A Communist Party insider

During her career teaching at the Communist Party’s top academy, Cai Xia cheered on signs that China’s leaders might ease their political grip, making her an uncommonly prominent voice for democratic change near the heart of the party.

Now Cai has turned her back on such hopes, and the party has turned against her. She has become the latest intellectual punished for challenging the hard-line policies of the current leader, Xi Jinping.

 

The Central Party School in Beijing, where Cai taught for 15 years until 2012, announced Monday that she had been expelled from the Communist Party after she denounced both the party and Xi in recent speeches and essays.

“This party has become a political zombie,” she had said in a talk that circulated online last month, apparently spurring the party school to take action. “This system, fundamentally speaking, has to be jettisoned.”

In an interview from the United States, where she has lived since last year, Cai quoted from a copy of the party school’s internal decision that said she had “maliciously smeared the image of the party and the country, and rabidly insulted the party and state leader.”

“Cai Xia’s attitude has been vile,” the party school said, “and she showed not the slightest contrition for her erroneous statements.”

Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School

by Chris Buckley   The New York Times

Cai returned fire, accusing Xi of undermining China’s prospects for peaceful democratization and recklessly alienating the United States and other powers.

Xi “bears a great deal of culpability,” Cai said during the long, sometimes tearful interview Tuesday about her evolution from party insider to apostate. “But for one person to do ill over a long time, and for the whole party to not utter a word, that clearly shows that the party’s system and bodies have big problems.”

Cai, 67, is among a cluster of Chinese dissenters who have recently decried Xi’s policies, including his handling of the coronavirus outbreak and imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong.
Two of those critics, Xu Zhangrun and Ren Zhiqiang, already faced retribution last month. Xu, a law professor, was detained for a few days and dismissed from his post at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Ren, a once well-connected property developer, was expelled from the party, accused of corruption and put under criminal investigation after he derided Xi’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Source  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/