'It was “in the name of ‘stability maintenance,’” Xu Zhiyong’s essay charges, that “the Public Security Bureau of Wuhan threatened and denigrated doctors who tried to reveal the truth about the coronavirus.” The state-controlled China Central Television in Beijing, he adds, “offered support by condemning rumormongers and decried the doctors’ legitimate freedom to express their views. The cover-up in Wuhan led directly to what is now a national disaster.”
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..Xu Zhiyong warns that what is happening in Xinjiang today — an extensive surveillance network; large numbers of Uighurs “incarcerated in ‘educational training centers’ on the most spurious grounds” — could soon become the norm for the rest of China. “What kind of country has ever, anywhere, been run like this?” ''Since early 2016, Xu Zhangrun has been publishing speeches and essays warning of the perils that China is inviting by turning away from substantive economic and political reform and instead reaffirming the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance. His work is usually widely read in China — until it is censored. But thanks to its broad circulation in international Chinese-language media, it gets recirculated on the mainland in the form of digital samizdat, and is frequently quoted in WeChat discussions.
In what arguably is his most famous critique of the Xi government, which was published online in China in July 2018, Xu Zhangrun had written: “The gunpowder-like stench of militant ideology has become stronger.” He had decried attempts to mythologize Mr. Xi like Mao Zedong was many decades before: “We need to ask why a vast country like China, one that was previously so ruinously served by a personality cult simply has no resistance to this new cult.”
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For Xu Zhangrun, the current crisis is only the latest in a series of policy failures — including Beijing’s handling of the trade war with the United States and the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong — that highlight the deficiencies of an authoritarian system that has increasingly concentrated power in the hands of one man:
<blockquote>“Don’t you see that although everyone looks to The One for the nod of approval, The One himself is clueless and has no substantive understanding of rulership and governance, despite his undeniable talent for playing power politics?”</blockquote>
“The political life of the nation is in a state of collapse and the ethical core of the system has been hollowed out,” Xu Zhangrun declares in his elegant signature prose, which rings with classical cadences. “The ultimate concern of China’s polity today and that of its highest leader is to preserve at all costs the privileged position of the Communist Party and to maintain ruthlessly its hold on power.”
The same day that essay was published, Feb. 4, another powerful, sarcastic analysis of China’s party-state appeared online. In an open letter addressed to Mr. Xi, the legal expert and rights activist Xu Zhiyong called on the president to take responsibility for numerous political missteps and step down.
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Xu Zhiyong’s essay lambasts the president for promoting a vision for China’s future that is, in fact, a muddle of contradictions:
<blockquote>“Where do you really think you are taking China? Do you have any clue yourself? You talk up the Reform and Opening-Up policy at the same time that you are trying to resuscitate the corpse of Marxism-Leninism.”</blockquote>
Also: “Your lack of confidence means that everywhere you look you see threats and you crank up ‘stability maintenance’ measures in response.”
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It was “in the name of ‘stability maintenance,’” Xu Zhiyong’s essay charges, that “the Public Security Bureau of Wuhan threatened and denigrated doctors who tried to reveal the truth about the coronavirus.” The state-controlled China Central Television in Beijing, he adds, “offered support by condemning rumormongers and decried the doctors’ legitimate freedom to express their views. The cover-up in Wuhan led directly to what is now a national disaster.”
And that was no mishap. Xu Zhiyong warns that what is happening in Xinjiang today — an extensive surveillance network; large numbers of Uighurs “incarcerated in ‘educational training centers’ on the most spurious grounds” — could soon become the norm for the rest of China. “What kind of country has ever, anywhere, been run like this?”
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As both Xu Zhangrun and Xu Zhiyong have pointed out, it is the canker in China’s body politic that turned the coronavirus outbreak into a health crisis far worse than it needed to become. And the epidemic, in turn, has only exposed the extent of the party-state’s sickness.'
- New York Times,
Xi Jinping’s handling of the epidemic is reviving political dissent, March 3, 2020
ContextChina Uighurs 'moved into factory forced labour' for foreign brands, March 2, 2020
(BBC) - 'The death of Dr Li Wenliang .. China's command and control system of governance under Xi Jinping .. [that] structure is obviously broken.'(CNN) - Whistleblower doctor (34) silenced by police dies from coronavirus - Coronavirus Crisis Shows China’s Governance Failure, [pleasing Xi Jinping]'..Xi delivered a series of secret speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security offensive now underway in Xinjiang..'China is 'threat to world' says dissident writer'What do we do about China now?' - '..the Chinese manipulated Western politicians and business leaders into thinking China was evolving toward democracy and capitalism.'