The possible collapse of the CCP will lead to long-term unrest in China

 Direct translation

After the chaos, the CPC Central Committee collapsed and the provinces became independent?

—Yan Chungou: June 4th is unlikely to happen again. The collapse of the CCP will lead to long-term unrest

Commentator : Yan Chungou / Editor: Fang Xun / https://www.aboluowang.com/2025/0604/2228219.html / Image : 

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2006 was the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. At that time, I wrote an article reviewing my patriotic feelings over the past 40 years. The title was "Patriotic Feelings in the Past 40 Years". The article mentioned June 4th: "The June 4th Incident exhausted the Chinese people's sense of moral justice. The patriotic enthusiasm was crushed by tanks. The frustration and helplessness of the year gradually faded with the economic growth and improvement of life over the past decade. The ideals of democracy and freedom were anesthetized by the desire to pursue worldly happiness. Everyone's life has improved, but the soul cannot settle down."

Now it seems that these few words are basically accurate. The Chinese people's sense of moral justice was exhausted in June 4th. In the years that followed, although liberal intellectuals and human rights lawyers were once active, they could not withstand the suppression of the CCP after all, and have basically been dispersed. Except for a few righteous patriots (such as Peng Lifa and the female college students in the White Paper Movement), most Chinese people have become accustomed to an unjust society and have barely coexisted with a corrupt government. They have become quite indifferent to the political demands for democracy and freedom. Therefore, even if Hu Yaobang exists today, his persecution and death may not cause a social trend as big as June 4th.

Recently, Wang Dan hosted a discussion on the success or failure of June 4 online. The attendees included Xu Chenggang, Lin Peirui, Hu Ping, Zhang Chaohua, Zheng Xuguang, and Xiang Xiaoji. Hu Ping and Zhang Chaohua mainly debated the topic of "quit while you are ahead", Lin Peirui spoke very little, and Zheng Xuguang sorted out some of the activities of the CCP's top leaders at that time, and many of the materials were very valuable. Xiang Xiaoji mainly talked about his views on the movement. Professor Xu Chenggang raised a question, why June 4 failed in China, but the democratic movement was successful in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This question is indeed worth pondering.

June 4 was the largest civil resistance movement since the founding of the Communist Party of China. It brought the patriotic sentiment of "every man has a share of responsibility for the rise and fall of the country" in Chinese traditional culture to the extreme. At that time, college students and citizens regarded the rise and fall of the country and the welfare of the people as their unshirkable responsibilities. They took risks and took risks, with the sole purpose of exchanging personal efforts for the progress of the entire nation.

Unfortunately, the Chinese encountered the Communist Party. Why were the political demands of the Chinese people crushed by the violence of the CCP, while the same democratic trend was crushed in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe? My idea is that this is determined by China's traditional culture and China's political reality played a key role.

At the time of June 4th, China had only opened its doors for a short ten years, and the political enlightenment of the Chinese people was only in its early stages. Most Chinese people did not understand the meaning of modern politics, and the Confucian concept of monarch-monarch, minister-minister, father-father, and son-son still lingered in the lives of the Chinese people. June 4th only touched the hearts of students and a few citizens. A large number of Chinese farmers and industrial workers were still in ignorance, and the movement did not receive the response of the general public.

Secondly, the CCP is a party that fights for power and sits on the throne. Mao Zedong and the top leaders of the CCP are full of imperial ideas. The CCP is a party with Marxism-Leninism as its shell and feudalism as its core. They lie without blushing and kill without blinking an eye. Therefore, the CCP regards armed suppression as the only way to solve problems.

The former Soviet Union was also quite barbaric during the Lenin-Stalin era, but after all, they had a Christian cultural tradition. By the time of Gorbachev, the core strength of the party had deeply degenerated, and at the same time, the national strength was weakening day by day. From the reality of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was not the Soviet people who rose up in resistance on a large scale, but the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee itself was paralyzed. This is why Yeltsin stood on the tank and raised his arms before the armed suppression began, and the whole situation changed.

This is just like the October Revolution, which did not actually go through a long and arduous struggle. It was just that the Russian naval officers and soldiers rushed to the Tsar’s palace and overthrew a corrupt regime. In the late Qing Dynasty in China, the court itself collapsed and collapsed after a slight impact.

In the above article, I also said: "The worst things in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have already happened, and the worst things in China have not yet happened." The fate of China in the future depends on the rise and fall of the two variables of the CCP's stability maintenance force and the civil resistance force. The CCP's stability maintenance force is constantly weakened, while the civil resistance force is constantly gathering. Under this situation, the day of the CCP's collapse will come.

The problem is that the Chinese people have exhausted their patriotism and moral sense of justice. People now only care about their immediate lives. They are already overwhelmed by the difficulties they face, and they have no common political ideals, no imagination and consensus on the future of China. Therefore, it is impossible to expect another large-scale mass movement.

During the June 4th Incident, maintaining stability was also a new issue for the CCP. There were no armed police and no high-tech control measures at that time. At that time, the civilian intellectual elites were still quite active, and patriotism among students was still quite common. The CCP's social control was looser than it is today. If there were small-scale social protests today, the CCP would have extinguished them in their infancy and would not allow them to develop into a trend. Therefore, there are no subjective and objective conditions today to brew a large-scale social protest movement like the June 4th student movement.

The CCP's rule has reached a dead end, and it is unable to maintain stability. The accumulated public grievances are constantly rising. One day, people's resistance will occur universally, but those resistances will be small and scattered, which will weaken the CCP's grassroots construction. The CCP will exhaust its vitality in the long-term social unrest. By then, the CCP's governance will be incapable and society will be in disorder.

In the future, China will not leap from autocracy to democracy overnight. China will definitely go through a long period of civil unrest. The central government will collapse, and the provinces will be independent or co-governed. Then they will slowly find consensus. If they can negotiate to establish a national system with a democratic prototype, it will be a blessing. If not, it will be the end of the former Soviet Union.