This is not just a detailed proposal, but also a belated “bill”. This generation of old farmers once supported the backbone of the country with their labor, public grain, and cheap labor, but now they are struggling on the line of barely 200 yuan a month. Recording this voice is to preserve the last dignity for those who cannot access the Internet and do not know how to seek help.
The so-called institutional design is sometimes just to “digest” you in a precise closed loop. We record these disappeared whistleblowers not only to leave evidence for history, but also to rebuild the last line of defense for the truth on the ruins of bankrupt credibility.
In the CCP’s official narrative, Xi Zhongxun is portrayed as a distinguished and tenacious “founding father.” However, the Free Archives, through a review of historical archives, found that the real Xi Zhongxun was not always on a pedestal. He experienced the brutal intra-party purges during the Yan’an period, and after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he was trapped in a 16-year political purgatory because of the novel “Liu Zhidan.” This family memory of surviving on the edge of totalitarianism is not only the history of Xi Zhongxun’s personal suffering, but also constitutes the origin of the deep “totalitarian undertones” and lack of security in Xi Jinping’s ruling style.
After three decades of rapid growth, we went from “welfare housing” to a “Ponzi scheme.” When an industry no longer competes on who can build good houses, but instead bets on who can borrow more money, acquire more land, and find more takers, collapse becomes a physical law. This is not a simple economic cycle; it is a collective conspiracy of lack of integrity, power rent-seeking, and mass blind following. Remembering this cost is to avoid becoming the “cost” of the next era.
Zhang Xuefeng, with his “truth” as a blade, pierced the information barriers of university enrollment, but also constructed a utilitarian narrative that sells fear. He is not only describing reality, but also rewriting it, reducing the possibilities of education to vocational training. Behind the controversy is the collective panic of this generation of Chinese people about the future. Guarding memory is not only about remembering a name, but also about seeing clearly the symptoms of the times in which he lives.
We always thought that by establishing a set of sufficiently complex rules, we could restrain the greed of power. However, twenty years of practice have proven that when procedural justice is alienated into absolute truth, efficiency becomes a sacrifice. Those cumbersome forms and stamps not only failed to completely block those with connections, but instead became a solid fortress that blocked the truth, screened out efficiency, and exempted the mediocre from responsibility.
History has never gone away, it has just changed uniforms. When judicial documents become “illegal evidence”, when police officers become the “private bodyguards” of the powerful, what we are protecting is not just the right to speak of a public account, but also the fear of everyone not being “illegally expeditioned”. Memory has weight, they want to erase the truth, we must engrave it in our hearts.
In August 2024, artist Gao Qian was taken away before boarding a flight back to the United States. The police accused his sculpture from many years ago of “infringing on martyrs.” This file compiles the creative background of the Gao brothers and analyzes the profound impact of the case on the retroactive effect of law and political censorship.
Land is the lifeblood of farmers, and it is also their inheritance from their ancestors and their hopes for the future. When public power attempts to deceive under the guise of “public interest”, it not only takes away the land, but also attempts to erase this group’s memory and rights to their home.
History has never been far away, it has only changed the script. When police power becomes a private servant, when the whistleblower becomes the defendant, what we need to remember is not only this slap in the face, but also the death knell of power out of control. Guarding memory is guarding our last line of defense.
