'..Mariana insists on another very important idea: he says that natural law is vastly superior to the power of each king or ruler. This is an essential idea that is still perfectly applicable today..'
- Jesús Huerta de Soto,
(Spanish, English, Chinese) - The Values: 'You only have to read one book, "The History of Spain" by Father Juan de Mariana.' - Thomas Jefferson'..What China needs above all other things is Freedom! Only with freedom will creativity truly flourish and progress be possible. With your move away from collective leadership in favor of your own one-man dictatorship, you are driving the country backwards.''..numerous intellectuals and various [Party-state and business] elites were reformers or idealists who favored introducing a form of constitutional democracy to China. They hoped that the country could gradually evolve and move on [from one-party rule]. During the Hu-Wen era [2003 to 2012], there was a limited space for such deliberations, as well as significant hope. There was even a place in the establishment for talented reformist thinkers like
Yu Jianrong.
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Shanghai became a metropolis for historical reasons and it flourished as an oriental metropolis during the Republican era..
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[In the early 1970s, Mao Zedong employed a] Third World strategy that was aimed at manipulating autocrats big and small in his efforts to influence their politics so that the People’s Republic could join the international community and gain China’s seat at the United Nations. Today, there’s a majority of democratic countries that are far more open and your various Blue, Gold, and Yellow ploys are creating sensational news headlines. [Note: ..a shorthand for the covert use of Internet blackmail (blue), bribery (gold), and honey traps (yellow) to achieve commercial and political goals.] Newly elected leaders are refusing to get on board, and many proposals are floundering. Initially, it must have all seemed so clever, but times are a-changing and you’re just making a fool of yourself.
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There are those who say that the trade war is not really about money at all, that it disguises an existential threat—that is, that it’s actually about the very survival of the Communist Party itself [the trade war is seen by many as being part of an overall and ongoing American strategy aimed at undermining and eventually engineering the overthrow of China’s one-party state]. When the Cold War came to an end with the victory of the West in the 1990s, why do you think the world didn’t try and snuff out your Communist Party then? It was because China was in the midst of its Reform and Opening-Up push. Those policies made everyone feel that there was some hope for China’s future. In recent years, however, the nation has engaged reverse gear, and we’ve been moving backwards at full throttle. Economic reform is in retreat; democratization is in retreat; basic human rights are in retreat. It’s also no coincidence that lifetime tenure for Party-state leaders has made a return [giving Xi Jiping an indefinite hold on power], that the grand banner of Marxism is once again raised on high, and that the Cold War has been reignited. The Sino-American Trade War is not limited to the economic sphere; it is also about ideological competition, it is a continuation of the original Cold War. It has come about as a result of our own mucking around.
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Massive industrial wealth accrued over long years of work—that is, private property—is in effect being taken over without compensation by the Party branches. It sure is what you’d call “communism” [..the Chinese word for “Communism,” literally means “shared property”], isn’t it? As for village-level democracy [and the trialing of local elections] experimented with over many years, that is all giving way to Party secretaries who are taking complete control of village affairs. These days, even the heads of local neighborhood property management committees [that oversee apartment complexes] have to be Party members. The Party has gone from a gradual withdrawal to a full-scale return. In this country, history too is moving in reverse.
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There are those who argue that China needs a strong-man to lead it. I’d posit that the kind of authority figure we need should be more like Chiang Ching-kuo [the late Nationalist Party president on Taiwan and son of the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek who, as ruler, shepherded the way to the island’s ending martial law and eventually undertaking political and social reforms that would transform it into a modern democracy]. But you have no desire to go with the flow of history. If you are determined to set yourself against history, you will surely visit disaster upon this country. What China needs above all other things is Freedom! Only with freedom will creativity truly flourish and progress be possible. With your move away from collective leadership in favor of your own one-man dictatorship, you are driving the country backwards.
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The majority of my fellow citizens are “mortgage slaves.” Having been ripped off by the government the first time around, [government-created] inflation will be nothing less than a second act of plunder. If things continue in this fashion, it is imaginable that within a few years the majority of Chinese will be living in much reduced circumstances. Many dynasties throughout history collapsed because of economic depletion; empires simply spent themselves into insolvency. After three successful decades of the Reform and Opening-Up are the Chinese people now fated to suffer a precipitous return to the dark days of Mao-era impoverishment?
- Xu Zhiyong,
Dear Chairman Xi, It’s Time for You to Go, February 26, 2020
Context(War)(The threat to world order is China) - '..rigorous analysis of Chinese political warfare and a warning of its effects on democracy.' - ..‘Insidious Power: How China Undermines Global Democracy’