12/04/2019, 15.13
CHINA
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History repeating: Xi Jinping like Chongzhen, the last Ming emperor

by Wei Jingsheng

Emperor Chongzhen lost himself in the internal struggles of the palace and did not worry about making peace with external enemies. He used repression as the only way to keep the people submissive. He had a falsely patriotic and arrogant ruling class. Xi Jinping is a perfect "brother" of Chongzhen, who ended his life by hanging himself and losing his empire. A reflection of the "father of democracy" in China.

 

 

Washington (AsiaNews) - Recently, I took a break and reviewed the history of the Ming Dynasty.  Unexpectedly, I discovered how much Chongzhen (the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty who hung himself as the peasant rebellion army entered the Capital Beijing) looked like the current Xi Jinping?  The Ming Dynasty perished in the hands of Chongzhen, that ambitious emperor.  Now Xi Jinping is also an ambitious emperor without much ability.  The Ming Dynasty had many opportunities to coexist peacefully with rivals outside the borders, and refused to make peace even when the other parties asked.  It kept seeking to be beaten up, until there was no return.  Xi Jinping has acted just as the twin of Emperor Chongzhen.

Why?  Scholars of all ages have surmised many reasons, and they are all very reasonable.  To sum up, there are mainly the following three points.  First, the top leadership only knew the plots and tricks of power struggles, instead of how to govern the country.  Second, the entire ruling class was intoxicated by self-braggadocio and portrayed reality with arrogant psychology, and was unable to deal with actualities, instead blaming others for the crisis.  Third, the officials only cared about themselves, with their fame and fortune being more important than the prosperity and security of their country. So that country would only perish.

In the previous a few years, there had been many people pinning their hopes on Xi Jinping and thinking of him as a smart and capable leader.  Emperor Chongzhen also accidentally became the emperor, and he vigorously and speedily cleared the eunuch dictatorship and thus was considered as a wise and promising leader that would bring prosperity.  However, besides internal fighting and being capable of power manipulations, his ability to govern the country and engage in diplomacy was a disaster.  He was wrong on every major decision.  Kind-hearted people made excuses for him saying they were mistakes due to wrong judgments.

Xi Jinping's performance in these years is simply a replica of Emperor Chongzhen.  Apart from eliminating dissidents and concentrating power in the name of anti-corruption, he has not earned credits in either domestic affairs or foreign diplomacy.  Emperor Chongzhen was unwilling to negotiate when negotiation was possible, and thus caused enemies to attack aggressively and the people of the country to suffer heavy losses.  Xi Jinping also resolutely refrained from negotiating when peace talks were possible, and waited until miserably beaten during the Sino-USA trade war.  To the end, it was the common Chinese who suffered.  Eventually, the whole country was destroyed.

One important reason restraining Emperor Chongzhen from peace talks was due to the arrogance of the entire ruling class.  This arrogance made the emperor, who did not want to take responsibility, hesitate.  Now we see such a similarity of today's bureaucrats and intellectual upper classes in China to those of the Ming Dynasty.  So-called patriotism, marked with arrogance, is standing right behind the backs of Xi Jinping and Liu He, so they cannot retreat even a half step back.  Otherwise they would be named as traitors without places to be buried.  That is called "one lifts the stones that hit one's own foot."

Our ancients more than 2,000 years ago already knew that a necessary or even prerequisite for the demise of the country is when the literati lack moral resolve.  At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the bureaucratic and intellectual class was full of talent, yet it was impossible to convince people to work for the country.  There were so-called "plenty of talents for internal fights, with no capacity to fight outside."  Is it true that there was really no talent?  No.  The reversed selection system and political environment made excellent talent not only useless, but also difficult to survive.

Xi Jinping's political prisons are so similar to that of the Chongzhen's emperor's prison, which just like made by two brothers.  In such an environment, take no action will let one free from harm.  Those patriots who were devoted and loyal to the emperor were almost certain to end badly.  With this kind of atmosphere spreading among the officials, it would be nonsense if the dynasty did not die.

The people were forced to rebel by the officials who opposed them.  The officials only thought of suppression by force.  The result was the problems were never truly solved.  After the death of Dashing King Gao, there came the Dashing King Li, who became even more successful, to the degree of taking over the home of the emperor.  Emperor Chongzhen ended up dying without a place to be buried.  Examining Xi Jinping's response to the protests of the people of Hong Kong, it is simply following the train of thought of Emperor Chongzhen.  Will the results be different then?

Regardless of whether President Trump is a wise leader or a great emperor or not, China is not a capable opponent to the United States in this trade war.  This is just like the Chinese army was not a capable opponent of the Qing Army at the end of Ming Dynasty.  All the officials at that time and scholars of the later generations thought that peace was the only way for the Ming Dynasty to survive.  There was no chance of success when it was fighting battles on both fronts, as the continuous attacks of the Qing army indeed protected the uprising peasant army from being destroyed.

As a minority, why did the Qing Army stabilize its rule soon after it occupied China?  How was the incompetent bureaucratic class of the Ming Dynasty able to serve the foreign rulers well?  Why did these ordinary Chinese who were constantly rebelling, live under foreign rule peacefully?  There were always scholars who do not understand this.

Looking at the present when the people of Hong Kong would prefer British colonial rule rather than the Communist regime in China, everyone should understand the reason. To take the lesser of the two evils, is not this the same principle followed as the Ming dynasty changed to the Qing dynasties?!

 

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