Lucid waters and lush mountains, full poverty eradication, one-vote veto — the assessments are stuffed with the will of a fucking idiot; the tax-sharing system stripped away fiscal power, the land finance model collapsed, and the industries that could drive the economy were strangled by his own hands. Documents contradict each other, red lines are packed as dense as a red carpet, and officials have only two paths left: gamble, or lie flat
The video analyzes the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bureaucratic evaluation system in recent years, pointing out that Emperor You Xi has pushed officials into a dead end through evaluation items filled with personal will, such as environmental protection, poverty alleviation, and one-vote vetoes. With the imbalance of financial and administrative powers brought by the tax-sharing system, the collapse of land finance, and the targeted strangulation of the private economy, local governments no longer have the leverage to boost the economy. As a result, officials can only choose to gamble or lie flat amidst conflicting documents and dense red lines.
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Over the past decade or so, it's not that Emperor You Xi didn't want to dismantle this assessment system; the guy never even considered converting these assessments into political lines, he just kept overplaying his hand. Look at how he did it step by step. First, he pushed that ecological and environmental protection stuff—you know, the 'green mountains and clear waters are gold and silver mountains' slogan, remember that? They launched that ridiculous 'returning forest to farmland' policy, and then not long after, they had to reverse it. Wasn't that all his doing? In fact, back then, Emperor You Xi was already throwing sand into the CCP's bureaucratic assessment framework. Later on, there was the 'national poverty alleviation' campaign. Hey, when that was happening, didn't the former Premier, Lord Li Keqiang, give Xi Jinping a cold shoulder? Six hundred million people with a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan—is this the poverty alleviation achievement of that fucking idiot Emperor You Xi? I dare say that this figure definitely wouldn't be reached now; after all, the Chinese economy back then was still coasting on inertia, still sliding forward a few years after he took office. When Li Keqiang said that, it was exactly the turning point where the Chinese economy went from prosperity to decline. This guy is.
He is very fond of inserting his own private agenda into official assessments. What kind of private agenda? It's assessment items that reflect the will of this reckless fool, adding what's called a 'one-vote veto.' Yes, that's the thing. What is a 'one-vote veto'? It means that even if you get full marks in every other subject, it's useless; as long as he thinks something went wrong in this one area, the entire paper is voided, and your official career goes down the drain with it. Now, put yourself back in the shoes of a county party secretary. You sit down at your desk in the morning, and the first document on top is telling you to go all out for development. Okay, fine, development costs money. The next document is telling you to pay off debts, and if you don't pay them off well, it's a one-vote veto. Then, you flip to another one, telling you to go all out to attract investment and offer whatever preferential policies are needed. Immediately after, the next one starts threatening you, saying you can't step even one inch over the red line of compliance. Let me tell you, the documents on the desks of CCP bureaucrats nowadays probably look pretty much like this, and you see, Emperor You Xi is a fucking idiot; his words always leave loopholes. What are these loopholes? Let me explain: if things go well, hey.
"I was the one who told you to do it, so all the credit goes to this fucking idiot. But if you didn't do it well, then sorry, you have to take the blame, because this grandson of a bitch has said it both ways." Ever since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completed the tax-sharing system reform, local financial power and administrative power have been torn apart. Local governments only have that little bit of family savings left, yet all the tasks still fall on them. Then in 2021, as the real estate market collapsed, land transfer fees plummeted like someone jumping off a building. At this point, the local governments' purses were actually completely empty, but the exam papers for the CCP bureaucrats instead became thicker and thicker. Why thicker and thicker? Because local CCP bureaucrats wanted to boost the economy but had no leverage. Emperor You Xi carried out targeted strangulations on all industries where private capital existed. Look, venture capital was strangled, education was strangled, resources were strangled, and even real estate was a bomb detonated under the "personal command and personal deployment" of that fucking Emperor You Xi. So what else can local governments do? All the leverage to boost the economy is completely fucked. So what is the scene that everyone is seeing?
From 2021 to 2024, it's not that the CCP didn't want to pull the economy back to performance-based legitimacy, but that almost everything that could fucking pull the economy up had been ruined by Emperor You Xi. There is another change that people usually don't see, but officials can feel every single day.