Mo Zhixu, February 27, 2018   On February 26, China’s official news agency Xinhua published the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s Proposed Amendments to China’s constitution (Chinese). The Party proposed revising the clause “The term of office of the Chairman (国家主席) and Vice-Chairman of the People’s Republic of China is the same as that of the National People’s Congress, and they shall serve no more than two consecutive terms” to “The term of office of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the People’s Republic of China is the same as that of the National People’s Congress.” During the Party’s 19th congress in November, 2017, no one in the new politburo standing committee appeared to be the potential successor of Xi Jinping, as Hu Jintao was to […]

Mo Zhixu, February 4, 2018   “Rather, reform has been used as a kind of calibrating tool for the system to retain complete control in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres.”   In 1981, Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski ordered a crackdown on the growing Solidarity movement. Eight years later, under pressure of internal unrest as well as a cultural thaw in the Soviet Union, the Polish Communist government and Solidarity held roundtable talks. On June 4, 1989, free parliamentary elections were held in Poland and the Communists suffered a crushing defeat. Jaruzelski resigned in 1990 and Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa took his place as president. Poland marked its transition to democracy without shedding a drop of blood. Poland’s case is unique among the political […]

Mo Zhixu, December 14, 2017       In the evening of November 18, 2017, a fire broke out in the Jufuyuan Apartments (聚福缘公寓) in Beijing’s Daxing District (大兴区), prompting authorities across the city to begin “clearing out illegal apartments.” In an abrupt and sweeping action, tens of thousands of people were commanded to collect their belongings and vacate their homes onto the cold and windy streets of China’s capital. It was heart wrenching to watch. The incident raised much online discussion. The drive to remove the so-called “low-end population” (低端人口) of Beijing harks back to the “shitizen” (屁民) phenomenon that arose a decade earlier in Shenzhen. For many, it is a blatant reminder that in China, a veil of prosperity and affluence conceals the […]

Mo Zhixu, July 1, 2016 2016 is also an election year in China, in case you are not aware of it.     A struggle is once again brewing in Wukan. Four years ago, after a protracted struggle during which village representative Xue Jinbo (薛锦波) lost his life under mysterious circumstances in police custody, the people of Wukan were able to elect a village leader that they trusted. But several years later, they still haven’t been able to win back their rights and things have again become unsettled. Police recently detained Lin Zulian (林祖恋), the elected head of Wukan’s village committee, and then put him on television to confess to accepting bribes. And in just the past few days in Gansu Province, independent candidates for […]

By Mo Zhixu, published: April 6, 2016 Authoritarian resilience has always been an illusion.       On March 6, 2015, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by George Washington University Professor David L. Shambaugh entitled “The Coming Chinese Crackup.” In it, he pointed to five indications that China’s political system is seriously falling apart—a view that attracted widespread attention for some time after its publication. Ever since 1989, many have predicted the impending collapse of Chinese Communist rule. But there are two reasons why Shambaugh’s piece was so noteworthy. First, Shambaugh has enjoyed good personal relations with leading Party officials. His books have been published in Chinese translation, and state media have often quoted his views. In January 2015, the China Foreign Affairs University under the Ministry […]

By Mo Zhixu, published: October 4, 2015 “[T]he existence of a relatively free, relaxed, and anonymous Internet for the regime is ‘the root of all evil.’”   August 5 was the last day that opinions were solicited by the government for its new Internet Security Law, meaning that in the near future the legislation will be formally unveiled. In draft form, many of its clauses have already attracted scrutiny: for example, the draft stresses that Internet sovereignty is the extension of state sovereignty into cyberspace; it also takes as its objective “protecting the sovereignty of cyberspace and national security,” granting almost unlimited powers to the administrative organs in charge of the Internet. Many think that the Chinese government is setting up a “national Intranet.” The […]

By Mo Zhixu, published: July 23, 2015 This commentary was written and published in March 2014 in connection with the Jiansanjiang incident (建三江事件) in which four rights lawyers went to Heilongjiang province to free Falun Gong practitioners from a black jail. The lawyers were tortured and temporarily detained. Dissident intellectual Mo Zhixu’s observations about the political climate in China (paragraph 3 onward) stand out even more today in light of the recent large scale arrests of rights lawyers.   – The Editors     Recently, when lawyers Tang Jitian (唐吉田), Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), Wang Cheng (王成), and Zhang Junjie (张俊杰) went to the Jiansanjiang Agricultural Reclamation District in Heilongijiang to provide legal assistance to Falun Gong practitioners being held at a so-called legal education center, they […]

“A longer, more pessimistic outlook [than the Economist’s special report on China’s internet].“ – the author By Mo Zhixu, published: April 6, 2013   On March 28, the General Office of the State Council issued a “Notice about the Division of Labor in Implementing ‘the Plan for the State Council’s Institutional Reform and Function Change’” (国务院办公厅关于实施《国务院机构改革和职能转变方案》任务分工的通知) which lays out, among other things, the time table for implementing the information network real-name registration system (“The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and State Internet Information Office, along with the Ministry of Public Security, will be in charge of it. It shall be completed by the end of June, 2014”); and for establishing a unified credit information platform and a unified social credit coding system based on […]

Every year in  March, China holds its annual Two Meetings—the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) –to “discuss and decide” the important matters of the country. Chinese citizens might not know who in the Great Hall of the People represents them, but they do know life becomes considerably more inconvenient during the Two Meetings. For some, it can mean major infringement on their rights and freedom. For still others, it can be outright scary and brutal. If you are a dissident, a rights lawyer, an activist campaigning for any cause, or an outspoken intellectual, you have probably been placed under some sort of house arrest. Since February 22, dissidents across the country have been Shanggang-ed (上岗). That is, outside […]

By Mo Zhixu Mo Zhixu (莫之许), pen name of Zhao Hui (赵晖), is a Beijing-based Chinese dissident intellectual and a frequent contributor of Chinese-language publications known for his incisive views of Chinese politics and opposition. He is the co-author of “China at the Tipping Point? Authoritarianism and Contestation” in the January issue of Journal of Democracy. With permission, we edited his piece, originally published in iSunAffair Weekend on Thursday, to reflect later developments. A more detailed account of the event itself can be found in this Foreign Policy article by Annie Zhang that I translated. –Yaxue The predicament of Party-owned but commercialized media outlets in China China does not have private media. Most of China’s media groups are subordinates of CCP Committees on different levels. The […]

This week, Chinese citizen Li Tie (李铁) was sentenced in Wuhan to 10 year prison, while another,  Zhu Yufu (朱虞夫), was charged in Hangzhou, both for “inciting to subvert the state power,” namely, for promoting freedom and democracy. News like these doesn’t fly on Weibo because, censorship aside, most people shun such topics out of fear. Meanwhile, all over Weibo many are talking about the case of Wu Ying (吴英), a young business woman in Dongyang, Zhejiang (浙江东阳), who was sentenced to death for “illegal fund-raising and financing.” The public overwhelmingly opposes not only the sentence but also the “crime.” Also, find out how people are relishing the fun of being “buried alive”. Click date below for link to the original. In a reply to […]