A Beautiful China – Fifteen – On Nonviolence, Part One
Xu Zhiyong, translated by Joshua Rosenzweig, October 22, 2024
Note From the Editor
Born in 1973, Dr. Xu Zhiyong (许志永) is a legal scholar, pioneer of China’s rights defense movement, and a founder of the New Citizens Movement. On April 10, 2023, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of “subverting state power.” Before this, he had served a separate prison term from 2013 to 2017 for his Citizens Movement activities during Xi Jinping’s first wave of crackdowns on civil society after coming to power in late 2012. Between the two prison stints from 2017 to the end of 2019, Dr. Xu wrote A Beautiful China (《美好中国》), a collection of 24 essays. It is a review of his journey and that of his generation’s struggle for a better China in what often appeared to be a hopeful era of rapid economic development and political awakening; it is also a vision for a China free of the totalitarian yoke. Dr. Xu Zhiyong’s imprisonment is a textbook example of how the paranoid Communist leadership deploys its rubber-stamp judiciary to imprison China’s brightest and bravest. Dr. Xu has since early this year been sent to Lunan Prison (鲁南监狱) in Shandong province to serve the remaining 10 years of his sentence – if the communist regime in China will last that long. Late last year, from the detention center in Linyi, Shandong, Dr. Xu wrote to China Change via his lawyers to express his wish that A Beautiful China be translated and published on this website. Honoring Dr. Xu’s work and his sacrifices for the sake of his country, today we begin serializing a translation of his 24 essays.
Yaxue Cao
February 12, 2024
Fifteen
On Nonviolence
Part One
The Weakness of Violence
It’s painful to think back to the events of 1989. The regime had tanks and machine guns, while the students and ordinary people were unarmed. But one thing worth pondering is why the soldiers who committed murder felt anger, rather than shame. They had been lied to. Undoubtedly, the bricks and curses that came their way were also a factor in dispelling their sense of shame and making the violence even more fanatical.
Should the protesters have stopped resisting and just let the army go on its rampage? No. They shouldn’t have fought with bricks and sticks, but they shouldn’t have stopped resisting either. What if we went back and did it all over again? What if the Chinese people were united in a common cause, didn’t throw bricks or block roads, and felt neither hatred nor fear? If we had kept our faith and refused to give in, then even if the military took over Tiananmen Square and occupied every neighborhood in Beijing, what good would it have done them?
I don’t blame the citizens who bravely stood up at that moment. I regret how deeply rooted China’s authoritarian culture was and how weak the forces of democracy and freedom were. We had no choice but to use wooden sticks and bricks as weapons. And our ideological weapons were even more primitive.
How can we truly put an end to the autocratic regime if our hearts are so filled with fear, anger, and violence? Before we can ever have a better China, we must first have powerful ideological weapons to completely destroy the roots of 3,000 years of autocracy. True strength — the kind of strength that can overcome the opponent — does not come from guns, but from thought.
At the end of the Qing, revolutionary groups would have had at least a few dozen members and a few dozen guns. But for the past forty years, people who have advocated violent revolution against the communist regime have gone no further than words. Given the prevalence of guns in the United States, why haven’t these people organized an army there? It’s because the times have changed. There is no room for organized violence to develop within China. Violent organizations organized abroad would be labeled terrorists and subject to arrest warrants worldwide.
Political behavior should be proportionate, and the degree of radicalism commensurate with the degree of oppression. The First Emperor of Qin killed Confucian scholars, and reformers were put to death at the end of the Qing Dynasty. In each case, tyranny justified violent revolution. China’s post-totalitarian regime is evil, but it is still somewhat more civilized compared with those of Stalin or Hitler, and its evil is banal and diffuse. Assassinating an official would be considered too extreme. Except in self-defense, violence is seen as disproportionate and would not be supported by Chinese citizens or people in the civilized world.
Neither would a military coup be a realistic way to bring about democracy. The military in post-totalitarian China is loyal to an abstraction — the Party — and not to any individual general. It is simply impossible for any military leader to mobilize a force capable of staging a coup. Nor is there any force capable of fighting the tide of democracy when the time comes for political transition. When the peaceful movement gains in strength and receives broad popular support, the military will step aside.
Authoritarians “fight to control state power.” They first establish the army to protect the Party, and then they force people into submission using violence. We take the opposite path. A free people will naturally have a national military, independent of any political party.
We no longer live in the olden times, when people fought with spears and daggers. Popular violence to resist state power is like trying to shatter rocks by smashing eggs against them. It will never succeed. The regime is skilled at using violence. Even on the eve of its demise, it will fight back with all its might if attacked. As cracked as it is, it will nonetheless unite against outside force and be strengthened as a result. We must not try to compete with the autocratic regime in the ability to use violence. We will be no match for them and only dooming ourselves to failure.
Taking up bricks and sticks against the mighty would be a sign of spiritual weakness. We are weaker when we try to compete using violence. We are the force that conforms to the trend of history and human desires. We have the support of 1.3 billion people who yearn for justice. We are therefore truly strong, full of love in our hearts, and shall be the ones to redeem this ancient nation.
Violence is not the way to democracy and freedom. Violence cannot bring an end to tyranny, because it would take stronger violence than that of the dictators, which means you’re left with a more powerful tyranny. Let us not forget that Russia’s October Revolution paved the way for the Soviet totalitarian empire.
We must ask ourselves: what kind of China are we working toward? If this is just going to be a change of dynasty that doesn’t lead to a better China, then why are we putting in a lifetime of hard work? Fear and hatred will not save China. In the 20th century, our nation experienced far too much fear and hatred. Our mission is to say goodbye forever to dictatorship based on fear and hate and achieve constitutional democracy, good politics, and a better China of freedom, justice, and love.
Nonviolence Is Possible
Gandhi’s leadership of a nonviolent, non-cooperation movement was the driving force behind India’s independence from the British Empire. South Africa’s years of civil disobedience ended apartheid. The “People Power Revolution” in the Philippines brought down the Marcos dictatorship. These are clear precedents for the success of nonviolent movements in the 20th century. The third wave of democratization began with countries that achieved democracy through largely peaceful revolutions.
Some of my friends say that nonviolence is impossible in China because the communist dictatorship has no scruples and would do anything to stay in power.
The end of communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was undoubtedly the result of nonviolent movements. We must ask ourselves why these powerful political parties and their powerful armies failed. They collapsed more rapidly than other authoritarian regimes, without the need for the kind of war we’ve seen in Syria. They vanished overnight. In an instant, ruling communist parties with tens of millions of party members found themselves left with just a few tens of thousands; these parties are now a shadow of their former selves.
There will be no defenders of the old regime. The fall of the USSR was not due to the absence of “a real man” who could have come to its defense [as Xi Jinping suggested in 2012].
Hearts and minds have already been lost. When the end comes, it’ll just be a formality. There will be no need for the tumult and killing of past dynastic transitions. The only thing that people will lose are their chains, and they’ll greet the bright new era with smiles.
There was never a June Fourth massacre in the USSR, though Stalin’s domestic massacres were just as brutal as Mao’s. The Soviets were still shooting people in Lithuania in 1991. The violence of the Soviet communist state remained strong until the tanks rolled into Moscow on August 19. Nobody predicted the collapse of the USSR. The Soviet Union may have been very different from China, but there’s one crucial similarity. Like China, the USSR was a dictatorship run by a communist party with tens of millions of members and a powerful military under the Party control.
But still it came to an end. The communist dictatorships ended in more or less the following pattern: First, a large social movement awakened significant swathes of the country’s civil servants, military, and police, who refused to carry out the regime’s orders. At the crucial moment, the army hesitated and waited to see how things would develop. Sometimes there was a split in the ruling elite, with an enlightened faction prevailing and reaching a compromise with the opposition. This led to the end of the regime.
At the time of the August coup, the Soviet regime still had powerful implements of state violence at its disposal, including the KGB, the army, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But it was at a pivotal moment in history when the hearts and minds of the people had shifted. Boris Yeltsin stood on top of a tank and called upon the people to resist the hardliner coup. The people of Moscow surrounded the Russian White House to support him. The conservatives’ power was seriously weakened, and the special military units sent to attack the building refused to carry out orders. The army hesitated and, after three days, the coup failed. A dictatorship may possess a great capacity for violence, but it becomes extremely fragile when hearts and minds change.
Nonviolence can only be effective when conditions are right. At the height of totalitarianism, when the ruling group is unified in thought and action and the entire society is consumed with hatred and hostility, there is clearly little room for the awakening of the human conscience. As in the case of Hitler’s Germany, greater violence is necessary to end totalitarianism at its height.
On the margins of totalitarian rule, such as in Norway under Nazi Germany, or in the later stages of totalitarian rule, such as in China today or Poland in the 1980s, power is loosened and there is room for an awakening of the conscience and an opportunity for nonviolence.
Strategically, nonviolent movements are effective in democracies, as well as in post-totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, as well as semi-democracies. In such contexts, there exist international and domestic constraints on power, and there is also space for civil society. Post-totalitarian states have the social conditions for nonviolent action. There are already many factors that constrain the machinery of violence.
The high walls of a dictatorship are not made of stone; they are made up of people. Autocratic violence is indeed powerful and capable of destroying the earth a dozen times over. But regimes don’t use it everywhere or all the time. The Party and the army are not abstractions. They, too, are made up of specific, individual people. Ultimately, the operation of power depends on people, each and every one of them. A gun, placed in a person’s hand, changes both that person’s mindset and the gun. Changing hearts and minds also changes the dictatorship. It’s a truly radical change.
Hearts and minds are changing. Totalitarian ideologies have lost their hold. People are no longer mere pawns in the class struggle. They are living individuals with values, interests, and consciences. The regime lacks legitimacy, and the people serving it are divided in their thinking. When those who use violence no longer do so on the basis of class hatred, but simply play a role and follow orders from above, violence no longer has any value. Roses are delicate, but they have repelled weapons in many countries.
Don’t ever imagine your adversary as an all-powerful devil above the constraints of social conditions. Nor create demons just to scare yourself. Instead, treat the other person as a human being. Love is the most powerful weapon to end tyranny. Smiles are the spring breeze that melts the glacial plain.
The times are changing. Mass slaughter of civilian populations was once the norm in war, but today they are war crimes. Human civilization is developing a greater morality and conscience, and we no longer tolerate such things as concentration camps and barbaric violence. This applies to those in power as well as those who carry out their orders. In the age of the internet, information is difficult to block, and mass barbaric violence cannot evade the gaze of collective humanity. This puts a limit on the use of violence by those in power.
Totalitarianism depends on its leaders. Faced with a democratic movement, the generals felt certain that a Deng-style strongman would win and, as a result, would carry out his orders of suppression. In today’s China, there are no such leaders. If a nonviolent social movement gains widespread support, the ruling class will inevitably fragment. The army is loyal to the Party, but who is the Party? Generals will hedge their bets and ask, “Who do I listen to?” Once the army hesitates and waits to see what happens, the dictatorship comes to an end.
Power is all about trust. Deng didn’t have any formal position, but he was the one who held supreme power. A real strongman like him needed neither obsequious shows of loyalty nor amendment of the constitution to hold onto power beyond term limits. In a time of crisis, getting generals to sign a pledge is not a true centralization of power. When the tide of history turns, raising salaries won’t win hearts and minds. Yuan Shikai (袁世凯) fell despite having a personal army. There is no way the current generation of communist leaders, mediocre compared to the generation before them, can fare any better. If there is division and discord under normal conditions, there is no way of knowing whether the current leader will prevail in a moment of crisis. Those who believe will follow orders. Those who doubt will hesitate. And that hesitation spells the end of the regime.
To stay stable, this post-totalitarian regime can only rely on meticulous management of every detail, or what is known as grid management. They know full well that they lack the ability to mobilize the military to suppress a crowd once it gathers as part of a widespread social movement. Authoritarian violence is powerful, but it is destined to disappear overnight.
The Principles of Nonviolence
Human nature has an animal side, which is ignorant and savage. It also has a divine side, which is capable of great love and civility. Animal nature gives humans the strong forces of fear, hostility, hatred, and physicality, all of which help sustain authoritarian violence. Our divine nature, with its strong forces of love, compassion, friendliness, and goodness of heart, is the foundation of nonviolence.
Violence originates in the mind. One way to overcome violence is to use greater violence to destroy or suppress the opponent’s capacity for violence. The second option is to change the mind so that it renounces violence. Ultimately, the greatest violence is overcome not by our violent animal nature but by our divine nature — by love. If the most powerful armed forces in this world were not restrained by divinity, they would do whatever they wanted by whatever means and it would create hell on earth.
When it comes to violence or animal nature, a small animal is no match for a larger one. We are doomed to fail if we try to match the dictatorship in violence or pit our weak points against the opponent’s strengths.
But if we switch arenas and compete in the realm of the mind, we become the stronger side. They lack belief, whereas our faith is rock-solid. They’re worried about maintaining their positions, while we’re focused on a better China.
Faced with the regime’s military and police, many people instinctively think of petty acts of violence, such as picking up clubs or stones. In doing so, they fail to realize that this is the beginning of the defeat of the movement. Veteran rights defenders secured clear results when they engaged in nonviolence over many years. When they picked up sticks and fire extinguishers, they failed.
What is our strength? We choose the divine side of the spectrum of human nature. We even go to the absolute extreme to purify our conscience and love and embrace total nonviolence. Our strength is using this to awaken and unite people’s consciences. Just as yin and yang are mutually exclusive, one extreme must be used to overcome the other. There is no middle ground between these two extremes.
A nonviolent movement, one in which the rose is capable of repelling the gun, will succeed if it awakens the conscience. Every human being has a conscience. A heinous murderer also loves his mother and children. Ordered to suppress a protest march, police and soldiers will have a different mindset when facing a young girl holding a rose than they do when faced with an angry man holding a club. Beautiful scenes awaken the softer side of the human heart.
We may not be able to awaken the most intransigent or transform the police and soldiers from their role as tools of the autocratic regime. But we can awaken more and more ordinary people, awaken the majority, and build a stronger force for justice. A nonviolent movement is also a confrontation between forces. On one side, the rulers have guns, but they enjoy less popular support because they are going against the will of the people. We don’t have guns on our side, but we have more and more popular support because we obey our conscience. In the end, the hand with the gun trembles and drops it.
The success of a nonviolent movement depends on the contrast between these two forces of human nature. When the forces of our supreme good coalesce, our opponents, with their lack of faith and disorganized hearts, will inevitably fail.
The ultimate force behind social change lies not in the gun. It is in the conscience. The battle for the progress of human civilization is ultimately fought in the spiritual world. The ultimate triumph of good over evil is not just something in literature and art. It is the unending desire of humankind and the source of civilized progress.
We got beaten up over and over when we went to investigate “black jails.” In the end, they were the ones who went away. It got so bad that even the regime was so embarrassed to openly endorse their evil deeds. We, on the other hand, spread the word on the internet and secured the backing of a strong public opinion. We ultimately prevailed in the battle for hearts and minds.
The faith, wisdom and commitment of Divine Grace means that we are not alone in the democratic movement. The strength of the Chinese people’s conscience and the power of human society’s justice far outweigh the weapons of the regime. They may have violence, but we have hearts and minds. They will inevitably lose their capacity for violence. The regime will find itself isolated in the tide of human civilization and the ocean of conscience of 1.3 billion Chinese people.
Conscience is the only strength we can rely on. Turning our backs on it is a surefire way to fail. We may still fail again and again when we do obey its command, but we will be the ones to win in the end. A better China is the hope of every Chinese person. In the battle for hearts and minds, it is we who will win in the end.
Love Is the Soul of Nonviolence
Nonviolent action requires techniques and tactics, selection of targets, design of symbols, planning routes, and a division of labor. Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930 was meticulously planned. Techniques and tactics are an integral part of the nonviolent system of thought. These are the branches and leaves. Underneath there is the trunk, and then the roots, which is faith.
The more concrete the rights and the easier it is to realize them, the more a rights movement can emphasize tactics and techniques. In democracies, where there is little resistance in the first place, many rights campaigns can achieve success through the tactics and techniques of nonviolence. In this sense, some experts are right to say that nonviolence does not require faith or even morality.
More difficult change requires greater strength. You need deeper roots, and stronger convictions.
The American civil rights movement needed faith to sustain it, given that it was faced with a culture of racial segregation that had endured for two hundred years. That faith was that all humans are equal before God. When the rallying crowds faced police water cannons, they prayed, then moved ahead. The movement succeeded because of a mature democracy, an independent judiciary, a free media, and a strategy of action coupled with Christian faith.
We are facing a more difficult change. Our mission is clear: to end dictatorship, establish constitutional democracy, and bring about the rebirth of Chinese civilization. Our opponents have deep institutional, cultural, and human roots. They believe in jungle politics and that human nature is evil. To uproot the evil beliefs deep inside human nature, we must fight a battle in the depths of the soul. To win this battle, we must be extremely powerful and base ourselves on our deep-rooted beliefs. In this sense, it is too superficial to say that nonviolence is only a tactic.
If we use nonviolence only as a tactic, without triumphing over our opponent in faith and character, we will be prone to hatred and fear. We will fight but will never achieve victory, let alone rebuild civilization.
Nonviolence must be absolute. It is not temporary or localized. It is not a cover for violence. It doesn’t mean limited violence. We must be unwavering in our commitment to nonviolence throughout the transformation of our political civilization. That is how we will achieve a society with the least amount of violence and hatred. We will achieve constitutional democracy and a rebirth of our civilization only if we put our faith in nonviolence completely and make it the mainstream faith of society. This is the only way for Chinese civilization to rid itself of the cycles of violence that come with barbaric politics.
There are three realms of nonviolence. The first is tactical: there can be no violence, only tactics of nonviolence. The second is strategic: nonviolence is the only way to bring about peaceful transformation. The third is a firm belief that love is the only way to completely end tyranny and achieve a rebirth of civilization.
Nonviolence is by no means weakness, passivity, submission, or supplication. It is, in fact, a form of active struggle. It is the most dignified form of struggle, a determined, more powerful force. Gandhi called nonviolent non-cooperation “satyagraha”, which is often translated as “soul-force.” Nonviolence is not some passive and cowardly way to avoid a fight. It is a different kind of strength that achieves victory while upholding the belief in truth.
B. R. Nanda, historian and biographer of Gandhi, wrote that nonviolent non-cooperation is not about achieving a specific objective or destroying the opponent. It is, he argues, about advancing a kind of force that will ultimately be able to bring about new life. It is a tactic that may lose every battle, but it will still win the war.
Gandhi led 2,000 people in the Salt March campaign. One group of unarmed volunteers after another walked through the gates of the salt factory and were knocked down by the military police without even raising their arms to protect themselves. That day 320 volunteers were injured, and two were killed. Some may have said that the goal wasn’t reached because the salt tax wasn’t abolished. It seemed like the battle was lost. But a well-prepared sacrifice, instead of bringing fear, revealed glory and strengthened a nation.
Love is the soul of nonviolence. It is faith. It is the light of God shining from a beautiful soul. Life has the same root and the same spiritual home. We all have different roles to play in this life. There is no devil; evil is due to ignorance. Human nature is good at birth. Everyone is a human being, our fellow beings. Our hearts are filled with sunshine and a desire for goodness.
We all descend into the vicissitudes of life according to our roles. Sometimes, we look back from on high at the earthly world and ourselves. We feel compassion. We say goodbye to fear and hate, and we soothe our anxious and thirsty souls in the dust and smoke of history as well as the blessings of God.
By treating others with dignity, rather than humiliating them, we awaken the oppressors’ conscience and save them from their own oppression. Gandhi said to eliminate hostile thoughts, not the enemy itself. Even if our opponents are filled with hate and we are injured by their violence, we should feel sympathy and not rage.
Love is amazing grace. Recognize it, and you’ll be filled with energy. In this battle for civilization, we have faith in the human conscience and in a better China. We may lose 99 percent of the battles, but as long as the energy of love continues to grow, it will be a success. Once the hostility and hatred melts away, we can begin to rebuild our national character and a modern civilized China. This will allow us to reclaim our ancient civilization.
Nonviolence and Violence
Violence was necessary to overcome the Nazis. Violence is necessary to stop a maniac who is in the process of killing people. Law and order are necessary in a civilized country. But nonviolence is a belief. If there is a stronger violence rooted in fear and hatred, it can only bring more people into servitude, not freedom. The Soviet Union stopped Hitler but enslaved half of Europe.
The most powerful violence of humankind — that administered by law — has been rooted in the love of God. Law is necessary, but civilized law is about redemption, not revenge. The less fear and hatred there is, the less violence there will be. Civilization continues to progress in the direction of more and more love.
It is inevitable that isolated events of extreme violence will occur when a society is in transition. When there is extreme inequality of power, people make bigger sacrifices. We understand anger and despair, and we respect the sacrifice of individuals. It disrupts the numbness that can affect society and contrasts with the peaceful rationality of nonviolence, making it a natural complement to nonviolent social movements. Those who resort to nonviolence and those who resort to violence do not blame or sever ties with each other.
Nonviolent coercion is when a nonviolent movement has gained significant momentum and successfully deterred the threat of violent repression. Those in power are compelled to change when they realize they are no longer able to use it. This is nonviolence in action. When a social movement has achieved great momentum, it becomes even more necessary to advocate nonviolence.
Nonviolent intervention is, for example, when a group of people engage in a peaceful sit-in protest to block the advance of security forces or occupy a public square. It is not a form of attack or a struggle over control. It’s about holding firm. Above all, the heart must be filled with love, not hostility.
It is possible that there will be spontaneous quasi-violence on the fringes of nonviolence. For example, there may be violent actions such as storming and occupying a radio station or a legislative chamber. However, these do not result in serious injury to people or intentional destruction of property. It is a spontaneous action of a social movement that has reached a certain stage of development. Quasi-violent acts are occasionally unavoidable, and they are also conditional on the understanding and respect of the community at large.
Violence and quasi-violence must have ethical underpinnings. First and foremost, any violence or quasi-violence must be motivated by legitimate goals. These could be freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, as well as the advancement of a better China. Second, the defense must be appropriate. Violence must be based on self-defense and be proportionate with the level of violence of the other party. Violence must never target innocent people. Break down barriers, but do not destroy unrelated property on purpose. Nonviolent social movements respect violence that is morally bound and reject violence that has no such limits.
Chinese original: 许志永《美好中国之十五：非暴力》
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