Communist Chinese politics are a lugubrious merry-go-round … and in order to appreciate fully the déjà-vu quality of its latest convolutions, you would need to have watched it revolve for half a century. The main problem with many of our politicians and pundits is that their memories are too short, thus forever preventing them from putting events and personalities in a true historical perspective.

— Simon Leys quoted in Watching China Watching
China Heritage, 2018

***

… those who have sought to be profound about Chinese culture have always had difficulty with tedium.

— Lucien W. Pye, China Quarterly, December 1967

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium

Geremie R. Barmé

For Xu Zhangrun 許章潤

Contents

• Prologue 真面目 — The True Face of Mount Lu, 1 January 2022
• An Illustrated Proem 鴟 — A Winking Owl, a Volant Dragon & the Tiger’s Arse, 10 January 2022
• A New Year’s Card — Greeting the Year of the Tiger 壬寅虎年, 31 January 2022
• Introduction 瞽 — You Should Look Back, 1 February 2022
• A Tally 單 — The Threnody of Tedium, 18 February 2022
• Chapter One 比肩 — We Need to Talk About Totalitarianism, Again, 31 March 2022
• Chapter Two ∓ 加減 — China’s Former People — Part I: Xu Zhangrun on 6 July 2023; and, Part II: On and On the Great River Rolls, 11 October 2024
• Chapter Three 迴 — Turn, Turn, Turn, 迴 The Tyranny of Chinese History, 10 March 2024; 旋 The Lugubrious Merry-go-round of Chinese Politics, 15 March 2024
• Chapter Four 1984年 — Simon Leys on George Orwell in 1984, 20 June 2024; Part II, 義憤 ‘Profoundly indignant. Longstandingly indignant. Dignifiedly indignant.’, 28 June 2024; Supplement: Recalling an Expert ‘China Expert’, 11 August 2024
• Chapter Five 甲申380年祭 — The Long Tail of 1644
• Chapter Six 陰陽兩界 — The Yin-Yang Nation and the Legacy of 1954
• Chapter Seven 人走茶涼 —When the Tea Goes Cold, 3 September 2024
• Chapter Eight 中軸線 — Beijing Reoriented, 1 October 2024
• Chapter Nine 曲 — The History Men
• Chapter Ten 兲 — Horses Don’t Exist
• Chapter Eleven 牆國荒誕字 一把辛酸淚
  — The Absurdities of China’s Locked-in Syndrome
• Chapter Twelve 緘 — A State of Cultural Boredom
• Chapter Thirteen 刁 — Thick Skin, Black Heart
• Chapter Fourteen 冀 — The Disappointed & Professional Chinamen: Recalling an Expert ‘China Expert’; Han Suyin and Two-faced People
• Chapter Fifteen 丕 — A Century of Cancellation
• Chapter Sixteen 膜 — Taiwan, ROC (The Republic of Comedy)
• Chapter Seventeen 聚 — China’s Highly Consequential Political Silly Season: Part I (6 October 2022); Part II (14 October 2022); and, Part III (16 October 2022). Epilogue (8 November 2022)
• Chapter Eighteen 期 — Ecce Homo! — Hopium & China’s Hopioid Crisis (in three parts)
• Chapter Nineteen 熬 — The Copium of the Masses, Part I, The Art of Survival in the Age of Xi Jinping (4 May 2023); Part II…
• Chapter Twenty 咒 — A Hosanna for Chairman Mao & Canticles for Party General Secretary Xi, 22 October 2022
• Chapter Twenty-one 醒 — Awakenings — a Voice from Young China on the Duty to Rebel, 14 November 2022
• Chapter Twenty-two 官逼民反 — Fear, Fury & Protest — three years of viral alarm, 27 November 2022 (see also Appendix XXIII 空白 — How to Read a Blank Sheet of Paper, 30 November 2022; Appendix XXIV 職責— It’s My Duty, 1 December 2022; Appendix XXV 贖 — ‘Ironic Points of Light’ — acts of redemption on the blank pages of history, 4 December 2022; and, Appendix LV 一週年 — What Scares Me, 4 December 2023, as well as the Supplement, ‘It’s only the end of the beginning’ — Teacher Li on Blank Pages, Li Keqiang, Snowflakes & Monsters, 18 December 2023; and, Supplement II, The Persecution of Teacher Li, 16 May 2024)
• Chapter Twenty-three — Chinese Time, Part I: 新鬼舊夢— More New Ghosts, Same Old Dreams, 1 January 2023; Part II: 忘卻的紀念 — the struggle of memory against forgetfulness, 2 January 2023
• Chapter Twenty-four 楓橋 — The View from Maple Bridge, Part I: Ah, Humanity!, 5 February 2023; Part III: An Old Tale Retold, 29 June 2023; …
• Chapter Twenty-five 特 — The Blight of Yan’an — Privilege, Corruption & China’s Ongoing Revolution
• Chapter Twenty-six 新民 — A Pavilion for Sick Plum Trees — Homo Xinensis & Xi Jinping’s China Dream
• Chapter Twenty-seven 虛船觸舟 — Li Keqiang, the ‘Empty Boat’ of the Xi Jinping Era, 14 November 2023 (see also Monster Mash — Mourning a Dead Premier & Mocking the Ghouls Among the Living, 4 November 2023)
• Chapter Twenty-eight, Part I, 赤字 — 華表 huabiao — Red Rising, Red Eclipse, 29 December 2022; and, Part II, 檄 — As If: Australia-China at Fifty, 31 December 2022
• Chapter Twenty-nine 黑箱 — China Watcher Agonistes & the Black Box of Chinese Politics
• Chapter Thirty 與潮共舞 — China’s Mytho-poetic Historical Complex
• Chapter Thirty-one 在路上 — With Jack Kerouac in Chiang Mai — Planet Speakeasy & The Other China, 7 September 2023
• Chapter Thirty-two 劃地為牢 — A Cathedral of Pretence in the Pusillanimous Heart of Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, 13 October 2023
• Chapter Thirty-three 天下 — All-Under-Heaven — Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium as a Final Solution on a Global Scale
• Chapter Thirty-four 無往而不復 — Time’s Arrows, a chapter in six parts: Time’s Arrows; The Revolution of Resistance; Have We Been Noticed Yet?; Chinese Visions: A Provocation; On China’s Editor-Censors; Ethical Dilemmas — notes for academics who deal with Xi Jinping’s China; and, Fifteen Years of China’s Prosperous Age
• Chapter Thirty-five: Conclusion 憬 — An Irrealis Mood

Appendices

• Appendix I 捌 — A Beijing Winter after the Summer Olympics, 4 February 2022
• Appendix II 忌 — Beijing’s Coldest Spring — The 2022 Winter Olympics, Li Wenliang & Xu Zhangrun, 4 February 2022
• Appendix III 霸— Requiem for an Autocrat — Fang Zhou on Xi Jinping’s End of Days, 10 February 2022
• Appendix IV 闔 — A Valentine for M on the Bund, 14 February 2022
• Appendix V 朝 — Nixon in China, consisting of nine sections: 撼 — A Week That Changed The World; 見 — A storied Handshake, an excised Interpreter & a muted Anthem; 蒞 — Nixon’s Press Corps; 迓 — ‘Welcome to China, Mr. President!’; 有目共睹 — 1978-1979, Year One of the Xi Jinping Crisis with the West; 迥 — Dissing Dissent; 鞭 — The President & The Chairman in Retrospect; and, 書 — A 2012 Letter to the Chinese Embassy
• Appendix VI 直 — Eileen Gu— Hu Xijin on Skis, 25 February 2022
• Appendix VII 懼 — The Pandemic of Fear & the Angel of Dread, 6 March 2022
• Appendix VIII 愬 — Wang Jixian: A Voice from The Other China, but in Odessa, 12 March 2022; I’ve Forgotten How to Kneel in Front of You, 21 March 2022
• Appendix IX 蛻 — Who Goes Nazi Now? Russia, China, America …, 12 April 2022
• Appendix X 敘 — A Decade of Telling Chinese Stories, 1 May 2022
• Appendix XI 屈 — The Double Fifth Festival and the 35th of May 2022, 3 June 2022
• Appendix XII 治 — Hong Kong — twenty-five years after the fall, 1 July 2022
• Appendix XIII 罪 — The Curse of Great Leaders — the Xi Jinping decade and beyond, 20 July 2022
• Appendix XIV 窺 — China Watching — old skills honed for a ‘new era’, 24 August 2022
• Appendix XV 零 — Xi the Exterminator & the Perfection of Covid Wisdom, 1 September 2022
• Appendix XVI 覿 — China Watching in the Xi Jinping Era of Blindness and Deafness, 28 September 2022
• Appendix XVII 點 — October 1 & October 10 — Two Chinas, Whose Fatherland?, 1 October 2022
• Appendix XVIII 雙十 — From One to Ten and Back Again — 10 October 2022, 10 October 2022
• Appendix XIX 臺上臺下 — Exit Stage Right — Hu Jintao’s staggering departure from China’s political scene, 23 October 2022
• Appendix XX 花甲 — Xu Zhangrun at Sixty, 25 October 2022
• Appendix XXI 責 — ‘The Unseating Incident’ — a letter to Xi Jinping, my fellow Tsinghua alumnus, about our elder, Hu Jintao, 26 October 2022
• Appendix XXII 幽 — Bao Tong — Spirit & Soul, 10 November 2022
• Appendix XXIII 空白 — How to Read a Blank Sheet of Paper, 30 November 2022
• Appendix XXIV 職責— It’s My Duty, 1 December 2022
• Appendix XXV 贖 — ‘Ironic Points of Light’ — acts of redemption on the blank pages of history, 4 December 2022
• Appendix XXVI 囿 — A Ray of Light, A Glimmer of Hope — Li Yuan talks to Jeremy Goldkorn & to a Shanghai protester, 10 December 2022
• Appendix XXVII 謔— When Zig Turns Into Zag the Joke is on Everyone, 12 December 2022
• Appendix XXVIII 週而復始 — In My End is My Beginning — Chairman Xi’s New Clothes, 13 December 2022
• Appendix XXIX 孤傲 — Ever More Arrogant & Proud — Xi Jinping’s Rule in the End-time of Covid, 14 December 2022
• Appendix XXX 缺席 — Where is China’s Intelligentsia during the Covid Emergency? — re-reading Xu Zhiyong’s Letter to Xi Jinping, 22 December 2022 (see also Less Velvet, More Prison and Elephants & Anacondas)
• Appendix XXXI 人礦 — Xi Jinping’s Harvest — from reaping Garlic Chives to exploiting Huminerals, 6 January 2023 (annexure: Xi Jinping’s Harvest — an anthem for China’s disaffected Huminerals, 7 January 2023)
• Appendix XXXII 虎頭蛇尾 — The Tail-end of Tiger Tyranny, 20 January 2023
• Appendix XXXIII 卯兔 — Now What? — Greeting the Guimao Year of the Rabbit 癸卯兔年, 21 January 2023
• Appendix XXXIV 水中撈月 — So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 28 January 2023
• Appendix XXXV 染疫 — Dizzy with Success — snatching victory from the jaws of Covid defeat, 16 February 2023
• Appendix XXXVI — 你儂我儂 ‘It’s all ruined by the politics’, 5 March 2023
• Appendix XXXVII 萬變不離其宗 — The Harry Houdini of Marxist-Leninist regimes; the David Copperfield of Communism; the Criss Angel of autocracy, 6 March 2023
• Appendix XXXVIII 白茫茫一片真乾淨 — A Landslide Victory Marking the End of the Beginning, 10 March 2023
• Appendix XXXIX 鴨架湯 — It’s Time for Another Serving of Peking Duck Soup, 12 March 2023
• Appendix XL 我不相信 — ‘I Do Not Believe’  — Xu Zhiyong on being jailed, again, 10 April 2023
• Appendix XLI 東張西望 —You Can Get Here from There — Soviet historian Stephen Kotkin on Xi Jinping’s China — Watching China Watching (XL), 9 May 2023
• Appendix XLII 溫故而知新 — ‘If’ — Ending the Western Presence in China, Then & Now, 19 May 2023
• Appendix XLIII 期頤佞者— Kissinger Scores a Century, 27 May 2023 (supplement: Kissinger — a myth in his own time, 13 December 2023)
• Appendix XLIV 家住安源 — The Muzak of the Chinese Holocaust — Azalea Mountain on the Party’s birthday, 1 July 2023, 4 July 2023
• Appendix XLV 今夜越獄 詩詞為羽 — Five Years Ago Today — Xu Zhangrun’s Sublime Madness in the Soul, 24 July 2023
• Appendix XLVI 顛倒：羅剎海市 — The Topsy-turvy Country — China’s Summer Hit, 28 July 2023
• Appendix XLVII 殉道 — A Sermon for the Times, 26 August 2023
• Appendix XLVIII 悲欣交集 — Celebrating Geng Xiaonan, 8 September 2023
• Appendix XLIX 陰魂不散 — Shades of Mao — Children Spying on Parents, Fragile Hearts in Patriotic Drag and the Fishwife who Trolled Ukraine, 9 September 2023; and, Xi at XI — More Mao Than Ever, 23 December 2023 (a supplement)
• Appendix L 圍— A Country Besieged by Itself, 10 September 2022
• Appendix LI 好話說盡，壞事做絕 — 1 October 2023 — Golden Millet Dreams and a Future Long Frustrated, 1 October 2023
• Appendix LII 該怎麼辦 — It Is What It Is, 4 October 2023
• Appendix LIII 人妖之間 — Humanism, a Modest Existential Threat to Xi Jinping’s Ideological Security State, 20 October 2023
• Appendix LIV 現炒冷飯 — Chef Wang Makes a Hash of Egg-fried Rice, 1 November 2023
• Appendix LV 一週年 — What Scares Me — a letter from Kathy on the first anniversary of the Blank Page Movement, 4 December 2023
• Appendix LVI — 向何處去 From Jail, Xu Zhiyong asks ‘Whither China?’, 8 December 2023
• Appendix LVII — 傷感 A Unabomber Moment, or How We Hurt the Feelings of the Chinese People, 26 December 2023
• Appendix LVIII — 蠅營狗苟 You Want It Darker — Farewell 2023, Roll in 2024, 31 December 2023
• Appendix LIX — 本位 Xi Jinping’s Silos — the corrosive individualism of collectives, 8 January 2023

• Back When the Sino-US Cold War Began, 1 June 2023
• On the Road 在路上 — Taipei vs. Beijing, 12 January 2024, updated on 13 January 2024, also included in The Other China
• A Day for Humanity — Ai Song the artist & the poet Xu Zhangrun, 16 February 2024, also included in the Xu Zhangrun Archive
• Liu Chan 劉蟾, Caged Birds and Turd Blossoms, 1 March 2024
• Xu Zhangrun, Mourning Alexei Navalny, Shedding Tears for China, 2 March 2024
• ‘You are garlic chives!’ — Trisolarans, Burn Book and China’s Men in Black, 20 April 2024
• May Fourth at 105 — Protest, Resistance, Repression, 1 May 2024; May Fourth at Seventy, 4 May 2024; Captive Minds & Academic Angst on May Fourth 2024, 8 May 2024
• Catherine Churchman, Why Is Chinese So Boring?, 26 May 2024d
• Emperor One Direction — Xi Jinping, 1 June 2024
• June Fourth 2024 — Dai Qing, a Former Person who Refused to be Silenced, 4 June 2024
• After the Fall — Hong Kong Apostasy in 2024, 1 July 2024