A video about sending off the old and welcoming the new is widely circulating on WeChat in China. In the video, a small Italian six-member band, each opens a window in a building and sings the song “Vaffanculo 2020!” for the companies that closed during the pandemic, for people losing their freedom, for all the empty streets, for not being able to celebrate the festive seasons anymore because we don’t have money in our pockets, for the people who can’t sing anymore, for all those who have lost loved ones, and for workers and employees alike, let’s vaffanculo 2020!

The song title was translated to “Fxxk you, old man!” in Chinese which was a popular nationwide cuss against the country that originated from the high school graduates of 1966-1968 who were rusticated during the Cultural Revolution. This cuss word was chosen because the band also sings about the experiences of the Chinese people. However, in China today, the Chinese people are not allowed to sing about their experiences, not to mention that they are constantly experiencing new hardships.

The epidemic in China is not over, and there are still cities sealing off neighborhoods. The epidemic is serious in Dalian and Chengdu, and even Beijing is shutting down the Hanting Hotel Dashanzi store. As we enter into the severe winter, not only Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, and Shenzhen are hit with power outages, Beijing and Shanghai have also gone dark amid the nationwide power crunch. Residents are not clear whether the outages were because of a ban on thermal coal imports from Australia to penalize the other side, or due to a lack of money to buy coal, or because the authorities are allocating most of the power to prepare for war?

All Chinese festivals belong only to the authorities, to Zhongnanhai, and every regular meeting is their festival. In a speech at the annual Central Economic Work Conference held in Beijing that ended on the 18th, Xi Jinping boasted that with respect to the country’s economic work in 2020, “China has made historic achievements that have satisfied the people and impressed the world.” Currently, the party media is in full swing to promote this conference in a festive manner. The official Xinhua News Agency reported for the umpteenth time that 2021 is designated “a year of special importance in the process of China’s modernization drive.” The eight major tasks set by Xi Jinping for the coming year are the same as the “six stabilities” set for 2019 at the Politburo meeting in December 2018, which became the “six guarantees” at the Politburo meeting in April this year. These policies all hit the nail right on the head, capturing the serious problems of China’s economic downturn, withdrawal of foreign investment, and escalating unemployment after the U.S.-China trade war and the national epidemic. The eight tasks for next year reveal the situation that the Chinese economy would be in a more serious predicament in the event of the failure to maintain the “six guarantees,” the pushing of the national security law in Hong Kong, and the continued severe sanctions by the Trump administration.

The first milestone of Xi Jinping’s “two centennial goals” marks the CPC’s (Communist Party of China) 100th founding anniversary in 2021 with the eight major tasks pointing to the consolidation of political power and the strict control of speech being the top priorities. After Jack Ma was attacked, an article in support of the e-commerce giant appeared online, saying that fair competition means that “the rules of the game are fair, but victory and ability are inherently unfair.” This is the root of human progress. You can see that Jack Ma and Pony Ma are both monopolists, and “If you don’t let them dominate, China’s economy cannot thrive.” In fact, this was borrowed from a speech delivered by Steven N.S. Cheung, a Hong-Kong-born American economist, in September 2018 in Guangzhou at the invitation of the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). The revival of the old speech by Chinese internet users is also considered to be a backlash of anti-Xi forces.

Xi makes a move against online social capital. One reason is to harvest profit from the losses of China’s middle class and take all the financial platforms into state ownership. The second is to implement total leadership of the internet, that is, to implement an absolute monopoly of the industry. With the acceleration of technological changes and the huge user resources, through agenda setting and big data algorithms, the “platform” containing various public products can determine what people pay attention to and what they don’t pay attention to, what they think about and what they don’t think about, making Xi Jinping and his Propaganda Department feel a growing sense of crisis in terms of initiative and dominance in the battlefield of public opinion. Between 2012 and 2015, Alibaba acquired shares by various means in more than 20 media, including government media such as Sichuan Daily Group and Mango TV. In fact, China’s three most prominent technology firms, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, known collectively as BATs, as well as TikTok’s parent company, a new rising tech giant, have all saturated into the online platform including media through self-operation or investments, forming their own “internet empire.” Needless to say, in 2021 these empires must accept full leadership of the Party or be exterminated.

Meanwhile, the 76-episode Chinese television series “Qin Dynasty Epic” was broadcast on CCTV during prime time starting Dec. 1st. The drama’s scriptwriter-director sang the praises of Qin Shi Huang’s unification of the six kingdoms: “The reunification of the world is god’s will and the desire of the people.” In fact, it is Xi Jinping’s vehicles, “profound changes unseen in a century” and “a community with a shared future for mankind,” to reshape history, which has sparked countless criticisms and ridicule on the internet. The internet has already replaced traditional publishing as the mainstream culture, so you can imagine what it will be like in 2021 when there is not even the slightest leeway for non-governmental capital. What kind of songs should Chinese people sing?

(Lui Yue, a veteran Chinese journalist)

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