Thread by @AndrewSErickson

“Remembering the lewd chatter around the dinner table every night, I felt for the first time that the system I had long considered sacred was in fact unbearably absurd.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“My experience with the study outline taught me that the ideas the party sanctimoniously promoted were in fact self-serving tools used to deceive the Chinese people.

I soon learned that they were also a way of making money.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“CCP had >3.6 million grassroots organizations, each of which was expected to buy a copy of a new publication. If the book was priced at ten yuan per copy, that meant a minimum of 36 million yuan in sales revenue—equivalent to more than $5 million today.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“Since that money was coming from the budgets of the party branches, the scheme was essentially an exercise in forcing 1 public entity to transfer money to another...W/ nearly every unit inventing new ways to make money, venality has permeated the regime.”
foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“I came to the pessimistic conclusion that the CCP was unlikely to reform politically. …

The CCP, having come to power in 1949 through violence, was deeply wedded to the idea that it had earned a permanent monopoly on political power.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“The party’s record, particularly its crackdown on the #TiananmenSquare protests, demonstrated that it would not give up that monopoly peacefully. & none of the post-Deng leaders had the courage to push for political reform; they simply wanted to pass the buck to future leaders.”

“To me, the discontent showed that it was becoming harder for China to develop its economy without liberalizing its politics.

Hu thought otherwise.

‘Don’t muck up things,’ he said in 2008….”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“So China, under [Hu Jintao’s] watch, entered a period of political stagnation, a decline similar to what the Soviet Union experienced under Leonid Brezhnev.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“The highly oppressive version of Marxism promoted by the CCP owed more to Stalin than to Marx himself.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“China’s long-standing problems of corruption, excessive debt, and unprofitable state enterprises are rooted in party officials’ power to meddle in economic decisions without public supervision.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“Trying to liberalize the economy while tightening political control was a contradiction.

Yet Xi was launching the biggest ideological campaign since Mao’s death to revive Maoist rule.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“Although most of my article simply quoted the party’s constitution and code of conduct, the Central Party School’s disciplinary committee accused me of serious errors.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“I was indignant at my treatment, even though I understood that others had been dealt with even more harshly.

If the CCP’s officials are capable of such despicable actions, how can the party be trusted?”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“At the end of each conversation, my interrogators demanded I keep it a secret.

It was all part of an underworld that couldn’t be exposed to the light of day.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“I asked myself, If the CCP’s officials are capable of such despicable actions, how can the party be trusted?

Most of all, I wondered how I could remain part of this system.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“After 20 years of hesitation, confusion, and misery, I made the decision to emerge from the darkness and make a complete break with the party.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“#Xi’s #GreatLeapBackward soon left me with no other choice.

In 2018, Xi abolished presidential term limits, raising the prospect that I would have to live indefinitely under neo-Stalinist rule.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“I was disgusted by #Xi’s mishandling of the [#Coronavirus] outbreak and signed a petition supporting #LiWenliang, the #Wuhan ophthalmologist who had been harassed by police for warning his friends about the new disease and eventually died of it.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

“Officials [@ Prof.#CaiXia's fmr employer, the #CentralPartySchool] avoided answering the question & instead made vague threats against my daughter in #China & her young son.

It was at this point that I accepted the truth: there was no going back.”

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china… #蔡霞