Jimmy Lai, the Twilight of Freedom & the Dawn of ‘Legalistic-Fascist-Stalinism’ 法日斯 in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Apostasy   International commentators, analysts, political scientists and students of contemporary China would be well advised to add the phrase ‘Legalistic-Fascist-Stalinism’ 法日斯 Fǎ-Rì-Sī to their everyday lexicons. Professor Xu Zhangrun 許章潤, the outspoken Beijing-based critic of Xi Jinping’s China, created the expression some years ago to describe China today, a country ruled by a form of social control that, as he put it, is ‘cobbled together from strains of traditional harsh Chinese Legalist thought [法 Fǎ; that is, 中式法家思想] wedded to an admix of the Leninist-Stalinist interpretation of Marxism [斯 Sī; 斯大林主義] along with the “Germano-Aryan” form of fascism [日 Rì; 日耳曼法西斯主義].’… Read

Xu Zhangrun’s Fears & Hopes, July 2018-July 2020

Viral Alarm   On 26 July 2018, Xu Zhangrun (許章潤, 1962-), a well-known professor of law at Tsinghua University published an essay titled ‘Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes’ 我們當下的恐懼與期待. Written in a succinct and powerful form of literary Chinese, Xu’s jeremiad analysed the authoritarian revanchism of what the Chinese media were hailing as the New Epoch of Xi Jinping Thought.… Read