During the anti-revision demonstration movement at Hong Kong airport on August 13, 2019, Global Times reporter Fu Guohao was regarded as a mainland spy by Hong Kong protesters and was confined. The phrase “I support the Hong Kong police, you can beat me up” at the time made him a “national hero”. After his recovery, Fu Guohao was treated like a hero and soon returned to his normal work, deliberately keeping a low profile.
More than a year after the incident, in late April 2021, Fu Guohao’s father, Fu Chengxue, posted on the Chinese Internet platform “Today’s Headline” that Fu Guohao was having difficulty settling down in Beijing because of his income and financial situation. In late April 2021, Fu’s father, Fu Chengxue, posted on the Chinese Internet platform “Today’s Headlines” that Fu Guohao had chosen to leave Huanzhou because of his income and financial situation. It was a painful and helpless choice for Fu Guohao to leave Beijing, Huanshi and Laohu. In the article, he pointed out that Fu Guohao has been working in Huan Shi for nearly 3 years and has been working with his colleagues happily, but at the age of 30, his “income and financial situation is difficult to have a place of his own in Beijing. His parents can’t allow their only son to drift around in Beijing, so they decided to let him leave Beijing and Huan Shi. The picture at the end of the posting is a photo of Fu Guohao with Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of Huan Shi, and the “bald sheriff” of Hong Kong.
Beijing doesn’t believe in tears
I remember in September 2019, Huan Shi held an internal “Hong Kong reporting recognition meeting” and Fu Guohao received a 100,000 RMB bonus. Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief, said at the time that Fu Guohao had been earning a low income and living in a rented apartment in Beijing, hoping that the bonus would bring him luck. Hu’s good hope for him was that he would be able to buy a flat in Beijing and marry his wife.
Although Hu Xijin said, “Almost all the people in the Global Times are foreigners, and most of them have bought houses after working for some years. One of the newspaper’s drivers, who is in his forties this year, came at the age of 19 and later gritted his teeth and took out a loan to buy a house, and a few years ago managed to achieve points settlement in Beijing and the family had a Beijing hukou. But the ordinary family Fu Guohao, but not like other colleagues to achieve this wonderful long-cherished dream.
It seems that there are always “a large number of cases” in contemporary China, which will fall into this theory and reality completely out of line. The “Hu Xijin dilemma”.
The neutral, objective and comprehensive Hu Xijin dialectic is good at using various tricky postures to find positive values in something that is originally considered negative, polish it and make it as white as a wash. But often most people are already deep in the negative when they don’t wait for the positive value. And about the reason why young people can’t buy a house, Mr. Hu has long been prepared in February this year: “To the personal level, the only way for a person to achieve change and rise in an already determined life environment is to redouble one’s efforts. Not being negative, not slacking off, believing that fate is in our own hands, than complaining about society is at least a positive belief and practice that will bring us practical help. “
The short answer is, “You can’t afford to buy a house because you don’t work hard enough on your own.
From the report, we know that the original salary of Fu Guohao is just about 7000, or before tax. He rented a very small bungalow hut in the south gate of Chaoyang Park, the rent is about 1000. Minus transportation and catering expenses, how many years does it take for an ordinary family to afford a house of tens of thousands of square meters? A suite is difficult for a hero, even if it is 100,000 bonus, struggling for ten years can not fill this gap.
In fact, Beijing is also equal, and it will equally fail every person who “floats in Beijing”. After all, according to Hu Xijin’s logic: “If everyone is equal, there is no real equality. In 2017, the biggest event of the year in Beijing was probably the targeting of the “low-end population From migrant workers, couriers, and cleaners as manual workers, to university students, journalists, and teachers as brain workers, all without Beijing hukou could become the “low-end population” to be expelled. Many journalists work in the morning while still pointing to the “low end” of the population. Many journalists are still pointing out the mountains and waving their hands in the morning, and at night they may be informed by the owners to find a room and move out immediately. The Tianjin resident Fu Guohao was probably still working at the Beijing-based “Dovetail News Network”, so I wonder if he was affected? In 2020, tens of thousands of young people in Beijing were called by banks, displaced by landlords, and even sleeping in the streets. Did Fu Guohao, who has a dream of being a journalist, pay attention to it or even have friends who are deeply involved in it?
The outside world noticed that the “list of people with press cards” published by the Global Times in February this year did not include Fu Guohao’s name, which means that although he had been working as an editor for many years, he did not become a state editor. editorial work for many years, he did not become a “journalist” recognized by the state, and was not entitled to the higher benefits of The “establishment” job is not available. Some commentators have also mocked Fu Guohao for being used up and discarded by the Global Times, but this is not quite true. For the non-domestic migrant population, comparative interests induce them to move to cities. However, the structural policy restrictions of the state, violent urban governance strategies, and the “gentrification” of capital in urban development have shaped a systematic siege of the migrant population, and Fu Guohao’s Fu Guohao’s departure is just a small microcosm of the many young people returning to their hometowns in the big cities.
Beijing will soon forget him, because Beijing has never believed in tears.
History’s muddled account
Fu Guohao’s father, Fu Chengxue, said at the end of his post, “8.13.2019 has become history, and “Ring Time” has become the past, while his goal will not be lost and his footsteps remain solid. “. This statement by Fu’s father seems to be a bit arbitrary, as Ring Time can become Fu Guohao’s past, but August 13, 2019 cannot be defined as “history” so quickly “.
In January this year, a Hong Kong court sentenced the three Hong Kong protesters who assaulted Fu Guohao to 4 years and 3 months to 5 and a half years in prison, the highest sentence ever handed down to an anti-China movement. The court gave justice to Fu Guohao, but did not have the ability or obligation to explain the vein of hatred, so obviously the questions and doubts still exist, not to mention that the controversy in Hong Kong did not end with the implementation of the National Security Law, the implied confrontation still does not stop, and the hatred and pain is still prolonged. Fu seems to have failed to recall that the people who rushed to his side immediately after he was beaten were civilian volunteer lifeguards, some of whom may have been arrested at Polytechnic University or will face police charges. And he also failed to remember that former Hong Kong legislator Kwok Ka-ki was also doing his best to protect him, and even told the protesters, “You don’t lynch him, you tell him to apologize, you tell him to kneel down, you tell him to vindicate June 4, but you can’t lynch him like that! “Today, Kwok Ka-ki has been charged with conspiracy to subvert state power in connection with last year’s pro-democracy primary election and has not yet been released on bail.
China’s history is full of confusion: did Fu Guohao’s grandfather resist the invasion or was he held hostage by North Korea during the Korean War, and were the soldiers’ sacrifices worth it? Was the Sino-Vietnamese War experienced by Fu Guohao’s father worth the sacrifice of the soldiers, whether they took the initiative or fought back in self-defense? What did the experience of being kidnapped and beaten mean to Fu Guohao? How does he see and reflect on his own position in the anti-sending campaign? What did he do as a journalist for a “nationalist tabloid”? What does his status as a “national hero” bring to him? –What we know is that the veterans of the Sino-Vietnam War have been petitioning over the years because of their treatment, and no one remembers them except themselves, in the same vein as most “heroes” of the Republic. This is in the same vein as the fate of most “heroes” of the Republic.
Hong Kong’s anti-revision movement in 2019, a large number of live broadcasts closely and continuously presented the scene of the protests in front of Hong Kong people, from peaceful rallies to violent confrontations, with Hong Kong people sometimes running around in the streets and sometimes gnashing their teeth behind their cell phone screens, people especially remember the indiscriminate attack by white men in Yuen Long on July 21 and the police beating at Prince Edward Station on August 31, with a large number of shocking and violent images in the live The presentation of the camera made the emotional shuttle and connection of Hong Kong people particularly strong, and largely shaped the direction of the protest movement.
For mainland viewers, who have long accepted the one-sided presentation of events, the impact came from the images of a large number of protesters who regarded Global Times reporter Fu Guohao as a mainland spy and confined and beat him at the Hong Kong airport on August 13. This incident directly tore apart public opinion in both Hong Kong and China, leaving no room for discussion of the anti-revision movement in Hong Kong for mainlanders, but a “no-cut” view in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, there is a unified view that even if one does not agree with the violence, one is not divided from the demonstrators on the front line.
Since June, the war of public opinion throughout the mainland has been in full swing, with the strategy of unilaterally exaggerating the violence of the demonstrators and reducing the issue to “Hong Kong independence” mobilizing hatred for Hong Kong in the mainland. The strategy of unilaterally exaggerating the violence of the protesters and reducing the issue to “Hong Kong independence” has mobilized hatred in the Mainland; it has also created a perception of “Hong Kong is in chaos” among the politically apathetic public. The violent clashes, which are removed from the context of the incident, can instantly mobilize the emotions of the mainland audience, and even automatically and quickly spread in China, where nationalism is prevalent. The “suffering” of Fu Guohao is the oil on the fire.
In fact, I think Fu Guohao himself should know very well his place in this huge conflict, and should understand his role in the huge propaganda machine of the Chinese Communist Party. He was inadvertently, but somewhat inevitably, involved in the stormy waters of the Hong Kong movement, that is, in the situation where the demonstrators and the CCP were in sharp confrontation, Fu became the “scapegoat” of the propaganda system and the secret service system. “Some of the radical demonstrators “dehumanized” him, pouring hostility and anger from afar on him, and he himself He himself seemed to relish being portrayed as a “national hero” afterwards, and instead served to return to the drama of Communist hero-making.
The image of the demonstrators tying up Fu Guohao and beating him with fists and feet is one that evokes a full range of emotional imagery, perhaps “Jesus in the Passion” for Christians, but for mainlanders For Christians, it may be the heroic images of revolutionary martyrs such as Li Dazhao and Liu Hulan. His phrase “I support the Hong Kong police, you can beat me up” has become the most paraphrased voice in China, from the propaganda system at the top to the civil opinion at the bottom, as the People’s Daily says As the People’s Daily said, “He shouted out the voice of nearly 1.4 billion people and made an upright Chinese person’s proper appearance.
The era of Fu Guohao as a symbol is almost over. Maybe Beijing will forget Fu Guohao, but his beloved Hong Kong will not forget Fu Guohao.
Postscript.
I don’t want to discredit or sympathize with Fu Guohao, but just talk about him as a human being. I think his return home is like handing back from Hu Xijin, his father, to his own father, like returning from the state patriarchy to the family patriarchy. I spent a lot of time reading his father’s blog, he loves his son but seems to be trying a little too hard, he can denounce Fang Fang while commemorating Li Wenliang, he can help veterans defend their rights while being proud of being a Vietnam veteran, he can complain about housing prices while unconditionally supporting Hu Xijin’s remarks, his father actually represents many Chinese fathers, ordinary mixed with the majesty of the big time, simple and firm but full of unspeakable feelings. The father is actually representative of many Chinese fathers, ordinary with the majesty of the great age, simple and firm but full of unspeakable contradictions. I am writing this article hoping that I will not be accused of having been handed a knife by Father Fu.
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