Shike1

喜歡分享 分享喜歡
個人資料
  • 博客訪問:
正文

China’s Overarching Trend By Xu Wenli (徐文立)

(2025-01-21 07:32:45) 下一個

By Xu Wenli (徐文立) 

   

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by the author fifteen years ago. Now, in 2025, looking back, one may find its outlook a touch optimistic, yet the “displacement theory” regarding mainland China may still hold some merit. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s final analysis and prediction of communism states: “In the twentieth century, communism brought catastrophe to humankind, yet it also presented a painfully important lesson: utopian social engineering cannot coexist with the complexity of the human environment; only when political power is constrained can a society’s creativity be fully realized. Based on that lesson, what will likely dominate the twenty-first century is democracy, not communism.” Still, the ultimate demise of communism is but a historical trend; precisely when it will end remains hard to predict. The author’s notion of a sweeping displacement may help us comprehend the array of events now unfolding. That displacement has already occurred and cannot be reversed; the broader trend is set, unstoppable.]

Recently, Xiao Han (蕭瀚), a professor at the Law School of the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing who was suspended for political reasons, offered a New Year’s wish on January 1, 2010: let laughter “usher in the collapse of autocracy.”
Xiao Han’s words are bold indeed, and history will confirm his prediction as a great one.

Why a great prediction?
At the close of last year, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) government handed down a heavy sentence against Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) and the “Charter 08” (《零八憲章》). That may well be the regime’s last act of madness. During the grand military parade to mark the sixtieth anniversary in 2009, residents in the vicinity of Tiananmen were forbidden from stepping out their doors, so the Party’s “splendor” could unfold in a “sealed iron cask”—a telling sign indeed.

At the end of the Qing dynasty, despite two Self-Strengthening Movements, the economy was not poor. Yet in 1894, on Empress Dowager Cixi’s (慈禧) sixtieth birthday, China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War forced her to hunker down in the Ningshougong (甯壽宮). And in 1903, the Qing court punished Zhang Taiyan (章太炎) and Zou Rong (鄒容) for their writings. Eight years later, the Wuchang Uprising toppled the dynasty overnight.

Our present era is long removed from the Ming Dynasty’s closed-door isolation or the late Qing’s halting footsteps; change now arrives in cycles of mere decades, not centuries.

Thus, what is the grand trend in China today, and where might the way out lie? Let us consider several fundamental realities and transformations in mainland society:

1

Today’s CCP is already a mutated CCP; can a CCP that has lost its original character have any future?

The Chinese Communist Party, originally tinged with some idealism when the Soviet Union created it in 1921, is long gone. (It is worth noting that large sums provided by the Comintern early on had already deeply corrupted the CCP leadership.)
This mutation began before 1949. An even more telling sign, as historian Yang Kuisong (楊奎鬆) discovered, is that in April 1950, the CCP government promulgated a “Draft Salary Standards for Central-Level Government Personnel,” setting the top salary at 28.33 times that of the lowest level. In effect, top officials earned at least fifty times more than the already second-class peasants. Yet before 1949, the “corrupt regime” so vilified by the CCP—the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China—had enacted in 1946 a salary range from bottom to top of only 1:14.5 (excluding the president and five Yuans’ leaders). As for those Western countries so harshly criticized by the CCP, “except for a handful of nations, in England, France, and Germany, including their chief executives, the difference between the highest and lowest wages stands around 8–10 times, while in the United States and Japan, the gap is larger yet still only around 20 times. In most cases, the higher figure applies merely to the personal salary of the president or prime minister, which may be more than double that of the next tier of administrators.” In other words, in developed Western countries, the pay gap among government officials tends to be far narrower than that of officials in the so-called “New China.”

Facing these hard facts, those who blindly extol the Maoist line will be the most embarrassed.
One can conclude definitively that Mao Zedong is the primary culprit behind China’s current social inequities (毛澤東).
During the three-year civil war, over ten million people—mainly peasants—lost their lives. Both the Nationalists and the Communists carry guilt: the former for mistakes, the latter for crimes. From 1959 to 1961, the unprecedented Great Famine caused the death of millions more peasants, the atrocity of a totalitarian communist dictatorship with the “Red Emperor” Mao Zedong at its helm. Then came the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, both of which broke the moral backbone of Chinese society and severed the source of the nation’s knowledge.

After 1978, the process of mutation under Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) leadership became increasingly blatant. In order to break out of economic hardship, the Party “signaled left while turning right,” recognizing citizens’ right to private property and renouncing the campaign to eliminate “the root of all evil,” i.e.,

Share

private ownership—effectively discarding the theory of communism. Soon, official-business collusion led to a second wholesale seizure of public wealth (the first being after 1949). The CCP’s ruling elites became the most contemptible private owners—a “privileged oligarchy” built on monopoly. Today’s “one-party dictatorship” is maintained by that group’s entrenched monopoly.

Hence, the CCP now is completely changed—one might more accurately call it the “Chinese Oligarchic Privilege Party.”
A classic maxim holds that justice brings ample support, whereas injustice yields little. How could today’s China tolerate the perpetual domination of a tiny cluster of oligarchs? Can such a mutated Party have any future?
A proverb says, “When the name is not correct, the words will not ring true.” This fundamental disconnect leads only to destruction, which is the first point.

2

Mainland Chinese society today has undergone an all-encompassing displacement.
With this major shift already in place, can the Party’s authoritarian rule remain stable?

Over the past century, China has witnessed two sweeping societal displacements.
Textbooks in mainland universities still do not acknowledge—thus leaving many Chinese intellectuals unaware—that some two thousand years ago, Emperor Qin Shihuang (秦始皇) established a commandery system, abolishing feudal enfeoffment and centralizing imperial power, thus ending the “fiefdom” model of clan and tribal leaders that had spanned millennia. Since the Qin Dynasty, China entered an era of centralized “imperial autocracy,” lasting from Qin times through 1911, over two thousand years of imperial rule. This period is not properly called “feudal society.” In his essay “The Confusion of ‘Feudal,’” Mr. Luo Jian links the scholarship of Chen Yinke, Hu Shi, Huang Renyu, Li Shenzhi, and Wang Xuetai, offering incisive commentary. We need not elaborate here. Mainland textbooks, constrained by the CCP’s once-blind faith in Marxist theories from the West and in The History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), continued to push the “five-stage theory of human society.” Meanwhile, the new generation of CCP leaders hold inflated academic credentials but lack genuine learning in the humanities, with full control of all societal functions yet no capacity to rectify such errors.

Admittedly, before 1912, that imperial autocracy committed myriad evils and injustices, but it largely aligned with China’s agrarian production methods at the time and thus achieved a mighty empire more than once.

Curiously, under this “imperial autocracy,” there was still a degree of “gentry-based clan autonomy” (or community self-rule) at the grassroots, which even carried on into the Nationalist era under Chiang Kai-shek. Only around 1949, with Mao Zedong’s so-called “land reform,” was this space entirely shut down. It is likely that only in Communist China would a “bound-feet detective squad” replace the gentry-based clan autonomy—a practice persisting to this day with “red armbands” everywhere during official holidays. This pervasive stench of foot-binding cloth is indeed a wonder of the world, ridiculed by all.

After two thousand years of seemingly unshakable imperial autocracy, once confronted with the modern world of the Industrial Revolution, the system became immediately untenable. Around 1840, Western powers used “strong ships and sharp cannons” to force the moribund Qing court to end its isolationist policy and begin the first “reform and opening” in modern Chinese history. Western influences flooded in, novel institutions appeared in droves, a civil society began emerging, commercial guilds thrived, and private capital entered the scene. Society underwent the first major displacement. Despite the empire’s outward grandeur, it lost its traditional underpinnings, so its “overnight collapse” became inevitable.

At that time, China “imported” something called “newspapers”—a form of mass media—and with it came “crushing” figures such as Zhang Taiyan (章太炎) and Zou Rong (鄒容) in the famous “Su Bao Case·” offering an unparalleled platform for new ideas. The old order fears new ideas far more than it fears new weapons.

Hence the perceptive Mr. Wang Wo can declare, “Eleven years is not a prison term for some individuals; it is a death sentence for certain people.” That is the second point.

3

The Internet will be the catalyst for accelerating social transformation in mainland China.

For authoritarian rulers, the Internet is a war they can never win. Its essence is decentralized, without a single origin or endpoint; once you fail to smash it, you cannot block it. Like spilled mercury, it seeps into every crevice. All these “golden shields” and “silver shields” eventually become riddled with holes, to no avail. As early as the 1920s and 1930s, China had pioneers who promoted “human rights concepts.” Again, in 1978 and 1979, voices cried out. But only in the Internet age have human rights truly gained recognition. The CCP has been compelled to incorporate human rights into its constitution and has signed two U.N. treaties—the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Today, almost every blogger or Weibo user becomes a mini “newspaper” or “news agency,” terrifying the Party’s rulers. In mainland China, “oppositional voices” engage the authoritarian regime every day; arrests can’t stifle them, and bans can’t hold them. Freedom of speech may well be the first forbidden zone to be broken. In terms of the future, the CCP ought to be worried, not us.

Witness how Chinese mainland society has, once again, undergone a fundamental displacement—one the authorities are loath to see or admit. Yet “flowers drift of their own accord, waters flow of their own accord.” This intrinsic transformation is not only real but deepening, already irreversible. The pivot on which one-party rule rests is steadily shrinking; the Party’s sole remaining pillar is the increasingly targeted “privileged oligarchy,” whose corrupt officials have become “street rats” spurned by all. Indeed, openly cursing the CCP has long been fashionable. Perhaps the architects of the “new Self-Strengthening Movement” within the Party never anticipated this day; perhaps Deng Xiaoping vaguely foresaw it. When someone asked him if, in fifty years, Hong Kong’s political system would be identical to that of the mainland, he demurred: “By then, if we’re all the same, there’s no need to change.” What “we’re all the same” meant deserves probing.

Crucially, the CCP did not willingly permit this overarching displacement. After the Tiananmen events of 1989, both Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Li Peng (李鵬) attempted a return to the old ways, traveling to southern Jiangsu (the Sunan region) and rallying to eradicate the “social foundation of peaceful evolution.” Yet Deng Xiaoping knew that spelled doom for the Party. He undertook his famous “Southern Tour,” slapping down Jiang and Li in the process.

The past three decades of change in Chinese society have not been driven primarily by the CCP but rather by a citizenry—particularly peasants—who were desperate from years of famine and poverty. In a paradoxical twist, the privileged oligarchy that benefited most from ill-gotten wealth would not voluntarily pull society back, for they are a host of vampires reveling in extravagance and addiction, heedless of impending floods. Thus, ironically, they are both the most significant predators and the biggest catalysts for this massive displacement. That is the third point.

These three factors together portend imminent upheaval. On Chinese soil, “mountain rains are about to break, and wind fills the tower.” The ostensible prosperity of one-party rule is already a rotten wall awaiting an inevitable collapse.

4

A stable foundation for liberty and democracy rests on robust social autonomy and citizens’ legitimate private property.

So, where is mainland society’s current, ceaseless displacement heading? Indeed, it is quietly moving toward a new foundation. And what is that new foundation?

To grasp this, we must first clarify what underpins a stable, free, and democratic state—and then see whether the hidden displacement in mainland China aligns with that bedrock.

At first glance, this may seem profoundly complex or mystical. Yet truth is always the simplest thing, unburdened by complexity or obscurity.

Consider:

  1. A stable democratic regime is not fundamentally shaken by mere social or economic turbulence. One does not speak of democracy’s “shipwreck” because it rests on two solid pillars. The first is broad social autonomy; the second—“the foundation of the foundation”—is that every citizen is equally entitled to hold legitimate private property and, in practical terms, does hold such property.
    Once we grasp this, we have the key to understanding why free, stable democracies endure.

Take the White House, for example. The power of a U.S. President is not small, yet aside from being constitutionally granted authority in foreign affairs and defense, he cannot intervene in the affairs of each U.S. state, roughly equivalent to a Chinese province. Under a “dictatorial system,” this would be unthinkable. Translating “state” as “州” (zhou) for the U.S. is not quite accurate; strictly speaking, each State is more akin to a “nation” with its own legislative, judicial, and executive branches that do not bow to the federal government. This forms the largest unit of self-governance, making the United States a Federal Republic. Add in widespread community autonomy, periodic term limits and elections, an independent judiciary, and checks from public opinion. Under these conditions, no U.S. President can ever wield absolute power—he is effectively confined within “the cage of the rule of law.” In this way, a free and democratic political order takes shape and holds firm.

Consider Taiwan as another example: although its democracy remains imperfect, today’s elected President cannot and does not meddle arbitrarily in the affairs of Kaohsiung in the south or even in the local affairs of Taipei, which is run by his own party.
Thus, local and nationwide autonomy form the bedrock of a free, democratic state.

Chinese people are also beginning to realize that even “car culture” fosters independent, self-reliant individuals. Commercialization and marketization—however incomplete—inevitably generate myriad autonomous entities. The tens of thousands of volunteers who rushed to assist after the 2008 Wenchuan (汶川) earthquake exemplify such a spirit of autonomous initiative.
Though China’s state-owned economy remains concentrated in the hands of very few, just as Western capital was once monopolized by only a few individuals and families, such a phenomenon will inevitably fade away.
Who can reverse such a foundational shift in Chinese society? Impossible!
That “policies never leave Zhongnanhai (中南海)” is actually good news—the portent of the Red Dynasty’s impending collapse, unstoppable.

  1. Let us delve further into the second foundation of foundations. Take, for instance, “Charter 08” (《零八憲章》), which some belittle. From day one, it held its head high, boasting 303 distinguished mainland signatories at the outset. We have yet to hear that any have recanted. During the court verdict against Dr. Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), the CCP indirectly revealed that more than ten thousand people had signed it. Some supporters even proposed a plan to accompany Liu into prison in protest, described by the media as “tender yet defiant.” When has mainland China, in recent memory, witnessed such an inspiring scene? “If the people do not fear death, how will you threaten them with it?”

Recall the 33 signatories of 1989—how many retreated, regretted, or recanted under pressure? It was understandable.
Consider the Rightists and quasi-Rightists in 1957, half a million or more—arguably the backbone of the Chinese nation—virtually all were forced to confess or beg the Party for mercy, compelled to submit to Mao Zedong. Again, understandable.
Why was that? Because around 1949, with land reform, the co-opting of private enterprises, the establishment of people’s communes, and the nationalization (in reality, “Party-ization”) of everything, the CCP, and Mao Zedong seized absolute power over intellectuals’ survival, from basic sustenance to raising children. Faced with such extremities, how many could possibly resist?

Today’s Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) may be no less ruthless than Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin, but he no longer has the means. The essential social displacement that began taking shape after 1978—driven by commerce, markets, and private ownership—has allowed the mainland to begin to realize “If one place won’t feed me, another will.” Professor He Weifang (賀衛方) offers one example. Fan Yafeng (範亞峰) and Zhang Boshu (張博樹), who were also recently suspended by the “Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,” remain calm, steadfast, and unyielding—another. Times have changed: intellectuals on the mainland once again enjoy their own intellectual property rights, personal assets, and social resources.
The collective fearlessness of “Charter 08,” at minimum, shows that the CCP’s first survival weapon—lies—has already failed; its second—violence and oppression—no longer inspires enough fear. The implications of that failure run deep.

In summary, these are the “two foundations” of a free and democratic political system.
Certainly, mainland China still has a long way to go before these foundations can support a stable, liberal democracy. Yet the fundamental displacement underway has already accelerated the downfall of the Party’s red dynasty.

Still, do not expect a free, democratic society to be one of absolute equality or unbridled freedom. Such a society rests on the rule of law, guaranteeing only legally protected freedom and equality of rights and opportunity without denying human differences. It protects legitimate private property earned through honest work, does not encourage laziness, and does not stifle industry. An absolute egalitarian society has no future. Nature’s laws cannot be defied; law grows from nature, unifying Heaven and humankind and enabling societal harmony. (For a detailed analysis, see my On the Normal Order of Human Society, written in prison in 2002 and published in Hong Kong in 2008.)

5

The contradiction between the CCP’s privileged oligarchy and the citizenry is the principal conflict in mainland China today.

It hardly requires argument to see that this is the central reality of Chinese society. Because this oligarchic group is tiny, it stands opposed to the larger population, including the seventy million ordinary Party members. The ease with which they amassed power only makes them greedier, sharpening these conflicts. Meanwhile, their rapacious arrogance and domineering ways will produce decisive economic and social crises, as we see with escalating public protests. Relying on brute force, the oligarchs may discover one day that they have truly become a minuscule minority—at which point their armed forces might also waver. A “color revolution” is inevitable. By then, unless the oligarchy splinters and concedes power, allowing freedom of speech and assembly, independent unions, and the formation of new parties—mirroring the actions of the large bourgeoisie in the West—there will be no escape. But the current CCP oligarchy is likely far less enlightened and self-respecting than those Western magnates of old. If they do not surrender, they face extinction.

Nonetheless, even an imperfect market economy gradually fosters habits of independent thought, individual judgment, mutual respect, and adherence to contracts. Day by day, people learn anew: “fair dealing,” “equality of human rights,” “commercial economy is contract economy,” “market economy is the rule-of-law economy,” “live and let live,” and “negotiation is better than mutual destruction.” Over time, water wears down the stone. A peaceful transformation is not impossible—and that would spare the Chinese from the nightmares of another communist revolution. Then we would indeed be fortunate.
I believe circumstances override human will. The tide is stronger than the individual.

So, how can we achieve the best outcome rather than the worst?

6

Achieving “Three Possessions for Citizens” (公民三有) may be the key to a peaceful transition in mainland China.

Change cannot wait.
In my view, the path lies in continuous, unrelenting “rights-defense” and “civil rights” movements, leading to the realization of “Three Possessions for Citizens.”
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is the core of constitutional democracy. Of this, “for the people” underpins the other two. “Three Possessions for Citizens” is simply its concrete form.
This means that citizens have employment (有業), shares (有股), and property (有產).

“Have employment” signifies that the nation should provide every citizen a fair chance at full employment and the opportunity to build a personal career. Of course, no society can achieve 100% employment, but only in a constitutional democracy can unemployment be minimized, and those without work receive proper unemployment aid and retraining, with an emphasis on equal opportunity.

“Have shares” refers to the massive assets accumulated in China’s state-owned enterprises thanks to the people’s decades of labor. After recent shareholding reforms, mainland citizens received nothing, while the privileged oligarchy seized what should have been public property. Citizens thus have every right to reclaim their portion. This must be enacted through legislation to ensure fair distribution. Indeed, this step is inevitable—one that may become a major driver of transformative change. Meanwhile, we also encourage private entrepreneurs to share a suitable portion of equity with their employees, a decision to be made independently by shareholders, gatherings of employees, or free unions without state interference.

“Have property” mainly concerns housing and land. Citizens should hold complete and legitimate ownership of private property, with the state prohibited from vying with the populace for profit or arbitrarily confiscating lawfully held assets. Naturally, we acknowledge the extreme complexity of land rights. Legislation must ensure equal rights in land ownership for all citizens, ending the perpetual second-class status of peasants.

Among these, “shares” and “property” are the most potent weapons, the only real means to dissolve the trap of crony capitalism.

7

Democracy in China must be born from and take root in fine traditional values.

Since the nineteenth century—especially under foreign oppression—some Chinese have believed only foreign imports are good, first “Mr. Marx” and then “Mr. Capital.” They forget that we also have “Mr. Chinese Tradition” and a “normal order of human society” that forever remains in effect. When we fail to achieve harmony, it is because we defy that order; to create harmony, we must restore it. Our ancestors taught this long ago. Such things cannot be accomplished by mere toppling. The Communist Party destroyed the Nationalist Party at the cost of tens of millions of Chinese lives; after taking power, it again caused millions more innocent deaths. Repeating that pattern is reckless.

We should not forget that in 1957, Xu Zhangben (徐璋本)—labeled a Rightist and imprisoned for twenty years for an article and a “Labor Party Manifesto”—remarked incisively: “From the holistic perspective of human nature, Marx’s omission of ‘the person’ reduces humans to products of an economic system, an inversion of cause and effect. Such a doctrine cannot serve as a guiding ‘philosophy of life.’ Moreover, relying on ‘class struggle’—a derivative of Hegelian ‘war-driven evolution’—reflects an extreme expression of human selfishness, hatred, and cruelty. While Marx inherited Germany’s rigorous academic traditions, he also inherited its Prussian absolute intransigence, tinged with religious fervor. Applied to a ‘political philosophy of action’ that ignores humans’ dual biological instincts, it engendered both a lofty ideal and a psychology of hatred: an internal contradiction that prioritizes ends over means. Meanwhile, the profound insights of India and China’s Eastern traditions, free from religious dogmatism, extol the ‘Great Unity’ of humanitarianism and the concept that ‘Heaven and Man are One.’ This is the right path for humanity.” Researchers believe that this single essay will earn Mr. Xu Zhangben a place in China’s intellectual history. (Xie Yong, “Qian Xuesen and His Classmate Xu Zhangben”).

The fusion of universal human values with China’s longstanding virtues is the grand future for our country.

Without addressing institutional issues, understanding human nature, without comprehending the normal order of human society, no fundamental solution to China’s problems is possible.

  1. We must learn from the West’s distrust of personal authority, preference for pluralistic checks and balances, and democratic political institutions so that evildoers dare not and cannot easily do wrong.

  2. On the other hand, we should carry forward the best of Chinese culture: law following nature, the unity of man and Heaven, trust in humanity and in the innate conscience of each individual (“everyone has a scale in their heart”), urging self-reflection and inner responsibility. We must cultivate both character and intellect, meaning that in future China, we value both institutional constraints and moral education. Education comes first.

  3. We must accept that human society has a normal order. It cannot be violated.

China’s path forward lies in education, institutions, and that normal order.

8

The best way for China to achieve democratization and national unification is through peace, rationality, and nonviolence.

Remember, in his final hour, Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) implored: “Peace, struggle, save China!”
Through “scholarly forums” advancing to “roundtable dialogues,” we seek reconciliation, systemic transition, and ethnic rapprochement between the two sides of the Strait. We must employ democratic constitutional governance to resolve the crisis of legitimacy, use “Three Possessions for Citizens” to steer clear of crony capitalism, and build a constitutional democracy while revitalizing Chinese culture to establish a just foundation of “sovereignty.” In this manner, we can achieve national unity. Concretely, we can address cross-strait realities through peaceful development under a framework of “One China, Two Constitutions, Two Governments,” eradicating division and confrontation. A future authorized “constitutional convention” can finalize a peaceful democratic transition, ending authoritarianism and ultimately forming the Third Republic of China, a new civilization defined by liberty, benevolence, and ethnic unity—our optimal path to constitutional democracy and national unification.

That is precisely why I, along with former Taiwanese legislator Qian Da (錢達) and the young mainland scholar of New Confucianism Kong Shiren (孔識仁), jointly advocate a cross-strait peace accord.

Wang Kang (王康), a noble encyclopedic mind whose wisdom could guide mainland China to greatness, recently said: “We have not just one Moses—Liu Xiaobo is the latest. Let us not allow our Moses to stand alone. Only then does China have hope. This faith belongs to Liu Xiaobo.”
I believe it belongs to all.
I believe China’s Shrine of Loyal Martyrs will never lack courageous souls.
I believe that with worthy guides and wise men leading the way, China’s future is boundless.

(January 18, 2010)

This translation is authorized and contributed by the author and undertaken by the China Thought Express editorial team. The Chinese version will be in the Contemporary China Review 2025 Spring Issue.

 

Free from political or ideological influences, we publish and syndicate commentary and analysis on a variety of China-related topics, delivering insights from top experts in the Chinese-speaking world in real-time. Welcome share our posts with readers who seek a deeper understanding of issues related to China.

If you are interested in connecting with the experts or authors of the articles we publish, please reach out to us via chinathoughtexpress@gmail.com.

 
LIKE
 
COMMENT
 
RESTACK
 

© 2025 World Chinese Publishing
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

[ 打印 ]
閱讀 ()評論 (0)
評論
目前還沒有任何評論
登錄後才可評論.