Hello everyone, welcome to “News Perspective”, I am Li Xin.
Today’s focus: Xi prepares secret military funds, targeting officials who live luxuriously at the expense of the public with an aim at 80 million such officials; far exceeding the Cultural Revolution! The Party officials in Zhongnanhai are harvesting lives and properties on a large scale; the economy is worsening, and wages in small county towns are starting to collapse.
As 2024 comes to a close, China’s economy has entered a severe recession, what will happen in 2025? Today’s program will discuss this question.
In the movie “Let the Bullets Fly”, Ge You said: Whose money are you accepting, the poor’s money, do the poor have money? Jiang Wen: If you have to receive, receive money from the rich.
In 2024, a new official unit appeared vigorously – the “Tax Security Operations Center”. This shocking move has made CEOs of listed companies and private entrepreneurs nervous, waking up every morning feeling like criminals when looking at the mirror, calculating their prison sentences. The police, who were owed wages, rolled up their sleeves and launched more direct and powerful “deep-sea fishing” operations, traveling from one province to another, arresting entrepreneurs by throwing bags over their heads into cars. A former subordinate of Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun, a software expert in game development, a robust man at the age of 47, was abducted and interrogated to death. He has been dead for half a year, with no precise cause of death yet.
But for the Chinese Communist Party, this is just the tip of the iceberg. From 1953 to 1956, the whole country began to investigate taxes, known as the famous “Three-anti Five-anti” movement, many bosses had no money to pay taxes, and were subsequently arrested or committed suicide.
In the movie “Let the Bullets Fly”, officials collect taxes from the people for 99 years, in 2024 the Chinese Communist issued a fifty-year ultra-long-term national debt. Will there still be a Chinese Communist in 2074 to pay back the debt?
After harvesting money from listed companies, private enterprises, and the people for 50 years, where else can the Chinese Communist Party’s sickle go? Don’t worry, there are still 80 million officials who live extravagantly waiting to be harvested like fat pigs.
In the midst of China’s economic recession, where will the military funds come from if they launch a cross-sea landing battle against Taiwan?
Recently, legal scholar Yuan Hongbing in Australia revealed to “Watching China” Xi Jinping’s special method of raising secret military funds during the economic downturn.
He said, “In 2025, the Chinese Communist Party is bound to deteriorate further. The economic depression will inevitably trigger another secondary effect, which is the escalating secret military expenses that Xi Jinping has been accumulating year by year to launch a war in the Taiwan Strait, almost equivalent to the publicly announced military expenditure. It is becoming increasingly difficult to pay for these secret military costs from the growth indices of the Chinese Communist economy.
“According to insiders among the second-generation reds who oppose Xi Jinping, in 2025, the Chinese Communist military is preparing to increase the number of nuclear warheads used for combat duty by 100, bringing the total number to 1,100, followed by the induction of the invisible strategic H-20 bomber and J-35 stealth fighter into active service. The Navy’s strategic submarine force and amphibious combat ships on the sea are also accelerating development before going to battle.
“But where will this secret military funding come from? Xi Jinping’s method is to use corruption charges against officials, especially retired and second-line officials, as the fat pigs to be slaughtered, confiscating the huge wealth they have accumulated over their lifetimes as secret funding to develop militarism.
“There are rumors in the Beijing official circles that Xi Jinping is using the entire nation as a cash cow, using the 80 million officials who live extravagantly as fat pigs for slaughter. Xi Jinping’s actions are like drinking poison to quench thirst, which will further stir up official restlessness, indignation, and fury. This will only further exacerbate the internal contradictions of the Chinese Communist Party, further fueling the flames of despotism in 2025.”
From the harvest of entrepreneurs to officials by the disciplinary committee, to what extent has the Chinese Communist Party gone? Commentator Huang Yu detailed this in his commentary for Voice of America.
In his article, Huang Yu described that by the end of 2024, the social atmosphere in China had become extremely dull and dismal. In the central parts of major cities, there were no Christmas trees to be seen, small businesses in medium-sized cities were closing down, and industrial parks in the south were deserted, with almost all sectors of society feeling desolate. Now, even the bureaucratic class, including state-owned enterprise executives, have finally experienced what it means to live not as officials. In today’s Chinese society, from the common people to the officials, there is a sense of despair, collisions, suicides, and numbness.
This is the Chinese society under deflation.
People at various private gatherings at the end of the year freely vented their anger. The current level of social discontent has surpassed that of 1976, with a sense of shared hardship among the various classes. This sense of shared hardship may be a sign of collective despair before the arrival of revolution.
In contrast, more young people are turning to “seeking the Tao”. They are not only avidly reading fantasy novels on their daily commutes but also delving into various spiritual practices, ranging from seeking divination guidance to studying astrology and tarot cards, seeking enlightenment and comfort from both Eastern and Western schools of thought. Over the past two to three years, belief in feng shui, fortune-telling, and Taoism has seen a resurgence.
Meanwhile, the vast bureaucratic groups seem to have suddenly realized: the pursuit of narrow paths within the Party-state system is a trap, which can be purged or exploited by the Party at any time. Even those engaged in lobbying within the Party, involved in political-business activities, are easily labeled as “political fraudsters” or overseas spies, while a few intellectuals who occasionally voice dissent are quickly silenced.
According to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s statistics, more than 4 million officials were investigated and punished between the 18th and the 20th National Party Congress over ten years, and this trend has continued in the years following the congress. This far exceeds the number of officials persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, with the Central Organization Department later confirming that 2.3 million cadres were persecuted, a heart-wrenching phenomenon.
Firstly, the disciplinary system has been continuously cracking down on officials at the provincial and municipal levels, sparing no retired officials. One of the favorite phrases used by disciplinary officials from Beijing is “there are no honest officials left in the Party”, and the torture methods they employ even surpass those of the public security system, reminiscent of the terror of the East-West Factory in the past. For officials who manage to withstand months of interrogation, it is difficult for them to prove their innocence and be released until their families pay tens of millions of cash assets. There is an unspoken agreement between local disciplinary committees, the central disciplinary committee, and local officials, allowing local disciplinary committees to collect substantial fines from officials who are investigated, which are then transferred into the local treasury, with only a small portion of corrupt funds used as a basis for lenient sentencing, thus incentivizing corrupt officials to confess and return funds.
At the same time, various sectors and regions are demanding collective returns of ill-gotten gains, such as returning bonuses, red envelopes, and bribes, which has been ongoing in high-risk sectors such as healthcare and education for two years. The disciplinary system’s intention to use centralized funds for the central finance, which is facing a severe deficit crisis, is evident, and this anti-corruption mechanism has somewhat paradoxical implications of fostering corruption and exploitation.
Secondly, in stark contrast to the quiet net being cast by the disciplinary system within the system, underdeveloped local public security systems are hunting down private entrepreneurs in developed areas. Faced with declining local economies and insufficient financial revenues, these regional governments are conducting cross-provincial “deep-sea fishing” operations beyond the central transfer payment system.
The most deeply affected by the cross-provincial “deep-sea fishing” operations are provinces like Zhejiang and Guangdong. The public security departments in these economically developed coastal areas in the southeast have to play the role of local protectors, either intervening in these captures from other provinces or engaging in “protective arrests” after local entrepreneurs report crimes. Even the so-called Beijing, the best of the best areas, is not exempt. Additionally, practices like the long-term detention, harsh trials, and complete confiscation of all property of local entrepreneur Xu Shuangjun by the Henan Hebibe police are widespread.
When compared to earlier instances such as the random hunting of the middle-class Lei Yang in Beijing’s Dongxiaokou police station in 2016, the arrest and harsh sentencing of entrepreneur Li Huaiqing in Chongqing in 2018, and the comprehensive encroachment and confiscation of all assets of Sun Dawu in Baoding, Hebei in 2020, it is clear that this wave of attacks on the bourgeoisie can be considered as fishery. This is no longer targeting individuals, or those with symbolic or political orientations, but leveraging wealth collection towards specific groups, using methods comparable to confiscation to target the wealthy. As long as a company has sufficient cash reserves and a hefty family wealth, whether it is located locally or elsewhere, it may fall into the competitive looting range of the local public security. The scope of this looting targeted at the wealthy is broad, and includes arrests of some online writers by the Anhui public security, showing a trend of expanding from targeting the bourgeoisie to the middle-class farmers.
In theory, this trend indeed affirms what economist Wang Qingzuo said in a speech to entrepreneurs a few years ago, “Having us eliminated is an inevitable choice, eliminating us is an idealistic pursuit.” Under the endorsement of the highest leader’s “firm determination”, in the difficulty of scraping the barrel, almost all the remote inland provinces have extended the visible hands of national violence to the privately owned enterprises in the thriving coastal provinces and the private entrepreneur groups, middle-class. This oppression is taking place in cities, with the situation in small county towns worsening.
A netizen disclosed online that during a conversation with high school classmates from a county town in their hometown, they were told that the unit salaries had dropped from 2000 to 1500, making life increasingly difficult. They can only save wherever possible, working as delivery drivers after work to make ends meet. Moreover, it is not just their government units, many businesses in county towns are closing down in large numbers, with large shopping centers either closing or downsizing, and fewer people going out to consume.
From this perspective, the county towns in China are gradually becoming marginalized in society. It is possible that the county towns will gradually transform into what the villages used to be like. If you don’t believe it, take a look at a set of data:
The latest census data shows that the average permanent population in each county town in China is only 399,200 people, with a 30% outflow rate of young people. More importantly, those who stay behind are mostly forced to do so because they lack the ability to leave. In a small county town, if one-third of the young people leave, the remainder are mostly the elderly, the sick, or young children. In county towns, good job opportunities are monopolized by those with connections, and when taking civil service exams in county towns, each county only has about a dozen spots, which have long been occupied by those with connections and their descendants. Ordinary people have no chance at all.
In times of severe deflation for the Chinese economy and society, unchecked power and violence are expanding limitlessly, preying on private property at all levels. Whether these possessors have cash, wealth, or social relationships, or they are intellectuals adept in writing, they are left without recourse under the collapsing nest.
In this sense, a new Cultural Revolution has quietly begun in China, and the Chinese people have entered into a new cycle of catastrophe.
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