Author: Zhao Yantao Editor: Lu Cong
Dear Mr. Xi Jinping:
The ancients said: "The world is not the world of one person; it is the world of all the people under heaven."
Looking back over several thousand years of Chinese history — so many dynasties rising and falling, so many emperors, generals, and ministers — in the end, all of them became no more than a page in the long river of history. Power can be possessed for a time, but no individual can possess a country forever.
In former days, the House of Han declined and the realm fell into turmoil, and in the end the transfer of political power was concluded through abdication. China today is no longer in the age of imperial rule, and the people are no longer subjects. What modern China needs is not a new emperor, but a modern system of state; not one person holding power for life, but power that can be transferred peacefully.
Mr. Xi Jinping, if you truly hope to become an important figure in Chinese history, then what is truly worth leaving behind is not the words "holding power for life," but being able to take the initiative to lay down power at a critical moment in history.
To step aside voluntarily does not represent failure.
Quite the contrary: to be able to possess power is an ability, while to be able to lay down power at the proper time is, all the more, a bearing of historical responsibility.
What the Chinese people need is a future of peace, stability, freedom, and the rule of law. What we hope to see is not palace struggles, not a society torn apart, and still less a bloody revolution, but a peaceful, orderly, and dignified political transition.
If one day China can complete the transfer of power by peaceful means, let the people regain the right to choose the nation's leaders, and let the constitution truly become the supreme rule that restrains power, then this will not only be a victory for the Chinese people; it can also become the final stroke that Mr. Xi Jinping leaves to history.
Therefore, today I, in my capacity as a modern Chinese person, put forward to Mr. Xi Jinping a simple and solemn counsel:
Please lay down personal power, step down from the highest political office, and return the future of the nation to the people.
Do not let history remember a person obsessed with power.
Let history remember a person who in the end chose the people, chose peace, and chose the future of the nation.
The world, in the end, belongs to the people.
China, too, in the end belongs to the Chinese people.
May China in the future have no more emperors, only citizens; no more lifelong power, only limited terms; no more individuals standing above the system — but instead let the people become the true masters of the country.
This urges stepping down — and, even more, it urges peace.
Thank you, everyone.
