A few days ago, a video exposing the price of Food in a government canteen in Huangpu District, Shanghai, sparked a lot of controversy, and the netizen who shot the video was accused of leaking state secrets and was detained. What is the difference between the Life of a member of the Communist Party system and that of an ordinary citizen? In an interview with Daji on March 24, Chunshen Jun (a pseudonym), who has worked as a municipal cadre in the CCP system for more than 20 years, observed that the CCP is implementing a new round of “criticism” within the party system – Cultural Revolution 2.0 (CR 2.0) is quietly underway.
It is well known that the CCP has a large number of vested interests within the system to defend and consolidate the interests of the central leaders of the party, and that the special offerings for state civil servants are incredibly costly, but Chun Shenjun says, “People within the system are not ‘pink’ and basically not ‘red. ‘” No one will really be loyal and work for the CCP. The CCP leadership is using “fear” to manipulate the grassroots within the system.
Cultural Revolution 2.0: Purposeless Fighting within the Communist Party System
After the Epidemic broke out in China in 2020, the Communist Party began asking people within the system to complete purposeless self-criticism. Chunshenjun said these activities used to happen but were not as intensive. Last year, the central government began asking provincial inspector teams to send orders to the cities, where each cadre had to complete a long list of ideological studies and each ended up writing black materials about the other.
Chunshenjun said: “In fact, there were similar activities before, but more intensive after the epidemic. A few of us who knew each other well had to discuss with each other how to expose each other’s faults, and in fact we had no opinion about our leaders or colleagues, but we were still asked to mention them.” Officials from the inspectorate also expressed their helplessness, as they themselves faced the same dilemma, and the CCP had started to “criticize” each other within the system.
Cultural Revolution 2.0 (CR2.0) is an academic term for the development of social conditions in mainland China and Hong Kong after the 2010s, and derives its name from the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, which was launched by Mao Zedong. Since 2020, Chinese official media have been criticizing and sniping at Hong Kong more frequently, and Cultural Revolution 2.0 has been seen as the norm.
Chunshen believes the first step of the Cultural Revolution 2.0 was to make everyone afraid to disagree publicly, which has largely been accomplished. The next step is the ongoing one, which does not allow people to be silent, to start writing personal experiences and to criticize each other; the third step is to purge those who do not applaud enthusiastically, and those who do not actively participate in the criticism will also be suppressed, and the last step is to lock everyone inside the cage, leaving only one person standing outside to get the key. The Cultural Revolution 2.0 is just a means to consolidate totalitarian power.
Fear” to control people within the party system
His grandfather was a capitalist before 1949, and after the Chinese Communist Party came to power, the factory was nationalized and his grandfather worked as an ordinary employee. He said, “Whenever my grandfather didn’t come Home on Time, the Family would wait at the entrance of the alleyway, there was no phone and no WeChat, so I didn’t know what would happen. For ten long years, (grandpa) went to work every day not knowing if he could come back, and every day he was glad that he lived another day.”
Chunshen believes this is the CCP’s way of cultivating “fear” and silencing everyone, while at the same time really drawing out the snake and exposing some dark information. The reason is that people with good relations may not attack each other, but the opposing factions, or those who need to consolidate their power, will go to expose the fraud and speculation.
At present, this phenomenon of demanding criticism and review has not occurred in other domestic enterprises, but Chunshenjun believes that once the CCP controls the people inside the Communist Party system, they can then be used to manage ordinary people, so the CCP can achieve the effect of the Cultural Revolution by fixing this part of the people. Moreover, the CCP’s party branches have infiltrated all private enterprises, he said: “Now all enterprises in China have party branches, unless the turnover is too small for the CCP to enter, otherwise even foreign enterprises need to set up domestic agents and party branches, and it is basically difficult for enterprises that refuse to set up party branches to operate in China.
Those inside the system increasingly distrust the CCP
Chun Shenjun said, “The more people in the system, in the public security system, the clearer it is what’s going on.” No matter how much the CCP asks people to read study materials and self-criticism, no one will believe it anymore, he said, adding, “Everyone is an adult and has experienced the reform and opening up of the country in the 1980s, so how can they still change their mindset.”
Chun Shenjun cited the “anti-China” incident in Hong Kong as an example. Although people in China do not have access to information from the outside world and can only read news from Netease and Sohu, no one around him believes that Hong Kong people are thugs or want Hong Kong independence.
He said, “What is written on the news about the offensive weapons held by the Hong Kong people? Glow sticks, cell phones, umbrellas. What kind of equipment is on the public security system and what kind of equipment are these Hong Kong people using, is this not nonsense? A herd of sheep attacking a pride of lions.” But no one is willing to go through all this, and no one has the courage to expose the CCP’s hypocrisy to their faces.
Many national security personnel told Chunshenjun privately that they were just fulfilling their mission and trying to live up to their conscience. Many people within the system are forced to be “two-faced” and cope with the demands of the system, but they are extremely dissatisfied and suffer from a schizophrenic state of life.
Chun Shenjun believes that the current way of maintaining the CCP’s system is actually “fear,” and that people within the system are more distrustful of the CCP. He said, “The CCP will come after you in all kinds of ways, and there is always a way to make you look bad.” Any time a statement is made that is at odds with the central government or criticizes high-level policies, trouble may come to the door, usually with a purge to find mistakes and oversights, and anything as big as a sesame seed may be magnified.
Chun Shenjun said, “How can a person who has worked for more than 20 years not have oversights? Unless he doesn’t do anything.” Even if the person is really perfect and can’t find any problems with his work or life style, he can still find some trumped-up charges to expose. He said people used to be able to joke about Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao in their units, but now everyone is silent and no one in the office dares to joke about the top brass in Zhongnanhai, and even if someone does, no one dares to answer. Chunshen said, “It’s not because people like the CPC, but because they know it’s useless to talk about it, and no one wants to be found in trouble.”
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