If someone had asked me many years ago what democracy is, I might only have been able to give the definition found in textbooks: the people possess the right to vote, the government governs according to the law, and everyone is equal before the law. Back then, these terms were both familiar and unfamiliar to me, seemingly very far removed from the lives of ordinary people. I had never seriously considered how a system could ultimately affect a person’s entire life.
Later, I began to come into contact with more and more news, books, and historical materials from different countries and regions, and I gradually came to understand the course of Taiwan’s democratic development. As my understanding continued to deepen, I discovered that what I yearned for was not a specific place, but a system that can truly safeguard the rights of ordinary people.
When many people discuss democracy, they always like to start with political figures, election results, or political party competition. But in my view, the true value of democracy is not manifested in these grand political scenes; rather, it is manifested within the daily lives of ordinary people.
Does a society allow different opinions to openly exist? Can an ordinary person openly criticize the government without having to worry about suffering retaliation? Can the media continuously supervise public power? Can the courts hand down judgments based on the law rather than based on power? These questions, seemingly ordinary, directly determine the living environment of every single person.
I began to pay attention to Taiwan, and it was not because it has no problems. In fact, no society is perfect, and democratic systems similarly experience controversies, conflicts, and even chaos. However, it is precisely because different voices exist that people can continuously correct mistakes through open discussion, media supervision, judicial remedies, and democratic procedures, rather than allowing one single voice to monopolize the public space for a long time.
One point that left a deep impression on me is that the Taiwanese society’s discussion of public affairs is nearly omnipresent. When the government proposes a new policy, the media will continuously report on it, experts will express opinions, civil society organizations will organize discussions, and ordinary citizens are also able to express their own views through various channels. Ultimately, whether a policy is reasonable is no longer unilaterally decided by administrative organs alone, but is gradually formed into a social consensus through continuous communication, debate, and amendment.
Some people believe that such a process is too low in efficiency. I, however, increasingly feel that what is truly worth pursuing is not the speed of decision-making, but the quality of decision-making. Because behind every single policy, it concerns the lives of countless ordinary families. If there is no full discussion, no participation of different opinions, and no supervision over power, no matter how efficient a decision is, it may bring irreparable harm to many people.
It is precisely because of this that I more and more understand why a democratic system emphasizes procedure so much.
Procedure is not red tape; rather, it is for the purpose of preventing any power from easily crossing legal boundaries. Every single procedure is a restraint upon power; every single open discussion is a balancing of the public interest by society; every single judicial review is a reminder to administrative power by the law.
I have gradually come to realize that the true civilization of a society is not how much power the government possesses, but how much supervision the government is willing to accept.
Taiwan’s development over the past several decades has also allowed me to see that systems are by no means immutable. From the authoritarian period to today’s democratic society, it has experienced a long and complex process of reform. Freedom of the press has continuously expanded, the judicial system has sustained improvement, the rotation of political parties in power has gradually become the norm, and civil society has become more and more active. These changes tell me that the development of a society does not solely rely on economic growth, but relies even more on a system’s ability to constantly correct itself.
Of course, I do not believe that Taiwan’s democracy has already achieved perfection. Political opposition, social rifts, and various practical problems similarly exist there. However, what I pay more attention to is that when problems arise, people can openly discuss them, can supervise according to the law, and can push for change through the system, rather than only being able to accept them in silence.
This kind of ability is far more important than so-called perfection.
I once seriously reflected on why an ordinary person needs democracy. Later, I discovered that the answer is actually very simple. Because ordinary people have no power, no resources, and no ability to influence public decision-making, the only thing that can protect themselves is a system that is fair, open, and transparent.
I once seriously reflected on why an ordinary person needs democracy. Later, I discovered that the answer is actually very simple. Because ordinary people have no power, no resources, and no ability to influence public decision-making, the only thing that can protect themselves is a system that is fair, open, and transparent.
Democracy is not for the purpose of making everyone’s opinions unanimous, but for the purpose of ensuring that different opinions can all be heard; the rule of law is not for the purpose of making it more convenient for the government to manage the people, but for the purpose of making the government first be constrained by the law; freedom of the press is not for the purpose of manufacturing opposition, but for the purpose of allowing the truth to have the opportunity to be seen by society.
Precisely because of continuously understanding these details of systemic operation, I have begun to more and more yearn for a society that truly respects human beings.
This kind of yearning is not because a certain place is wealthier than another place, nor is it because any kind of system will never make mistakes, but because I wish to live in an environment within which everyone possesses basic dignity, every kind of voice has space for expression, and every single public power must accept supervision.
I believe that the true strength of a country is not just possessing a developed economy and advanced science and technology, but more importantly, being able to allow ordinary people, when facing public power, to still possess the confidence and backbone endowed by the law; being able to allow every single family, when planning their own lives, to not have to worry that their own choices will be easily replaced by the outside world; being able to allow every single citizen, when expressing different opinions, to still believe that the law will protect their own basic rights.
It is also precisely because of this that I more and more believe that democracy is not a political slogan, but a kind of systemic arrangement that can allow ordinary people to possess a sense of security, a sense of dignity, and hope for the future. It is precisely this kind of system that has allowed me to see another possibility of social development, and has also allowed me to even more firmly believe that respecting individual rights, safeguarding civil liberties, and restricting public power constitute the important foundation for a modern society to continuously progress.
Editor: Li Jing Proofreader: Cheng Xiaoxiao Translator: Ge Bing
活动时间：2026年7月19日，周日，7:00-9:00 PM活动地点：2077 Gold St, Alviso, CA 95002活动形式：主题分享 + 文本共读 +提问回答
人人被造平等：重读〈独立宣言〉250周年
2026年是美国《独立宣言》问世250周年。每当人们提起这份文件，最常被引用的便是那句：
“All men are created equal.”
中文里，它常被译为“人人生而平等”。但如果细读原文，会发现 created 并不只是一个普通词。它与后文 “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” 形成了完整的思想结构：人之所以拥有不可剥夺的权利，并不是因为国王、议会或政府授予，而是因为人作为被造者，本身就具有平等的尊严与权利。
本次读书会将围绕这一核心问题展开：为什么《独立宣言》写的是 created equal，而不是 born equal？这一区别如何帮助我们理解美国革命的合法性来源、政府权力的边界，以及美国革命与法国革命的不同走向？
Telecom fraud is so rampant that no one from middle school students to PhD candidates can escape it. Why not offer a course on anti-fraud?
Answer:
If schools start an anti-fraud course, students will discuss, speculate, research, reflect, question, criticize, and subvert. Gradually, they will develop the capacity for independent thinking and independent judgment; they will acquire the ability to distinguish the true from the false, right from wrong, good from evil, black from white, and correct from incorrect.
They will then discover:
Who has been talking nonsense all along!
Who is the largest fraud syndicate of all!
(II) Deception
Slogans shouted from the mouth, if not implemented, are deception;
Slogans hung upon the wall, if not fulfilled, are deception;
Articles written into the constitution, if not activated, are deception.
One set of behavior on stage and another set off stage is deception;
One thing in the mouth and another thing in the heart is deception;
One way to someone’s face and another way behind their back is deception.
Non-disclosure of information is a form of deception;
Non-disclosure of personal property is a form of deception;
Non-disclosure of the judiciary is a form of deception;
Non-disclosure of government affairs is a form of deception.
Black-box operations are a form of deception;
Entrapment law enforcement is a form of deception;
Falsification of data is a form of deception;
False propaganda is a form of deception.
Drawing a big cake is a form of deception;
Launching a satellite is a form of deception;
Model operas are a form of deception;
Positive energy is a form of deception.
Staging anti-Japanese miracle dramas is a form of deception;
A seedling yield of a hundred thousand catties is a form of deception;
American imperialism is a paper tiger is a form of deception;
Closing the comment section is a form of deception.
In the final analysis, no matter how grand the slogans shouted by emperors, generals, and ministers are, or how magnificent the promised goals are, it amounts to nothing more than: conquering the rivers and mountains, sitting on the golden throne, sleeping with women, plundering property, wielding power, and preventing rebellion!
Yet, they still insist on loudly shouting for “fairness and justice, freedom and equality, the rule of law and democracy”; loudly shouting for “the common people, the souls under heaven, and the well-being of humanity.”
This, fucking hell, is absolute and outright fraud!
(III) Playing with Fire
An evil wind of the “Three Capitalizations” reform blowing out from Hunan and Hubei is currently sweeping across the nation, reappearing in its true colors of deception;
The so-called “Three Capitalizations” are:
Turning resources into assets, securitizing assets, and leveraging funds.
The first step: treat the 100 bachelors of the local village as a form of “human resources,” and then register them as “state-owned assets” possessing labor income and resource value-added potential. This is turning resources into assets.
The second step: make a valuation of this state-owned asset, package it into ten thousand shares of “human resource income right certificates,” and issue them to the financial market. This is securitizing assets.
The third step: use the cashed-out money to introduce more bachelors from other villages, scale up the valuation, and continue issuing to the financial market to cash out. The snowball rolls bigger and bigger. This is leveraging funds.
Local governments everywhere register all kinds of resources from corners and crannies as assets, staking the future and staking credibility, beautifying and packaging them, re-evaluating their value, concocting a good story, and packaging them for sale, all to defraud real gold and silver!
This is not “playing with fire”!
This is jumping into a “fire pit”!
June 30, 2026
Editor: Feng Reng Proofreader: Feng Reng Translator: Ge Bing
The Communist Party’s eager-for-instant-benefits population policy: violating human nature by implementing population family planning, is the first tyrannical policy in human history to violate the natural laws of biological reproduction, and this policy was even designated as a Basic State Policy under the rule of the Communist Party. Oh, the historical price and long-term lingering hazards of this family planning!
The Communist Party’s family planning policy, which began in the 1980s and lasted for decades, was once revered as a key state policy to resolve population pressure and promote economic development. Today, looking back from the temporal milestone of distorted demographic structures, the prominent crisis of an aging population, and a continuously sluggish willingness to bear children, this policy—once invested with high expectations—has long exposed profound institutional defects, chaotic enforcement practices, and long-term evil consequences. The social trauma and demographic liabilities it has brought are deeply affecting the developmental direction of the contemporary Chinese nation.
The most fundamental issue of family planning is that the Communist Party simplistically and brutally interfered with citizens’ basic reproductive rights, alienating what originally belonged to the autonomous choice of families into a forced administrative task of state control. Reproduction is the most basic natural right of human beings, the foundation for the continuation of families and the reproduction of society. Yet, under the high policy pressure of the Communist Party, millions of ordinary families lost the freedom to decide the number of their children. To fulfill the population quotas handed down layer by layer, numerous enforcement methods that violate human nature emerged at the Communist Party’s grassroots: forced IUD insertions, forced sterilizations, and late-term forced abortions. Families that over-birthed were subjected to exorbitant fines, the sealing and confiscation of property, and expulsion from public office. In rural areas, if a family had no money, officials would scale the house to tear off the roof, lead away their cattle, and drive away their pigs, causing countless families to be broken and shattered over reproductive issues, leaving behind physical and mental trauma that is difficult to heal. The Communist Party’s act of trampling on individual human rights with tyrannical administrative power violates human nature, violates the spirit of the rule of law, and has thoroughly torn the bond of trust between the Communist Party and the public. The damage it has caused to human society is far heavier than the short-term gains of population control.
The short-sightedness in the policy’s implementation directly led to the systemic collapse of the demographic structure, planting multiple hidden dangers for today’s society. Back then, the Communist Party’s decision-makers only focused on controlling the total population volume, while completely ignoring the balanced development of the population structure. The long-term One-Child Policy directly gave rise to the world’s most severe imbalance in the sex ratio at birth; a massive number of male infants were selectively retained, while female infants were abandoned or aborted, making it difficult for tens of millions of marriageable men to find spouses, which in turn exacerbated conflicts in love and marriage, human trafficking crimes, family instability, and other social problems. Meanwhile, after the generation of only-children became the mainstay of society, the “421 family structure” was fully formed—a single couple has to support four elderly parents and raise one child. The pressure of elderly care and child-rearing has been infinitely magnified, making the family’s capacity to resist risks extremely fragile; once an unexpected misfortune occurs, the entire family plunges into a dead end.
Even more fatal is that family planning directly over-drafted the country’s future demographic dividend, triggering a deep aging crisis. Decades of strict reproductive control have caused China’s fertility rate to drop below the population replacement level for a long time. Today, the total population has entered a stage of negative growth, the scale of the labor force continues to shrink, and the speed of aging far outpaces economic development. The manufacturing sector, which once rose by relying on cheap labor, now faces the predicament of labor shortages and skyrocketing labor costs; the revenue and expenditure pressure on social security pensions has abruptly intensified, and public services for medical and elderly care are overwhelmed, drastically weakening the developmental vitality of the entire society. What is more ironic is that after desperately and strictly controlling population growth back then, the state has now fully relaxed the policies to allow second and third children, yet the matching support for child-rearing is severely lacking. The public has long formed a psychological shadow from past reproductive controls, and coupled with the persistently high costs of raising children, the willingness to give birth remains sluggish. The demographic decline is already difficult to reverse, which is precisely the most direct backlash of a short-sighted policy.
In addition to this, family planning has also brought many implicit social evils. Only-children grow up amidst excessive pampering and loneliness, and a portion of this group has formed personality traits characterized by selfishness, fragility, and insufficient ability to handle pressure, affecting the overall humanistic character of society. A large population of over-birthed “black-market/unregistered” (heihu) individuals have long been unable to enjoy public resources such as education, medical care, and social security, becoming a socially marginalized group and planting hidden dangers for class conflict. Furthermore, the massive administrative apparatus established to control reproduction has consumed enormous public fiscal resources, crowded out investments in people’s livelihoods, and aggravated the administrative burden at the grassroots.
To be sure, under the rule of the Communist Party during a specific historical stage, family planning did briefly alleviate the resource pressure brought by overly rapid population growth, but the short-term gains can by no means offset its long-term costs. It bartered away temporary economic development at the price of sacrificing the public’s reproductive rights, damaging the population structure, and over-drafting the nation’s future; in essence, it was a short-sighted decision eager for instant benefits. Today, negative population growth, population aging, and the low-fertility trap have become established facts, which is precisely history’s severe warning against improper population policies.
Reflecting on the past of family planning is, in essence, about recognizing a core truth: population is never a burden to society, but the very foundation of a nation’s development. Any administrative control that detaches itself from human nature, violates natural laws, and ignores long-term development will ultimately be backlashed by the era. Only by respecting individual rights, conforming to demographic laws, and supplementing these with a sound social welfare and birth support system can a benign cycle between population and society be achieved. And the profound lesson left behind by family planning ought to serve as a perpetual alarm for the state when formulating public policies.
Today, America turns two hundred and fifty years old.
During the day, the community where I live was filled with singing and dancing in a scene of peace and prosperity. As night falls, fireworks light up the night sky once again, and people raise their glasses to celebrate independence. Since the beginning of this year, the historical materials I have consulted the most have all been related to America. At this very moment, echoing in my ears once again is that deafening sentence written by Jefferson two hundred and fifty years ago:
“All men are created equal.”
This phrase once crossed oceans and spanned centuries, inspiring revolutionaries, abolitionists, women’s rights activists, and countless ordinary people. Many might not remember who wrote it, but they remember the phrase itself.
However, when that pen came to a stop, the man who wrote those words still owned his own slaves.
History is often like this. It is not always created by perfect individuals, but is frequently born in the fissures between ideal and reality.
And history should never be a biography of “saints”; rather, it manifests the tug-of-war between ordinary mortals and their ideals. Jefferson failed to achieve “equality for all,” but the phrase he wrote lived on to become a weapon for countless generations that followed.
The abolitionist movement used it to speak out; the civil rights movement used it to speak out… Today, there are still people using it to question America: Why does discrimination still exist? Why is there still a vast gap between the rich and the poor? Why are there new inequalities?
An unfulfilled promise has, conversely, become the sharpest yardstick. It first judged the man who wrote it, and it continues to judge this nation.
Thus, I cannot help but think of my own country, China.
I think the true confidence of a country does not lie in declaring itself free of problems, but in allowing its people to constantly point out problems. It lies not in demanding that everyone sing its praises, but in not being afraid to have its founding principles repeatedly examined.
Quisling and arguments are not terrifying, nor are divisions.
What is terrifying is when no one dares to ask questions anymore, causing the individual to lose the capacity to resist the collective. In the end, all questions are left with only one “standard answer,” which goes by a beautiful, grand, and Weiguangzheng (grand, glorious, and correct) term: Tongyi (Uniformity/Unification).
Two hundred and fifty years have passed, and America still has prejudice, tearing, interest groups, and all kinds of injustices.
Yet, the Declaration of Independence still stands right there.
It has not been deleted because it causes awkwardness; it has not been modified because it causes embarrassment; it has not become a taboo because it is constantly cited to criticize reality.
Fireworks are fleeting.
What truly remains in history are not the celebrations, nor the slogans, but that phrase written two hundred and fifty years ago: All men are created equal.
People may betray their own ideals. But the height of a country lies precisely in whether it allows its people to forever hold onto those ideals to make demands of reality.
What truly remains from celebratory events is not the applause or the brilliance of the fireworks, but whether people can continue to ask: How far are we still from those ideals written on paper? Because while humans may betray their ideals, ideals will, in turn, judge humans.
Two hundred and fifty years have passed. Today’s America still harbors prejudice, tearing, and quarreling, yet there are still those who believe that freedom and equality are worth continuing to fulfill.
I think what is truly great has never been a single person, but a single phrase.
And what makes this phrase resonate with power is generation after generation of people who hold fast to this motto.What a country truly ought to celebrate is not necessarily that it has achieved everything perfectly, or done everything well, but that it once wrote down a phrase that even it itself had not yet achieved, and allowed posterity to constantly use this phrase to hold it accountable.
From Strict Exit Bans to Not Stepping Out of the Province: Grid-ization Under Digital Surveillance and the Brittle Fracture of China’s Destiny
Author: Zhou Min
Within China’s state system (tizhi nei) in 2026, a suffocating physical siege is quietly spreading.
In the past, people’s attention was focused on the political red lines where civil servants, university teachers, and even medical personnel had their passports collectively confiscated and their international travel restricted. However, a deeper, more impenetrable net of control has now quietly unfurled within the country’s borders. Today, not only has going abroad become a luxury, but employees within the system must also undergo tier-after-tier of reporting and approval in digital personnel systems just to leave their city of employment, cross provincial boundaries, or even travel to their provincial capital during weekends or statutory holidays. As for “entering Beijing,” it has become a top-tier sensitive red line that must not be touched, and is absolutely never approved unless deemed strictly necessary.
This evolution from preventing overseas flight to comprehensive internal confinement tears away the veil of “prosperous stability.” It exposes a massive, deeply panicked leviathan that is attempting to quench its immediate thirst with poison—trading short-term security for the compression of individual freedom of movement.
This domestic travel restriction did not appear out of thin air; it is a specimen of everyday domestication, adapted from the Chinese Communist Party’s past success in transforming crisis control during extraordinary periods into routine governance.
Around 2015, with the intensification of the anti-corruption campaign, passport control over “naked officials” and personnel handling classified information became a norm. At that time, control had clear targets and class specificity. However, what truly placed physical shackles on the entire population and everyone within the state system was the digital epidemic-prevention grid established between 2020 and 2022. During those three years, through the Travel Code, Health Code, and the mutual liability system of “reporting when leaving the city, obtaining approval when leaving the province,” every individual was firmly pinned into the grids of administrative divisions.
After the smoke of epidemic-control technology cleared, people were astonished to find that this maturely functioning tracking and approval mechanism did not dissolve. Instead, it was seamlessly toggled into a steel claw for “political discipline” and “safety management.” By 2026 today, this steel claw has embedded itself deeply into daily life. Grassroots civil servants, teachers, and doctors in public hospitals—the moment their feet cross the administrative boundaries of a prefecture-level city, their movements are fully exposed on the system backend. What awaits them is, at best, a public reprimand, and at worst, disciplinary action affecting their political careers.
In essence, this is the resurrection of the Mao-era “Danwei (work unit) system” and the Qing Dynasty “Lijia system.” Living individuals have degenerated into the digital property of administrative units.
The Party is sacrificing the vitality of an entire society to lock 1.4 billion people—especially the civil servant and technical classes who form the backbone of society—into their respective administrative grids. Behind this lies a realistic and selfish political calculation:
First, it extinguishes all sparks of cross-regional networking to maintain absolute, localized political security.
Beijing and various provincial capitals are the centers of politics, resources, and power. Restricting grassroots personnel (mainly those who interact with grassroots conflicts and hold social resources within the system) from freely entering Beijing and provincial capitals completely severs, at the physical source, the risks of potential higher-level petitions, mass gatherings, or cross-regional rights-defense networking.
Second, through collective liability, it forces mid-level bureaucrats into trembling self-censorship.
The top-level design has instituted a mutual liability mechanism of “whoever is in charge of the person who errs will be held accountable,” naturally transferring the pressure of stability maintenance (weiwen) down to grassroots units. The instinct to save their official posts drives various leaders to implement escalating measures, preferring to over-regulate rather than make a single mistake. How cunning this design is: it requires no frequent red-headed documents from the central authorities; to avoid accountability, lower-level officials voluntarily tighten the noose tighter and tighter themselves.
Third, it enforces high-intensity psychological domestication.
When a person needs to submit an application, explain reasons, and account for their travel companions just to see a doctor elsewhere, take their child to a neighboring city to visit relatives, or travel to the provincial capital, their psychological submissiveness and dependence on the Organization are infinitely magnified. The atomization and docility of personnel within the system have reached an unprecedented height. Yes, unprecedented.
However, the march of history does not pivot according to the will of power. This ultimate rule of compressing free movement into gridded cages is paving a path toward systemic collapse for China’s future.
1. The Inward Squeezing and Depletion of the Economy: The essence of economics is the natural flow of people, capital, and information. Today, the class within the system—which possesses excellent consumption and investment power—is confined. Consequently, tourism, cross-provincial commerce, and technical exchanges sink into stagnant water. How can factors of production be matched and optimized? Capital can only sit idle locally, and what follows is the suffocation of innovation capacity and the drying up of economic vitality.
2. Social Social-Zombification: When the physical movement of flesh and blood is jammed, the clashing of thoughts and social mobility are locked up as well. The entire society gradually falls into a state where “ten thousand horses stand mute” (wanma qiyin—a classic idiom for total suppression of speech), and absolute silence prevails. Without the churning of social vitality and the passion of civic autonomy, nothing remains but a pool of stagnant water.
3. Black Swan Risks Under High Pressure: The free movement of people actually dilutes many localized conflicts. When someone encounters oppression or injustice from the local system, they can dissolve their pain and seek a new life by moving elsewhere and searching for a new space. Today, all channels are welded shut, and everyone is forcibly pinned into the vortex of local conflict at their point of origin.
Nowadays, the principle of “whoever approves is held responsible” has led to the total “lying flat” (tang ping) of the bureaucratic system. Aside from keeping watch over subordinates and engaging in inert stability maintenance, grassroots officials have lost any genuine desire to resolve real problems. Looking out across the landscape, one sees an area of ultimate, taut tension. A tiny, localized crisis (such as a local fiscal collapse or a sudden mass incident) could in the past be digested through social elasticity. But in the era of grid-ization, who knows on what day or in what place a total chain reaction will be triggered because the system has lost all its elasticity—leading to a massive, brittle fracture (da cuiduan).
Viewed from a macro-historical cycle, this posture of setting up tier-upon-tier of internal defenses while tightly shutting the external gates signals that China is actively abandoning the path of integrating into global competition and leveraging civic vitality to expand frontiers. Instead, it is retreating into an inward-looking, defensively postured, traditional centralized empire.
We are witnessing a massive regression born out of an extreme lack of security and an extreme fear of reality.
The rulers are leveraging long-term national destiny and the vitality of the entire society as collateral to exchange for a few years of immediate, physical, and precarious security.
The laws of history are densely written: the tighter the high-pressure iron curtain is welded, the more fiercely it blazes when it burns down. When even the cells within one’s own system cannot roam freely, where is the grandeur and prosperity? It is clearly nothing but an unmaskable trembling before reaching the end of the road. Those physical bodies trapped within the iron bars remain temporarily silent. But the reckoning of history has already begun to surge with dark undercurrents beneath the seemingly placid, dead water.
Politics and Democracy—Chapter IV: Characteristics of the Autocratic Regime
Author: Zhu Zhengming
(I) The Formation of the Autocratic Regime
If we turn the pages of the entire history of human development, we can say it is a history of struggle between oppression and anti-oppression, exploitation and anti-exploitation among human beings. Everyone possesses the desire to act willfully and to place oneself above others. In each stage of human social evolution, just like in other animal groups within nature, the phenomenon of the weak falling prey to the strong has always existed, and its cruelty is no less than that of the survival competition between any other species.
The contest of individual physical strength within primitive tribes produced tribal chiefs. The competition of strength among tribes produced regional lords. Armed conflicts among lords produced kings. The outcome of wars among kings produced emperors. Ultimately, a state system controlling an expansive territory was established. The emperor led both civil and military officials, as well as royal relatives and imperial kinsmen, dividing the nation into a number of regions, and then separately enfeoffing them to trusted ministers and royal aristocrats to guard and defend. These ministers and royal clansmen then subdivided their own jurisdictions into smaller fiefs, enfeoffing them to their own minor subordinates to rule. Bureaucrats proliferated in succession, and power was decentralized in turn, until the ruling power extended to villages, towns, families, and households. Ultimately, the typical power pyramid structure of a feudal autocratic society was formed. At the very bottom of this pyramid are thousands upon thousands of common citizens, and at the very top is the monarch, the emperor alone.
In a feudal autocratic society, the means by which the government obtains ruling power is violence, and the fundamental means by which the government maintains its rule remains violence. A feudal autocratic society is a social system that naturally developed and evolved after the productivity of human primitive tribal society advanced to a certain degree. When regional differences were quite significant, primitive tribes were numerous, and development was uneven, it once played a certain positive role in the dissemination of culture, the prosperity of commerce and trade, the progress of remote and backward areas, and the promotion of the development of productive forces. The feudal autocratic ruling model is a maintenance-oriented ruling model, strong in conservatism but weak in innovation. When people live in an unyielding, unchanging manner, the rulers still possess sufficient experience and energy to cope with various social problems. When society enters an era of reform and innovation, and a large number of unprecedented, newborn things emerge, the ruling model where everything is decided by the monarch alone immediately reveals its clumsiness. Even if the monarch is exceptionally shrewd, capable, clean, and devoted to public service, a situation will still arise where he has neither the experience nor the energy and time to cope. Consequently, errors caused by arbitrary decision-making will become common occurrences, and losses caused by negligence and delay will be too numerous to count, as the rigid system will visibly constrain and hinder the development of society.
The great discoveries in science and technology and the emergence of the industrial revolution brought human society into a brand-new era of industrial science and technology. Human understanding and capability to master nature experienced rapid and vigorous development, and social structures and lifestyles became increasingly complex. Autocratic society was no longer capable of adapting to the needs of this development, playing a severe role in obstructing social progress. It is necessary for us to carefully analyze the characteristics and maladies of this social structure, so that we can better understand it and break free from it.
(II) The Disadvantages of the Autocratic Regime
The autocratic system possesses a self-stabilizing mechanism within its organizational structure, capable of playing a basic role in maintaining social public order; therefore, it has been able to exist for a long time. From the perspective of social morphology, the autocratic regime exhibits the following five major disadvantages:
1. Arbitrary and Dictatorial Rule
The supreme ruler monopolizes all major power individually, deciding everything and dominating everything in state affairs. Society lacks the rule of law, and the individual will of the ruler is the law. Even if some legal clauses are promulgated, they are completely aimed at constraining the common people and serving the ruler. Officials at all levels can arbitrarily interpret and execute the law at their own discretion; however many officials a country has, that is how many kinds of laws exist. When the interests of the common people are infringed upon by officials, they are left helpless and have nowhere to turn for help. The sole recourse is to appeal to higher-level bureaucrats, but they will only be dismissed and sent to a reception office that possesses no real power whatsoever. The reception officials are either brimming with arrogance, showing complete impatience as if dealing with a psychiatric patient, or view the victims as making unreasonable disturbances, forwarding their materials back to the very officials who originally abused their power to create the unjust case, whereupon the victimized suffer even more intensified persecution.
The country lacks an independent legislative body of an elected nature. If a legislative body does exist, it is established according to the will of the ruler and exists in dependency upon the ruler, who can arbitrarily arrange the personnel composing the legislative institution based on his own will. Only those who can pass the careful screening and long-term inspection of the organization department, who are absolutely reliable politically, and who can consciously maintain ideological consistency with them, have the possibility of entering the legislative body. The legislative body is no different from a hand-raising machine and rubber stamp for the ruler, failing to play a role in restraining the ruler, who can formulate and amend laws at will. The judicial organs lack independent status; much like the legislative bodies, their personnel composition is designated by the ruler, and they act in accordance with the ruler’s will.
The centralized ruler holds all power within society, possessing the ultimate power of life and death over the lives of the common people. In such a society, acquiring official power and status is the sole way out for people to obtain privileges and freedom, and the officialdom is the only arena for all those who wish to display their personal capabilities. To obtain more power, property, freedom, and personal happiness, the only choice is to strive for a higher official position. Whether one can achieve this desire depends entirely on whether one can secure the personal favor of their superior, having absolutely nothing to do with whether the common people approve or not. Therefore, such a society is a paradise for all kinds of careerists, conspirators, and despicable individuals. They exert all their strength to win the favor of the ruler, catering to the hobbies of the dictator, flattering the foolishness of the aristocrats, and enduring their insults. They understand clearly that sacrificing their own dignity is the only effective and cheap means to preserve and promote their own positions. The dictator grows accustomed to those who willingly or under compulsion act as lackeys; living long among praises and smiling faces renders him obstinate and self-opinionated, leading a dissipated life. He will find that everything of his has already been considered in advance by others. Even though he manages the affairs of millions of people, in truth he does not understand these matters, and thus frequently hands over his official authority to subordinates to exercise. This enables low-level officials to also flaunt their powerful connections and bully others as they swagger through the streets, reclaiming their dignity in front of the common people and earning the optimal return for their obsequious brown-nosing.
The rulers cannot tolerate any differing opinions. Any dissent will sound extremely grating to them; regardless of whether its content is reasonable, it will first and foremost be deemed a lack of respect for themselves and a manifestation of disregarding the leadership. Under such a system, the greatest taboo is to contradict a superior; even if it happens only once, one might be permanently consigned to limbo. Consequently, those who truly possess talent, adhere to principles, and speak bluntly will only receive arrogant and contemptuous treatment, belonging to the category of those who are least qualified to be appointed. Such people must either yield their positions to politicians who are better at fawning, or abandon their own principles of conduct. Honesty and integrity are not recognized as virtues; instead, they are regarded as redundant and foolish character traits.
Whether one is submissive or not serves as the primary standard by which the powerful and wealthy measure the merits and faults of their subordinates. No matter how poor their moral character or how incompetent a person is, as long as they can show submission—and perhaps possess a touch of petty cleverness, knowing how to win the favor of the powerful and wealthy—they can receive promotions. Even if they are utterly incompetent, they can still remain officials for life. Therefore, those who are lucky are often conspirators or swindlers. After gaining power, the incompetent and tyrannical nature of these people is quickly exposed to its fullest. To those above, they are slaves; to those below, they become slave owners. Looking from top to bottom, one sees blossoming, sunflower-like smiling faces; yet looking from bottom to top, one sees only the ugly necks of the officials.
The ruler, of course, also understands what the purpose behind his subordinates’ various efforts is. Therefore, he also frequently gives the cold shoulder to those seeking positions to test whether they are truly loyal, sometimes intentionally leaving certain positions vacant to keep them in a state of hope and anticipation for a long time, so that he can effectively control and tame them. He knows that when he has completely satisfied all their demands and can no longer provide new benefits, they are highly likely to cast him aside and seek refuge with a new master.
The dictator has no sense of trust in his subordinates; they do not trust anyone. They frequently find that even those they trust the most are lying to them, thereby believing that everyone has bad motives and improper intentions. They do not understand the meaning of the word freedom; upon encountering any dissent, they panic and lose their bearings, constantly remaining on guard against anyone posing a threat to their own official power and status. They fear any form of non-governmental organization, seeing every bush and tree as an enemy soldier, and stand ready at any moment to pinch them out in their infancy.
They treat dissidents brutally, viewing these individuals as the most dangerous enemies, subjecting them to physical torture, sentencing them to labor re-education, banishment, or even death. They regard the common people as ignorant and foolish mobs, maintaining a high level of vigilance, and stand ready at any moment to deploy the armed forces to suppress assembly operations of any scale. For those detained and arrested, they inflict cruel and inhumane torture.
Externally, the dictator is militarily aggressive and wages wars of aggression. They frequently go to war over personal squabbles, dragging the country into warfare, driving thousands upon thousands of common citizens to slaughter one another on the battlefield, and spending enormous amounts of state funds on researching and manufacturing killing weapons. The cause of war, at times, is merely for the ruler to flaunt his strength and fight for face. They know that inciting xenophobic sentiments, or even launching a war, is an effective means to divert the citizens’ attention away from domestic political corruption, enhance social cohesion, and strengthen their personal power, while conveniently crowning themselves with the laurels of a national hero.
Under such a regime, officials at all levels are awed and subdued by the dictator’s authority. When the dictator makes an erroneous decision, even though many people will detect its mistake, they lack the capability to point it out and correct it. Most absurd of all, decisions made by the dictator under conditions of drunkenness and mental derangement will still be implemented and executed as if they were imperial edicts.
However, despite the fact that the dictator is filled with a sense of wariness toward the common people, remains indifferent to the hardships of the common people, and is utterly unconcerned with the voice of the common people, they still do not forget the need to display their gentleness to the public. On a whim, they will also travel to remote, impoverished areas and, under the prerequisite of absolute security, sit together with simple villagers, affectedly striking a pose to let a large retinue of accompanying journalists take group photos, so as to show that they are close to the common people.
2. Hereditary Stratification
Under this system, people are divided into various classes and ranks by the rulers based on their family background. These ranks prescribe people’s place of living and the occupations they can engage in. The rank is lifelong; without making tremendous efforts or contributions and receiving the consent of the upper-level rulers, no one is permitted to change it. Sometimes, even the burial location after death is stratified according to status.
Ranks and classes possess a hereditary nature; those of the lower orders are born as lower-class people, and their descendants continue to maintain the exact same identity as them. Lower-class people typically have received no formal cultural education, or have only received a bit of the most basic cultural education. Upper-class people, on the other hand, naturally belong to the ruling class; they are born into families of the ruling class, receive the most complete education, and they themselves will also become members of the ruling class. At the absolute apex of society are the imperial court aristocrats, who hold office for life and transmit their official positions and power to their own posterities. At the absolute bottom are the common citizens who possess no rights whatsoever. Between these two, there exists a series of different ranks and strata. While each rank accepts the rule and domination of the rank above it, it has a larger population of the rank below available for it to dominate. This makes bureaucrats at all levels feel that though they fall short of those above, they surpass those below, with each possessing a certain sense of satisfaction and their own vested interests. While maintaining their own vested interests, they intangibly and automatically promote the stability of the entire social state.
In this system, the reason why many people possess power is purely due to their blood relationships with the original rulers; in reality, they are neither wiser nor more capable than the people they rule. The rigid hierarchical system ruthlessly fixes every individual into a set position; although doing so makes management easy, it constitutes an astonishing waste of human talent. In this system, mediocrities of noble birth often secure excellent positions and treatment, whereas people of low birth seeking development encounter all kinds of obstacles and restrictions. In order to solve the basic problem of food and clothing, they have no choice but to toil all day long, frequently exhausting their lifelong energy for the sake of some pitifully small objectives. Even for a genius, his chances of achieving success in his career are far fewer than those of a mediocrity of noble birth.
3. The Spoils System
In the early stage of the emergence of states, if the power of a band of robbers who had no territory and lived on highway robbery developed to a certain degree and captured a piece of territory, they would substitute highway robbery by collecting protection fees from the local citizens, while putting on the mask of a protector to become a member of the local forces. When local forces fought each other for territory, they were in fact fighting for the right of control over the common people. This control did not depend on whether the local citizens agreed or not to exist; it depended solely on whether they possessed sufficient military force. The emergence of the state reduced the frequent armed conflicts among local forces, but it did not alter the nature of this rule.
An autocratic government carries out wanton plunder against the common people economically. They can formulate tax laws at will, forcing the citizens to pay all kinds of high and exorbitant taxes and levies, monopolizing the operation of highly profitable industries, and deploying state treasury funds to construct various luxurious facilities for their own enjoyment. When a fiscal deficit occurs, they arbitrarily print and issue currency. No one dares to audit their finances, let alone dares to establish an oversight system for their accountants. The state treasury is their own private vault, and the common people are their inexhaustible and endless source of wealth. Domestically, among the bureaucrats at all levels, the spoils are divided proportionally, rationally enjoying the money and wealth extorted from the common people. They will also by no means forget to allocate a portion of the financial revenue to maintain a massive army. Citing the name of defending the country, in reality they painstakingly privatize it so that it remains loyal only to themselves, ready at any moment to be used to extinguish resistance coming from the common people.
Even if isolated individuals within the ruling class still possess compassion for the common people when they first come to power, after long-term immersion in such an officialdom, they will also become muddle-headed and tyrannical, turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the hardships of the common people. Because the support of the common people cannot elevate their official positions, and the spurning of the common people will not reduce their remuneration. Their relationship with the common people is one of domination and obedience; they have no need to expend excessive energy on the common people. What decides their positions and futures is entirely whether the superior trusts them.
Due to the lack of a permanent mechanism for supervision and constraint, the laissez-faire attitude of superiors allows corruption to exist ubiquitously among government bureaucrats at all levels. Bureaucrats will not be satisfied with a “rational” distribution of benefits; they frequently invent all sorts of pretexts to collect various extra fees from the common people to line their own pockets, or, when faced with bribes, sacrifice the interests of the broad masses of common people for the sake of their own negligible personal benefits. Superiors turn a blind eye, permitting subordinates to use their power and influence to reap benefits as a return for the subordinates’ tributes.
4. Obscurantist Policy
The cultural education and communication media of society are uniformly controlled by the government. There is no freedom of speech or freedom of the press and publication; without the permission of the government, no publication can be published or distributed. The outcome of implementing this obscurantist policy, at times, also fools the rulers themselves.
Regarding the ugly phenomena within the ruling clique, the rulers block information to prevent the common people from knowing. When policy errors caused by the irresponsibility or corruption and incompetence of officials result in heavy losses to the common people or to social property, they fabricate facts, concoct storylines, and create false impressions to fool the common people. While they internally scramble for power and profit, cheating and outwitting one another, they deliberately present an appearance of getting along harmoniously and sharing close intimacy before the public. They suppress different ideological concepts, forbidding criticism of the unreasonable aspects of their ruling model. They are haughty and conceited, rejecting foreign cultures and failing to accept the merits of other ethnic cultures. They alienate themselves from the mainstream of the international society, becoming a solitary soul outside the international family. Domestically, they detach themselves from the masses, protected by the mist of government authority, keeping the common people ignorant of the political inside story and the sources of policy. They pose as profoundly knowledgeable instructors, their mouths full of grand principles to lecture the populace, portraying any development of society as their own great political achievement. To the few literati who are willing to clamor on their behalf, they dispense small favors and kindnesses, ruling the entire society in the primitive fashion of the carrot and the stick.
Blinding the eyes and ears and muddying people’s minds is a weapon of any successful ruler. In the absence of any other sources of information, the obscurantist policy can successfully enumerate to the common citizens the countless advantages and inevitabilities of the social status quo, attributing all developments of society to the rulers and causing the common people to display an obedience colored by admiration. For their policy errors and various problems arising in society, they can also always find all kinds of big and small excuses, allowing the media they control to produce explanations advantageous to themselves.
In this way, they use a meticulously planned and densely woven net to cover the entire society, forming an independent ideology. People can only think about problems within the scope of this ideology in a government-permitted, uniform manner. Even the most creative spirits and those with the most resolute will cannot break through this net to become leaders of social reform.
As for those isolated and weak opponents, before their insights can appear in the press and before their personal capabilities can show any prominence, the rulers will immediately deal them a head-on blow and crush them to death. Under such brutal crackdowns, society is incapable of producing any valuable political insights.
As time goes on, the common people are deceived by various false appearances and develop misunderstandings toward various social phenomena. Knowing neither their own society nor the true conditions of the outside world, they leave the populace of the entire society spiritually decadent and ideologically demoralized.
That thousands upon thousands of citizens in a society are cowed and subdued by a handful of rulers through pure methods of terror is the most disgusting and disappointing spectacle of human society.
Under this kind of feudal autocratic rule, it is impossible for ordinary people to have any say whatsoever in the behavior of government officials, let alone apply their own wisdom and will to guide and alter the behavior of the government. They can only obey the orders of the government, or even helplessly allow the government to infringe upon their own rights and interests. If anyone who cares about the political issues of the country is unable to exert any influence on them, and instead faces considerable danger that makes it impossible to maintain a basic livelihood, they will become indifferent to political issues and public affairs, turn a blind eye to the corruption of government officials, remain unmoved by the decay of social morals, and even lose all interest in the planning, sanitation, and public security of their own streets, believing those are entirely the government’s business. Ultimately, the citizens care only about their own lives, focusing their energy on how to better arrange the narrow space in which they live, and how to scramble for a bit more negligible interest for themselves in a crowded society. They lack the spirit of resistance, and have even entirely lost the capacity to generate discontent. They are numb to all social problems, possess no sense of social responsibility, and live at the absolute bottom of society—turning into a herd of timid, submissive cattle and sheep that only know how to work, allowing themselves to be slaughtered and enslaved at will, while government officials become their shepherds.
In such a society, the common people often believe in the mandate of heaven and fate. They believe that their situation, encounters, fortunes, and misfortunes are all predestined by fate, and whether one can accomplish a certain thing depends entirely on one’s own luck. They believe that kings, generals, ministers, bureaucrats, and aristocrats are born to be rulers. With extremely simple and pure feelings, they shed tears of gratitude for the negligible subsidies returned and heavily played up by the rulers. Meanwhile, the rulers do not forget to crown their own regime with the beautiful name of “the people,” holding power in the name of the people, which makes it highly deceptive.
The result of the government’s implementation of the obscurantist policy forms a vicious cycle of ruling: the autocratic government controls the communication media of society to manufacture the obscurantist policy; the obscurantist policy creates a vast number of common people who resign themselves to fate; and the common people who resign themselves to fate subsequently support and bear up an all-controlling autocratic government, as shown in Figure 4.1, going round and round in a vicious cycle. There is a saying in political science that goes, “A people get the government they deserve.” This saying has its merit, and the reason is very simple, because a government should be built upon the consent of the people. However, in an uncivilized, powerful, and autocratic society, this saying also holds true in reverse: “A government gets the people it deserves.”
In such a society, the common people often believe in the mandate of heaven and fate. They believe that their situation, encounters, fortunes, and misfortunes are all predestined by fate, and whether one can accomplish a certain thing depends entirely on one’s own luck. They believe that kings, generals, ministers, bureaucrats, and aristocrats are born to be rulers. With extremely simple and pure feelings, they shed tears of gratitude for the negligible subsidies returned and heavily played up by the rulers. Meanwhile, the rulers do not forget to crown their own regime with the beautiful name of “the people,” holding power in the name of the people, which makes it highly deceptive.
The result of the government’s implementation of the obscurantist policy forms a vicious cycle of ruling: the autocratic government controls the communication media of society to manufacture the obscurantist policy; the obscurantist policy creates a vast number of common people who resign themselves to fate; and the common people who resign themselves to fate subsequently support and bear up an all-controlling autocratic government, as shown in Figure 4.1, going round and round in a vicious cycle. There is a saying in political science that goes, “A people get the government they deserve.” This saying has its merit, and the reason is very simple, because a government should be built upon the consent of the people. However, in an uncivilized, powerful, and autocratic society, this saying also holds true in reverse: “A government gets the people it deserves.”
Holding the big stick of powerful crackdowns in one hand and the anesthetic of the obscurantist policy in the other, the autocratic ruler can cope with any strong-willed resistance. As long as the obscurantist policy can fully exert its effects, autocratic rule can be maintained for a long time.
5. Routine-Bound and Stagnant Conservatism
The bureaucrats and aristocrats are accustomed to ruling in a routine and conventional manner according to the ways left behind by their ancestors, because their ancestors lived very well by doing so, and they are well-satisfied with their own positions. Only when the development elements or productive forces of society undergo changes will the bureaucrats and aristocrats reveal their own incompetence; they lack any capability whatsoever to adjust their own organizational structure in a timely fashion to adapt to the new situation. Rulers are all selected and generated by old rulers from among a few reliable close relatives they are familiar with; their knowledge and concepts are identical to those of the old rulers, and they cannot break away from the domain of the vested interest groups. This method of selecting leaders cannot guarantee that successors will possess excellent leadership qualities, knowledge, and talents, nor can it guarantee that they can secure the admiration and support of other veterans and high officials in the government. Therefore, except for the first-generation leaders, successors all have no choice but to let the aristocratic veterans share a portion of the power. It is very difficult for powerful figures to emerge in the government who possess the capability to carry out structural restructuring and reform of the government to make it adapt to the development of productive forces.
When society remains unyielding and unchanging, they still possess a certain capability to conduct management; but when social morphology undergoes changes, the government will appear at a loss as to what to do, with internal management falling into chaos and promulgated policies contradicting one another. As a result of internal political power struggles, a group of older individuals who are rich in officialdom experience frequently gain the upper hand. These individuals follow the beaten track and cling to old customs, ultimately turning the government into a backward, conservative, and reactionary stronghold that opposes change.
In such a society, when the power of the rulers is absolutely secure, they are still relatively mild and magnanimous; when their power becomes weak, or after the holders of power become old and decrepit, they will become stubborn and unconvertible. When the lifestyle of the ruling class becomes a habit and is fixed down, their prejudice and opposition toward change will become deep-rooted. Making any alteration to their lifestyle will become extremely dangerous, even encountering hysterical retaliation. The reaction of such a society toward change is just like a psychiatric patient who roars upon seeing a doctor, unable to tolerate anyone putting a hand on his defects, studying his illness, and thinking of ways to cure his disease.
Under this ruling model, due to the obstructing effect of the massive vested interest groups occupying the dominant position, the development and progress of society can only occur intermittently and are inefficient. Each change can only be implemented by replacing muddle-headed and tyrannical political leaders through methods of violence and coups, thereby triggering social turmoil, accompanied by bloodshed or even consecutive years of internal wars, causing enormous human, financial, and material losses to the entire society. Alternatively, the entire society pays a long price in time, waiting for the natural death of the supreme ruler, pinning its hopes on the possibility of an enlightened and rational new leader coming to power. Yet, tragically, under the best medical and healthcare conditions, rulers are often long-lived, while the new rulers, except for their age, possess a mode of thinking that is an exact replica of the old rulers. This causes those people who harbor illusions about the social system and a beautiful life to unconsciously pass through their youth and middle age in the midst of waiting, only to usher in their own twilight years.
An autocratic system is not entirely incompetent and ignorant; at times, there are also civilized and enlightened autocratic governments. When society is under the rule of an enlightened and wise leader, it can also be managed in an orderly fashion. It can construct some great human engineering projects, organize powerful armies, resist foreign invasions, and even conquer neighboring countries to establish vast empires—even though this kind of strength often does not endure longer than the lifespan of a single generation.
For the rulers, autocratic rule is the most convenient, natural, and comfortable way of ruling. Rulers can do as they please, fully enjoying the pleasures of being human. Even if the country is very poor, the rulers can still enjoy a lifestyle that only the rich in wealthy countries can afford: access to the most advanced medical equipment, the highest-grade means of transportation, the most precious and expensive food and utensils, and the most luxurious palaces. If wanting to do as one pleases is human nature, then as far as human nature is concerned, no ruler is unwilling to rule in this manner. Therefore, although the autocratic regime is an unfair, inhumane political model with obvious defects, it still possesses a powerful vitality. In human history, there have been quite a few precedents where democratic regimes, under circumstances where the populace lacked sufficient vigilance, unconsciously evolved into autocratic regimes.
Editor: Huang Jizhou Proofreader: Feng Reng Translator: Ge Bing
Today is American Independence Day. It is a day that should originally be worthy of grand celebration.
On July 4, 1776, the American Declaration of Independence proclaimed to the world: all men are created equal, and that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inherent, unalienable rights endowed upon mankind. For someone who has lived through an autocratic society, the word “freedom” has never been a mere slogan; rather, it is something that countless individuals have traded their very lives to attain.
However, on this year’s Independence Day, I find myself completely unable to rejoice.
Just two days ago, on July 2, a Tibetan in exile—Lobga Rangzen—set his own body on fire in front of the United Nations Headquarters. I can no longer remember which number this is among all the Tibetan self-immolation incidents I have come to know. Yet, every single time I hear such news, I fall into a long, profound silence. Because this is far more than just a piece of news.
Beginning in 2009, I worked and lived in the Ngawa (Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province for over five years. In the dozen or so years that followed, the trajectory of my life has unfolded almost entirely around Chengdu and Ngawa. Perhaps because I was once an NGO volunteer, perhaps because I am engaged in cultural heritage preservation, or perhaps simply because I enjoy drinking, chatting, and treating the local people with absolute sincerity, I have had the opportunity to hear many stories that ordinary people will never know.
Among these narrators, there were establishment insiders who once participated in the crackdown operations, as well as the relatives, friends, and classmates of those who were suppressed.
They told me how they fired their weapons at Tibetans; they described what the bodies looked like after being shot dead; they recounted how captured Tibetans were escorted into military compounds, stripped naked, and then locked into iron cages welded together from rebar (threaded steel). The height of those cages was only sufficient for an adult to crawl on all fours. They were confined inside for prolonged periods, exposed to the blistering sun and biting wind, forced to eat, drink, sleep, and relieve themselves entirely within the confines of the cage.
There were others who recounted how they, alongside the soldiers, smashed their rifle butts into any Tibetan who dared to raise their head, and how they stood atop the iron cages, urinating on the people inside to humiliate them. To this very day, these images remain vividly frozen in my mind.
At the same time, I have listened to many Tibetan friends recount the ordeals suffered by their own relatives, friends, and classmates. Some were left permanently disabled, while others lost their lives forever.
I even once had a prolonged, deep conversation with an elderly Tulku (Living Buddha) who had just returned from meeting the 14th Dalai Lama in India. He was the biological uncle of a Tibetan brother of mine. To my astonishment, he spoke extremely flawless and standard Mandarin. He said: “This Mandarin of mine was learned during the eighteen years I spent behind bars in the Communist Party’s prison.”
At that exact moment, I fell into a long silence.
Prior to 2009, I had never truly set foot in China’s ethnic minority regions—until the Wenchuan earthquake completely altered the course of my life.
Leveraging my identity as a volunteer, I traveled across numerous Tibetan-populated areas in Sichuan and Qinghai; I also visited the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, and once lived for over a month in the home of a Kazakh friend in Xinjiang. These experiences thoroughly transformed my understanding of the plight faced by ethnic minorities in China.
During my childhood, in the city where I lived, one could frequently see Xinjiang vendors pushing small carts to sell raisins and mutton skewers, or Khampa men with Tibetan knives strapped to their waists, squatting by the roadside selling traditional Tibetan medicine. I used to secretly snatch their raisins and stealthily touch the Khampa men’s knives. They never once lost their temper at me for these antics; they would always smile with pure, honest benevolence.
Later on, everything slowly began to change.
Various rumors about them began to circulate incessantly throughout society. Some said that Tibetans would draw their knives at the slightest disagreement. Others claimed that people from Xinjiang were thieves, scammers, and acted with tyrannical lawlessness. Some even asserted that even if they committed murder, the police could do nothing about it. Gradually, people began to fear them and ostracize them.
Near the Wuhou Temple in Chengdu, I witnessed the following scene on more than one occasion: a Tibetan would be walking completely normally on the sidewalk, yet the Han Chinese walking from the opposite direction would actively veer away to bypass them. Meanwhile, that Tibetan had done absolutely nothing. It was only later that I came to understand that this fear did not stem from real, lived interactions, but rather from protracted propaganda. Because I subsequently came to know more and more ethnic minority friends, I began to discover an entirely different world. They were not so-called “lawless” elements at all. Quite the contrary. In many instances, they bore a system of management far more severe than that imposed on ordinary Han Chinese.
My Xinjiang friends told me that for many years, they have not dared to speak their native language in public spaces. They dared even less to readily admit their religious faith. Because once they admitted it, what awaited them next would very likely be endless, grueling interrogations. Some lost their freedom as a result. Some were sent to the so-called “learning centers” simply because they got drunk, had a minor street altercation, or due to trivial matters that would seem completely insignificant to an outsider. Once there, their families did not even know where they had been taken.
I once went on a road trip with some friends from Xinjiang. Every time we crossed a checkpoint, my local friends had to step out of the vehicle to have their ID cards checked, fingerprints recorded, and irises scanned. Meanwhile, as a Han tourist, I only needed to sit inside the car and wait. Every single time, I felt an acute, profound sense of discomfort.
I finally realized: despite living within the very same country, people of different ethnicities face worlds that are diametrically opposed.
Many Han Chinese simplisticly conceptualize Tibetan monasteries as merely places to “burn incense and worship Buddha.” But only after truly living there did I realize that this is far from the whole truth. A monastery is not just a religious site. It is also a school, a hospital, a cultural hub, and a vital sanctuary where language, art, and history are kept alive and passed down. It is within those walls that many Tibetans learned how to read and write. Therefore, when monasteries are restricted, it is not merely religion that is impacted; it is the very continuity of an entire ethnic culture.
Not long ago, Article 6 of the newly promulgated law stated: “The consciousness of the Chinese nation’s community is the foundation of ethnic unity. The State adheres to enhancing commonality while respecting and accommodating differences…” These are beautiful, pleasant words. However, whether a society genuinely respects differences should not be judged by what it writes, but by what it actually does.
True ethnic unity does not mean forcing all ethnic groups to become more and more identical. Rather, it means that every single ethnic group is granted the complete freedom to preserve its own language, culture, faith, and way of life.
Many people will refer to the departure of Lobga Rangzen as a “self-immolation.” But in my heart, I have always felt that he did not die from the flames of that particular day. What truly pushed him, step by step, toward those flames was the reality of the long-term oppression weighing upon an entire nation’s culture, religion, language, and freedom of belief.
If a person could freely express their faith, freely inherit and pass down their culture, and freely live upon their own ancestral land, I believe that no one would ever choose to terminate their own life in such an excruciatingly painful manner.
Therefore, with every instance of a Tibetan self-immolation, what I see is never merely the death of an individual. What I see is an entire nation crying out to the world, over and over again. It is also a human being, in the final moment of their life, still telling this world:
“We are still here. We have not given up.”
Lobga Rangzen, I did not know you. But because I once lived in Ngawa (Aba), because I have heard all too many stories of Tibetans, and because I have lived, worked, and shared drinks with many Tibetan friends, today, when I see your name, I know with absolute certainty that this is far more than just a piece of news.
Your departure forces me once again to recall those people whom I have seen, whom I have heard of, and whom I can never, ever forget.
Your flames did not illuminate the buildings of the United Nations, yet they brought a shred of light and warmth to me. They serve as a stark reminder: Do not remain silent!
Continue to speak out about the things you know. Even if it is only to let more people know that there once existed such a person in this world, who, for the sake of his own nation, culture, faith, and dignity, chose to set himself ablaze.
Today, America celebrates its independence. As for me, I prefer to dedicate this day to a human being who burned his own life for the sake of freedom.
Lobga Rangzen, please rest in peace.
May your name never be forgotten as the news cycle passes.
May your sacrifice be more than just a momentary flash illuminating the night sky; may it transform into the courage for more people to pursue freedom, dignity, and truth.
I salute you. I also extend my deepest, most profound respect to all those who endure suffering for the sake of freedom, for faith, for ethnic culture, and for human dignity. May there come a day when no one ever needs to burn their own body again just to tell the world: freedom, by right, belongs to every single human being.
Editor: Zhang Zhijun Proofreader: Zhou Min Translator: Shen Meihua
The Party’s Pawns: A Secret History of the CCP’s Export of Revolution
Author: Tuo Xianrun
Part II: The Fate of the Biological Son—The Communist Party of Malaya and the Communist Party of Thailand
In 1961, Chin Peng, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), secretly arrived in Beijing.
The purpose of his visit was very clear: to tell the Chinese comrades that the CPM could no longer keep fighting. From a force of over 10,000 at the end of World War II, they had dwindled to fewer than 600 men hiding out in the jungles along the Thailand-Malaya border. They had fought for over a decade, yet had achieved absolutely nothing. The British had left, Malaya had achieved independence, and the new government’s counter-insurgency campaigns against the CPM were becoming increasingly effective. The number of people in the jungle grew fewer by the day, and securing supplies became harder and harder. Chin Peng was prepared to announce the abandonment of armed struggle and lead the remaining men out to negotiate, in order to trade their weapons for a path to survival.
The person who received him was Deng Xiaoping.
Deng Xiaoping told him: The situation in Southeast Asia is on the verge of a massive shift, becoming increasingly favorable to communism; do not alter your policies, and you must keep fighting on.
Chin Peng went back and kept fighting.
Eighteen years later, in 1979, Chin Peng was summoned once again to meet with Deng Xiaoping. This time, Deng Xiaoping told him: China will no longer support the CPM; you will have to find your own way.
Two conversations, with the exact same person, yielding entirely opposite directives. No one has ever tallied how many people died between these two conversations, and no one cared.
The history of the CPM was planted with the seeds of tragedy from its very first day.
In 1925, Borodin, a representative of the Communist International, dispatched an assistant southward to the South Seas (Nanyang), establishing the Nanyang Communist Branch in Singapore. This was the earliest predecessor of the CPM. From day one, it was an overseas branch of the Chinese Communist Party; it did not grow naturally from the soil of Malaya, but was planted there. In 1930, under the stewardship of Ho Chi Minh, the Nanyang Communist Party was formally reorganized into the Communist Party of Malaya. The party members were almost exclusively overseas Chinese, the leadership was entirely Chinese, the funding for building the party came from China, and the political program was dictated by China.
This congenital condition later became a fatal weakness that the CPM could never escape. The Malaysian government framed the CPM’s armed struggle as a war of Chinese domination over the Malays, making it impossible for the CPM to ever truly mobilize the local masses. The banner you flew was that of communist revolution, but the local Malays saw only a group of Chinese wielding guns coming to rule over them; politically, this war was already half-lost from the start.
Yet, during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, the CPM briefly became the most critical armed force on this land. The British provided them with weapons, and the CPM formed the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), which controlled over two-thirds of the territory on the Malay Peninsula, with armed personnel exceeding 10,000. That was the only period in the history of the CPM where they were truly powerful, and it was also the closest they ever came to victory.
Then, a man named Lai Teck appeared.
Lai Teck was an overseas Chinese of Vietnamese nationality who claimed to be a representative of the Communist International. When he entered the CPM, it happened to be during a hiatus when all communication between the Chinese Communist Party and Malaya had been completely severed, so absolutely no one could verify his identity. Relying on this status, he established a firm foothold within the CPM and made his way all the way up to Secretary-General.
No one knew that he was simultaneously working for the French, the British, and the Japanese.
In February 1942, the CPM decided to convene a secret meeting at a place called Batu Caves, attended by most of the high-ranking commanders of the CPM and the Anti-Japanese Army. The Japanese received advance notice, surrounded the site, and slaughtered everyone down to the last man. That was the most tragic and horrific purge in the history of the CPM, where virtually all of its core backbone died. Lai Teck was originally supposed to attend, but at the last minute claimed his car had broken down and failed to show up.
After the war, once again in the name of a Communist International representative, he persuaded the CPM to disband the armed forces they had painstakingly built up, saying they should pursue the path of legal struggle and avoid direct confrontation with the new colonial government. The CPM believed him and handed over their guns. Then, he absconded with all of the party’s funds and vanished.
In 1947, he was recognized in Bangkok, Thailand, by members of the Communist Party of Thailand, who pursued him and shot him dead right on the street.
Only after Lai Teck’s death did the CPM begin a thorough investigation, discovering that behind every single thing he had done back then lay the shadow of betrayal. The massacre at Batu Caves, the disbanding of the armed forces—every time the CPM suffered a heavy blow, Lai Teck was the biggest beneficiary. But by this time, the man was dead, the evidence was gone, and everything could only be a matter of inference.
It took the CPM a full decade just to stand back up from the destruction caused by Lai Teck. During these ten years, a foreign spy had hollowed out the CPM, a fact which in itself illustrated the fundamental problem of the CPM: it lacked roots truly dug into the soil of Malaya; stripped of Beijing’s command and protection, it was nothing more than a heap of loose sand.
After Lai Teck was gone, the true terminator of the CPM emerged. This person was not the British military, nor was it the Malaysian government, but a young lawyer named Lee Kuan Yew.
In the early 1950s, Lee Kuan Yew returned from studying at Cambridge in the United Kingdom and began practicing law in Singapore. He took the initiative to approach the front organizations of the CPM, as well as various left-wing trade unions and labor groups, offering to help them fight lawsuits and providing free legal aid. He moved like a fish in water within these organizations, quickly becoming the person with the most extensive network of contacts in Singapore’s left-wing circles.
Then he put forward a proposal: to establish a legal political party called the People’s Action Party (PAP), and to strive for political power through parliamentary elections. His reasoning was solid—the CPM was an illegal organization that could not enter parliament and could only fight guerrilla warfare in the jungles, and guerrilla warfare had already proven to be unviable. It would be better, he argued, to take the legal route and channel their strength into the system. The people of the CPM felt that this line of thinking made sense, so they began to support him with all their might, helping him canvass votes, helping him organize workers and students, and building up his popularity bit by bit.
In 1959, the People’s Action Party won the Singapore general election, and Lee Kuan Yew became the Prime Minister of the State of Singapore.
Once political power was in his hands, Lee Kuan Yew began to take action.
The way he took action was one by one; it was not a blanket sweep, but rather precision strikes. First were those with a CPM background—anyone with organizational ties was arrested across the board and thrown into prison, detained indefinitely without trial. Some were locked up for over a decade, some were detained until their hair turned white, and some were detained until they died in prison. The Internal Security Act gave him this power; no evidence was required, no court of law was needed, a single piece of written order was enough.
Next were the people dispatched by the Chinese Communist Party’s southern intelligence system, which was that group of underground workers appearing in the capacities of scholars, teachers, and journalists. This group of people he did not imprison; instead, he politely deported them, seeing them off with utmost courtesy, even bidding them farewell before they left. Nanyang University was at that time the most important education and training base for the Chinese Communist Party in Malaya; Lee Kuan Yew shut it down directly, claiming it was to be merged into the University of Singapore, offering a high-sounding rationale that no one could refute to his face.
Finally, there were those left-wing colleagues who had once helped him campaign, helped him canvass votes, and sent him into parliament. Among these people were his comrades-in-arms, his friends, and those who had stood up to support him in his darkest hours. He sent them into prison one by one under the charges of colluding with the Communist Party and threatening national security. Some of them stayed in prison for nearly thirty years, and were already old men by the time they came out.
Lee Kuan Yew was later hailed by many as a rare political genius in the ethnic Chinese world. This assessment is probably correct. But the price of genius was borne with their entire lives by those who had helped him. The CPM and the left-wing forces sent him into parliament, and he used their corpses to consolidate his own power, subsequently establishing an efficient authoritarian system unique in the ethnic Chinese world.
The CPM in Singapore was thus completely wiped out.
Having lost Singapore, the CPM retreated into the jungles of the Malay Peninsula to keep fighting. But they faced a dilemma that was fundamentally unresolvable: the leadership was Chinese, and waging an armed revolution in a Malay-majority country would forever be framed as an invasion by foreign forces. They persisted in the jungles, persisting year after year; their numbers grew fewer and fewer, supplies became increasingly difficult, and their connections to the outside world grew weaker and weaker.
What life in the jungle was like has rarely been described. Most of those who stayed inside for decades left no written records. Occasionally, someone would reminisce, speaking of the perennially damp jungle, decaying leaves, food that was never enough, and nerves that were constantly on high alert. They married, bore children, and grew old, spending the best years of their lives inside that jungle. Their children were born in the jungle, and some of these children had never even seen the outside world.
All of this was because of Deng Xiaoping’s phrase back in 1961: “you must keep fighting on.”
In 1979, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew told him to his face: If you want to build good relations with ASEAN countries, you must stop supporting the communist parties in Southeast Asia. Deng Xiaoping agreed, and then summoned Chin Peng, telling him that China would no longer support the CPM.
The secret base that China had established for the CPM in Yiyang, Hunan was shut down, the Voice of the Malayan Revolution radio station ceased broadcasting, and all weapon supplies and funding were completely cut off. CPM cadres who had been trained in China were repatriated; those CPM cadres who had spent many years in China and learned to speak fluent Mandarin discovered overnight that they had nowhere to go.
Having endured for another ten years, in 1989, the CPM finally reached the end of the line.
Under the witness of the Thai government, the CPM and the Malaysian government signed a peace agreement. The CPM announced its dissolution, its members laid down their arms, and swore allegiance to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Supreme Head of State) of Malaysia. In exchange, the Malaysian government promised not to pursue legal liability, offered a sum of resettlement compensation to those willing to return to the country, and allocated several plots of land for those staying in Thailand to reside on.
At the time of dissolution, there were still about 1,000-odd people left, a mere fraction of the original 10,000-plus force.
One part of the population returned to Malaysia, collected their money, found a place to live out their days, and never mentioned the past again. The other part remained at the border of southern Thailand, moving into several villages allocated by the Thai government. These villages were later bestowed with the name of a Thai princess and transformed into tourist attractions called the Princess Chulabhorn Villages, totaling four villages. Tourists go there to drink coffee, take photos, and buy local souvenirs made by the residents; no one tells them what was once buried in the soil beneath their feet, nor would they ask.
Chin Peng wanted to return to Malaysia, but was rejected by the government. He waited in Thailand for many years and passed away in Bangkok in 2013, ultimately failing to return home. He was forty years old when he went to Beijing to meet Deng Xiaoping for the first time, and eighty-eight when he died. Throughout these forty-eight years, he handed over the best years of his life entirely to a war destined to fail, and how long this war would be fought, or to what extent it would be waged, was never something he could decide.
The story of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) is highly similar to that of the CPM, only its ending is even more bizarre.
The CPT was even more pure-bred than the CPM. It was directly established by the Nanyang Branch of the Chinese Communist Party in 1926, and formally founded as a party in 1942. Its first Secretary-General, Li Qixin, was a CCP member who later returned to China to serve as the Deputy Director of the Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch. What the Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch was during that era is perfectly understood by anyone in the know—it was the core agency of the CCP’s intelligence and united front system in Hong Kong, operating under the cover of a news organization while actually carrying out intelligence work. The CPT’s first Secretary-General was himself a man of the intelligence system. What kind of relationship such a party shared with the CCP goes without saying.
In 1960, the Sino-Soviet split occurred, and communist parties worldwide were forced to declare their stance and choose a side; the CPT was the first communist party in Southeast Asia to openly support China. No discussion was needed, and no consideration was required, because they were simply a part of the CCP system. In 1962, China established the Voice of the People of Thailand radio station in Yunnan and began broadcasting revolutionary propaganda to Thailand. In 1965, the CPT formally commenced its armed struggle, with China providing training, weapons, and funds in full support.
The CPT fought for ten years, advancing steadily and building quite stable base areas in the mountainous regions of northern and northeastern Thailand. The year 1976 was the highest highlight of their history. That year, a military coup occurred in Thailand, and a large-scale student movement erupted in the universities of Bangkok; the military suppressed it, and many people died. Large numbers of students and intellectuals fled into the jungles to join the CPT. The armed forces rapidly swelled from a few thousand to 8,000 men, and their controlled areas expanded to affect nearly half of Thailand’s provinces. The Thai government was highly tense for a time, believing that the revolution was truly coming.
But in 1979, everything was over within a matter of a few months.
China decided to unite with Thailand to jointly confront Vietnam, and could no longer maintain its support for the CPT. The Voice of the People of Thailand radio station ceased broadcasting, and all aid was cut off. Under pressure from Vietnam, Laos expelled all CPT armed forces within its borders, causing the CPT to lose its most vital rear base. Without aid and without a path of retreat, the CPT disintegrated rapidly. Most members accepted the government’s offer of amnesty and left the jungles one after another. By 1991, the armed forces had completely vanished.
Yet, one matter has remained a mystery from beginning to end.
The leadership of the CPT prior to 1976 was almost entirely composed of ethnic Chinese, who were cadres directly trained or dispatched by the CCP. After the CPT dissolved, the Thai government did not place these people on wanted lists, did not put them on trial, and did not even issue a single amnesty decree, acting as if these individuals had never existed. Where they went has no public record whatsoever. The Thai government does not speak of it, and the Chinese government does not speak of it either; there is a tacit understanding between the two sides, and this matter was pressed beneath the surface of the water, never to float up again.
In the history of the CCP exporting revolution, vanishing is the best outcome. It means that after you return, you are still one of our own, and you can still be properly settled within the system. Those who left behind their names, conversely, are the ones who were truly abandoned. Chin Peng left behind his name, so he died in Thailand. The ethnic Chinese leadership of the CPT did not leave behind their names, so they returned quietly, vanishing from historical records to start anew in another place.
The CPM fought for sixty-four years, from its party founding in 1925 to its dissolution in 1989. The CPT fought for twenty-five years, from 1965 to 1991. These two most loyal, biological sons of the CCP spent their entire lives acting in accordance with Beijing’s directives. When Beijing said fight, they fought. When Beijing said stop, they stopped. They were never truly independent, and they never made a single major decision based on their own judgment.
In the end, the ordinary soldiers of the CPM grew old and died in foreign villages that had been transformed into tourist attractions, the ethnic Chinese leadership of the CPT quietly vanished from historical records, and those who died in the jungles did not even leave behind their names.
Chess pieces are just chess pieces; when they are used up, they ought to be put away. As for what the chess pieces themselves think, it is never within the consideration of the chess player.
Editor: Li Jing Proofreader: Zhou Min Translator: Ge Bing
