Finding melodic names for abhorrent policies – this is what China’s communist leadership is best at. “2023 Spring Breeze” is the name of a work program in Xinjiang that serves a number of purposes. It is intended to provide ordinary farmers with rewarding jobs in industrial enterprises. But there are other reasons than mere philanthropy behind it. In his analysis, Marcel Grzanna describes how Uyghurs are sometimes even forced to move to distant regions in the giant province to find work, far away from their families and under constant surveillance. While they are away, their children are looked after in Han Chinese educational institutions – and ideologically indoctrinated.
The arrival of springtime also marks the end of a small era, especially for China business travelers. For those who had to get to the People’s Republic somehow during the pandemic, the charter flights of the German Chamber of Commerce Abroad were a kind of air bridge. Their planes took off a total of 50 times, bringing almost 10,000 people from West to East and back again. As the last plane takes off from Frankfurt tonight, Joern Petring recaps how these charter flights became a lifeline for the German economy.
Admittedly, a little more self-criticism would be desirable for some politicians. It doesn’t have to be acts of “self-purification, self-perfection, self-renewal and self-improvement” – as Xi would like the members of the Communist Party to do. Johnny Erling delves into the origins of a submission ritual in which at least a certain person is always praised.
At the upcoming National People’s Congress, Xinjiang will also be a topic of discussion. Delegates from the autonomous province in northwestern China will report the successful implementation of “Spring Breeze 2023” – a job program for Uyghur workers in Xinjiang.
Within six weeks until the end of February, local authorities organized 333 job fairs with more than 7,000 participating companies, attracting tens of thousands of interested people, according to Chinese state media. Even three million users are said to have viewed the offers online. The goal: Getting people into wage labor – away from their fields, out of their homes.
There is no doubt that Xinjiang requires a large workforce. Thousands of Chinese companies, but also foreign companies, have invested in the region in recent years. This system allows the Chinese government to push ahead with the promised economic development. It often counters criticism of its repressive policy against the Uyghurs by pointing to the growing gross domestic product.
What they fail to mention is that industrialization drastically simplifies the state’s control over the Uyghurs. Official 2021 data documents the transfer of almost 3.2 million “rural workers” into employment.
Even though the figure is inaccurate because some data has been included multiple times: The bottom line is that millions of people have been bound to jobs located in new industrial parks and economic zones. There, they are under 24-hour surveillance. In an interview with Table.Media, Xinjiang researcher Rune Steenberg from the University of Olomouc called this integration of the Uyghurs a new and “more sophisticated” method of surveillance.
This abhorrent system undermines the very foundations of Uyghur society, researchers say. Particularly because people do not always accept these jobs voluntarily. The German-Uyghur activist Mihriban Memet learned about the fate of her relatives late last year. A cousin told him that three of her children had been deported to work in factories against their will. Two of them in Xinjiang, a third one “somewhere inland”, she told Table.Media.
They are so far away from home, she said, that contact with their family is sporadic at best. “Their mobile phones are checked and they are probably under 24-hour surveillance,” says Memet. Secret communication with their families has been severely punished in some cases.
However, factories are not only built in economic zones but also close to the villages. Any remaining fathers who are not imprisoned or working in other regions, and especially the mothers, work in these factories. Parents have to send their children to local childcare institutions. There, Mandarin is spoken most of the day, not the mother tongue. At the same time, they are educated by Han Chinese teachers. They follow a curriculum that contains state-mandated ideology.
Sinologist Bjoern Alpermann from the University of Wuerzburg recognizes a similar pattern to the one the Chinese authorities are using in Tibet. There, systematic school closures force children to attend distant boarding schools where they grow up away from their families. “In this way, Uyghur children are also increasingly socialized in a Han Chinese environment and uprooted from their cultural identity,” Alpermann told Table.Media.
Recently, a study by Sheffield Hallam University traced the deep involvement of Chinese automotive suppliers in the region’s labor program. It found that Chinese companies producing in Xinjiang also have German manufacturers as customers. In these industrial zones, supplier parts and spare parts are produced which, according to the report, are used throughout China and around the world in cars manufactured by BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Tesla, Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
This means that products made under human rights violations could still find their way into products of Western brands along the supply chain. The study sees considerable “supply chain risks” for buyers. Volkswagen is particularly vulnerable because it operates a plant in the capital city of Urumqi. No other company has dared to enter Xinjiang with its own plant.
VW has therefore been fighting the growing pressure back home for years. “Volkswagen must be transparent about how it investigates reports of forced labor in its supply chains and what consequences it is ready to draw,” demands Hanno Schedler of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP).
The problem: “Volkswagen and other foreign companies strengthen the reputation of the province by their presence and thereby also the local leadership that is involved in the human rights violations,” says Alpermann. What is striking is the low output of the plant, which makes no economic sense with such figures.
The car manufacturer denies the allegations. It claims to take reports of forced labor in the region very seriously but is in no way considering a withdrawal from Xinjiang. In the middle of last month, China CEO Ralf Brandstaetter visited the plant to investigate concerns about the manufacturer’s involvement. There were no indications of human rights violations at the site, Brandstaetter said. The management was trying to maintain a good working atmosphere. He said that he had spoken extensively with Uyghur employees.
A very special flight will take off from Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday evening: For the last time, a charter plane of the German Chamber of Commerce Abroad (AHK) is scheduled to depart there at 7:10 pm for the Chinese port city of Qingdao. These flights were in high demand among German expats during the pandemic years.
The Chamber’s flight program was a response to the plight of German citizens. Not only were regular flights between China and Germany hardly available, but there was also a high level of uncertainty upon arrival. For example, it was often completely unclear in which quarantine hotel travelers would stay. Anything was possible, from a luxury hotel to a windowless dosshouse. After all, rooms were usually allocated only after arrival, without much choice.
After the Covid pandemic broke out, the Chamber quickly realized that travel would remain the biggest problem for German companies for a long time. The project started in the spring of 2020 after China closed its borders due to the pandemic. Many expats and their families were stuck outside China and could not return.
“We needed a solution, and we needed it fast,” recalls Jens Hildebrandt, Executive Board Member of the German Chamber of Commerce in China, about the hectic beginnings of the charter program. What started shortly after became a kind of lifeline for the German economy.
The Chamber took the lead, but many stakeholders were involved: Lufthansa provided the crew and the aircraft. The German Embassy took over the political coordination. To make these flights possible, permits were required, among others, from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the aviation authority CAAC and respective local governments.
The first flight departed from Frankfurt to Tianjin on 29 May 2020 with 179 passengers on board, the second to Shanghai on 3 June 2020 with 181 passengers. All subsequent flights then headed for Qingdao, where the 50th and thus last charter flight is scheduled to land on Saturday.
Organizing it was all but easy, after all, China kept changing its quarantine regulations without notice. The regulations for Covid tests changed five times in 2022 alone, and the mandatory quarantine period ranged from 5 to 28 days.
The charter flight service was primarily intended for employees of German companies and their family members. However, travelers from a total of 57 countries were flown. All of them could expect to be accommodated in a more comfortable quarantine hotel in Qingdao upon arrival. A total of around 9,600 passengers were brought to China this way.
Now it is over, but there is no sign of sadness at the Chamber. “We have advocated for lifting the travel restrictions from the very beginning. Although the AHK charter project was in great demand and our team worked passionately on it, we are glad that it is no longer needed,” says Hildebrandt.
Travel between Germany and China has still not returned to normal. ” As far as the number and costs of flights are concerned, we are still a long way from the time before the pandemic,” says Hildebrandt. “What is true at least is that those who want to travel can do so.”
As the Chamber says, Chinese visas are once again being issued in Germany within two weeks in some cases. Furthermore, Germany no longer requires a negative PCR test to enter the country. The chamber assumes that China will soon follow suit and no longer require any tests of arriving travelers.
However, according to Hildebrand, German companies have not yet been able to solve one serious problem: Sending Chinese employees to Germany on business trips is “extremely burdensome”. This is said to be due to staff shortages in German embassies and consulates. Due to the current visa situation, German companies would lose competitive advantages compared to companies from other countries that do not have this problem. German companies hope that the German Foreign Office will remedy this situation as soon as possible.
Every time Xi Jinping is elected as leader, the submission ritual of the Communist Party follows. In 2013, 2017, and most recently at the end of December last year, Xi summoned the Politburo for a special “criticism and self-criticism” session.
With it, Xi also gave the starting signal for the nearly 100 million party members in the country to follow their leaders by holding their own criticism and self-criticism sessions in their local party cells. The idea is that they should criticize each other while simultaneously practicing self-criticism and admitting their own shortcomings. Xi demands that they face their own mistakes so harshly that “the sweat beads off their foreheads”.
This concept originated in the Soviet Union; Mao copied it from Stalin for ideological cleansing and education of his party. He used it as a scare tactic for brainwashing and self-mortification of millions of Chinese and extended it to everyone during the Cultural Revolution. Xi reintroduced the Politburo special sessions after he came to power.
After 2017, the rules were tightened. All CP cells above the county level must hold such sessions at least once a year. Xi had Chapter 4 of the regulation include what he already demanded of all Party members back in 2013. As an act of self-criticism, everyone must “look in the mirror, fix their clothes, wash, and cure their illnesses.” (照镜子、正衣冠、洗洗澡、治治病).
But those who expected Xi to lead by example ended up disappointed. At the Politburo criticism session last December, his comrades showered him with praise. Xi, they said, was not only the core of the party, but as the creator of the new socialist doctrine, he was also their ideological role model. They repeated this three times. Who would now dare to criticize Xi or demand self-criticism from him? Only everyone else makes mistakes.
In February, China’s public learned that Xi unexpectedly became the staunchest advocate of the market economy. The CC theory magazine “Qiushi” revealed that he straightened out the Central Committee in December. “For quite some time, incorrect, even deliberately false views have been circulating in society about whether we are running a socialist market economy and whether we still adhere to the two unshakables.” that is, unshakably promoting both the state and private economies equally (一段时间以来，社会上对我们是否还搞社会主义市场经济、是否坚持 “两个毫不动摇” 有一些不正确甚至错误的议论). Xi added that everyone must take a “clearly and unambiguously” position on this and not act like fools (决不含糊).
Even for Beijing’s propaganda, this is some strong stuff. After all, Xi had openly lashed out against the private sector, tech platforms, monopolies, and real estate speculators with an ideological control spree. Now, however, he called for a U-turn in order to boost the weak economic growth. The People’s Daily promptly praised him: “General Secretary Xi Jinping has always cared about and supported the healthy development of the private sector” (习近平总书记一直关心和支持民营经济健康发展).
The surprising embrace of the private sector came on the heels of Xi’s departure from zero-Covid. Instead of explaining his sudden change of heart, he unceremoniously proclaimed himself the victor over the pandemic – not despite, but thanks to his back-and-forth policy.
Like Mao, Xi never admits to a mistake. China’s old emperors were more conciliatory. They coined three characters: “罪己诏” (Zui Ji Zhao). The state encyclopedia Sea of Words (Cihai) explains the ancient Chinese expression as a term for an imperial admission of guilt. “China’s rulers issued so-called edicts of their guilt, in which they assumed responsibility for severe natural disasters or great calamities. By doing so, they hoped to calm dreaded uprisings.”
However, Mao, who was well-versed in dynasty history, did not believe in imperial self-criticism. When revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh privately told him in the 1950s that he wanted to ask his people to forgive him for radical leftist mistakes, Mao strongly discouraged him. At internal party meetings, he warned other CP leaders not to make such mistakes. The dictator told his nephew Mao Yuanxin: “All dynasties whose emperors made confessions of guilt before the people perished afterward.”
Mao was wrong, says historian Xiao Han (萧瀚). He found examples in the chronicles of 79 emperors who published 260 edicts of guilt over 2,000 years of dynastic history without causing their empires to collapse.
But the chairman avoided serious self-criticism even at the legendary mammoth conference in early 1962, at which China’s leadership had to justify itself before 7,000 officials for the catastrophic famine caused by Mao’s collectivization madness and attempt to change course. According to the official party biography (毛泽东传, 1949-1976, p.199), Mao said at the conference, “Those who make mistakes must correct them. If they are mine, I will change them” … “You are the chairman, is this not something you must do?” (谁的错误谁就改。是我的错误我要改 … 你当主席嘛，谁叫你当主席?)
Mao knew what he had done. After learning about acts of cannibalism committed in his and Mao’s home province of Hunan, then-President Liu Shaoqi told him to his face, “So many people have starved to death. In future history books, your and my guilt of this and the cannibalism will be recorded” (饿死这么多人，历史上要写上你的我的，人相食，要上书的!). A few years later, Mao persecuted Liu until the latter’s death. The incident is described by former Vice Minister of Culture and historian Yu Youjun 于幼军 in his book “Socialism in China 1919 to 1965”, officially published in 2011 (社会主义在中国 1919-1965, p.412).
Mao used “criticism and self-criticism” as an instrument of power. The two slogans shaped the Maoism myth even beyond China. In the Red Book “Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong,” which was printed more than a billion times during the Cultural Revolution between 1964 and 1976 and translated into 20 languages, Chapter 27 is devoted to Mao’s quotations on “criticism and self-criticism.” Mao calls for criticizing opposing opinions without compromise. “Can we approve of any political filth staining our pure face, of any political microbes eating our healthy body?” And, self-criticism is necessary “to always be clean and remove the dirt, wash our face every day and sweep the floor.”
Xi adopted this cleaning analogy half a century later when he re-planned his inner-party education campaign in 2013, calling for “self-purification, self-perfection, self-renewal, and self-improvement.” Today, Xi is planning “criticism and self-criticism” campaigns to unleash a “self-revolution” in the party so it is able to withstand any attempt at regime change.
The party motto “criticism and self-criticism” still contains the Soviet legacy. When Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic in Beijing on October 1, 1949, bookstores filled their shelves with propaganda pamphlets. These included educational books, such as a pamphlet printed in September 1949, “On Criticism and Self-Criticism.” They were Stalin’s translated speeches and essays from Pravda on the subject.
Soviet communists, influenced by Russian Orthodox Church teachings, had already developed the method of criticism and self-criticism in the 1920s with their purification rites and repentance ceremonies. Nanjing historian Pan Xianghui (潘祥辉) discovered how much the traditions of the thousand-year-old church influenced Soviet political culture.
Among China’s Communists, the terms began to appear in Mao’s writings in 1937. For the purpose of re-education, subjugation and self-purification, he decreed criticism and self-criticism on his comrades. In 1942, Mao used them in his first systematic party purge and persecution campaign in the guerrilla base of Yan’an (批评与自我批评成为整风运动的基本原则和方法),
Behind the campaigns that Xi is pursuing once again now is still the conviction that he can totally subjugate his party members and the myth that he can transform them into perfect, loyal, socialist people with their own set of values. But in China, just like anywhere else, only the old Adam emerges instead of the hoped-for new human.
A strange collection of rather stiff gentlemen: 200 bronze Chiang Kai-sheks are standing in Taiwan’s Cihu Memorial Sculpture Garden. Their presence probably does not exactly arouse spring fever in Taiwanese visitors. After all, the ex-president ruled by martial law and a police state. As is well known, the dictatorial legacy was succeeded by democracy. The removal of these statues began in 1999. There are a total of 43,000 of them – a monumental task.
Finding melodic names for abhorrent policies – this is what China’s communist leadership is best at. “2023 Spring Breeze” is the name of a work program in Xinjiang that serves a number of purposes. It is intended to provide ordinary farmers with rewarding jobs in industrial enterprises. But there are other reasons than mere philanthropy behind it. In his analysis, Marcel Grzanna describes how Uyghurs are sometimes even forced to move to distant regions in the giant province to find work, far away from their families and under constant surveillance. While they are away, their children are looked after in Han Chinese educational institutions – and ideologically indoctrinated.
The arrival of springtime also marks the end of a small era, especially for China business travelers. For those who had to get to the People’s Republic somehow during the pandemic, the charter flights of the German Chamber of Commerce Abroad were a kind of air bridge. Their planes took off a total of 50 times, bringing almost 10,000 people from West to East and back again. As the last plane takes off from Frankfurt tonight, Joern Petring recaps how these charter flights became a lifeline for the German economy.
Admittedly, a little more self-criticism would be desirable for some politicians. It doesn’t have to be acts of “self-purification, self-perfection, self-renewal and self-improvement” – as Xi would like the members of the Communist Party to do. Johnny Erling delves into the origins of a submission ritual in which at least a certain person is always praised.
At the upcoming National People’s Congress, Xinjiang will also be a topic of discussion. Delegates from the autonomous province in northwestern China will report the successful implementation of “Spring Breeze 2023” – a job program for Uyghur workers in Xinjiang.
Within six weeks until the end of February, local authorities organized 333 job fairs with more than 7,000 participating companies, attracting tens of thousands of interested people, according to Chinese state media. Even three million users are said to have viewed the offers online. The goal: Getting people into wage labor – away from their fields, out of their homes.
There is no doubt that Xinjiang requires a large workforce. Thousands of Chinese companies, but also foreign companies, have invested in the region in recent years. This system allows the Chinese government to push ahead with the promised economic development. It often counters criticism of its repressive policy against the Uyghurs by pointing to the growing gross domestic product.
What they fail to mention is that industrialization drastically simplifies the state’s control over the Uyghurs. Official 2021 data documents the transfer of almost 3.2 million “rural workers” into employment.
Even though the figure is inaccurate because some data has been included multiple times: The bottom line is that millions of people have been bound to jobs located in new industrial parks and economic zones. There, they are under 24-hour surveillance. In an interview with Table.Media, Xinjiang researcher Rune Steenberg from the University of Olomouc called this integration of the Uyghurs a new and “more sophisticated” method of surveillance.
This abhorrent system undermines the very foundations of Uyghur society, researchers say. Particularly because people do not always accept these jobs voluntarily. The German-Uyghur activist Mihriban Memet learned about the fate of her relatives late last year. A cousin told him that three of her children had been deported to work in factories against their will. Two of them in Xinjiang, a third one “somewhere inland”, she told Table.Media.
They are so far away from home, she said, that contact with their family is sporadic at best. “Their mobile phones are checked and they are probably under 24-hour surveillance,” says Memet. Secret communication with their families has been severely punished in some cases.
However, factories are not only built in economic zones but also close to the villages. Any remaining fathers who are not imprisoned or working in other regions, and especially the mothers, work in these factories. Parents have to send their children to local childcare institutions. There, Mandarin is spoken most of the day, not the mother tongue. At the same time, they are educated by Han Chinese teachers. They follow a curriculum that contains state-mandated ideology.
Sinologist Bjoern Alpermann from the University of Wuerzburg recognizes a similar pattern to the one the Chinese authorities are using in Tibet. There, systematic school closures force children to attend distant boarding schools where they grow up away from their families. “In this way, Uyghur children are also increasingly socialized in a Han Chinese environment and uprooted from their cultural identity,” Alpermann told Table.Media.
Recently, a study by Sheffield Hallam University traced the deep involvement of Chinese automotive suppliers in the region’s labor program. It found that Chinese companies producing in Xinjiang also have German manufacturers as customers. In these industrial zones, supplier parts and spare parts are produced which, according to the report, are used throughout China and around the world in cars manufactured by BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Tesla, Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
This means that products made under human rights violations could still find their way into products of Western brands along the supply chain. The study sees considerable “supply chain risks” for buyers. Volkswagen is particularly vulnerable because it operates a plant in the capital city of Urumqi. No other company has dared to enter Xinjiang with its own plant.
VW has therefore been fighting the growing pressure back home for years. “Volkswagen must be transparent about how it investigates reports of forced labor in its supply chains and what consequences it is ready to draw,” demands Hanno Schedler of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP).
The problem: “Volkswagen and other foreign companies strengthen the reputation of the province by their presence and thereby also the local leadership that is involved in the human rights violations,” says Alpermann. What is striking is the low output of the plant, which makes no economic sense with such figures.
The car manufacturer denies the allegations. It claims to take reports of forced labor in the region very seriously but is in no way considering a withdrawal from Xinjiang. In the middle of last month, China CEO Ralf Brandstaetter visited the plant to investigate concerns about the manufacturer’s involvement. There were no indications of human rights violations at the site, Brandstaetter said. The management was trying to maintain a good working atmosphere. He said that he had spoken extensively with Uyghur employees.
A very special flight will take off from Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday evening: For the last time, a charter plane of the German Chamber of Commerce Abroad (AHK) is scheduled to depart there at 7:10 pm for the Chinese port city of Qingdao. These flights were in high demand among German expats during the pandemic years.
The Chamber’s flight program was a response to the plight of German citizens. Not only were regular flights between China and Germany hardly available, but there was also a high level of uncertainty upon arrival. For example, it was often completely unclear in which quarantine hotel travelers would stay. Anything was possible, from a luxury hotel to a windowless dosshouse. After all, rooms were usually allocated only after arrival, without much choice.
After the Covid pandemic broke out, the Chamber quickly realized that travel would remain the biggest problem for German companies for a long time. The project started in the spring of 2020 after China closed its borders due to the pandemic. Many expats and their families were stuck outside China and could not return.
“We needed a solution, and we needed it fast,” recalls Jens Hildebrandt, Executive Board Member of the German Chamber of Commerce in China, about the hectic beginnings of the charter program. What started shortly after became a kind of lifeline for the German economy.
The Chamber took the lead, but many stakeholders were involved: Lufthansa provided the crew and the aircraft. The German Embassy took over the political coordination. To make these flights possible, permits were required, among others, from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the aviation authority CAAC and respective local governments.
The first flight departed from Frankfurt to Tianjin on 29 May 2020 with 179 passengers on board, the second to Shanghai on 3 June 2020 with 181 passengers. All subsequent flights then headed for Qingdao, where the 50th and thus last charter flight is scheduled to land on Saturday.
Organizing it was all but easy, after all, China kept changing its quarantine regulations without notice. The regulations for Covid tests changed five times in 2022 alone, and the mandatory quarantine period ranged from 5 to 28 days.
The charter flight service was primarily intended for employees of German companies and their family members. However, travelers from a total of 57 countries were flown. All of them could expect to be accommodated in a more comfortable quarantine hotel in Qingdao upon arrival. A total of around 9,600 passengers were brought to China this way.
Now it is over, but there is no sign of sadness at the Chamber. “We have advocated for lifting the travel restrictions from the very beginning. Although the AHK charter project was in great demand and our team worked passionately on it, we are glad that it is no longer needed,” says Hildebrandt.
Travel between Germany and China has still not returned to normal. ” As far as the number and costs of flights are concerned, we are still a long way from the time before the pandemic,” says Hildebrandt. “What is true at least is that those who want to travel can do so.”
As the Chamber says, Chinese visas are once again being issued in Germany within two weeks in some cases. Furthermore, Germany no longer requires a negative PCR test to enter the country. The chamber assumes that China will soon follow suit and no longer require any tests of arriving travelers.
However, according to Hildebrand, German companies have not yet been able to solve one serious problem: Sending Chinese employees to Germany on business trips is “extremely burdensome”. This is said to be due to staff shortages in German embassies and consulates. Due to the current visa situation, German companies would lose competitive advantages compared to companies from other countries that do not have this problem. German companies hope that the German Foreign Office will remedy this situation as soon as possible.
Every time Xi Jinping is elected as leader, the submission ritual of the Communist Party follows. In 2013, 2017, and most recently at the end of December last year, Xi summoned the Politburo for a special “criticism and self-criticism” session.
With it, Xi also gave the starting signal for the nearly 100 million party members in the country to follow their leaders by holding their own criticism and self-criticism sessions in their local party cells. The idea is that they should criticize each other while simultaneously practicing self-criticism and admitting their own shortcomings. Xi demands that they face their own mistakes so harshly that “the sweat beads off their foreheads”.
This concept originated in the Soviet Union; Mao copied it from Stalin for ideological cleansing and education of his party. He used it as a scare tactic for brainwashing and self-mortification of millions of Chinese and extended it to everyone during the Cultural Revolution. Xi reintroduced the Politburo special sessions after he came to power.
After 2017, the rules were tightened. All CP cells above the county level must hold such sessions at least once a year. Xi had Chapter 4 of the regulation include what he already demanded of all Party members back in 2013. As an act of self-criticism, everyone must “look in the mirror, fix their clothes, wash, and cure their illnesses.” (照镜子、正衣冠、洗洗澡、治治病).
But those who expected Xi to lead by example ended up disappointed. At the Politburo criticism session last December, his comrades showered him with praise. Xi, they said, was not only the core of the party, but as the creator of the new socialist doctrine, he was also their ideological role model. They repeated this three times. Who would now dare to criticize Xi or demand self-criticism from him? Only everyone else makes mistakes.
In February, China’s public learned that Xi unexpectedly became the staunchest advocate of the market economy. The CC theory magazine “Qiushi” revealed that he straightened out the Central Committee in December. “For quite some time, incorrect, even deliberately false views have been circulating in society about whether we are running a socialist market economy and whether we still adhere to the two unshakables.” that is, unshakably promoting both the state and private economies equally (一段时间以来，社会上对我们是否还搞社会主义市场经济、是否坚持 “两个毫不动摇” 有一些不正确甚至错误的议论). Xi added that everyone must take a “clearly and unambiguously” position on this and not act like fools (决不含糊).
Even for Beijing’s propaganda, this is some strong stuff. After all, Xi had openly lashed out against the private sector, tech platforms, monopolies, and real estate speculators with an ideological control spree. Now, however, he called for a U-turn in order to boost the weak economic growth. The People’s Daily promptly praised him: “General Secretary Xi Jinping has always cared about and supported the healthy development of the private sector” (习近平总书记一直关心和支持民营经济健康发展).
The surprising embrace of the private sector came on the heels of Xi’s departure from zero-Covid. Instead of explaining his sudden change of heart, he unceremoniously proclaimed himself the victor over the pandemic – not despite, but thanks to his back-and-forth policy.
Like Mao, Xi never admits to a mistake. China’s old emperors were more conciliatory. They coined three characters: “罪己诏” (Zui Ji Zhao). The state encyclopedia Sea of Words (Cihai) explains the ancient Chinese expression as a term for an imperial admission of guilt. “China’s rulers issued so-called edicts of their guilt, in which they assumed responsibility for severe natural disasters or great calamities. By doing so, they hoped to calm dreaded uprisings.”
However, Mao, who was well-versed in dynasty history, did not believe in imperial self-criticism. When revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh privately told him in the 1950s that he wanted to ask his people to forgive him for radical leftist mistakes, Mao strongly discouraged him. At internal party meetings, he warned other CP leaders not to make such mistakes. The dictator told his nephew Mao Yuanxin: “All dynasties whose emperors made confessions of guilt before the people perished afterward.”
Mao was wrong, says historian Xiao Han (萧瀚). He found examples in the chronicles of 79 emperors who published 260 edicts of guilt over 2,000 years of dynastic history without causing their empires to collapse.
But the chairman avoided serious self-criticism even at the legendary mammoth conference in early 1962, at which China’s leadership had to justify itself before 7,000 officials for the catastrophic famine caused by Mao’s collectivization madness and attempt to change course. According to the official party biography (毛泽东传, 1949-1976, p.199), Mao said at the conference, “Those who make mistakes must correct them. If they are mine, I will change them” … “You are the chairman, is this not something you must do?” (谁的错误谁就改。是我的错误我要改 … 你当主席嘛，谁叫你当主席?)
Mao knew what he had done. After learning about acts of cannibalism committed in his and Mao’s home province of Hunan, then-President Liu Shaoqi told him to his face, “So many people have starved to death. In future history books, your and my guilt of this and the cannibalism will be recorded” (饿死这么多人，历史上要写上你的我的，人相食，要上书的!). A few years later, Mao persecuted Liu until the latter’s death. The incident is described by former Vice Minister of Culture and historian Yu Youjun 于幼军 in his book “Socialism in China 1919 to 1965”, officially published in 2011 (社会主义在中国 1919-1965, p.412).
Mao used “criticism and self-criticism” as an instrument of power. The two slogans shaped the Maoism myth even beyond China. In the Red Book “Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong,” which was printed more than a billion times during the Cultural Revolution between 1964 and 1976 and translated into 20 languages, Chapter 27 is devoted to Mao’s quotations on “criticism and self-criticism.” Mao calls for criticizing opposing opinions without compromise. “Can we approve of any political filth staining our pure face, of any political microbes eating our healthy body?” And, self-criticism is necessary “to always be clean and remove the dirt, wash our face every day and sweep the floor.”
Xi adopted this cleaning analogy half a century later when he re-planned his inner-party education campaign in 2013, calling for “self-purification, self-perfection, self-renewal, and self-improvement.” Today, Xi is planning “criticism and self-criticism” campaigns to unleash a “self-revolution” in the party so it is able to withstand any attempt at regime change.
The party motto “criticism and self-criticism” still contains the Soviet legacy. When Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic in Beijing on October 1, 1949, bookstores filled their shelves with propaganda pamphlets. These included educational books, such as a pamphlet printed in September 1949, “On Criticism and Self-Criticism.” They were Stalin’s translated speeches and essays from Pravda on the subject.
Soviet communists, influenced by Russian Orthodox Church teachings, had already developed the method of criticism and self-criticism in the 1920s with their purification rites and repentance ceremonies. Nanjing historian Pan Xianghui (潘祥辉) discovered how much the traditions of the thousand-year-old church influenced Soviet political culture.
Among China’s Communists, the terms began to appear in Mao’s writings in 1937. For the purpose of re-education, subjugation and self-purification, he decreed criticism and self-criticism on his comrades. In 1942, Mao used them in his first systematic party purge and persecution campaign in the guerrilla base of Yan’an (批评与自我批评成为整风运动的基本原则和方法),
Behind the campaigns that Xi is pursuing once again now is still the conviction that he can totally subjugate his party members and the myth that he can transform them into perfect, loyal, socialist people with their own set of values. But in China, just like anywhere else, only the old Adam emerges instead of the hoped-for new human.
A strange collection of rather stiff gentlemen: 200 bronze Chiang Kai-sheks are standing in Taiwan’s Cihu Memorial Sculpture Garden. Their presence probably does not exactly arouse spring fever in Taiwanese visitors. After all, the ex-president ruled by martial law and a police state. As is well known, the dictatorial legacy was succeeded by democracy. The removal of these statues began in 1999. There are a total of 43,000 of them – a monumental task.
