The mainland media and pinkies were full of praise for Yang Jiechi, repeating the official media’s claim: “1901 and 2021 are both Xin Chou years, but China is no longer the same China”.
1901 was the year when the Manchu Qing Dynasty signed the Xin Chou Treaty with the Great Powers. Now China is the second largest economy in the world, and certainly not the original China. The logic of the political system, however, played a much larger role than perhaps strength.
The Treaty of Xin Chou had its roots in the Hundred Days Reform three years before. Cixi suspected that the Guangxu Emperor had seized power and pro-regime through the Restoration Movement, and thus there was a full-scale backlash against the Restorationists. Because of the West’s tendency to support the Restoration Movement, the Boxer Rebellion rose in the following year, and Cixi condoned and even encouraged the activities of the Boxer Rebellion. The threat to the security of foreigners led to the Eight-Power Allied Forces and the Treaty of Xin Chou.
The root cause of all the strife and turmoil in human history has been the struggle for power. Diplomacy is a continuation of internal affairs. The Treaty of Xin Chou originated from the struggle for the transfer of supreme power in the Qing court. The Hundred Days Reform, an institutional change from a hereditary imperial system to a virtual cabinet system, was essentially a continuation of the hereditary monarchy without impeding the transfer of real power, and if successful would have brought about a different situation in Chinese politics for the next hundred years. But the reform failed, and those who were interested in reforming China all took the revolutionary road to overthrow the hereditary dynasty. From the Xinhai Revolution, to the Northern Expedition, to the Chinese Communist Revolution, to Mao Zedong’s “continuing revolution” after the establishment of the Chinese Communist regime. After the failure of the Hundred Days Reform, the endless revolution has written the history of China in the past hundred years.
After 1949, when Mao Zedong assumed absolute power, a series of political movements, although all of them were carried out in a way to mobilize the masses, were aimed at dealing with the number two person in the succession position, and all of them involved the succession of supreme power. After the death of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping took over absolute power, and the turmoil also came from the need to deal with the number two person in the power position, first Hu Yaobang and then Zhao Ziyang.
The lesson of thousands of years of history is that as long as the transfer of supreme power is not institutionalized and there is no recognized transfer mechanism, there is bound to be endless power struggles and political turmoil.
Deng Xiaoping, in his later years, after defeating Hu and Zhao, was also dissatisfied with Jiang Zemin, but he said “things can only be three”, and left Jiang behind, and I believe he also reflected on China’s decades of turmoil, so set the next generation after Jiang’s successor Hu Jintao, and the top leader can only be re-elected once, that is, no more than two terms.
This was followed by Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. A roughly calm transition.
In 2018, another Wuxu year, the year the 13th National People’s Congress passed an amendment to the constitution that removed the restriction that the president of the country could not serve more than two consecutive terms. This is the new Hundred Days of Change. Li Shenzhi, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who accompanied Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping abroad many times, said in his article “Fifty Years of Wind and Rain” written in 1999: “It was not until after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 that I saw the formula proposed by Nanni, general secretary of the Italian Socialist Party: ‘The dictatorship of one class inevitably leads to the dictatorship of one party, and the dictatorship of one Party dictatorship inevitably leads to individual dictatorship'”. After all, the rules laid down by Deng Xiaoping were only expedient, not fundamental reforms.
In these next three years, China had a change of heart to the Mao era in all aspects of political, economic, social and cultural policies.
In the same year, the U.S. changed its policy toward China and started a trade war, and in October Vice President Pence said “Beijing is using a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and interests in the United States.” In 2019, Hong Kong‘s revision of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance caused turmoil throughout the year. 2020 saw a global Epidemic triggered by pneumonia in Wuhan, and an election in the United States.
For good measure, as Chinese think tank Zhai Dongsheng said, America’s “old friend is back.” On the eve of Biden‘s inauguration, China and Europe reached an investment agreement, and Trump‘s planned “world around China” broke the game. But premature nationalistic exuberance has made it possible for the EU Parliament not to approve the CEIBS. A few days ago Hu Xijin feared that an alliance between the West on trade and commerce with China would cause substantial harm.
Everything that has happened in three years is related to the new Hundred Days’ Change. Will the Boxer Rebellion and the Eight-Power Allied Forces be a historical repetition in disguise?
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