-1737630623.jpg "The Chinese People's Wish for the Year of the Snake")
Since 1978, perhaps no year has made the Chinese people feel so hopeless as 2025. The people seem to be truly feeling the 2024-2025 New Year's Eve, waiting with great reluctance for the worst year in nearly half a century.
This social depression, similar to the Great Depression, can be seen in the deserted streets of big cities during New Year's Eve and in the New Year's speeches of Chinese leaders on New Year's Eve.
Xi Jinping's New Year's speech was a farewell to himself
Remarkably, the recording of this speech reveals that the Chinese leader left his office and recorded it elsewhere, a gesture of self-farewell. The tone of the speech was also unusually humble, devoting considerable space to addressing livelihoods. It also, unusually, omitted any mention of the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," abandoning empty nationalist slogans to rouse the public. It can be said that, two years after the COVID-19 pandemic, during the onset of the Great Depression, the leader, operating in an information silo, has finally come to appreciate the hardships of ordinary people, and his nationalist charade is becoming untenable.
It is very similar to the situation before the October 1976 coup.
For the general public, survival itself is becoming an overwhelming priority, defining the social tone of 2025. Furthermore, there seems to be a sense of risking everything. For example, in Beijing taxis and ride-hailing apps, increasingly, drivers, despite knowing that their vehicles are equipped with real-time audio and video surveillance, are still seizing the opportunity to rant against the current political authoritarianism. Across China, from underdeveloped small towns to developed regions, this widespread discontent has become almost the new normal, remarkably similar to the situation before the October 1976 coup. Amidst widespread discontent and resentment, the people seem to have rediscovered a sense of political agency.
