During her career teaching at the Communist Party’s top academy, Cai Xia cheered on signs that China’s leaders would make their political move, making them an unusually prominent voice for democratic change close to the heart of ‘ the party.
Now Mrs. Cai has turned her back on such hope, and the party has turned against her. She is the latest intellectual to be punished for challenging the tough-line policies of the current leader, Xi Jinping.
The Central Party School in Beijing, where Ms. Cai, 15 years to 2012, announced Monday that she had been fired from the Communist Party after insulting both the party and Mr Xi in recent speeches and essays.
“This party has become a political zombie,” she had said in an interview circulating online last month, apparently encouraging the party school to take action. “This system must, fundamentally speaking, be jettisoned.”
In an interview from the United States, where she has lived since last year, Ms. Cai quoted from a copy of the party school’s internal decision as saying she was hurting the image of the party and the country. had and the party raped insulted and state leader. ”
“Cai Xia’s attitude has been sly,” said the party school, “and she did not show the slightest check for her wrong statements.”
Ms. Cai returned fire, accusing Mr Xi of undermining China’s opportunities for peaceful democratization and recklessly alienating the United States and other powers.
Mr. Xi “bears a lot of guilt,” Ms Cai said during the lengthy, sometimes tense interview on Tuesday about her evolution from party insider to apostate. “But to make one person sick over a long period of time, and not utter a word to the whole party, shows clearly that the system and bodies of the party have great problems.”
Ms Cai, 67, is among a cluster of Chinese dissenters who recently pursued the policies of Mr. Xi have unleashed, including his handling of the coronavirus outbreak and imposing a national security law on Hong Kong.
Two of those critics, Xu Zhangrun and Ren Zhiqiang, have been reporting for the past month. Mr. Xu, a law professor, was detained for a few days and fired from his job at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Mr. Ren, a once well-connected property developer, was expelled from the party, accused of corruption and put under criminal investigation after ignoring Mr Xi’s treatment of the coronavirus crisis.
Increased by the treatment of Mr. Xu and Mr. Ren, Mrs. Cai has expressed in her defense.
“They have persecuted Xu Zhangrun by ruining his reputation, degrading his dignity, depriving him of his right to work and destroying his existence,” she wrote in an essay published by Radio Free Asia last month. “This intimidates everything in the Chinese scientific community, inside and outside the system.”
Such focal critics are few in China, where censorship and political pressure have intensified under Mr. Xi. But larger numbers of dissatisfied liberals are quietly waiting for a crisis that will undermine the power of Mr. Xi can shake, said Deng Yuwen, a former editor at Study Times, a newspaper published by the Central Party School. The academy trains emerging officials in political science, party history and other subjects.
“Based on my observations, a significant number of reformists in the party are desperate, such as Cai Xia,” Mr Deng said in a telephone interview from the United States, where he now lives. “But for the most part, they place the blame on Xi Jinping and wait for some mistake by Xi to reinvigorate reformist forces within the party.”
It could be a long wait. Not even the coronavirus, which spreads after local officials keep information about early cases, appears to have worsened Mr Xi’s condition.
Many Chinese say they are happy that their country is recovering relatively well from the pandemic compared to other countries that have struggled. Many also support the government’s imposition of the sweeping national security law on Hong Kong.
“As with Cai Xia defining freedom of speech, I think as a retired party school professor she should defend the country’s leadership of the country,” said Hu Xijin, a Beijing editor who often knew party recordings, in an online commentary on Tuesday. “Now that the United States, as a party member, has launched an offensive against the Chinese Communist Party, it should not, objectively speaking, be on the side of the attacker.”
In the interview, Ms. Cai that in the long run, Mr Xi’s policy would send China to a political crisis by isolating the country and closing domestic hopes for orderly economic and political relaxation.
She said she supported the tough line the Trump administration has taken against the Chinese government over trade and other issues, even though it was competent on some of its tactics. And they maintain that China’s harsh measures to suppress the spread of the coronavirus had become a driving force to spread surveillance in every corner of society.
After Mr. Xi abolished a term limit on the Chinese presidency in 2018, effectively paving the way for a longer stay in power, Ms. Cai told a party school official that such a move would damage China’s international image, she said.
‘I said,’ You’re forcing Western countries into a showdown with us, ” she recalls.
Ms. Cai was raised in a family with communist values in eastern China. For a decade, she was one of the most famous scientists at Central Party School.
Under Jiang Zemin, the leader who brought China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, Ms. Cai promoted Mr. Jiang’s opening of the party to more businessmen and professionals. Then and later, she appeared frequently in the Chinese news media, claiming that the party could be a means of rigid political and economic liberalization.
In private, Ms. Cai, she became increasingly frustrated at the reluctance of party leaders to align economic changes with politics. She was disappointed by the dull authoritarian manners of Mr. Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, then even more frightened by the draconian turn of Mr. Xi, who took power in 2012, to Mr. Hu.
Ms Cai said the incident that broke her declining confidence in the party was not a major crisis, but the government’s handling of the death of Lei Yang, a Chinese environmentalist who died in police arrest in 2016. Police accused him of hiring prostitutes, a claim that Ms Cai and other supporters said that slander was intended to dispel public anger over his death.
“That incident left me completely escaped,” she said, putting her tears behind her. “Their methods were despicable to an extreme that surpassed anything we could imagine.”
Ms. Cai is facing shocking uncertainties in her new home in the United States. The party school cut off her retirement and other retirement benefits, and she said she would probably stick around when she returned to China. But she said she was upset that she could now speak her mind fully.
“In my own head, I wanted to finally resign from the party,” she said. “Now that they’ve kicked me out, I’m really happy because I finally got my freedom back.”
