This list of officials is getting longer and longer, and Xi has lost all his authority

Report by : Du Zheng / Editor : Zhongkang / Source: Shangbao / https://www.aboluowang.com/2024/1001/2109849.html

More and more CCP officials love to read banned books, and this trend has been discovered in the official bulletins frequently released.

Throughout history, there have been countless banned books, and the reasons for banning them seem to be only two: politics and sex. However, under the CCP, which is dominated by politics, the books on the list of banned books by the party and the state seem to be mainly political and religious books.

The ancients said, "Read banned books behind closed doors on snowy nights." Banned books are best read on snowy nights because there are very few visitors on snowy nights, which is not only relatively safe, but also ensures the continuity of reading.

A friend who just came out of China told me that CCP officials now also love to read banned books late at night. Most of them have not been discovered for a long time, and occasionally they will share them with others, but once there is mutual infighting in the officialdom, it may become a serious crime. "Political disloyalty is the first problem, and corruption is something that everyone has, but it is not the main one."

The list of officials who read banned books is getting longer and longer

In the past two years, the storm of investigating the purchase and reading of "books and periodicals with serious political problems and audio-visual products" by senior officials within the CCP has intensified.

It was observed that at the end of Xi Jinping's first term, when Wang Qishan was in charge of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, he began to propose that anti-corruption is political supervision. After Xi Jinping was re-elected after the constitutional amendment in 2018 and Zhao Leji took charge of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the authorities carried out political inspections, and official reports on officials who were dismissed for privately bringing "reactionary books and periodicals" into the country, and privately storing and reading "foreign books and periodicals with serious political problems" and other similar terms began to appear. By the 20th National Congress in 2022, when Xi Jinping was re-elected for the third time and Xi's confidant Li Xi took charge of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, related reports "exploded".

The latest example was on 23 September 2024, when the Gansu Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision of the Communist Party of China reported that a case had been filed for investigation against Wang Huanxiang, the former counselor of the Gansu Provincial Government, saying that Wang Huanxiang was "actually a greedy and corrupt person" and that Wang Huanxiang "privately brought banned books into the country and read them for a long time."

The author can find that there are nearly 30 officials who have been accused of bringing banned books into the country, reading or disseminating them in recent years. Here are only a few of the higher-ranking ones:

Wang Xiaoguang, former vice governor of Guizhou Province; Lin Gang, former vice mayor of Guiyang City, Guizhou Province; Zhang Zulin, former vice governor of Yunnan Province; Liu Liange, former party secretary and chairman of Bank of China; Zhou Qingyu, former party committee member and vice president of China Development Bank; Zhu Congjiu, former vice governor of Zhejiang Province; Zhang Guilin, former director of Beijing State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission; Xu Shiping, former president and editor-in-chief of Haidongfang.com; ...

There used to be privileges to read banned books within the system

For decades after the founding of the Communist Party of China, senior officials have always had the privilege of obtaining more information. The Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China published "gray books" in the early days and set up a special office for the compilation of foreign political and academic books. For example, the works of Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky and others who were considered "reactionary" were still available to some people under strict control.

The top leaders of the Communist Party of China even have the privilege of watching banned films. In the 1980s, there were always movie watching activities during vacations in Beidaihe. Taiwan's Central News Agency once reported that some films that are not suitable for public screening or have not passed the review will also be arranged to be included in the Beidaihe viewing list. This includes the 2012 French erotic film "Dans la maison" which cannot be released in mainland China.

Of course, banned films are another topic. Here we are mainly talking about political banned books.

According to the rules of the CCP, current case handlers still have to read the contents of these banned books. Therefore, the authorities require such people to be extremely politically loyal. In fact, the main thing is to be loyal to the party leader.

What are the current political banned books of the CCP?

Regarding what are "foreign books and publications with serious political problems", the official media once explained that they involve "discrediting the image of the party and the country, or slandering and defaming the leaders of the party and the country, or distorting the party history and military history".

Specifically, the so-called banned books in the CCP's view refer to those involving the June 4th Incident and the Hong Kong Incident, including the suppression of various groups, as well as exposing the private lives of CCP senior officials and the overseas assets of CCP officials, as well as insider books and publications on the power struggles within the CCP senior officials.

Hong Kong used to be a "paradise of banned Chinese books", and upstairs bookstores in downtown areas were once places where books could be freely purchased. In the old Hong Kong airport bookstore, the "best seller" shelves were filled with banned Chinese books, which became souvenirs that many mainland tourists must buy before leaving Hong Kong.

However, after the implementation of the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law in 2020, Hong Kong's freedom of the press and freedom of publication were unprecedentedly suppressed by the government and self-censorship, and officially entered the dark age. Printers, publishers, and distributors are silent about politically sensitive books. The trend of mainlanders buying banned books when traveling to Hong Kong has dissipated.

The free Chinese publishing world has now only moved to Taiwan. But in fact, the CCP has never been able to completely block the underground channels into mainland China, especially for privileged officials.

Details of reading banned books in the CCP officialdom

Officials secretly reading political banned books was more popular more than 20 years ago, just when the banned book market in Hong Kong was booming. In the late 1990s, the author was a young cadre in a county government. At that time, a middle-level leading cadre "Brother Chen" and I trusted each other. He was a witness of the June 4th Incident. He was known as a reformist official in the local area and had room for promotion, but he was also a corrupt official. There were some unfavorable news about him in the local area, but his brother was in the province, so no one could touch him.

"Brother Chen" often cursed the Communist Party in private, such as those rigid ideological policies, and had to deal with them when the documents were issued. Later, I left the system and kept in touch with him. He dared to read the banned books I brought back from Hong Kong, including the history of the "Cultural Revolution" and the truth of the June 4th Massacre. He also collected a copy of "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party".

Although many people read banned books 20 years ago, the official said publicly that officials knew it tacitly. It was only in the Xi era that such "problems" were publicly reported, which also shows that the authorities believed that "the problem was serious."

Zhang Guilin, the former director of the Beijing State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, who was dismissed from public office in June 2023, was reported for a crime of "privately possessing and reading books and periodicals with serious political problems", and it ranked first among all the problems.

An insider revealed that what caused Zhang Guilin's trouble this time were the books published in Hong Kong by Bao Tong's son Bao Pu, and the New Era Weekly was also seized. It is said that there were people in Beijing who specialized in underground books at that time, which were shipped in from Hong Kong and unpacked.

A cultural friend who had just come out of China once revealed to the author that among the officials he knew, there were those who read banned books, but they were most afraid that their colleagues would know.

The trend of informing is prevalent within the CCP. This trend is not new. Before and after the founding of the CCP, there was constant mutual reporting in internal struggles. The peak was during the Cultural Revolution, when fathers and sons, and husbands and wives could report each other. The anti-corruption campaign in the Xi era, especially after the so-called "political physical examination", has made the environment faced by officials more complicated. In order to get promoted, officials can do everything they can to pull others down, which makes secretly reading banned books a very dangerous thing.

However, people want to know the truth in order to avoid risks. This ultimate safety is more important, so many people have taken the risk of secretly bringing banned books into the country from overseas in recent years, and there are so many officials who have been found out, which is evident.

Reading banned books and "making irresponsible comments on the central government" both worry the Zhongnanhai

The high-ranking officials who are listed for reading banned books are often also charged with "making irresponsible comments on the central government", which also frequently occurs.

Zhang Junlai, former party secretary and chairman of the Changsha Industrial Investment Group in Hunan Province, was directly charged with the primary crime of bringing books and periodicals that slandered and defamed the leaders of the Communist Party of China into the country without permission.

Former Zhejiang Vice Governor Zhu Congjiu and former Bank of China President Liu Liange and other high-ranking officials read banned books involving so-called "serious political issues", and the primary one must also be "vilifying the image of the party and the country, or slandering and defaming the leaders of the party and the country", etc., mainly targeting Xi himself.

Recently, all the senior officials of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences were replaced, and the reason was said to be implicated by the deputy director Zhu Hengpeng's "making irresponsible comments on the central government". The Wall Street Journal revealed that Zhu Hengpeng had been detained and removed from his post for criticizing Xi Jinping's management of the domestic economy in a private WeChat chat group. Zhu Hengpeng's remarks included comments on the weakness of the Chinese economy and implicit criticisms of Xi Jinping's "personal life and death".

We do not know whether Zhu Hengpeng has read the banned books about Xi, but people with clear minds will probably accept reading such banned books and accessing real overseas information by climbing over the firewall.

If political banned books are subdivided, there are two categories: anti-communist and anti-Xi. If they involve other leaders, they can also be classified as anti-communist, but those involving Xi Jinping may be more valued by the authorities.

Multiple sources said that criticizing Xi is more likely to anger the authorities than opposing the CCP. Perhaps because the CCP has been infamous for a hundred years and is approaching its end, Xi Jinping wants to protect the party and control the entire party. He is more afraid that if he can't even protect himself, the CCP will be gone.

A mainland media friend who is familiar with the CCP official circle revealed that local officials, including ordinary civil servants, are still "lying flat" regardless of the central government's repeated orders. They still like to go to dinner parties most on a daily basis, but they are more careful and afraid of being recorded when they talk. At various dinner parties, whenever people talk about ridiculous or irritating people or things, or even express dissatisfaction with their superiors, they will vent their anger on Xi, just using some of Xi's code names, and then causing laughter.

During the three-year epidemic, Xi Jinping's dynamic zero-clearing policy destroyed the little popularity he had accumulated in the past few years by fighting corruption and catching corrupt officials, but people are increasingly finding that this selective anti-corruption is just to protect his power. In recent years, the economy has been bad, and there is resentment in society. The CCP relies on high pressure to maintain stability and strong blockades, but the paper can't cover the fire after all.

After Xi Jinping came to power at the end of 2012, he immediately created a crime of "making irresponsible remarks about the central government" in the officialdom, which seemed to be well prepared. Perhaps he expected that one day "making irresponsible remarks about the central government" would become a trend and spread from the officialdom to society, which means that he would lose all his authority. The disappearance of the authority of the CCP leader is actually accompanied by the end of the CCP's luck.

From the recent waves of social backlash against the CCP's policies, including the online certificate system, housing pensions, and delayed retirement, it can be seen that no matter what the CCP does or says now, it will not be truly believed. People are temporarily helpless and lying down, but the buried time bombs can be detonated at any time by emergencies!