Essay released: 2020-02-04
Sentencing on April 10 2023: 14 years in prison
Letter highlight
Real political leaders have true vision. 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 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.
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.
Go to Mitigation plea series
Short bio
Xu Zhiyong was born on March 2 1973. He holds a Doctor of Law degree from Peking University, from 2002.
Xu was elected twice to the Haidian District People’s Congress as an independent, in 2003 and 2006. He was one of the founders of the NGO Gongmeng (Open Constitution Initiative), reflecting his background as a legal expert.
Xu was first arrested and detained on July 29, 2009 on charges of tax evasion. Pressure on Beijing from the Obama administration led to the release of Xu and Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti about four weeks later. Gongmeng was shut down the same month.
Xu next established the civil rights organization “New Citizens’ Movement” in May 2012. In 2013 he was arrested for “gathering crowds to disrupt public order”, and later received a four year prison sentence. He was released in 2017.
While Xu was in hiding in February 2020 he posted on social media, asking Xi Jinping to resign over Xi’s “obvious inability to handle the COVID-19 pandemic”. He was arrested and detained the same month. Xu was sentenced to 14 years in prison after a closed trial on April 10 2023, for subversion of the state.
Letter Excerpt
This excerpt is taken from the translation by Geremie R. Barmé of Xu’s full open letter, published on China File. The excerpt is intended to give an impression of Xu’s resistance. You are encouraged to read the full essay.
Dear Chairman Xi, It’s Time for You to Go
I previously addressed an open letter to you; that was seven years ago. Then, I had expressed hope that, under your stewardship, China might move in the direction of constitutional democracy. I was merely expressing a sentiment shared by a vast number of our fellow countrymen and women. In response, you locked me up for four years. Even now, your associates are searching for me high and low so they can throw me back into jail.
You’re Not a Capable Political Leader
Real political leaders have true vision. 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 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?
Initially, many people fantasized that you’d show yourself to be the kind of strong new leader the nation needed, but you’ve let everyone down. You swerve willy-nilly from the left to the right; no one can pin you down. Vladimir Putin launched a blitzkrieg on Crimea and you think you can get away with something similar in the South China Sea. But you are far too indecisive to see it through. And as for the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands—you made an issue of them for the best part of a year, but all you actually managed to do was further bolster the U.S.-Japan alliance. And, then, you dropped the issue. Back in 2017, you started building a military road at Doklam on the border with India, but the instant Narendra Modi showed some grit you backed down just like some blowhard Beijing street punk.
You’re not Putin, or Modi, and you’re certainly not Trump. You flirt with Cultural Revolution fanaticism, but you are no true-believing Leftist; you lurch towards bellicose nationalism, but you’re no hawk, either. You’re a big nothing.
What’s Wrong with the Belt and Road?
On the surface, it looks like a significant gambit: The exporting of productive capacity as part of a grand strategy aimed at exercising control over the economies of weaker nations while, in the process, gaining influence over their politics so that they will support a new global order that is sympathetic to your brand of authoritarianism. Over the decades, China has relied on the wealthy, the European Union, and the United States to build up its foreign reserves. Now, your investment policies are all but out of control; at home you’ve encouraged over-investment in fatuous infrastructure projects, and now you’re pushing a similar strategy on a global scale.
The Threat to Collective Leadership
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.
Don’t Let Stability Maintenance Suck China Dry
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?
China is not the land of peace, prosperity, self-congratulation, and rapid advancement that you imagine it to be in your dreams. I’m deeply concerned about our nation’s future; I am afraid that a system that is so tightly wound up is a dangerously brittle one; and, I’m worried that there is no meaningful or substantive form of civil society that can deal with the situation.
Autocracy encourages sycophants to crowd around the Emperor, but this particular Emperor’s new clothes are on full display for all to see. Yet, even now, the people of China dare not “comment inappropriately” about what is in front of them. Well, I’m like that kid who blurted out the truth—the Emperor has no clothes!
Hong Kong through a northern lens 