[Epoch Times September 06, 2021]Hello friends, today is September 6th (Monday), and welcome to “Foresight Quick Review”. I’m Tang Jingyuan.
Since Hu Xijin publicly challenged Li Guangman’s big-character poster, the discussion about whether there will be a second Cultural Revolution in China has intensified and has not subsided. And all these discussions are closely related to the treatment of Hu and Li’s articles.
After Hu Xijin’s article was published, many people first noticed the first important detail, that is, his article only appeared on his personal accounts such as WeChat and Weibo, and was not reprinted by any official media. The second important detail that the public noticed was that Hu Xijin’s article was first banned from sharing on WeChat, but was banned after a few hours, and it has continued to this day without any further changes.
Corresponding to this is the treatment of Li Guangman’s article, which was first reprinted collectively by dozens of party media and instantly became popular. But as Hu Xijin’s treatment “rises eastward”, Li Guangman’s treatment naturally begins to “fall west”. Since last Friday, Li Guangman’s “revolutionary” article has not been found on WeChat, and the self-expression article he wrote the next day has also been deleted.
Who should I believe when fighting each other?
Suddenly, public opinion on the Internet about “who should we trust” almost reached a rush. The CCP’s external propaganda media “Duowei News” quickly stepped forward and posted a statement saying: “People must realize whether the’revolution’ mentioned by Li Wen is an exaggerated rhetoric or a “real thing.” In fact, the ambiguity of this’dual meaning’ has already caused the public opinion field to boil. This is the background for Hu Xi’s clarification.”
On the other hand, the South China Morning Post, which appears to be controlled by Jack Ma but actually has a background of non-Xi Jinping factions, quoted Beijing media sources as saying that the regulatory authorities have conveyed verbal instructions to the Chinese media, claiming that the impact of Li Guangman’s article exceeded expectations and asked them to use it. More moderate content to balance.
Both Duowei News and the South China Morning Post mentioned two important points in common: 1. The response from Li Guangman’s article was so great that the competent authority had to make corrections; 2. Hu Xijin was ordered to issue an article to balance it. It shows that the pressure of this kind of response also exists in the party.
I think it is worth emphasizing that even though the top management arranged for Hu Xi to come in and out to reconcile public opinion, it does not mean that the intensity of this campaign by the authorities will be weakened. The object of cooling is only limited to public opinion.
For example, the latest online rumors about the “restriction order” is about to be issued, and even a list of 7 foreign celebrities, including American Wang Leehom and Liu Yifei, as well as Canadian Nicholas Tse and Singaporean Jet Li , British Zhang Tielin and others.
Coincidentally, when Nicholas Tse, who was born in Hong Kong, was a guest on CCTV Movie Channel’s “Blue Feather Reception Room” interview program yesterday, he immediately publicly stated that he was applying for quitting Canadian citizenship, which was tantamount to adding a credibility to this rumor. evidence.
Taiwan’s “Apple News” also released an exclusive report, saying that a senior Taiwanese agent who has been working in China’s reality show group for a long time revealed that the major program groups have received this rumored list, and it is said that the authorities are preparing to request “Tax checks” have been conducted on non-Chinese big-name artists.
These news all show that while the authorities are cooling down public opinion, the harvesting action of “adjusting excessively high income and achieving common prosperity” shows no signs of slowing down at all. The harvest of the first batch of “bad artists” is not over yet, and the next batch is already on the way.
Is Xi Jinping’s series of big moves really going to initiate a new Cultural Revolution?
So, this brings us back to the question we mentioned at the beginning of today: Does Xi Jinping’s series of big moves really want to initiate a new Cultural Revolution? Up to now, we have seen all kinds of claims. Some say it was a repeat of the Cultural Revolution, some say it is very different from the Cultural Revolution, and some say it is not the Cultural Revolution at all.
Today we will have a brief discussion on this issue that has always been divergent and has attracted great attention. And the most important question discussed is what kind of political movement fits the characteristics of the “Cultural Revolution”? In other words, what are the unique characteristics or conditions of the Cultural Revolution? Only by understanding this, can we truly objectively compare whether the campaign launched by Xi Jinping is a Cultural Revolution.
Reasons for the Cultural Revolution
First of all, the first is the reason for the launch of the Cultural Revolution. Why Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution? It is generally said that he was trying to defeat Liu Shaoqi and regain the party power that was lost due to the man-made disaster of tens of millions of deaths in the Great Famine. This statement has some truth, but it is not comprehensive. Because at the end of 1965 before the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong had just held a few meetings and labelled the four high-ranking officials of Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi, and Yang Shangkun as anti-party groups. This shows that his power and prestige in the party is far from what most people imagine. So bad.
If he just wanted to bring down Liu Shaoqi alone, he didn’t need to stir up the whole country for an earth-shaking movement. What he really wants to defeat is another line represented by Liu Shaoqi. This line is a bit similar to the later Deng Xiaoping line, gathering a large number of high-ranking CCP officials, but in Mao’s eyes, this is a “feudal capital repair” line. .
Because of this, he said that “The Cultural Revolution will happen again in seven or eight years”, indicating that he does not want to target one person, but the entire ideological transformation.
In other words, the main reason for Mao Zedong to launch the Cultural Revolution was the dispute based on ideology. This point is similar to Xi Jinping’s current practice and propaganda. We see that the so-called “Xi Jinping Thought” system built by Wang Huning for Xi Jinping clearly emphasizes the difference from Deng Xiaoping’s theoretical system and moves closer to the Maoist system.
Although there is still a gap between this kind of closeness and Maoism, this trend and signs are enough to awaken countless people’s fearful memories. This is one of the main reasons why the public seriously questioned Xi Jinping’s second Cultural Revolution.
The political atmosphere formed by the Cultural Revolution on the mainland
Secondly, the political atmosphere formed by the Cultural Revolution throughout the mainland can be summed up in one sentence: “The party is greater than the law, and the party’s leader is greater than the party.” This is the most typical manifestation of the radicalization of the CCP’s totalitarian system. Mao Zedong’s quotations have become the ultimate truth that transcends everything. Anyone who dared to oppose, disagree, or even praised enough, or accidentally made a mistake in words, will be regarded as a heinous crime and be subjected to various inhumane persecutions.
From this perspective, the CCP authorities have pushed for Xi Jinping’s quotations to realize the forced brainwashing of Xi Jinping’s thoughts from elementary school to university. Those who dare to deliberate about Xi himself, such as Ren Zhiqiang and Xu Zhangrun, are tortured and served by the National People’s Congress. This also shows that Xi Jinping is advancing The tendency of Mao’s Cultural Revolution to move closer. The only difference is that Mao used to mobilize the dictatorship of the masses to crack down, publicly destroy the public security law to destroy the rule of law, while Xi Jinping used the name of “ruling the country according to law,” which is Luo Zhi’s crime of abusing the rule of law.
The Cultural Revolution has a very distinctive inner-party power struggle
Third, the Cultural Revolution has an extremely distinctive color of power struggle within the party. Mao Zedong mobilized the Red Guards and the masses to carry out a radical and large-scale intra-party seizure of power. The result was a heavy blow to the Communist Party’s grassroots political organization, causing the country to almost fall into anarchy and paralysis. Because of the differences in the understanding of Mao Zedong’s thought, the people split into different factions and engaged in brutal cultural and military struggles with each other. The essence of this is still the struggle for power.
Xi Jinping is also facing a large-scale struggle to seize power within the party. He wants to seek re-election or even stay in power for life. The resistance he faces is the biggest since he took office. He currently does not have the prestige and party foundations of Mao Zedong, and the ideological status of the overall population of Chinese society is very different from that of the people in the 1960s. Therefore, Xi Jinping’s way of seizing power did not rigidly copy Mao Zedong, but adopted a gradual anti-corruption approach. Way.
In other words, the line initiated by Mao Zedong to seize power is bottom-up, while Xi Jinping is top-down. There is a big difference in form between the two, but the ultimate goal is the same. Absolute rule of ideology that does not allow the slightest doubt about its status is also the “North Korean model” that everyone is talking about. In fact, the “North Korea model” was originally grafted from the Mao Zedong model.
Under this model, during the Cultural Revolution, because of the accidental defacement of Mao Zedong’s portrait, countless people were sent to prison and even killed in mainland China as a counter-revolutionary crime. The most vivid example of North Korea is, of course, the American college student Warmbier. He was quickly arrested and died violently because he covered shoes with a newspaper with Kim Jong Un’s portrait.
In the era of Xi Jinping, such things were not uncommon. Dong Yaoqiong, an ordinary working woman, lost her freedom just because she splashed ink on the portrait of Xi Jinping, and was imprisoned in a mental hospital at least three times before and after.
Therefore, from the point of view of ideological governance and public use of words to represent the law, Xi Jinping is also approaching Mao Zedong, but examples like Dong Yaoqiong are still in the state of distributing cases, and the whole society is entering politics like the peak of the Cultural Revolution. There is still a big gap between fanaticism. After all, in the current mainland, the legacy of Deng Xiaoping’s economic construction-centric line is still very huge. If Xi Jinping wants to return to political leadership, it will not be achieved overnight.
Provoking the masses against the masses, the red terror of “the dictatorship of the masses”
Fourth, another very important feature of the Cultural Revolution is to provoke the masses to fight against the masses, and the resulting red terror in the form of “mass dictatorship”. This includes large-scale mass criticism, home ransacking, and corporal punishment and abuse; including the revolutionary committee’s replacement of the public security law, leading to widespread lynchings and arbitrary killings; also including large-scale exposure, whistleblowing, and political framing, which destroys the most basic morality. and many more.
We can objectively say that Xi Jinping’s current behavior is far from this anarchic “dictatorship of the masses”. He also uses public opinion to mobilize the masses, but he has strict precautions against the mass seizure of power and will never allow the masses. Sexual destruction of the current order occurs.
For example, from the boycott of Japan to the cyclical boycott series involving a series of large companies in the United States, France, South Korea, Europe and the United States, the political enthusiasm of the patriotic pinks is strictly limited to the stage of online saliva. Once someone really takes action on the street, they want to take action , Will soon be suppressed by the authorities on the grounds of “irrational patriotism”.
The current propaganda system has also launched a nationwide large-scale criticism, such as the well-known stigmatization criticism against Xu Zhangrun and others, and the revelation-style criticism against inferior artists such as Zhao Wei, who represent capital forces, all have a strong cultural revolution. At the same time, the use of cessation of hiring or cooperation, prohibition of qualifications, or even “social death” to cut off the source of income can be said to be a modern version of copycats in disguise.
But relatively speaking, this kind of critique is temporarily limited to the field of online critique. Apart from ransacking homes, the target has not yet been escalated to the point of physical torture or forced distribution of rural areas to accept the transformation of poor and lower middle peasants.
But if we come to a conclusion from this, saying that the CCP has made some progress compared with the red terror of Mao Zedong’s era, then I am afraid that it would be a big mistake.
Jiang Zemin’s 610 cool killing reached its peak
Although the CCP does not have a Cultural Revolution-style revolutionary committee, it has established the “610 Office” that has survived in the era of Jiang Zemin. The red terror created by this huge system far exceeds that of the Revolutionary Committee. The arbitrary arrests, torture, and torture of faith groups have reached the pinnacle, and there has even been the tragic crime of live organ harvesting.
Although this system was created in Jiang Zemin’s hands, it is still operating today. The experience gained from the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners was applied to another large-scale group of persecutors during the Xi Jinping era. This is known as the Xinjiang concentration camp.
From this perspective, although on the surface the CCP does not have a “revolutionary committee” that represents the dictatorship of the masses, this role has been inherited and used continuously by institutions such as the “610 Office” and the “vocational re-education camp” in a different way. In the name of “thought crime”, the nature of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and killing of specific target groups is the same.
Things like this happen to Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs today, and tomorrow may happen to private entrepreneurs like “capital black hands” or “black representatives of the capitalist literary and artistic line” in the entertainment industry. Bo Xilai has repeated a small-scale Cultural Revolution against a large number of private entrepreneurs in Chongqing, but the term is not to knock down Fengzixiu, but to “sweep the black” in the name.
As for the prevalence of whistleblowing, during the Cultural Revolution, there was an example of Zhang Hongbing exposing his biological mother Fang Zhongmou’s “counter-revolutionary remarks” that led to the death of his biological mother; there is an example of CCTV host Bi Fujian’s personal statements being betrayed by his friends and his work was destroyed. And the mainland Internet has just recently emerged, offering hundreds of thousands of rewards for exposing various “anti-thief” news. I believe many of my friends may still be fresh in their memory.
Therefore, we can say that the launching of a new Cultural Revolution already has a considerable foundation both within the party and the entire mainland society. Xi Jinping did not take the violent way of letting go of mobilizing the masses, because he already has big data monitoring, a weapon for comprehensive control of society, and he can basically eliminate anyone who wants to attack at an early stage. This It is difficult for those who want to stop him or even overthrow him in the traditional way of conspiracy coup, and can only use the influence of Deng Xiaoping’s line and the people’s fear of the Cultural Revolution to conduct it in a conspiracy way.
Liu He came out to appease Xi to be controllable and a gradual cultural revolution
Okay, we can now have some conclusive discussions on this.
In general, Xi Jinping has adopted varying degrees of borrowing, imitating or moving closer to the four major characteristics of the Cultural Revolution mentioned above. This is an objective fact. It is necessary to repeat the reason for the doubts raised during the Cultural Revolution.
But objectively speaking, Xi Jinping is currently limited by factors such as his personal qualifications, prestige, and actual scope of power control within the party, and he cannot go that far for the time being. The latest news we see today is that Liu He, who is in charge of finance, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the China International Digital Economy Expo. He said that the policy of supporting the development of the private economy has not changed and will not change in the future.
This is of course purposeful to appease the current state of panic among private enterprises. It also objectively demonstrates that there are considerable constraints on Xi Jinping both inside and outside the system. He has not been able to do whatever he wants like Mao Zedong for the time being.
From this perspective, we can say that what Xi Jinping launched was a soft cultural revolution, a controllable and gradual cultural revolution. The ultimate goal of this New Cultural Revolution is no different from that of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, except that various conditions determine that the New Cultural Revolution is still in the initial stage of “unfinished pictures and no daggers”.
For Xi Jinping, his original intention may not really want to return to the 100% Mao’s Cultural Revolution. If we regard the Mao’s Cultural Revolution as the most extreme 100 steps, Deng Xiaoping’s “turning out of chaos” to Mao’s part has returned to 50 steps. So Xi Jinping’s vision is probably to “set out the chaos” of Deng Xiaoping, and then return to the 70th or 80th step, that is, like North Korea, it has the absolute authority of the Cultural Revolution, but it is not harmful to large-scale social unrest. model.
Of course, he may have a good idea, but once the CCP system is activated, whether he can manage it himself is another matter.
From another perspective, Xi Jinping’s current actions also imply a threat to the party by borrowing the power of the Maoist Cultural Revolution: when Mao Zedong was not allowed to take power, he launched the Cultural Revolution to make everyone almost finished. Now if you don’t let me be in power, and want to wait for me to step down and pursue the liquidation, then I can also launch the Cultural Revolution to let everyone finish the game.
Okay, let’s talk about it today. Thank you for watching. See you next time.
“Foresight Quick Review” Production Team
Editor in charge: Li Hao #
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