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| Xi's Shattered Illusion of Control Recent Protests Revive a Long Tradition of Chinese Dissent |
| 2022-12-06 |
| [Foreign Affairs] It has been a long time since demonstrators filled the streets of Chinese cities crying out, "We want freedom!" and "The Chinese Communist Party should step down!" But the seemingly unthinkable has happened in recent days as an upwelling of protest erupted against Beijing’s draconian "zero COVID" policies and then morphed into a more general expression of opposition against the suffocating controls that the CCP has imposed on Chinese society. Do these events threaten the reign of President Xi Jinping, who has just been anointed with a third term as general secretary of the party? Are they a historical tipping point? Or will they prove to be an epiphenomenon that the well-organized CCP will easily bring to heel with more repression? After all, in the wake of the far more tectonic 1989 demonstrations, and even the ensuing Beijing massacre around Tiananmen Square, Chinese leaders not only put the protest genie back in the bottle but also went on to initiate a period of impressive economic growth and stability. Although the United States has no shortage of China experts, we have never accurately predicted moments of historical inflection in this "people’s republic." Few of us foresaw Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, the mass demonstrations that led to the massacre in 1989, or Xi’s embrace of a neo-Maoist techno-autocracy over the last decade. But our failure to anticipate this most recent spark of dissent is perhaps more understandable; after all, as Xi’s one-party Leninist imperium has gathered momentum, most foreign journalists have been expelled from China. Compounding the problem, Chinese citizens themselves have also been cowed into silence. Without independent polling, a free press, fair elections, and academic freedom, and with Xi now exercising control over every organ through which public sentiment might find expression, it has become difficult for outsiders to gauge public sentiment there. For those looking into this black box from the outside, it had been too easy to assume that everything is under control and that Xi has found an effective recipe for a durable autocracy. But whatever the outcome of these demonstrations, they indicate that Xi has no more discovered the secret sauce for totalitarian success than did Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro—or Mao himself. The protests remind us, instead, that the people Xi rules, like people everywhere, do not live by bread, shopping malls, video games, and leisure travel alone, and that many do not want to be confined, censored, bullied, detained, or imprisoned. To assume otherwise is patronizing and overlooks the long and august Chinese historical tradition of seeking rights and freedoms. To hear voices calling for Xi and the CCP to step down suggests that an elusive but important psychological line may have been crossed. But Xi is not a leader who accepts lèse majesté easily, and he will most certainly take umbrage and seek retribution. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 The laogais are going to be busy... |
| Posted by: HeavyG 2022-12-06 11:35 |