IMAGINE DRAGGIN':

The Party itself is already a political zombie ... the system has already corrupted many ...  [The leader] has become a total mafia boss who can punish his underlings however he wants ... the whole Party [is] revolving around one person ... [The CCP's Standing Committee members are] just slaves under the command of one person, I wonder whether [the Party] can rise up again for the sake of this country and its people ... [and] ask this person to step down ... The key is whether our high-ranking officials have the political courage to be accountable to the Party and the people...

... Right now, society can't be counted on, he's already atomized the entire Chinese society into scattered sand. All of civil society and the capacity for self-organization have been shattered... the ability to think is being devastated...

... we need to believe in this nation ... it is resilient and alive... If we don't get rid of this person... we will wait for a hard landing.... There is a large likelihood that by the end of this year or the first half of next year [i.e. 2021], the economy will completely collapse... [eventually] domestic conflicts will boil over... within five years, we will witness China go through another period of major chaos... [...]

In this essay, Căi Xiá argued for the recognition of the individual who enjoys autonomy and can pursue diverse self-set aspirations, and not - as in China's despotic tradition - who is a subject and just a tool for realising the goals of the national collective. When she wrote critically of "the forced requisition of land and forced demolition of housing among the masses", this evoked vivid memories in my mind of ordinary people waving placards and demonstrating in front of urban demolition sites -- scenes, which any visitor to China who left the 'foreign tourist bubble' will have  come across in recent decades.

Căi Xiá re-issued her essay in January 2013 . It sounded like a cri de cœur against the then emerging argument that constitutional democracy just does not fit China's specific conditions. At the time, many foreigners were amazed that such arguments as hers were still tolerated in the People's Republic, indeed that such arguments - even when infused with Marxist-Maoist modes of dialectic thinking - could come out of the Central Party School. To my mind, this inspired hope.

The style of the essay reminded  me of the writings of Milovan Đilas (Djilas), the imprisoned communist renegade in Tito's Yugoslavia. He, too, had reflected about communism within a framework of Marxist dialectic and come to conclusions that condemned the 'New Class' (aka party priviligentsia) for frustrating the justified aspirations of individuals. Writers like Djilas and Căi Xiá are hard to read because they use communist jargon and are enmeshed in the Marxist way of thinking. A sympathetic Western reader of Căi Xiá must of course doubt the practicality of her proposals. How could the leading role of the Communist Party of China ever be sustained when the political order allows freedom of speech, freedom of association and free elections? Would this not lead to the demise of the monopoly Party because of its past repression and its corruption? Would that not lead to revenge and turmoil? Would the present rulers not soon be replaced by alternative thugs?

It is thus easy for Westerners to dismiss the writings of idealistic reform Marxists. Yet, they deserve some admiration for their valiant intellectual struggles and their humane, individualistic aspirations. After all, they have not had access to thinkers such as Max Weber, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Friedrich August Hayek and Karl Popper. Our respect needs, however, to be tempered: Whatever Marx may once have had in mind when he spoke of  'democracy' and whatever Căi Xiá imagines him to have thought, one cannot absolve present-day Marxist idealists of empirical ignorance. Wherever socialist revolutions overturned an old order during the past one-hundred years, thuggish autocrats emerged and inflicted fear and poverty on the people: Castro in Cuba, the Kims in Korea, Uncle Ho in Vietnam, half a dozen socialist dictatorships in Africa, the al-Assads in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi's 'Green Socialism', the chavista socialism in Venezuela, and so on. There is no indication of a revolutionary dialectic leading from socialist revolution to democracy and constitutionally limited government! [...]

The expectation in the 1980s and 1990s was that a new and educated middle-class would gradually demand more political freedom and become more outspoken about the corruption of the Party elites, just as demands for democracy and civil rights arose after a generation of economic advancement in Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The signs were there that the PRC would follow that same evolutionary trajectory. Remarkable writings like Căi Xiá's 2011 essay inspired hope.

Since Xi Jinping's takeover of the helm of the CPC in 2012, such expectations have had to be modified drastically, though not all foreign observers and Chinese citizens have completely  abandoned hope. Xi is on the unprecedented mission to control 1.4 billion people, who are no longer ignorant, downtrodden peasants. Nor are Chinese communities as 'atomised as sand', as Căi Xiá feared. Hundreds of millions now belong to an educated, aspiring middle-class. They have been buoyed by an economic and cultural ascendancy and now have the means to network independent of government.  Any leader, who sees his role as defending a life-long political monopoly of the Communist Party and the country, will of course try to meet the challenges from the rising, more demanding, more educated middle-class by falling back on selective repression and whipping up nationalistic fervour.

Căi Xiá is probably right when she now writes that a crisis is imminent. China's economy has been hit hard both by the domestic disruptions of production and trade and the downturn in export demand in the wake of the pandemic. The option of using massive pump-priming to 'buy prosperity' is less available than in earlier cyclical slowdowns, since huge debts and unused capacities - for example ubiquitous stocks of new, but vacant housing - weigh on the economy and the financial system. Add to this the COVID-19 death toll throughout the country and a possible second wave now spreading in the capital. Superstitious Chinese may interpret recent omens as signs that the Red Emperor is losing the Mandate of Heaven.

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