作者：陀先润
编辑：黄吉洲 校对：熊辩 翻译：周敏
中共国安部最近做了一件让连胡锡进都看不下去的事——他们堂而皇之地发了一篇公开文章，告诉中国年轻人：你们躺平，是因为境外势力在幕后操纵你们。那些鼓吹躺平的账号、公众号、网红，背后都有外国势力的手在推动。
我认认真真把这篇文章从头读到尾。没有证据，没有点名任何一个账号，没有指出任何一笔资金，没有任何实质内容。一个号称掌握国家最高机密情报的部门，拿出来的东西，是一篇连大学生写思想汇报都不如的空洞说教，通篇只有一个意思：境外势力希望你们躺平，所以你们不能躺平。
但这不是无能，这是傲慢。他们根本不需要证据。扣帽子不需要证据，恐吓不需要证据。这就是政治警察的底层逻辑：我说你有问题，你就有问题，你自己去证明你没问题。这套逻辑，中国人的上一辈在文革里领教得够透彻了。
更值得警惕的问题不是这篇文章写得多烂，而是：国安部为什么要写这篇文章？思想引导、青年工作，这本来是共青团中央几十年的地盘，是宣传系统的标准操作。现在国安下场了，用政治警察的口吻和逻辑来做本该属于思想政治工作的事。这个越界，不是偶然失误，是权力扩张的信号。
历史的铁律：政治保卫警察权力膨胀，普通人就要开始倒霉
要理解这个信号意味着什么，必须回到历史。中共历史上，政治保卫警察的权力曾经两度大规模膨胀，每一次的结局都是用鲜血写成的。
第一次是“肃反”时期。很多人以为红军是被蒋介石打败的，但真正从内部瓦解红军的，是以邓发、王首道为代表的政治保卫系统。这批人接管了中华苏维埃和苏区政府的方方面面——报纸归他们管，医院归他们管，妇女工作归他们管，儿童团归他们管，他们拥有否决一切、怀疑一切、最后制裁一切的权力。结果是大规模冤假错案，自己人杀自己人，红军从内部崩溃。这段历史后来被中共自己称为”沉痛教训”，参与其中的邓发等人后来被清算了一批，但这个教训显然没有被真正记住。
第二次是1957年“反右”之后。“反右”运动由邓小平主导，大量使用了罗瑞卿系统，也就是公安部里的政保系统。进入1959年之后，政治保卫系统再度膨胀，成分不好的学生被禁止考大学，阶级敌人的帽子满天飞。“大跃进”失败，饿死了几千万人，经济彻底崩溃。这个时候中共的反应不是检讨，不是认错，而是让政治警察更加猖獗——经济越烂，越需要找敌人，越需要用政治恐惧转移视线。这条逻辑，今天依然在运转。随后而来的，是“文化大革命”，是所有历次运动的总爆发。政治保卫渗入每家每户，管控街道、联防队员、学校老师，政治保卫高于一切。普通警察和政治警察之间的矛盾彻底爆发，公安部系统陷入派系混战，连公安部长李震都死得莫名其妙，官方说是自杀，没有人真正知道发生了什么。
第三次，正在发生
2019年之后，习近平将”政治安全”重新供上了所有安全领域的最高神坛。从那以后，国安系统开始悄悄爬进每一个领域。北京大学党委书记，由原北京国安局局长直接出任；清华大学随后也来了一个国安背景的干部。国安的人员开始向各高校、各科研院所蔓延，用抓人出身的眼光审视每一个教授、每一个研究员，看谁和境外有联系，看谁的研究方向不够”安全”。与此同时，证监会的上级指导单位悄悄加入了国安部，金融证券领域开始由国安”指导”工作。宣传口、媒体系统，国安也开始全面介入。
想象一下这意味着什么：一个在国安干了三十年、专职从事盯梢、监听、抓人工作的人，现在去”指导”资本市场。他懂什么叫市盈率吗？他懂流动性风险吗？他懂宏观经济政策的传导机制吗？都不懂。他唯一懂的，是盯着所有人的脸判断谁像境外势力，谁的背景需要深查，谁该被带走谈话。把这种人放进金融系统、教育系统、媒体系统，不是在治理国家，是在用政治恐惧系统性地替代专业判断，是在从内部摧毁这个国家的正常运转。
还有一个很多人忽略的细节：近年来，大量国企、高校、公务员单位重新要求员工填写”家庭出身”。很多年轻人不知道这是什么，以为是填职业或者收入。但家庭出身不是你的职业，是你的政治成分，是政治警察给所有人分类贴标签的标准工具，上一次大规模使用这个词是在“文革”。这个词的重新出现，不是行政惯例的延续，是系统性政治倒退正在悄悄重建分类管控体系的证据。
信息管控：让你连问题都问不出来
政治警察全面渗透的另一个结果，是信息管控的质变。3·29北京发生了什么？国内绝大多数人只看到了一辆车的视频。但在那之外，已经有医院开始转移病人，丰台的多家医院收治了大量工业亚硝酸盐中毒的患者。这些信息，国内的普通人几乎完全不知道。
这不是偶然的技术性漏洞，这是系统设计的结果。政治警察的信息管控不是粗暴地告诉你”这条新闻是假的”，也不是简单地屏蔽关键词——那种方式太容易被识别、太容易引发反弹。真正高明的管控，是让某件事从一开始就不进入你的信息环境，让你根本没有机会形成疑问，让你在不知道自己不知道的状态下，心平气和地继续生活。当你连问题都问不出来，管控就已经彻底成功了。
历史的规律是残酷而清晰的：每当政治保卫系统的行政地位开始大幅膨胀，恐怖管制时代就会随之而来。那个契机可能是一场经济危机，可能是一次军事冲突，可能是某一天某条突然消失的重要新闻。而一旦那个契机出现，等待所有人的只有两种状态：顺我者昌，逆我者亡，没有中间地带，没有置身事外的可能。
现在，这扇门正在被缓缓推开。留给中国人的时间，已经不多了。
The Ministry of State Security Steps in to Manage “Lying Flat”: The Prelude to an Era of Terror Has Begun
Author: Tuo Xianrun
Editor: Huang Jizhou Proofreader: Xiong Bian Translator: Zhou Min
Abstract: Attributing “lying flat” to overseas forces has been criticized as hollow preaching. The article uses this to warn of the expansion of the State Security system’s power and the infiltration of political police into various fields, potentially signaling a new round of social tightening characterized by fear and control.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Ministry of State Security (MSS) recently did something that even Hu Xijin could not stand—they brazenly published a public article telling Chinese youth: You are “lying flat” (tang ping) because overseas forces are manipulating you behind the scenes. Those accounts, public WeChat IDs, and influencers advocating for lying flat all have the hands of foreign forces pushing them from behind.
I read this article seriously from beginning to end. There was no evidence, no naming of any specific accounts, no pointing to any funds, and no substantial content. An agency that claims to hold the nation’s highest secret intelligence produced a piece of hollow preaching that is worse than a thought report written by a college student. The entire text conveys only one meaning: Overseas forces want you to lie flat, so you must not lie flat.
But this is not incompetence; it is arrogance. They do not need evidence at all. Labeling people requires no evidence; intimidation requires no evidence. This is the underlying logic of the political police: If I say you have a problem, you have a problem, and it is up to you to prove that you don’t. The previous generation of Chinese people experienced this logic thoroughly enough during the Cultural Revolution.
The more alarming issue is not how poorly the article was written, but: Why did the Ministry of State Security write this article? Ideological guidance and youth work have traditionally been the turf of the Communist Youth League Central Committee for decades—it is the standard operation of the propaganda system. Now, State Security has stepped into the fray, using the tone and logic of political police to perform tasks that should belong to ideological and political work. This overstepping is not an accidental mistake; it is a signal of power expansion.
The Iron Law of History: When the Power of Political Security Police Swells, Ordinary People Start to Suffer
To understand what this signal means, one must return to history. In the history of the CCP, the power of the political security police has expanded on a massive scale twice before, and each time the outcome was written in blood.
The first time was during the “Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries” period. Many people think the Red Army was defeated by Chiang Kai-shek, but what truly disintegrated the Red Army from within was the political security system represented by Deng Fa and Wang Shoudao. This group of people took over every aspect of the Chinese Soviet and Soviet zone governments—newspapers were under them, hospitals were under them, women’s work was under them, and children’s leagues were under them. They held the power to veto everything, suspect everything, and ultimately punish everything. The result was large-scale unjust, false, and wrongful convictions—killing their own people—and the Red Army collapsed from within. This period was later called a “painful lesson” by the CCP itself. Some participants, like Deng Fa, were later purged, but this lesson has clearly not been truly remembered.
The second time was after the “Anti-Rightist” movement in 1957. The “Anti-Rightist” movement was led by Deng Xiaoping and made extensive use of Luo Ruiqing’s system—the political security (Zhengbao) system within the Ministry of Public Security. After entering 1959, the political security system expanded again. Students with “bad backgrounds” were banned from taking university entrance exams, and labels of “class enemy” flew everywhere. The “Great Leap Forward” failed, tens of millions starved to death, and the economy completely collapsed. At this time, the CCP’s reaction was not self-reflection or admitting mistakes, but letting the political police become even more rampant—the worse the economy, the more they needed to find enemies, and the more they needed to use political fear to divert attention. This logic is still operational today. What followed was the “Cultural Revolution,” the total explosion of all previous movements. Political security infiltrated every household, controlling streets, neighborhood defense members, and school teachers; political security stood above all. The conflict between ordinary police and political police broke out completely, and the Ministry of Public Security system fell into factional infighting. Even the Minister of Public Security, Li Zhen, died mysteriously. The official statement was suicide, but no one truly knows what happened.
The Third Time is Happening Now
Since 2019, Xi Jinping has restored “political security” to the highest pedestal of all security fields. Since then, the State Security system has begun to quietly crawl into every domain. The Party Secretary of Peking University was directly replaced by the former Director of the Beijing State Security Bureau; Tsinghua University followed suit with an official from a State Security background. State Security personnel have begun to spread to various universities and research institutes, scrutinizing every professor and researcher with an eye trained for arresting people—looking at who has overseas connections and whose research direction is not “secure” enough. Meanwhile, the superior guiding unit of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has quietly been joined by the Ministry of State Security; the financial and securities sectors have begun to have their work “guided” by State Security. In the propaganda and media systems, State Security has also begun to intervene comprehensively.
Imagine what this means: a person who has worked in State Security for thirty years, specializing in tailing, wiretapping, and arresting people, is now “guiding” the capital markets. Does he understand what a P/E ratio is? Does he understand liquidity risk? Does he understand the transmission mechanism of macroeconomic policy? He understands none of it. The only thing he understands is staring at everyone’s faces to judge who looks like an overseas force, whose background needs a deep investigation, and who should be taken away for a “talk.” Placing such people into the financial system, education system, and media system is not governing a country; it is systematically replacing professional judgment with political fear and destroying the normal functioning of this country from within.
There is another detail many people overlook: In recent years, a large number of state-owned enterprises, universities, and civil service units have once again required employees to fill out “family background” (jiating chushen). Many young people do not know what this is and think it refers to occupation or income. But “family background” is not your occupation; it is your political status (chengfen), the standard tool used by political police to categorize and label everyone. The last time this term was used on a large scale was during the “Cultural Revolution.” The reappearance of this term is not a continuation of administrative routine; it is evidence that a systematic political regression is quietly rebuilding a system of categorized control.
Information Control: Making You Unable to Even Ask Questions
Another result of the comprehensive infiltration by political police is a qualitative change in information control. What happened in Beijing on March 29? Most people in the country only saw a video of one car. But beyond that, hospitals had already begun transferring patients, and multiple hospitals in Fengtai admitted a large number of patients with industrial nitrite poisoning. Ordinary people in the country knew almost nothing about this information.
This is not an accidental technical loophole; it is a result of systemic design. Information control by political police does not crudely tell you “this news is false,” nor does it simply block keywords—those methods are too easy to recognize and trigger pushback. Truly sophisticated control ensures that an event never enters your information environment from the very beginning, giving you no chance to form a doubt, and allowing you to continue living peacefully in a state of not knowing what you don’t know. When you cannot even ask a question, the control has succeeded completely.
The laws of history are cruel and clear: whenever the administrative status of the political security system begins to expand significantly, an era of terror and control follows. The trigger might be an economic crisis, a military conflict, or a piece of important news that suddenly disappears one day. And once that trigger appears, only two states await everyone: those who follow prosper, and those who resist perish. There is no middle ground, and no possibility of staying out of it.
Now, this door is being slowly pushed open. For the Chinese people, time is running out.
