Further to Ma Jian's anti-Xi polemic, here's an essay by Xu Zhiyong - Dear Chairman Xi, It’s Time for You to Go:
Real political leaders have true vision; at least they have a clear idea of the direction in which they want to lead others. Deng Xiaoping, for example, was a simple pragmatist; he summed up his credo in a famous line: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, so long as it catches rats.” Over time, he also articulated his approach in terms of the “Reform and Opening-Up” policy [which was initiated by the Communist Party starting in the early 1980s]. For his part, [Party General Secretary] Jiang Zemin had that theory about the “Three Represents” [an umbrella “theory” related more to practical policies than ideological dogmas] and he kept relatively quiet as his administration allowed people to focus on making money. Hu Jintao [who was Party leader from 2003 to 2012] was known for promoting the concept of the “Harmonious Society,” something that could be summed up in the line “don’t make trouble.”
And you? What have you got?
The “China Dream?” Come on: That’s plagiarized from the Americans; even so, you still can’t really explain what it means. National revival? According to the standards of what particular dynasty? You have amassed dictatorial powers, and through your policies you have increasingly distorted the market. Now, the nation’s economy is trending downwards. You call this a revival? You have also espoused building a “beautiful China.” But that’s all just put out there for show; what about the deeply held aspirations people have to enjoy true equality, justice, freedom, and happiness? You tout things like the “Four Self-Confidences,” the “Eight Clarifications” and the “Fourteen Perseveres.” Sure, you’ve got a grab-bag of such slogans, but no one has a clue what any of them really means.
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. On the one hand, you declare that we need to modernize government operations, but on the other you demand that the Communist Party has to be in charge of everything. At the same time you make reassuring gestures to private industry, you prop up the state-controlled industrial sector with everything you’ve got. So what’s it going to be: democracy and the rule of law, which you also talk about, or one-man rule and autocracy? The market economy or the planned economy? Modernization or re-Cultural Revolutionization? You believe that you can marry the ethos of class struggle that underpinned the first 30 years of the People’s Republic to the Reform and Opening-Up policies of 1979 to 2009. Well, you may claim that the former doesn’t preclude the latter, but if this isn’t all a contradiction in terms, what is it? It’s not that I don’t get it ...; nor is it that none of us get it. The simple truth is that no one can get it!....
In the course of his (long) piece, Xu looks in particular at three topics where Xi has in his opinion failed disastrously: The Sino-American Trade War; The Pro-democracy Protests in Hong Kong; The Coronavirus Epidemic in Wuhan.
And, then, of course, the treatment of the Uighurs:
Xinjiang is a place where, nowadays, people barely even dare exchange glances. Large numbers of Uighurs have been incarcerated in “educational training centers” on the most spurious grounds. A friend told me that during a simple trip to a local supermarket they were stopped at four different police barriers. Phones are confiscated and inspected for no apparent reason and, in the process, individuals are stripped both of their dignity and their privacy. Because of the repressive measures even large numbers of Han people have fled the region; it’s more extreme than [the world depicted in] 1984. What kind of country has ever, anywhere, been run like this? [They now say that] this “Xinjiang Model” will be imposed throughout China Proper. Security checks at subway stations, the recording and storing of over 200 million photographs of individuals are obviously part of a process that is being ratcheted up.
[Xu Zhiyong is a legal scholar and was a university lecturer. He holds a doctorate from Peking University. He co-founded the New Citizens Movement, a group that advocated civil rights and China’s peaceful transition to constitutional rule. Detained in July 2013, he was sentenced to four years’ jail in 2014 for “gathering crowds to disrupt public order.” He went into hiding in late 2019, until he was detained in Guangzhou on February 15, 2020.]
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