Zhang Pancheng, a former security guard at Peking University who spent a year and a half in jail in Beijing for posting criticism of current affairs and expressing political demands on the Internet, was arrested again on Feb. 14, drawing the attention of many netizens. Previously, Zhang Pancheng had recorded and uploaded videos and images of himself expressing his pursuit of freedom and democracy and his opposition to dictatorship, which were heavily reposted online. As Beijing authorities are gearing up for the change of leadership at the 20th Communist Party Congress scheduled for next year, General Secretary Xi Jinping, who appears intent on breaking the term limit for leaders, has been met with a series of “disrespectful” comments from China’s youth, drawing public attention.
Expression of ideas arrested again
“The tyrant judges us with sword and club, because he fears freedom like fire, and he fears that if we find it, his throne will be shaken and he will suffer. Hold up your heads, brethren, and do not mourn, for these chains are the badge of our pride! The winter will be over, and the spring will come soon!” A young man, who still looked a bit young, shouted to the camera of his selfie phone.
On a snowy day a few days ago, Zhang Pancheng, who had just turned 26, recorded the video in the wilderness outside his Home village in Heshui County, Gansu Province, and later sent it, along with other video clips expressing his ideals of freedom and poems and short essays willing to die against tyranny, to netizens, including a series of outspoken but politically sensitive denunciations of Xi Jinping, the top leader of the Communist Party of China, which are now considered highly sensitive in China. The content was sent to netizens.
After that, Zhang Pancheng disappeared for a few days.
His grandfather in his hometown of Gansu confirmed to VOA on Feb. 15 that Zhang Pancheng was taken away in a car a day earlier by five plainclothes officers from the county public security bureau.
The 76-year-old farmer said that Zhang Pancheng left his home on his bicycle around Feb. 11, just before Lunar New Year’s Eve, and that the PSB men then searched Zhang’s room all night, taking his computer and other items. He said his grandson called the police station after he returned home on the third day of the first month (Feb. 14) to inform the police to come and arrest him.
Zhang Pancheng’s grandfather said that four or five plainclothes officers drove to the local police station led by the police, did not show documents, nor a summons or arrest warrant, took away his grandson because he sent something with his cell phone, the specific sent what do not know.
Reporter: What is the reason for being taken away?
Zhang Pancheng grandfather: Pancheng cell phone sent what, I do not know much about it.
Reporter: He left after the news has it?
Zhang Pancheng grandfather: no. After taking away no news at all.
Reporter: Now where do you know?
Zhang Pancheng grandfather: people in the county public security bureau, right.
Reporter: Did they issue you an arrest warrant or summons?
Grandpa Zhang Pancheng: No arrest warrant was given, no. No documents were given. No documents were given. The person who came was wearing civilian clothes.
Family background at the bottom
Zhang Pancheng, a grandfather who lives in Xiaozui Township, Heshui County, said he and his partner stay in the village to farm for a living, and the only other income they receive is an annual pension of 1,400 yuan each.
He said to the reporter who called to ask, Zhang Pancheng’s Parents also live in the same village, but the couple is always in the field mobile work, the two are not together, Zhang Pancheng’s mother if the workplace is close to home, will go home to see, far away, not often back.
It is understood that Zhang Pancheng has a 19-year-old brother, who went to work in Zhejiang this year.
Exile artist concern “little security guard”
It is reported that Zhang Pancheng has been in contact with overseas exile dissident artist Hua Chung after his release from prison nine months ago. Before he went into exile, Huayong gave Zhang Pancheng an allowance in the name of his uncle during his first detention in Beijing’s Xicheng District Detention Center.
On Feb. 15, Huayong tweeted, “Less than a year after his release from prison, Zhang Pancheng, a security guard at Beijing University, has now been arrested again!” The tweet was accompanied by a picture of Zhang Pancheng tying himself to a tree in his village in Xiaozui Township, Heshui County, Qingyang City, Gansu Province.
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, Huayong tweeted to call attention to the isolated Zhang Pancheng’s possible danger, and posted a number of videos and other graphic text messages that Zhang Pancheng had sent him in a private message on the 29th day of the Lunar New Year, including a message opposing authoritarian tyranny and demanding the release of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan. At the Time, Huayong had lost contact with Zhang Pancheng for three days.
A few days before the Lunar New Year, Huayong tweeted, “On February 6 Dong Shouqiong was locked up for the third time in Zhuzhou City Psychiatric Hospital by the authorities!”
Huayong himself received attention from Chinese netizens in the winter of 2017 when he filmed and broadcast the brutal evictions of Beijing’s “low-end population” for days on end, and in the fall of 2018 when he was suppressed by the authorities and disappeared for weeks for supporting the girl who splashed ink on Dong Yaoqiong and helping her father, Dong Jianbiao, to speak out for his rights.
Zhang Pancheng’s Gift and “Heavenly Questions”
The video Zhang Pancheng shared with netizens shows the small room he lives in, with the glorious arrest notice for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” hanging on the wall, a portrait of Lin Zhaoge, a talented woman from Peking University who was executed for being a counter-revolutionary group in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution and later rehabilitated, a black cross he drew, and his fellow villager, who was molested by the unscrupulous He also painted a black cross and a picture of Li Yi Yi, a female student who jumped to her death after being molested by an unscrupulous secondary school teacher.
Zhang Pancheng thought that the authorities would severely punish him for the comments he made in yet another video, and that he would not escape death this time. He said he hoped to watch the bullet pass through his eye when he was shot.
Zhang Pancheng also showed a letter he was going to send to Xi’s mother, Qi Xin, and 71 apricot kernels he picked from a tree over the summer, one of which he said was bitter to himself. The young man, 95 years old, said that despite his dislike for Xi, he could only complain to Qi’s grandmother, believing that her original intention in joining the revolution back then was to build a free, democratic and constitutional state.
The information released by Zhang Pancheng includes a prison diary he wrote to Xi’s mother, Qi Xin, in the Xicheng District Detention Center in Beijing before New Year’s Eve 2019. He asked Qi Xin’s grandmother, “What crime have we committed? They want to treat me like this?”
According to Rights Defense Network, Zhang Pancheng told Beijing human rights activist Li Bohong, who picked him up after his release from prison in May 2020, that he had been forced to have his blood drawn dozens of times while in prison.
“Provocations” in front of Xinhua Gate
On November 11, 2018, Zhang Pancheng, who goes by the screen name “Zimuyuoxi,” live-streamed a performance by his like-minded friend Qi Yiyuan (screen name Lucifer) expressing dissent outside the Xinhua Gate in Beijing, the seat of the Chinese Communist Party. Previously, the two had recorded and uploaded separate videos against the authoritarian dictatorship. At the time, Zhang Pancheng had just quit his job as a security guard at Beijing University.
Zhang Pancheng said in the video at the time that he was a left-behind child growing up in the northwestern countryside and now wanted to express his will as a citizen: he disagreed with the sending of $60 billion in aid to (foreign) people without legal procedures, and demanded freedom of expression in solidarity with the disappeared people such as Dong Yaoqiong, Hua Chung, former Beihang University student Yue Xin, and Shenzhen Jiashi factory rights workers.
Zhang Pancheng also called on people to stand up for democracy and freedom, for fairness and justice, and for the same country promised in Mao’s 1945 article “On the United Government”.
A picture of Qi Yiyuan (screen name Lucifer), a friend of former Peking University security guard Zhang Pancheng and a returnee Chinese citizen who stayed in Australia, has a shirt that reads on the back: “Oppose Xi’s ban on commenting on retrogressive practices! Oppose the one-party dictatorship of the Communist Party!” (Photo shared by netizen)
In a video he recorded before his arrest, Qi Yiyuan, born in 1991, called for the release of the arrested human rights lawyer and the defense of freedom of expression. He was wearing a shirt with the words “Oppose Xi’s ban on perverse practices” written on the back. He also called for an end to the Communist Party’s one-party dictatorship.
The young returnee, who lives in Weihai, Shandong Province, and studied in Australia, was sentenced to two years in prison by a Beijing Xicheng District Court for “provoking and provoking trouble. His defense lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, told VOA, “His (Qi Yiyuan’s) self-defense was clear and unambiguous, that he didn’t think it was a crime, that it was freedom of speech. He doesn’t regret doing it.”
Young people “do not know the fear” of the frequent occurrence of cases
Observers point out that in recent years, even under the high pressure of tightening speech control and “word prison” by the authorities, many critics and young netizens inside and outside the Communist Party have continued to voice their opposition to Xi’s attempts to follow the old path of Mao Zedong, his obsession with power and constitutional amendments, his cult of the individual and his authoritarian tyranny. The government’s tyranny and cult of the individual.
In March last year, after the widespread spread of pneumonia in Wuhan, Zhang Wenbin, a university student in Shandong province, posted a video under his real name online demanding that “Xi Jinping and the Communist Party go out of office.
He said, “I was once a fan of the Chinese Communist Party, and I slowly recognized the evil face of the Communist Party after going over the wall. The Chinese Communist Party has gone from land reform, the Cultural Revolution, the three-year famine, family planning, the June 4 massacre, the persecution of Falun Gong, the persecution of the people of Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, to today it has extended its clutches to the whole world, and everyone is still turning a blind eye to it, even singing its praises, and I just can’t stand it.”
In March 2018, Xi Jinping’s second term as president received unanimous support at the National People’s Congress, which is considered a rubber stamp.
This past New Year’s Eve, some young overseas Chinese netizens joined hands with some young Chinese netizens to organize a “New Year’s insult festival” that was broadcast on online social media platforms and channels featuring spoofs of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. Just two days before the live broadcast of these spirited parodies and spoofs, which satirized Xi Jinping’s reading of scripts and reading of white characters, his self-aggrandizement, and his fixation on being the same, two mainland Chinese netizens who participated in the event were missing and suspected to have been arrested by authorities.
If the arrests are confirmed, it would be another case of young netizens being punished for online content involving Xi Jinping’s personal image, following the “Vulgar Wiki” incident.
Hundreds of young people were arrested and 24 of them sentenced to prison after the Vulgar Wiki incident, which involved leaking personal information about Xi Jinping, his daughter Xi Mingze and brother-in-law Deng Jiagui, was made a major case by China’s Ministry of Public Security. This major case of injustice, considered an abuse of public power, political persecution and punishment for words, has caused an outcry.
Niu Tengyu, a 20-year-old wiki technology administrator, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for “provocation,” “violating personal information” and “illegal business. His mother told VOA that Niu was innocent and was used as a scapegoat by the Maoming Public Security Bureau, which was responsible for the case, to claim credit and reward from the top brass in Beijing.
The Beijing government has always insisted that China is a state governed by the rule of law and that the protection of human rights is written into the constitution. The words “freedom,” “democracy,” “rule of law” and “equality” are also included in China’s officially proclaimed These words are also included in the core socialist values that China officially promotes.
Commentary: Turning back the clock and losing the hearts of the people
Analysts say Xi Jinping is much more tightly controlled than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and earlier Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, and less popular among young people than Jiang and Hu.
Chen Jiangang, a former Chinese human rights lawyer who studied law in Washington, D.C., told VOA that since taking office, Xi has been blatantly regressive politically, emphasizing struggle, ruling with high-handedness, imprisoning ideas, suppressing critical speech, arresting human rights lawyers, using modern technology to conduct big data surveillance, depriving people of their right to privacy while keeping the personal information and assets of his own family and powerful clique secret, and especially amending the constitution in an attempt to be re-elected indefinitely. All of these are important reasons why he lost the hearts of the people.
Chen pointed out that Xi Jinping, who holds a doctorate from the Party School, often reads out misspelled words from a script and pretends not to understand, and his personal image is overly packaged, revealing his true level. He said: “Excessive cover-ups, compensation, the more so, the more vain, low self-esteem. This is what the Chinese people can see and hear.”
Li Nanyang, daughter of the late Mao Zedong’s part-time secretary Li Rui, an expert on Chinese Communist Party history and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told the Voice of America that she and Xi Jinping, both of whose fathers were friends, did not inherit his father Xi Zhongxun’s enlightened ideas and democracy-leaning ideas, but instead followed the old Maoist path that brought disaster to China and the world.
“He does not be his father’s son, he is Mao’s grandson,” Li Nanyang said, “because both his father and himself were persecuted by Mao’s policies and governance agenda. His father was even persecuted so brutally that he became mentally ill, the result of a long period of persecution. As a result, he ignored his father’s philosophy and what he stood for, but followed Mao Zedong. This is the most disgraceful to me.”
Li Nanyang also pointed out that as a fifth-generation leader of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping is not moving forward, but backward, unworthy of his virtue and unworthy to lead a country as big as China. “Go backward not to mention, but also sunshine your book list,” she said, “after reading so many books, you should not be thinking like this.”
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