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

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 旋 — The Lugubrious Merry-go-round
• Chapter Three 迴 — Turn, Turn, Turn
• Chapter Four 變 — From Reform to Revival
• Chapter Five 蔭 — Shadows of 1644
• Chapter Six 彪 — The Tyger’s Red Genes
• Chapter Seven 甦 — The Xi Jinping Restoration
• Chapter Eight 曲 — The History Men
• Chapter Nine 讕 — The Factory of Lies
• Chapter Ten 兲 — Horses Don’t Exist
• Chapter Eleven 伎 — The Theatre of Politics
• Chapter Twelve 緘 — A State of Cultural Boredom
• Chapter Thirteen 刁 — Thick Skin, Black Heart
• Chapter Fourteen 喬 — Professional Chinamen
• 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; and, Appendix XXV 贖 — ‘Ironic Points of Light’ — acts of redemption on the blank pages of history, 4 December 2022)
• 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;
• 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 生西 — Jiang Zemin Goes West
• 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 集 — AI, the Hive Mind and the Party’s Transhuman Project
• Chapter Thirty 詠 — The Garden of Forking Paths — China’s mytho-poetic historical complex
• Conclusion 憬 — An Irrealis Mood & the Chinese Multiverse

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, 21-28 February 2022 (this appendix consists of eight sections: 蒞 — Nixon’s Press Corps; 迓 — ‘Welcome to China, Mr. President!’; 撼 — A Week That Changed The World; 鞭 — The President & The Chairman in Retrospect; 迥 — Dissing Dissent; 見 — A storied Handshake, an excised Interpreter & a muted Anthem; and, 有目共睹 — 1978-1979, Year One of the Xi Jinping Crisis with the West
• 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