A minority controls capital and power. The majority believes it possesses public opinion and moral authority. So the majority perpetually tries to use those tools — public opinion and the moral high ground — to overturn the cage woven by capital and power. But here is the truth: the former is real; the latter is illusory. The masses believe they wield this illusory force, yet the outcome is always the same: manipulated by illusion, they become cannon fodder and enforcers — serving the very ends of power and capital they imagined they were opposing.
From the surface-level information that mass media releases, a certain narrative takes shape — one engineered to make you feel personally aggrieved: a story of backward-region officialdom using brutal methods to harm an entrepreneur. And so, the vast majority of people instinctively side with the “underdog,” sympathize with the “victim,” and attempt to speak up for the “weak” in hopes of ultimately forcing the barbaric authorities to retract their claws. This is the script designed to drive the masses — and it is essentially the script the masses write for themselves inside their own heads. But what does reality actually look like?
Let me reframe the true picture. There is a TV drama called In the Name of the People. In it, there is a company called Shanshui Group, whose female boss has a special relationship with official Gao Yuliang, and is both the lover and a mutual-interest partner of Qi Tongwei. Why was Dafeng Factory seized by Shanshui Group? Because of the land. Why was Shanshui Group the only one that could take it? Why were there no other market competitors vying for that land? If the Dafeng land was so valuable, the market should have produced multiple competing bidders — which would have given Dafeng genuine leverage to negotiate from strength rather than desperation. So why was no other developer competing with Shanshui Group for this prize?
You guessed it — none of them had the qualifications. Why did Shanshui Group? Because of Gao Xiaoqin’s relationships and interest alliances with Gao Yuliang and Qi Tongwei. So Shanshui Group — and only Shanshui Group — had access rights. It didn’t matter whether Gao Xiaoqin had the money to develop Dafeng, or the capacity to relocate Dafeng’s workers. She could force open that land regardless.
As long as Gao Yuliang and Qi Tongwei remained in power to provide cover, everything could proceed smoothly. The problem arose when Sha Ruijin arrived from above, and he used Hou Liangping to throw the entire province into chaos — eventually bringing the fire down on Qi Tongwei. Once Qi Tongwei couldn’t hold his position, Gao Yuliang was cornered. With Gao Yuliang neutralized and Qi Tongwei dead, Gao Xiaoqin’s Shanshui Group would collapse — because much of what had been done existed in a deliberate grey zone, operating on unspoken mutual understanding, with transactions structured behind a facade of formal contracts.
Shanshui Group could develop ten projects like Dafeng in two years — all with the real benefit distribution happening entirely off the books.
— 2024-02-29 17:32
What did Sha Ruijin actually do? He demanded that all accounts be settled transparently, with no arrears — but strictly by the book: according to official project procedures and whatever the contracts stated on paper. There is a specific word for this: audit.
Most people have not registered what the central governance achievement of 2022 actually was: the establishment of a vertically integrated audit system. Every other form of authority remained untouched — but a new audit mechanism was created that could cut straight through every level all the way to the top. Audit is different from oversight and investigation. It does not interfere, does not surveil. It only examines accounts, traces the flow of funds, and routes that information straight up the vertical chain to where it can be heard. If there is a problem in the money flow, it then gets handed off to the responsible oversight body at the relevant level.
Why do private accounts get frozen when large sums move through them in a short time? Why do transfers over 100,000 yuan get flagged? Why do cash withdrawals of 50,000 yuan or more require you to explain the purpose? None of these details exist to hassle ordinary people — they are actually designed to trace the money flows of illegitimate private transactions through exactly these kinds of granular signals. If you have paid attention to official public disclosures, you would notice that at every level of government, the top leader personally holds the audit portfolio. Everything else gets delegated to deputies — but audit answers only to the number one.
Now, back to the drama’s characters. The newly arrived Sha Ruijin, through auditing, uncovered problems. He demanded settlement with Gao Xiaoqin’s Shanshui Group strictly according to the surface contracts. Gao Xiaoqin, of course, refused — because the actual capital committed to these projects, and the total funds that had flowed in and around them, far exceeded whatever appeared in the formal contracts. The bulk of it could not be presented openly; it had to be disguised through creative means. For example: procuring a Monet Water Lilies at a reported price of 30 million yuan — while the actual delivery is a cheap copy knocked out in a day by some painter in a back-corner studio in Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen. That kind of arrangement worked fine before. Once Sha Ruijin started scrutinizing things seriously, the game fell apart.
And if that game falls apart — what happens to all the money already committed? How do you cover the benefits already distributed through these covert channels? It is quite possible that the funds Gao Xiaoqin raised to execute these projects in the first place were themselves leveraged — debt piled up with banks and other financial institutions through various schemes. All of that debt, principal plus interest, along with all those already-disbursed private payouts, is sitting there waiting for settlement funds to fill the holes. If you settle only according to what is on paper and the actual physical state of the project, those holes cannot be plugged.
So Gao Xiaoqin and the forces behind her panicked. Their only way out was to find a way to drive off Sha Ruijin and Hou Liangping.
How do you drive them off? By finding compromising material on them — covertly. If nothing incriminating can be found through legitimate means, Qi Tongwei’s department and its specialized capabilities get deployed in the shadows. Hou Liangping is one thing — the real target is Sha Ruijin. If Sha Ruijin discovers someone has been running hostile operations against him behind the scenes, do you think he would take it calmly? Of course not. When the Prince of the West discovered that Police Chief Wang had been running that kind of operation against him, he flew into a rage and wanted him dead — so terrified, Wang fled to the American consulate to save his skin. And for Qi Tongwei to take that kind of action against Sha Ruijin would itself be both illegal and a violation of organizational principles. So if Sha Ruijin had Gao Xiaoqin arrested on those grounds, there would be little room to object — it would at minimum conform to organizational rules.
In In the Name of the People, Zhao Ruilong delivers the most incisive line: “Where are all these so-called corrupt officials coming from? It’s just internal factional infighting that didn’t stay buried.”
This is palace intrigue. The ordinary person’s only relationship to any of it is that no matter how it ends, you are the one who gets to share the bill. Why? Because the money has already been squandered. Dafeng was demolished. That land never generated the development returns it needed. Now there is a mountain of debt waiting to be repaid — and indignant masses are there to help cover it. You do not actually think your righteous outrage is standing up for so-called private entrepreneurs, do you? Gao Xiaoqin will not thank you for it. But she will be more than happy to have you spend your savings helping fill the holes and repay the debts she created.