups of coffee online, the little brother who delivered the coffee accidentally spilled half of it on the way. He called my friend to tell me the truth. She said it was ok, just put it at the door of the office, she will take a while. arrive. Not long after the coffee delivery guy bought a cup of coffee with his own money and sent it over - he didn't know what "it doesn't matter" meant, and was worried about being complained. It can be seen that he has been treated like a frightened bird, and he has also lost the basic understanding of words that we think are very common.

The high development of China's e-commerce is based on the fact that the bottom-level practitioners who have no right to speak are so wary. While traveling in Germany, I heard that Germans never work overtime and do not talk about get off work after work. But here we are, during Double Eleven, an employee of a courier company told me that he hardly slept before two o'clock during this period, and they couldn't get up after six in the morning. This means that they may sleep up to four hours a day. My friend Mr. Liang Wendao is very gifted, but these courier guys don't seem to be.

This is a country where hierarchy is ubiquitous. A white-collar worker who is bullied everywhere in the company may be a bully of the courier at home, just because the courier is easy to bully; when the e-commerce platform does not care about the life and death of its employees to please their employees for profit When it comes to the market, many people do not realize that it should be corrected automatically and consciously. My wife and I have never urged the courier. Sometimes they need to click to deliver in advance in order to be in a hurry, and we both understand. As long as complaints are made, no matter whether they are justified or unreasonable, they will punish their employees. There are still countless markets for the perverted argument of "customer is God", and the spirit of contract - a fair and just contract - is still far away. The modern evolutionary path from the so-called identity to the contract in Sir Maine's "Ancient Law" is still a bloody and muddy path in China.

There is no free lunch in the world. I fear that there will be retribution for all this. Just like the Xinjiang concentration camp incident, there will be retribution in the future, and there will be retribution after the Huawei 251 Incident. Will there be retribution in the current e-commerce business? Before this article was finished, there was a case of a takeaway who killed a customer in anger. Everyone knows that murder is a crime. The problem is that if it’s not just ordering a takeaway, why bother to treat or even humiliate the same drifters who are struggling to survive like you? There are also various workers engaged in urban services. What kind of work do they do every day, what do they eat, where do they sleep, do they have heating in winter and air conditioning in summer? How can the poverty, grievance and anger of the farmers who have no livelihood and are oppressed by the government at all levels in a healthy and effective way?

When will the retribution of all this fall on whom? All of this is calling for Mao Zedong's ghostly deceased to return and recreate the body. One of the most ruthless devils of mankind in the 20th century, he has become a saint among his followers. Will his huge morgue, which is at the heart of the capital, become an invincible totem for the next round of turmoil? Can liberal middle-class citizens, pursuing the rule of law and private rights, survive possible future national self-mutilation?

Ten years ago, I told my wife that our good days were coming to an end. Ten years later, I should have known the destiny, but I was even more confused. At this moment, pork prices began to rise wildly, and even plagues such as the plague began to enter people's field of vision - it did not spread, but people like me who like history still have an inexplicable fear of it. In history, plague has always been the omen of some major turning point, such as Athens during the Peloponnesian War, the last moment of the 13th century in Europe, and Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty.

The future has not yet come, before the boiling water boils, the boiling has not come, but it will come, as long as the fire continues to burn. I don't know what the future I fear will be, but the present keeps me lingering. Faust said before his death, "You are so beautiful, stop for a moment." This is the mood I can feel at any time - I selfishly hope that my daughter will not grow up, and can always listen to her say "Daddy hug" and listen to her upstairs Xia shouted: "Xiao Han, I'm done, come down and wash my ass." The child's childhood is so short, in the past two years, my wife and I have not been with her for less than half a month, except for two trips abroad. Together, at other times, with her every day, it is very simple and ordinary, it is happiness. However, happiness has always been fragile, and love is a kind of soul food with increasing marginal utility. In this often broken world, there are at least some integrity that we may be able to control, and cherishing them is one of the few things we can do well.

six

The end of the year is approaching, and winter has arrived. Before the winter solstice, we will take our children to a place where public facilities are the most kind to children. Many buildings there, even the stair handrails up and down the stairs are divided into upper and lower layers, and the lower handrail is for children; there, we can always find equipment for changing children's diapers, because almost all public facilities There will be; it is also one of the safest countries in the world, and even foreigners who are only here for a few days will not be afraid to go out at night.

This time in Kyoto, after smoking a cigarette from a smoking area near a hotel every night, I always like to spend a few minutes on the nearby Sanjo Bridge, watch the passing pedestrians, and watch the tranquility behind the lights of thousands of houses. This is the oldest in Japan. There are also inscriptions from the Tenzheng era on the stone pillar bridge. Perhaps there has always been a similar tranquility here, except for the roundup of the Shinsengumi and its director Kondo Isamu and deputy chief Hijikata Toshisan 155 years ago at the Ikeda House 100 meters to the west. .

Although I haven't been to all the places in the world, I boldly guess that Japan is probably the place where tourists can experience the best service in the world. Japanese self-denial, diligence, punctuality, cleanliness, etiquette, service quality, product quality, no matter the overall Whether it is a single item, it is enough to look down on other countries. At least we ourselves, having traveled so many times in Japan, have never had a bad experience.

However, on the afternoon we came back from a closed door at Liuliguangyuan— that night was Christmas Eve this year, my wife saw from the news that Dr. Yang Wen was massacred by the patient’s family. Yes, the massacre was not ordinary. kill. The borrowed quiet years were completely destroyed by the blood and water from the motherland. Japanese medical care has been ranked first in the global medical system for many years. When I was studying in Tokyo in 2015, my wife once experienced a minor illness, and I still remember it. In that visit, the treatment process was considerate and courteous, the cost was reasonable, the medicines were separated, and the curative effects were excellent. As for the medical disturbance, it was almost unheard of. Last year, the doctor who stabbed a doctor at a cancer medical center in Hyogo Prefecture was a Chinese patient. Civilization" has finally entered the world as a part of soft power and China's nightmare.

Whether it is myself or my wife, every time I am in Japan, I feel that life is so unreal, and my wife sees this state as a parallel universe - "The troubles on the timeline of the existing world become very far away". We love Japan, but that's not our life, and even coming to travel is a luxury in itself.

I saw a news a few years ago . When the Kumamoto earthquake occurred in April 2016, part of the 4th floor of the Utu City Government Building collapsed. Japanese media reported that because the government budget was not enough, the 51-year-old building has been earthquake-proof for 13 years. The opportunity for reinforcement is left to the school. This kind of news can't help but remind people of Wenchuan. Yes, that's not our life. In our place, there are not many government buildings that are not big or small.

At the beginning of the year, many economists said that 2019 may be the best year for China in the next ten years. Now it will enter 2020 in a few days. What will happen next year? I don’t know, and I don’t even want to know. The only thing I may know is that my daughter’s ability to express will be better next year. What I look forward to most in this world is that she will bring us a steady stream of surprises and overflowing nowhere. The happiness of placement - no matter what happens in the world.

The abyss stared at us, the thunder of Brazil rolled across the sky, and the wind seemed to still have the cold smoke of the pools of water from centuries ago. "Xiaomei sleeps on the belly of a giant chinchilla" and the massacre of Dr. Yang Wen are stories of the same world. The cruelty of the two mirrors of heaven and hell facing each other is the starting point of the absurdity. The massacre of Dr. Yang actually reminded me inexplicably of the assassination of Rathenau (a rare genius and great man), the foreign minister of the Weimar Republic in 1922. I don't know of any strange inflection point in the arrow of time, or any strange, nonsensical connection between the two events, but I am reminded of a comment by the historian Hafner on the Rathenau assassination, in which he said, "Obviously , the future does not belong to people like Rathenau who must strive to enrich themselves and make themselves extraordinary; instead, it belongs to people like Zhang San and Li Si, who only need to learn to drive and fire a gun.”

In a few days, the last day of this year will also be the nine-year anniversary of Shi Tiesheng's death. When Tie Sheng was alive, every time we met on the way home, my wife and I would immediately think that if Tie Sheng could live so happily, what right do we have to be unhappy? Reminds me of a poem by Brodsky:

"Why raise your eyebrows in surprise,

Be like the windshield wipers on a car,

Drive away the inexplicable sadness from the face,

Let the distance no longer be blurred. "

First draft of December 6, 2019

Finalized on December 28, 2019