Professor Tomoko Ako, University of Tokyo, summarized Wang Dan’s lecture at Meiji University in Japan

On the afternoon of December 4, 2022, Wang Dan delivered a speech titled “Where Is China Headed” at Meiji University in Japan. Professor Tomoko Agu from the University of Tokyo attended the lecture and recorded and organized the content of her speech. The following content is quoted from Professor Agu’s Facebook.

December 4: Mr. Dan Wang’s lecture @ Meiji University.

Since I participated while still working, the records are incomplete (though there may be some inaccuracies), but I’ll only note down the parts that caught my ears.

The current Communist Party is a community of shared interests. It is not an organization with ideals.

Considering both international and domestic circumstances, we are facing enormous challenges, with tremendous waves coming.

At a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in September, Xi Jinping called on member states to cooperate so that the democratization movement, known as the “color revolution” that occurred in the former communist bloc, is not triggered by foreign agitation. At a meeting calling for cooperation, Xi Jinping insisted that he alone must counter the color revolution.

Looking at the White Paper Revolution, it might be said that Xi Jinping’s judgment of the situation was correct, but why do they consider their own security issues?

Do you think there is a political crisis?

There

is no need to be concerned with factional theories or conspiracy theories within the Chinese Party.

Just think about the crisis facing the Chinese Communist Party.

The

head of the State Security Committee became the head of the Political and Legal Committee. This is evidence that Xi Jinping places great importance on national security.

They are trying to dismantle civil society and keep resistance against the Communist Party to an individual level.

Xi Jinping wants to be like Mao Zedong.

But who will follow Xi Jinping? There will always be a power struggle.

Like other political parties, the Chinese Communist Party has people with political ambitions within.

Xi Jinping’s mistake was thinking that if he solidified his surroundings with loyal people, he would be solid.

Those who had been sucking on Stalin’s sesame seeds wiped out that force once Stalin disappeared.

The person

Mao Zedong trusted most was Wang Dongxing, who served as the head of the Central Security Bureau.

He seemed to be the most loyal figure, and after Mao Zedong’s death, he led the Central Security Bureau to arrest Jiang Qing.

The person who is the one who makes sesame seeds is the one you must

not trust, but everyone around Xi Jinping is like that.

In 1989, I took out street activities not because I had courage, but because, in a free era, I didn’t know where dangers lay.

Even when they heard there was an army of 200,000, they never expected to attack them.

Our courage at that time came from ignorance. It was not that they lacked knowledge, but that they did not understand the essence of the Communist Party.

I

never imagined mobilizing the military to suppress the activities.

Thirty-three years later, those born after the 1980s know that the Chinese Communist Party will use every means to suppress activities.

People in this generation are more sensitive than ours.

The Blank Paper Revolution lacks a clear leader. It is decentralized.

This is also the result of absorbing the experience of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Be Water

The internet did not exist at the time of the Tiananmen Square incident. When mobilizing, they had to ride bicycles to the university.

Young people perceived the Party, country, and people as separate concepts, and they also knew where the root of the problem lay. He just didn’t say it.

Western think tanks made predictions about China, but they were all wrong. An era of uncertainty.

The

lying flat (lying down tribe) was a sign of this.

I used to think Chinese youth would give up, but looking at their current activities, they are starting to move with vitality.

There’s no way I can keep giving up—youth unemployment is over 20%, and my future life is probably uncertain.

There was also the phrase, “We are the last generation.”

Words spoken by a young man who was about to be taken away by someone wearing protective gear as part of COVID-19 measures.

I won’t have any more children. The desire to prevent children from experiencing such tragic things.

This also symbolizes Chinese youth.

It expresses not only a sense of sneezing but also a sense of despair about the future.

Despair does not exist in isolation, but is intertwined with hope.

Despair and hope are connected.

Only when the Chinese people are completely despaired of reality can new hope be born.

If there is even a little hope, the Chinese will not change.

Xi Jinping is also called the “total accelerator.” Someone who will end the one-party dictatorship of the Communist Party.

In Run, the Chinese are trying to escape outside.

Now, you can’t even protect your personal property. I understand the desire to go abroad.

Historically, large-scale exodus abroad has been detrimental to China’s development and democratization.

The

Xinhai Revolution occurred at the end of the Qing Dynasty because people who had studied abroad returned to China and brought about social transformation.

It

cannot be good for China for a mass group of rationally educated elites fleeing overseas.

I’m not criticizing going abroad as bad on a personal level, but objectively considering China’s future, it probably has negative effects.

The Chinese people overcoming their fear.

That will be the key point for whether China will take action going forward.