Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium
Appendix XIII

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In July 2018, the Tsinghua University professor Xu Zhangrun published a point-by-point critique of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping, its Chairman of Everything. In his biting broadside, one composed in elegant and at times bitingly humorous literary Chinese, Xu warned of the dangers of one-man rule, a sycophantic bureaucracy, putting politics ahead of professionalism and the myriad other problems that the system would encounter if it rejected further reforms. He appealed to the Chinese party-state to rein in Xi Jinping’s monomania before it was too late. That July 2018 Jeremiad was one of a cycle of works in which Xu repeatedly reminded his readers of the pressing issues related to China’s momentous struggle with modernity, the state of the nation under Xi Jinping and the mixed prospects for its future.

Xu Zhangrun would pay a heavy price for having published ‘Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes’ — a Beijing Jeremiad 我們當下的恐懼與期待. Dismissed from his job as a professor of jurisprudence at Tsinghua University, banished from the campus and stripped both of his pension and his accreditation as a teacher, from mid 2020, Xu has lived in internal exile in the western suburbs of Beijing where, despite constant threats from the police and Chinese secret service, he continues to read, write and, when possible, publish. His is a Chinese voice of conscience that refuses to be cancelled.

In July 2021, China Heritage invited Professor Xu to comment on the third anniversary of the appearance of his ‘Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes’. He composed an essay titled ‘Alarms and Excursions Permit No Peace’笳鼓悲鳴遣人驚 in response, a translation of which was published in The New York Review of Books under the title ‘Xi’s China, the Handiwork of an Autocratic Roué’. Below we reprint that essay and publish the original Chinese text for the first time. This is followed by an interview conducted by Matt Seaton of NYRB with the author and translator. We conclude with Bertrand Russell’s reflections on meeting V.I. Lenin in Moscow in 1920.

Upon learning that Xu Zhangrun had published yet another highly critical appraisal of Xi Jinping, his ‘keepers’ (state security and police officers) yet again subjected him to hours of interrogation, furious threats and verbal abuse. He responded by repeating his stance, formulated in July 2018, that jail was the only way to silence him.

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In our series Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, we previously noted that:

‘The threnody of the Xi Jinping decade is tedium, something born of the ceaseless oscillations within China’s hermetically sealed system and it signals its deadening presence through reversals and the glum repetition of various tropes of the past. In this era, what was formerly limited divergence has given way to convergence, difference to singularity, diversity to homogeneity. Where in the past there was wriggle room, a straitjacket now awaits; possibility is all too frequently replaced by ordained inevitability; contingency by certainty and the unpredictable is met with inflexibility and harshness. For those who have lived with China’s party-state over the decades the déja-vu quality of the Xi era is undeniable. It is an age that sets itself against the unpredictable, the contingent, against the disheveled nature of reality itself; as a result it is implausible, brittle and in constant crisis-mode….’

We have also repeatedly made the case that Xi is a logical extension of the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to cleave to its ideological traditions and structures of power.

‘[He] has, at great cost and with immense effort kept contending political, economic and social forces at bay. By foreclosing the future, Xi Jinping has, as we have noted elsewhere, and writers as diverse as Xu Zhangrun and Fang Zhou have noted, trapped China in a new vicious cycle of suffocating repetition. This phenomenon is by no means unique to China, since revisionism, the unresolved legacies of the past and historical repetitions bedevil many countries. In the case of the People’s Republic of China, however, there are no countervailing forces allowing for debate or an open-ended possibility of change. As a result, a sense of tedium is born not only of the repetitious nature of much that has been happening, but a wide-spread awareness that what has been undone during the Xi Jinping decade will, at some point in the future, itself have to undone.’

It is this claustrophobic cycle of becoming — and the grim prospects for meaningful social and political evolution in China in the short to medium term — that, in 2018, led Xu Zhangrun to speak out. Today, four years later, we commemorate his courageous rebellion in writing.

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In ‘Aspects of Mao’, an essay written only days after the death of Mao in September 1976, Simon Leys observed that:

‘China has lost her “Great Leader”. This should allow her at last to start forging ahead again, after an all too long and abnormal interlude of chaotic rule and cultural stagnation. For a nation such as the Chinese, the loss should not be crippling: do truly great peoples ever need a “Great Leader”?’

We preface Xu Zhangrun’s evaluation of Xi Jinping, a man now hailed by the official media as ‘The People’s Leader’ 人民領袖 with a few words about China’s ‘uncrowned king’ 無冕之王. As the first decade of Xi Jinping’s rule draws to a close, nearly half a century after Mao’s demise, many ask whether in the twenty-first century China really needs ‘A People’s Leader’?

— Geremie R. Barmé, Editor, China Heritage
Distinguished Fellow, The Asia Society
20 July 2022

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Further Reading:

• We Need to Talk About Totalitarianism, Again, China Heritage, 31 March 2022
• Prelude to a Restoration: Xi Jinping, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun & the Spectre of Mao Zedong, China Heritage, 20 September 2021
• Justified Fears, Diminished Hopes, Unflagging Faith — Revisiting Xu Zhangrun’s July 2018 Jeremiad, China Heritage, 8 August 2021
• Geremie R. Barmé, One Decent Man, The New York Review of Books, 28 June 2018
• Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, China Heritage, 1 January 2022-
• Xu Zhangrun Archive, China Heritage, 1 August 2018-

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The People’s Leader

人民領袖

China’s state media began referred to Xi Jinping as ‘The Leader’ 領袖 lǐngxiù as early as 28 January 2014. People’s Daily published an account of popular Russian views of Xi based on the two times he had visited the Russian Federation. The report was titled ‘Approachability is the Manifestation of the Personal Demeanor of The Leader of a Great Power’ 平易近人中更顯大國領袖風采 and it claimed that a Russian graduate scholar in international relations had referred to Xi as ‘The Leader of a Great Power’ 大國領袖. Again, on 9 May 2015, People’s Daily online reported that a Russian scholar had hailed Xi for ‘being possessed of the demeanor of a Leader’ 領袖風采 lǐngxiù fēngcǎi. By using a not-uncommon form of linguistic sleight of hand China’s official media had introduced the concept of Xi Jinping as ‘The Leader’ by quoting foreign sources.

China had not had a 領袖 lǐngxiù since the days of Mao and once this old ‘trigger word’ was linked to Xi Jinping’s name there seemed to be no going back. On 1 October 2015, for example, during Xi’s state visit to the United States and participation in the summit meeting held to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the United Nations held in New York, he was repeatedly hailed for his ‘demeanor as Leader’ 領袖風采. At the Sixth Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress over which Xi presided in October 2016, he was elevated to become ‘The Core’ 核心 héxīn of China’s Communist enterprise and in a series of articles on Party theory published by People’s Daily the following month he was repeatedly referred to as ‘The Leader’ 領袖 lǐngxiù.

Following the Nineteenth Party Congress held in late October 2017, Xi Jinping started his second five-year term in office and in a People’s Daily puff piece one of his Politburo comrades referred to him as ‘The Leader’, even though he was theoretically still primus inter pares. Meanwhile one local media outlet in Guizhou province, anxious to curry favour with Beijing, having detected the shift in the discursive-rhetorical terrain published a portrait bombastically titled ‘Our Great Leader General Secretary Xi Jinping’ 偉大領袖習近平總書記。It was the first time China had a ‘Great Leader’ since the demise of Mao just over forty years earlier.

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Deng Xiaoping, whose legacy Xi Jinping was in the midst of dismantling, was now dragooned into supporting the rhetorical shift and Politburo member cum-sycophant Zhao Leji 趙樂際 quoted the long dead ‘architect of reform’ to the effect that:

‘The Party must have a leader and a leadership core.’ 黨一定要有領袖，有領導核心。

As his second term in office began, Xi Jinping was hailed as being ‘The Leader who is making China not only wealthy but also strong’ 一個使中國由富變強的領袖。And, on 18 November 2017, the leading Party news outlet published a report titled ‘Ten Things That Are Evidence of the Charismatic Leadership of Xi Jinping’ 十个真实细节带你感受习近平的领袖魅力。In the build up to the March 2018 convocation of the National People’s Congress at which the Chinese Constitution was revised to allow Xi Jinping potentially terminal tenure, People’s Daily and China Central TV produced a series of pre-Spring Festival videos titled ‘The People’s Leader’ 人民領袖. It was in this heady atmosphere of old-time fawning that Professor Xu Zhangrun, who had been writing pointed essays about the direction China was heading under Xi Jinping since early 2016, began planning his famous July 2018 jeremiad. He was further provoked by statements such as the following, made by Li Zhanshu 栗戰書, a consigliere-esque favourite of Xi’s who was both a Party leader and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, on 20 March 2018:

‘Comrade Xi Jinping is the Unquestioned Core of Our Party who is both firmly supported by the Whole Party and Beloved of the People. He is the Generalissimo of Our Armed Forces and The People’s Leader. He is the Helmsman guiding the nation on its journey of building Socialism With Chinese Characteristics in this New Epoch. He is The People’s Guide.’

習近平同志是全黨擁護、人民愛戴、當之無愧的黨的核心、軍隊統帥、人民領袖，是新時代中國特色社會主義國家的掌舵者、人民的領路人。

From 2019, it has been commonplace to hail Xi Jinping as ‘The Leader’ and local Party bosses have vied with each other to heap the Chairman of Everything with cringeworthy accolades both in the expectation that he would continue in office beyond 2022 and as part of the manufactured ‘grassroots’ support for him doing so.

The ambitions of Xi Jinping and his courtiers are not, however, limited to his being crowned ‘The People’s Leader’ in China. On 25 June 2022, Reference News, a Party organ that is often used to reassure the leadership that their wisdom and unparalleled genius is also recognised on the international stage, published a lead report modestly titled:

‘Xi Jinping Points the Way for the Development of the Whole World’
習近平為全球發展指明方向

Official China’s media constantly lauds Xi Jinping for ‘pointing the way’ 指明方向 in all realms of Chinese life, thought and governance. In response, wags both on- and off-line mockingly refer to him as ‘Emperor Pointer’ 指明帝王.

Source:

• Much of the above material is digested from Ping Fan 平凡, ‘中共二十大臨近，「領袖」稱號進入快車道’，《美國之音》，2022年7月14日

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Xi’s China, the Handiwork of an Autocratic Roué

Xu Zhangrun, translated by Geremie R. Barmé

“Of course, the regime has rained down punishments on me for my criticisms; I expected that. It only exposes its inherent fragility and unfitness for the modern world.”

— August 9, 2021

 

Translator’s Note: Xu Zhangrun was, until last year, a professor of jurisprudence at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, one of China’s most prestigious colleges. A celebrated lecturer and author of numerous works on the law, he was a noted essayist, and also the editor of a major series of books on legal reform.

In July 2018, Xu published “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes,” a point-by-point critique of the policies of Xi Jinping’s government. Since then, he has been subjected to relentless persecution—his life’s work has been outlawed, his online presence deleted, and his career destroyed. Dismissed by Tsinghua in 2020, stripped of his pension, housing, and teaching credentials, Xu now lives in a book-filled apartment in the far western suburbs of Beijing, getting by on his savings. He is forbidden from leaving the city or accepting help from friends.

In February this year, Geng Xiaonan, a noted cultural activist and Xu’s most outspoken supporter, was sentenced to three years’ jail in a far-flung women’s penitentiary. Tried on charges related to her publishing business, few observers doubt that the real reason for her punishment was her advocacy on behalf of Xu Zhangrun and other dissidents.

Even with numerous sound-sensitive CCTV cameras trained on his apartment, and regardless of continued abuse and interrogations, Xu persists in his writing. His latest book, Ten Letters from a Year of Plague, has just appeared through an independent Chinese publisher in New York.

The following essay, adapted and edited in translation, was written to mark the third anniversary of the publication of “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes.”

— Geremie R. Barmé

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• A Note on ‘Roué’:

Here and elsewhere, Xu Zhangrun has mocked Communist Party leaders like Xi Jinping and the purged Bo Xilai for pursuing what he calls ‘The Politics of the Successor Playboys’ 公子哥式治國. 公子哥兒 gōng zǐ gē ér is a term used to describe the self-indulgent wastrels of the traditional imperial nobility. It denotes both lineage and lifestyle, and it reflects an attitude of unquestionable entitlement. Given the combination of Xi Jinping’s advanced years and adolescent political passions, I decided that ‘roué’, a term derived from the idea that ill-restrained individuals deserved to be ‘broken on the rack’, or rouer, could well apply to the shameless political posturing of the man who occupies the empty heart of China.

— GRB, 20 July 2022  

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In March 2018, the Chinese legislature approved revisions to the constitution that effectively put an end to the already minimal political advances achieved following the economic reform policies originally introduced by the Communist Party in late 1978. Although the revisions [which abolished term limits on national leaders, making it possible for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely] unsettled China’s legal world, the outrage was expressed sotto voce; the disquiet barely went beyond what in the Soviet Union used to be called “kitchen table talk.”

Meanwhile, in public, a host of obsequious legal scholars vied to offer fawning praise for the new dispensation. Seemingly unabashed as they betrayed previous held views, they gave no hint of any internal moral struggles or sense of ambivalence about their conversion. Quite the opposite: many appeared to relish the fact that they were able to navigate the situation so adroitly. Instead, they focused their energies on how they could best realign themselves and pursue professional advancement.

At this crucial juncture, China’s political, business, and academic elites revealed a core of craven self-interest and vacuous hypocrisy. The display was even further evidence of the degraded state of our nation’s public life, one that has long been characterized by brazen political opportunism, systemic corruption, and the celebration of populist thuggery.

Various edicts were issued from on high that banned all public discussion, let alone disapproval, of the constitutional changes. The authorities made it quite clear that dissent would be severely punished. In particular, legal scholars were cautioned to keep their own counsel.

At the time these changes were being proposed, I bumped into a colleague from Tsinghua University who had long enjoyed a seat on the National People’s Congress [the legislative body that would soon rubber-stamp the constitutional reforms]. He was quick to tell me that he, too, was outraged by the mooted changes. They were, he assured me, indeed absurd, an egregious act of revanchism. In the same breath, he said: “But I’m just letting off steam. Of course, when the time comes to vote, I’ll be raising my hand along with everyone else. No one is crazy enough to paint a target on their back.”

His attitude was evidently shared by a majority of the men and women who had a substantive say in the matter [with the revision passing by 2,958 votes to two]. Fear drove them to come up with various rationalizations for their actions, and so our country is now under the sway of a Great Reversal. This came to pass not in stealth, but openly and with the acquiescence and complicity of China’s intelligentsia. Their stance has proved to be little different from that of the imperial slave-subjects of yesteryear; it has hastened China’s lurch back into the familiar old rut of totalitarianism. What has all of this wrought? It is more than evident: we now live in a nation beset by mounting domestic and external challenges.

I believe that legal scholars like me are akin to a priesthood that serves natural law, rather than merely justifying the requirements of the state. We should be the guardians of a system of justice based on due process, one that ensures equality before the law; a system that is underpinned by the conviction that all citizens can and should feel secure in an environment of unthreatened coexistence. That is why, in 2018, I decided that to remain silent at such a critical moment would be a betrayal of my life’s work. If even people like me shied from speaking out at such a time, what hope was there for Chinese society?

My belief that it was incumbent upon educators like me to give voice to their indignation and concern publicly led me to write “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes,” an in-depth analysis and critique of the state of modern China. It was in a mood of immense relief that I published it online in late July 2018; I had acted out of a duty to speak up and my hope was that my words would reach as wide an audience as possible. I even dared to think that what I had said might embolden others to raise their voices.

“Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes” was a warning to my compatriots, alerting them to things that were happening right here and now. It was an appeal calling on people to protect China’s reforms—hard-won advances derived from the immense sacrifices that countless numbers of our fellow citizens had made over four decades. It was also an exhortation to people to do what they could to prevent China’s further backward slide, one that I believe might all too easily lead to a new civil war. My admonition was also born of the anxiety that China could yet again find itself isolated by the international community.

Naturally, my essay was an open challenge to the powers-that-be, and I knew full well that by publishing it, I was courting disaster. Yet I was at peace with myself, and awaited with equanimity what fate had in store for me. As expected, the punishments rained down on me with increasing severity until, in the summer of 2020, the authorities finally bared their teeth.

They resorted to the tried-and-true methods of the proletarian dictatorship: they destroyed my livelihood and they incarcerated me. They hoped to repress my heresy by crushing my spirit. The only thing that they have managed to do, however, is to turn me into a semi-exile under partial house arrest in my own land. I was mentally prepared for all of this, and all that I had expected has duly been visited upon me. I regret nothing.

What does dismay me, however, is that since I published “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes,” everything I feared might happen has come to pass, and new evidence in support of my case emerges every day. The “Eight Fears” that I identified in July 2018 are now a reality. In the space of three short years, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic, the totalitarian tendencies of the Chinese party-state have become more evident. What was already an obnoxious oligarchy has now been replaced by a Chinese version of the Führerprinzip, along with a brutal form of purge politics based on the Leninist-Maoist model.

Populist statism and institutional statism have become intertwined and now aid and abet what I have previously called “Big Data Totalitarianism.” In tandem with this, mainstream global politics have undergone profound changes in recent years. On the international stage, the politics of the “war on terror” is giving way to a new anti-Communist animus aimed at China. Previously, the People’s Republic enjoyed a collaborative and relatively harmonious relationship with the international community. That has seen a sea change as many nations have radically revised their views of our country and the direction it is taking. By generating imaginary enemies in all quarters, China is further isolating itself, even if the vast scale of the People’s Republic will ensure its continued international influence, at least for the time being.

As for my “Eight Hopes,” they remain nothing more than wishful thinking.

Today, China is yet again confronting a question that has long bedeviled it: Where do we go from here? As the Covid-19 pandemic gradually passes—and along with that crisis, the justification for the heightened totalitarian approach the government has employed to deal with it—China will, I believe, once more see support for a republican constitutional system that enjoys the benefits of a resilient and vital democracy.

I recall that in early 2020 the political philosopher Slavoj Žižek argued that the best way for the world to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic was to implement a version of “war communism.” Such wrongheaded sophistry suggested a cure to a medical crisis that would merely serve to open the door to a far more insidious infection of the body politic. Žižek’s summons to totalitarian politics is nothing less than an invitation to disaster. His proposal was absurd, ill-conceived, and delusional.