Revolution Rebooted: The Bloody Parallels Between Paris 1789 and Beijing 1949 | Digging into China

Hi, I'm Dong Shan. Welcome to Digging into China, where we explore China in depths to reveal unique perspectives. If we borrow from the history of the French Revolution, we can gain a deeper understanding of the several stages along China's revolutionary path and the unfinished business that still lingers. The 1911 Shing Hai Revolution was like pushing China Sir Louis 16th onto the gaadin ending over 2,000 years of imperial rule. The founding of the people's republic by the CCP in 1949 was like the Jaccoins taking power establishing a new regime in the name of radical revolution. And the Shiinping era since 2012 has echoed Napoleon's restoration along with the personal dictatorship and resurgence of imperial tendencies that followed the revolution. In this comparison, we see that China's revolution hasn't ended. It's been repeatedly postponed, countered, and mis misinterpreted. Just as Napoleon's rise both ended France's Republican experiment and restored the dictorial order in a new form, she's consolidation of power signals that China's great revolution aimed at building a modern republic hasn't truly been completed. It's simply entered a new historical phase. We often habitually think of revolution as a burst of explosive events, an instantaneous break in the flow of history, a landmark moment in time, a change of regime, a storm in the streets. But truly profound revolutions, especially those that transform an entire nation's civilizational structure, are never finished in days or even years. They must be measured in centuries. The French Revolution was like that and so is China's great revolution. They are not events with a net with a neat completion but ongoing historical process full of reversals and struggles. If we view China's modernization over the past century or more as a prolonged great Chinese revolution, much like the French Revolution, we'll see it as a massive historical shift in civilizational form from autocracy to republic from subjects to citizens. And this revolution remains unfinished to this day. Over a hundred years, the Chinese people have gone through the fierce upheaval of overthrowing the emperor. Yet, they've not arrived at a true republic. They've experienced the material modernization, but they still linger in the old logic of spirit and politics. The fall of theQing dynasty was far from the true beginning of a republic. The Republic of China's departure didn't mean the arrival of democracy. The power structures of autocracy haven't undergone fundamental change. All the turbulence and the passion of these 100 plus years have been merely the prelude to the greatest revolution. The 1911 Shinghai revolution overthrew manual colonial rule, restored China's legitimate sovereign status, and marked the end of the monarchical autocracy that had lasted over 2,000 years. But while the Shanghai revolution broke down the old system, it failed to establish a stable new one. It kicked off a century long cycle of revolution and the restoration in modern China. A revolution left unfinished. The first the first republic in Asia established in 1912 ultimately couldn't solidly solidly realize the ideals of democracy and republicanism. The chaos of the Bayang warlord era left China still struggling in the mud. Political darkness, hardships for the people. In the 1920s and beyond, the forces of the nationalists and the communist rose one after another trying to carry on and complete unfinished mission of the Shanghai pioneers. Yet in this process, history showed its paradoxes. Every every attempt at revolution was overtaken by a new autocratical order before it could finish. So the goals of revolution were frustrated and forced into another cycle. The maong era which took the stage after 1949 marked a crucial phase where China's revolution shifted from idealism to fanatical extremes. what we might call China's jackcoin moment. Just as uh Robert Pierre and others in the French Revolution fused the virtue and terror into one, Mao developed the Marxist Leninist dogma into a kind of secular religion of revolutionary ideology. In the Mao era, class struggle was promoted as something that worked like a magic at a touch elevated to a national faith. In this ideological system, class struggle was absolutized and moralized into the ultimate standard for judging right and wrong. As a result, revolution was no longer just a means for political change. It became an end in itself, even a neverending carnival of the masses and a collective creed. The CCP shaped the so-called new person through constant mass mobilization, thought reform, self-criticisms, and a struggle sessions creating an atmosphere of revolutionary faith community. This political fervor carried a clear religious overtunes. Mass rallies become like sermons fighting selfness and selfless uh selfishness and criticizing revisionism like a collective confessions. Political scrutiny like an in inquisition in secular form it satisfied the public need for faith and moral order while stripping away individual will and rational judgment. Just as Jaccoin in the French Revolution set up the committee of public virtue to scrutinize citizens morals, ma China built an omni omniresent system of political pressure and moral trials. People recited a chairman ma quotation every day with morning reports and evening debriefs. Neighbors and colleagues spied on and denounced each other. From kindergarten kids to high government officials, everyone was steeped in the feverish atmosphere built by revolutionary theology. One of the deepest impacts of Mauist authoritarianism on Chinese society was the shaping the masses into submissive subjects. Under the era's relentless pressure and brainwashing, the people were gradually tamed into objects of the revolution, passive objects of obedience rather than active citizens participating in public affairs. The long-term struggle and a terror taught people survival comes first. Obedience above all, voicing diff differing opinions openly could bring deadly disaster and any hint of rebellious spirit could get you labeled as an outsider and purged. Over time, most chose to keep their heads down and stay silent. Cultivating habits of resignation deference to superiors. This mirrored the psychological scars the Jaccoing terror left on French society. French people learned the silence and the submission during the terror only gradually regaining reasons after the thermodorian reaction toppled the robot spear in China because of the ma era's extreme isolation and information control. This culture of submissiveness took even deeper root. Obedience became a virtue doubt and original sin. People grew used to waiting for top directives unaccustomed to independent thinking or questioning authority. Revolution's original intent was to liberate humanity. But in its extremely form, it instead strangled human agency. The Mauist legacy caused a generational break in civic spirit. The generation that grew up in mouse era struggled to possess the rights, consciousness and independent personality that modern citizens should have. Even after the reforms and opening up, many Chinese in politics still hold a subject mentality, fawning over those above worshiping power, indifferent to public affairs. We could say Mauist authoritarianism trained hundreds of millions into docel OB subjects, stripping them of the ability to stand as modern citizens. Autocross's greatest sin isn't just trampling human dignity. It's robbing people of the capacity to reclaim it, leading them to selfdebasement, a drift under tyranny. All this is a massive drag on China's future democratization. It's a lesson the unfinished great revolution must still make up for. After Ma's death and the end of the cultural revolution, China reached a historical turning point. Dang Xiaoping, who came to power in 1978, used his pragmatic approach to correct the Mao era's extreme mistakes, steering the country from chaos toward stability. He proposed the focusing on economic construction with his black cat white cat theory and such not arguing over ideology but the channeling energy into developing productive forces. This marked a major shift from revolutionary idealism to pragmatism. The core of Dung's philosophy was a stability above all much like Napoleon's principles of prioritizing order in the later stages of the French Revolution. After years of internal strife, Napoleon took power in France, declaring the revolution over and that France needed order. He used an iron fist to quail chaos and focus on restoring social stability. Similarly, after taking control in China, Dung put the stability in the overriding position. He repeatedly stressed that for China, the overriding need was a stability. Without a stable environment, nothing could be accomplished. This demand for order stemmed from reflection on the 10 years of cultural revolution turmoil and it was also spurred by the Soviet collapse. Dung believed that only an authoritative government and a centralized leadership could prevent another plunge into full civil war and the national disintegration. So internally he re he rehabilitated the wrongly accused set things right to restore public trust. Externally he opened the country bringing in funds and technology to revive the economy. In the end, Dong's strategy did bring relative stability and prosperity to Chinese society by the close of the 20th century, but at the cost of suppressing revolutionary idealism and political participation, enthusiasm, temporarily shelving the pursuit of democracy and freedom. A value system began to dominate society, one that substituted economic growth for revolutionary ideals. In the Dong era and the subsequent rule of Jang Zaming and Huin Tao, China gradually formed a unique red oligarchic capitalism. Some call it the crony capitalism that the blended market economy with authoritarian politics. It deferred from the full planned system of Soviet style socialism and from western liberal de democratic capitalism. The key point of this structure was the party holding on to power without letting go while using markets and capital to bolster the ruling resources. In the transition from planned to market economy, CCP high caterers children and power brokers got rich first, monopolizing prime resources and opportunities. state-owned enterprises through privatization or shareholding reforms flowed into the hands of the elite while emerging private firms needed official backing to grow big. As a result, power and capital formed an intimate alliance creating a vast vested interest group. This was a bit like the new nobility in Napoleon's time. The revolution smashed the old autocracy, but new elites rose on military merits and the emperor's favor. In China, the fusion of official and business was especially pronounced. Power organs and big capital groups intertwined with political elites gaining fortunes through rent seeking and economic elites securing monopolies by clinging to power. Overnight, official profitering, backdoor deals, and power money trades became commonplace. Ordinary folks called it the fake capitalism under crony collusion. The direct fallout of this hybrid system was widening wealth gaps and the rampant corruption. The reforms and opening improved people's lives, but they also created massive corruption opportunities for officials at every level. With the fruits of people's labor seized and divided by officials and a tiny elite of vested interests from this, China formed a ruling steady state. Politically, high centralization economically using market means to accumulate wealth, letting the elite enjoy both autocratic power and capitalist profits. This model ran stably for years, seeming to find the trick of substituting economic legitimacy for revolutionary legitimacy. But it also planted new risks. When the people see severe injustice behind the prosperity, a lack of fairness and justice, the moral foundation of rule erodess away. This legitimacy sustained by growth once the growth slows or stalls faces a severe crisis of trust. Another striking feature of the dung era was the cooling and the pseudo sec sec secularization of official ideology. In ma's time banners of communism and the class struggle flew high. The masses were demanded to hold the religious like a faith in Marxim Marxism Leninism. After done, the ruling party gradually downplayed the utopian slogans proclaiming instead that development is the hard truth. From faith in Mao to faith in GDP, revolutionary fervor was replaced by consumerism and patriotism. What people chatted about was no longer socialist grand ideals, but stock indices, housing prices, wealth ranking. In governmental propaganda, happiness equaled material wealth. Patriotism equaled supporting economic construction. GDP growth became the new political religion enshrined yearly in concrete numbers in government work reports. In this atmosphere, ordinary folks were guided into bury their heads in money making, chasing personal material comfort, tossing political participation and a power demands to the back burner. This of course was just what the rulers wanted. Making the people forget freedom, forget democracy and human rights. Just remember making money and getting rich and the rule stays steady. This is a Napoleonic order of legitimacy. Prosperity for you but no talk of freedom. For a long time, man had taxly accepted this deal. Stability for development, freedom for modest prosperity. But as social problems bubbled up beneath the material boom like corruption, environmental destruction, gapping wealth gaps, moral decline, and as deeper crisis of political stagnation brewed, the economic miracle masked a rigid system with no rule of law, no checks on power. Its accumulated ills grew ever clear after entering the 21st century with diminishing growth dividends. This un undemocratic modernization model has reached a crossroads. Without the political reform, even its economic achievements can't last. Social contradictions and a crisis will inevitably erupt. In the Deng Xiaoping and his successors era, China established a ruling pattern akin to Napoleonic order, quailing revolutionary turmoil, prioritizing stable order, relying on economic development as the source of legitimacy. This phase avoided the Mao era's fanaticism and disorder, but it also froze democratic transition. Napoleon once called himself the ender of the great revolution. He ended the France's guillotin age, but built personal empire. Likewise, Dung ended the cultural revolutions extremes, but his successors didn't achieve true republican democracy either. They just grafted market economy onto the authoritarian framework. This transitional order was compared to revolutionary terror undoubtedly progress and it brought real benefits to the people for a time. But it wasn't the revolution's end point. Instead, it was more like an intermission where the revolution was put on hold. China's great revolution remains unfinished. The real tests and the turning points lie ahead. Xi Jinping who rose after the CCP's 18th Congress in 2012 marked a dramatic reversal in Chinese politics a Napoleonic style restoration whose main features were the claw back of power and personal centralization under the collective leadership and the term limits framework Dong had laid down top power in China had become somewhat institutionalized and relatively collective during Janging and Huin Tao's times But soon after taking power, she showed a strong tendency to accumulate authority. Through high pressure anti-corruption campaigns, he purged rivals and denters, vastly strengthening his control of a party, government, and military spheres. In 2018, through constitutional amendments, he abolished the two-term limit for state chairman, ending Dung's political legacy of scrapping lifelong tenure for leaders, paving the way for his own indefinite reelections, even lifelong rule. Just like Napoleon crowning himself emperor and a selfappointing lifelong rule, China returned once more to personal dictatorship. At the same time, personal cult and ideological resurgence became obvious. Media bladed about the she core and the people's leader. She's portraits and quotations appeared on walls everywhere. His works become required reading for party caterers, even seeping into elementary textbooks. Official discourse shifted from prior technocratic style to a new round of ideological mobilization putting she thought into the party constitution. The old crossing the river by feeding the stones pragmatism gave way to the rare faith of the new era stressing never forget the original aspiration remember the mission reviving the grand communist ideals. This whole approach had the flavor of returning to the Mao years markingly called a harbinger of a new cultural revolution. Of course, the reality differs from the Mao era, but the tendencies of remthol methologizing the state and redeefing the leader can be ignored. The state is again portrayed as a sacred and inviable party loyalty above all. The leader is reshaped as an ammunition helmsman with personal will steering the nation's course. To understand the politics of the she era at its core, look at the psychological structure of totalitarian rule. This can be summed up as patriarchical authority plus fear, order plus moral author orthodoxy. She himself likes to position as the people's parental official. The family head promoting party insiders and outsiders s see superiors and subordinate as one family. The whole society's political discourse takes on thick patriarchal and father worship tones. The party is parents. She as helmsman, the people as children. This psychological mode caters to Chinese traditions longing for sage kings and enlightened rulers and it helps mold a submissive social psyche. Second, she's rule creates a pervasive order of fear through forceful stability, maintenance, and high-tech surveillance. The anti-corruption drive is everywhere, leaving officials in constant dread. harsh laws and penalties. Speech controls. Ordinary people turn pale at the political talk. Fear becomes the lubricant for social operation. People don't dare speak or act out. Self-p policing within the red lines the authorities draw. Third, in propaganda, the regime pushes a set of moral orthodoxy, the great mission of national rejuvenation, socialist core values, anti-corruption and the thrift advocacy and so on. This burdens many with a sense of moral duty and identification as if following the party is a patriotism is moral defying the party is immoral unpatriotic. The essence of totalitarian politics isn't just institutional design. It's a psychological control making the masses accustomed to being ruled even internalizing in their thoughts the rightness of being ruled. Back then Napoleon used religion and honorific metals to win hearts making the French psychologically accept imperial restoration. Today, the Shi regime uses nationalism and traditionalism to rally values combined with omniresent surveillance and discipline, turning compliance into subconscious habit. When a society's majority self censors and self-restraints psychologically daring only to move in safe zones, then centralized the rule gains mass foundation. That's the success of Shi era governance, the remaking of social obedience. Compared to the Mao era's external coercive pressure, now more people unconsciously cooperate, stay silent and follow, either swept up in official narratives or deeply cowed by fear, neither willing nor daring to break the rules. It's worth noting that she's dictatorship isn't a simple replay of the Mao era. It's built on new technological and social conditions. A new authoritarianism for the digital age. In the past, signs of authoritarian rule were often massive personal cult like a mall or stalance with a frequent political campaigns and open violence. Now, China's totalitarianism has grown more refined and concealed. It uses big data, AI, cameras, and social media for all around the societal monitoring and guidance. Cyberspace through the great fire, keyword filters, and mass post deletions, shields unfavorable into form public view. Meanwhile, officials use water armies and algorithms to steer and manipulate opinion, creating bubbles of fake public sentiment. In this setup, autocrate become more efficient, more invisible. No need for daily mass struggles. Everyone lives under the gaze of cameras and data non-stop. No need for leaders to lecture daily. Algorithm precisely feed you the positive energy content you need. This system is more stable than the ma era's reliance on personal will and a mass movement because it seeps into every corner of daily life, often without the crude force, leaving people controlled without realizing it. Under digital toitarianism, many don't even notice their lost freedoms because in the slow boil of the frog, fear and compliance have internalized as part of life. We could say China's digital Napoleon has arrived. She using 21st century tech has partly realized what Napoleon couldn't. Building a highly centralized empire that self brands as modern and prosperous. Of course, history tell us that every such restoration carries the seeds of the next revolutionary outburst. Just like after Napoleon's empire, France surged again toward Republican movements. China's revolutionary path shares vital ties with the French Revolution. So will China like France ultimately head toward the republic, democracy, freedom? If it reaches that point, what prerequisites are needed and in what form will this social change unfold? I'll pick up this topic in the next episode. Thank you so much for watching. If you find this video helpful, please like it, drop a comment below, and hit the subscribe button right here. It really helps YouTube suggest my video to others. I'll be back with more content soon. Until then, be