A number of unusual episodes occurred during Beijing’s Two Sessions this year. A sedan attempted to force its way into Zhongnanhai, the most heavily guarded place in China, and a reporter abruptly charged towards the podium at a press conference, violating professional etiquette. There was also a video showing a group of people organizing a march in an unnamed Chinese city, holding red flags that read “Don’t forget the class struggle” and shouting the slogan “Down with the bureaucratic bourgeoisie.”
Their Target Is the Xi Administration
In the early morning hours of March 10, a man in a black sedan accelerated toward the main gate of Zhongnanhai in an apparent attempt to break in, but the threshold of the gate was too high and the driver was apparently unfamiliar with the road conditions. As a result, the car was forced to stop when it hit the threshold, and then dozens of black-clad security guards and armed police came out and surrounded the sedan, roughly removing the driver from the car and dragging him away.Guo Jun, president of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times, shared on the “Pinnacle View” program that the car involved was a luxury sedan with a Beijing license plate, indicating that the driver was not an average citizen.
“At least he is a rich man, or even a person in the official circle,” Ms. Guo said. “The Two Sessions were particularly tightly regulated this time, so I believe that the person who can drive into the most sensitive core area of Beijing is not an ordinary person.”
In addition, when the NPC held a press conference on the theme of economy, a gray-clothed female reporter, after raising her hand several times to ask a question that was not heeded, suddenly stood up and rushed toward the podium. Security guards immediately dragged her off the stage, and the live stream was cut off immediately.
Ms. Guo said that she suspects the reporter was not an ordinary person either.
“These reporters have gone through layers of political vetting and are definitely reliable members of the inner circle. These two incidents illustrate one thing, that is, the internal conflicts within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have escalated, and these conflicts have reached a point where they can no longer be resolved among themselves through personal interactions, and they need to be expressed through such drastic and extreme means,” Ms. Guo said.
She believes that there will be a change within the CCP hierarchy soon and that the most dangerous enemy of Xi Jinping in the future will be the extreme leftists within the party.
“The slogan ‘Down with the Bureaucratic Bourgeoisie’ of the marchers in the video is a direct descendant of the Cultural Revolution slogan. Who is the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie in today’s China? It refers to state-owned enterprises, state-owned assets, and the bureaucratic families that control these assets,” Ms. Guo explained.
She noted that at present, about 500 families in China control about 60 percent to 70 percent of the country’s assets, most of which are high-ranking CCP official families.
“Therefore, the slogan of that rally is basically targeting the current power elite of the CCP. Xi Jinping has been in power for ten years, and all the senior officials are his men, who are loyal to him personally, and they are the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. Therefore, opposing the bureaucratic bourgeoisie is actually opposing the current system, which means opposing Xi Jinping,” Ms. Guo analyzed.
Hu Liren, a former entrepreneur from Shanghai who currently lives in the United States, said on the show that the march and demonstration should be a kind of backlash against Xi’s administration.
Chinese No Longer Have Hope in Two Sessions
The atmosphere of this year’s Two Sessions was quite odd, mainly because of the stiff expressions on the officials’ faces. There were also many incidents outside, such as fires, traffic accidents, and vicious crimes.According to Mr. Hu, the atmosphere of this year’s Two Sessions is totally different from the previous ones. During the centralized era of Mao Zedong, the National People’s Congress (NPC) was actually a political show. Later, after the reform and opening up, people’s expectations of the two sessions gradually increased. At one time, there was a festive atmosphere at the two sessions because many people outside the CCP circle attended the two conferences, including entrepreneurs who entered a semi-official environment through the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
“I have many friends in the NPC and CPPCC. A friend of mine was an NPC deputy. When I asked him why he wanted to become an NPC deputy given that his grandfather had been executed by the CCP, he replied, ‘Becoming an NPC deputy was a means of self-protection for me. When the police wish to arrest an NPC deputy, they must first obtain approval from the NPC to strip the individual of their deputy status before proceeding with the arrest. Thus, the NPC and the CPPCC serve as a buffer zone, offering a procedural shield that could potentially allow one to evade charges,” Mr. Hu said.
“For this reason, the NPC and the CPPCC served as a sort of amulet for protection, and some people would actively participate in it. However, the landscape has shifted. Holding the title of an NPC deputy or a CPPCC member no longer offers protection. On the contrary, it places you in jeopardy, because of the fierce power struggles within the CCP. Being an entrepreneur associated with a specific official can make you a target for that official’s adversaries, who may seek to eliminate you due to your connections. That is why entrepreneurs are no longer interested in joining the NPC and CPPCC nowadays. Some are even withdrawing from them.”
There was another reason for people’s lack of interest.
‘New Quality Productive Forces’
Ms. Guo summarized this year’s two sessions in two phrases: “dreary and spiritless” and “totally devoid of new ideas.”“Xi Jinping put forward a term ‘new quality of productive force,’ which probably no one understands. So what is the ‘new’ he has in mind?” Ms. Guo questioned.
She believes that Xi is now in a hurry to find a new point of growth. This new term actually reflects his feeling of helplessness toward the CCP’s current situation.
“In the past, one of the CCP’s main arguments for maintaining its legitimacy was economic growth, and it advocated that development is undeniably the overriding task. In pre-pandemic years, China’s economy grew by eight percent or ten percent, but in 2023, after two years of recession, GDP growth was reported to be 5.2 percent, and even this less-than-desirable growth figure was widely questioned at home and abroad. Therefore, the CCP proposed the slogan of ‘high-quality development’ to justify this figure, which means that although the growth rate was high in the past, the quality was very low, and now the growth rate is low, but the quality is high. This is an insidious way of finding an expression to save its image, which is deceiving others and deceiving itself,” Ms. Guo said.
In her view, the so-called “new quality of productive force” refers to innovation, starting new businesses, and tech development.
“This idea itself isn’t wrong because when economic development progresses to a certain stage, it is necessary to go beyond copycat-style development,” she said. “But innovation and entrepreneurship have a precondition. That is, the need for ample freedom, the need for society to have a certain tolerance for mistakes and effective protection of private property.”
The current direction of the CCP is exactly the opposite. The leadership thinks that innovation is a result that comes out of management and design, which is a very ridiculous idea, Ms. Guo added.
Mr. Hu believes that another reason for the proposal of the new productivity slogan is to give the relevant officials a new platform to continue their practice of falsifying economic figures.
“I used to have a lot of interactions with the Ministry of Commerce, and I learned that many of China’s data, including the annual GDP growth data, were all falsified according to the targets set by the central authority and then gradually adjusted at various levels of government. That means the data were being falsified at every level. Just think about how many companies have collapsed after three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. How can there still be a 5 percent GDP growth in 2023? The central authorities know that no one will believe it if it continues to falsify the data in this way. So it tried to introduce the concept of ‘new quality of productive force,’ and I think this is to give those people a platform to continue to falsify the data and then let the show go on,” Mr. Hu said.
He further commented that if the doors of China are opened and the people are told the true reality, this country will undergo a radical change, and the communist regime will soon be finished.
