Breaking Down Hu Xijin’s Challenge to Li Guangman’s ‘dazibao’
by Yawei Liu
September 3, 2021
What is Hu Xijin’s dissent?
Importantly, Hu Xijin does not dispute the facts listed by Li Guangman. What he strongly disagrees with, however, is what these events mean. To Hu, recent actions by the Chinese government and CCP are policies designed to regulate the market, to stop capital from barbaric growth, and to restore social justice and equality. In other words, the goal of these policies is about improving effective governance and gradual social progress— they have nothing to do with a seismic revolution.
Hu’s central argument is that China is politically united with its existing governance mechanisms, which he writes are orderly and efficient. This is, as Hu argues, the very reason that China could sustain a massive trade war and a frontal assault from the US. This is also the very reason that China has successfully contained COVID-19, which has generated so many problems for Western nations. Hu asks why a successful country like China needs to mobilize for a “revolution”? Who will be the targets of this “revolution”? China has undergone and is still undergoing transformation, even critical transformation, because reform is about transformation.
Hu continues in his blog that he works for the CCP and has daily public and private interactions with government officials. He writes that he has never seen or heard anything remotely connected to a beginning of a revolution to usher in a new order and a political campaign designed to correct fundamental flaws in the Chinese system of governance. Furthermore, Hu writes that Li’s blog describes changes in China as revolutionary “as if China is going to bid farewell to the era of reform and opening up and to go for an overthrow of the current order.” This is deeply misleading, seriously erroneous, and cynically populist. This kind of rhetoric has to be stopped.
What does the Li-Hu debate signify?
In both its message and propagation by state media networks, Li Guangman’s blog can be compared to the first dazibao that was posted to a Peking University wall in the early summer of 1966. What we do not know is who is behind the effort to amplify Li’s voice? What is even more intriguing are the circumstances of Hu Xijin’s daring critique of Li Guangman. Hu is an insider with strong knowledge of how the Chinese government approaches propaganda. Either his own conscience has dictated his behavior, or he was encouraged by someone inside the government to challenge Li Guangman— perhaps someone wants him to speak up and test the limitations of acceptable discourse before they speak up themselves? Or, perhaps, insiders want to test the waters of public opinion before another government decision is made?
There is one thing for certain: this debate indicates there is raging debate inside the CCP on the merits of reform and opening up, on where China is today in terms of social and political stability, and about what kind of nation China wants to become.
In terms of U.S.-China relations, the downturn is giving Li Guangman and the like fodder for their diatribe. There are even scholars in China who warn this is Washington’s strategy— that it is using the downturn in US-China relations to break Chinese political unity, as mentioned by Hu, and achieve its goal of containing China once and for all. In any case, those in China who want to see another revolution and overthrow what the nation has accomplished are either ignorant of what the Chinese people truly want or are so blinded by their own ambition that they disregard the pulse of the Chinese people.
Hu Xijin is certainly aware of the huge stakes in this debate. In today’s China, it takes courage to speak out. For this, I commend him.
Yawei Liu is Chief Editor of the U.S.-China Perception Monitor.
No need to be violent.
