Why I Chose to Run

Prologue

Now that I've successfully taken the first step toward running away and cleanly severed all my previous social ties, I feel it's necessary to explain why I chose to run and share my inner journey — to give both myself and my former social circles some closure. Here I'll do my best to avoid political topics, sticking only to the angle of personal experience. This way, maybe someday I'll still have a chance to return to China. I trust that intelligent readers can still glimpse the current political issues from this essay's subtext.

The Tragedy Behind a Punchline

In the movie "Good Bye Xi", the punchline I find most interesting is when Xia Luo is forced to make a public self-criticism after beating up Teacher Wang. Standing at the flag-raising platform, he turns to Teacher Wang and says: "The grudge between us? Let's call it even." Most people laugh here — because clearly Xia Luo was the one who threw the punch, so why would he have the right to call off the dispute?

But if you think carefully, Xia Luo is actually the one with the most legitimate claim to propose reconciliation. Because in the past, Teacher Wang subjected Xia Luo to extreme oppression and humiliation — calling him "Dummy Number Two," calling Da Chun "Dummy Number One," even meting out corporal punishment that destroyed their dignity as human beings. From this perspective, Teacher Wang was the one who wronged Xia Luo far more severely. Even if Xia Luo beat him to a pulp, it couldn't make up for the damage Teacher Wang inflicted.

This scene is actually a tragedy. Two people hurt each other, and the one who was hurt more severely makes a peace offering to the one who was hurt less — yet people think the former has no right to initiate reconciliation. That's the sadness of Chinese society.

Educational Hell

A young person choosing to leave their homeland — on the surface it seems like an injury to their family, but in reality it's about escaping the harm inflicted by family and society. After running abroad, they generously choose to reconcile with those who hurt them, yet they're treated as arrogant and unreasonable. Some would say this young person has a victim mentality — but that's completely wrong. A Japanese drama once said: when a 12-year-old child wants to sever ties with their parents, how much anguish and suffering did her heart endure? Who could possibly understand?

China's current education has completely deviated from the ideals of the nation's founding. Rulers, using political means and authoritarian systems, have transformed teaching into brainwashing and驯化, then implanted populist ideology and hatred — completing the spiritual rape of students. Here I quote scholar Du Wen's original words: "...Education is indeed one of Xi's most prioritized endeavors. His various directives and speeches on education are extremely numerous, and the effort he invests is enormous. My final conclusion is that Xi's unified textbooks, one-size-fits-all approach, and education that eliminates diversity is precisely a continuation of Stalinism. Education equals destruction. Xi's education push consists of three major components:

1. Education for the broad masses of people, led primarily by the 'Five Identities' study-strong nation campaign.

2. Education for Party cadres and members, mainly the political education campaign of the 'Four Consciousnesses' and 'Two Safeguards.'

3. A new cultural transformation movement targeting Chinese children and teenagers.

These three educational campaigns are Xi Jinping thought brainwashing projects that deprive the educated of autonomy as a prerequisite, enforced through state coercive power. The teaching workforce has become a mind-control army. This organized, large-scale, systematic brainwashing project has effectively turned education into spiritual rape. I call it the New Cultural Revolution. This Cultural Revolution is nothing short of a brutal spiritual catastrophe for all peoples of China. The so-called educator Xi Jinping is nothing but a rapist."

Starting from Xi's 2012 assumption of power and the "Seven No's" in education, through internet lockdowns and public opinion control, all the way to the 2018 propaganda of populist patriotism entering campuses — this is undoubtedly the darkest era in China's education sector. The above is nothing new, and I believe Du Wen's analysis already thoroughly explains the anti-human nature and brainwashing essence of Chinese education, so I won't elaborate further.

In my senior year of high school, the年级 director required everyone to study with their heads down during self-study sessions. He monitored every classroom through surveillance cameras, and whenever someone looked up, he would immediately announce that class's name over the loudspeaker across the entire grade. Not only that — because senior year extremely compressed sleep time, leaving only 6 hours per night, during breaks between classes everyone was certainly exhausted enough to crash face-first on their desks. Over time, my cervical spine sustained irreparable strain from this ordeal, requiring regular visits to a blind person's massage parlor. This was merely the visible damage; the operations that violated student dignity and驯化 students were far more numerous. Take the school's unified hairstyle policy — every class had a few rebellious students who wouldn't comply, so the homeroom teacher would single them out as examples, cutting their hair in front of the entire class. They returned crying like children. From uniform dress codes and hairstyles to publicly announcing grades and rankings, this educational system comprehensively erased student dignity. Senior year was this system's final frenzy — the last quality check before social screws roll off the assembly line. Back then, while reading the Sutra of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva's Original Vow, I realized that the hellish treatment I endured in senior year truly mirrored the Eighteen Layers of Hell. When sleep is severely deprived, people experience hallucinations — at that time I genuinely felt I was already in hell. Whatever sins I committed in past lives, I believe I've more than paid for them in this one.

Students in Chinese society are prisoners without personhood or dignity — victims spiritually raped every single day, and this identity is not their voluntary choice. Like the baby born in a technical school's female restroom who died the same night — was that the baby's fault? It was the parents' fault. If you lack the ability to protect your child from harm, why give birth in the first place? This is a question the vast majority of Chinese parents should ask themselves. From the moment a child is born, the cradle has a college entrance exam countdown taped to it. From the first breath, they must be swept up by this ignorant society, running beneath the wheels of the system, constantly striving — only hoping that someday they can pass the civil service exam and "get on the bus," then drive on to continue running over the failures "beneath the wheels," and finally reproduce the next generation, continuing this cycle. Such a life is one where thinking has been ground away — a living corpse. The only difference between this and the baby born in a restroom might be the length of time they breathe. Of course, along the way many illusions arise — thinking one has a brilliant future, that the journey ahead is "the sea of stars." Yet in an environment that annihilates independent thinking and personal dignity, the learning machines produced cannot generate any creative value. Even if massive technology develops through a gŭdu (cultivation) approach, in the hands of a barbarous civilization, it will only become a means to further control the people.

No Hope for Reform

Additionally, if you're thinking about reforming society, that's utter fantasy. Hoping that rulers will come to their senses and stop enslaving people through education and violence is absolutely impossible. Hoping someone will lead the governed to rise up and resist the rulers is an even bigger joke. In China's authoritarian society, the relationship between rulers and the ruled is a kind of sadomasochistic relationship — as long as this relationship exists, society can never change. At 18, I had just awakened, discovering the fundamental logic beneath society's surface. I began enlightening my classmates around me. When the audience grew, I decided to lead people in resisting tyranny — starting by storming the principal's office and beating him up. The outcome, I'm sure you can imagine: absolutely no one dared to respond. At the time I asked a classmate nearby whether he felt extremely unfree. His answer is something I still remember to this day: "As long as what I'm doing right now is what I want to do, then I'm not unfree." Actively reverse-rationalizing one's circumstances, not minding inequality, starving to death rather than resisting — that's the essence of Chinese people. Many might say it was because we were in senior year, everyone was focused on studying, wouldn't consider participating in a freedom movement. But this is precisely the tragedy of the matter. Because the senior year is when the vast majority of Chinese people are most knowledgeable — at this time, people are most hopeful about toppling corruption and pursuing freedom. Once this group of governed passed the college entrance exam, over 95% chose to lie flat and play, never thinking about life again. Once this group of governed entered college, over 95% chose to lie flat and play, never thinking about life again. When the people of a country, in their most hopeful year, still choose submission, and fundamentally remain cowardly, selfish, and stupid — then this country is utterly hopeless. If you can't even see this clearly, I can only say your wisdom hasn't even reached the entry level, and the suffering you endure has a share of your own responsibility.

Does China have any hope? Anyone who's been awakened for over a year knows the answer: no. China isn't lacking heroes, but when there's no momentum forming, nobody wants to follow. Once a hero succeeds, they're happy to jump on board for a share of the spoils. Du Wen's son ran to America, and published "allies' amazement" regarding some citizens' blind obedience to the government, also scathingly critiquing Chinese people's submissiveness. Zhai Shan Ying was originally an anti-American big V in China. In 2019 he was preaching that America would collapse within 10 years. In 2021 he changed his tune, saying it would collapse within 5 years. Then at the end of 2021 he immigrated his entire family to America. After running to America, he also posted videos daily promoting China's collapse theory. At the end of 2024, his conclusion was that the CCP would fall in at least 2 years, at most 3. Like his America collapse theory, this viewpoint is spiritual opium injected into his audience. Through his venting-style rhetoric, it appears to expose the truth, but actually provides viewers with false comfort, giving false hope, thereby harvesting traffic and followers.

The submissiveness of Chinese people has been dissected and analyzed to death on foreign websites. What I want to do now is use precise logic and novel viewpoints to gain traffic while commenting on current events — creating a stylized channel and website where I can freely express my own views. By this point I'm sure everyone is clear: my core viewpoint is that China will experience a humanitarian catastrophe similar to the Cultural Revolution before 2048, and its intensity will far exceed the first Cultural Revolution.

Awakening

So this is why I chose to run. In a society beyond redemption, it's both the only way to escape this institutional straitjacket and a path to creating value for modern civilization. Among the four options contemporary young people have — run, grind, lie flat, or get exploited — running is actually the only path. I've always emphasized that the main purpose of running isn't pursuing democracy, freedom, or dignity. More importantly, it's escaping the big disaster that's inevitably coming. A Taiwan Strait war, Cultural Revolution 2.0, banking collapses, democratization turmoil — nobody knows which of these will come first. But military government control, internet shutdowns, comprehensive mass surveillance, and internet ID systems will certainly be the measures that follow whenever these events occur. Those who can't see this clearly, still feeling self-satisfied about current gains — their fates are almost sealed. Even if they lie flat later, they'll be living under a massive shadow.

Inner Journey

My awakening occurred suddenly two days before my 18th birthday. It was a sunny morning, shortly after I'd gotten up, when I suddenly discovered that my dimension of seeing the world had changed — just like a depressed person on the first day of their depression, like some nerve suddenly connected correctly. The entire process was instantaneous: the world before my eyes suddenly changed its face, permanently. Before this, I hadn't systematically studied viewpoints outside the Great Firewall, and no one in my life had directly awakened me. Saying I completely self-awakened is absolutely no exaggeration. Thinking back now, I'm still somewhat terrified — because if I still couldn't awaken by 18, this life would have been exactly that.

At that point in senior year, the most important thing for me was to conserve my energy and avoid further persecution. Because the conclusion I reached was: life has no inherent meaning to begin with. But if I can't even satisfy the need for sleep, then everything I care about will cease to exist, and I'll live a life worse than death. So I was a sleepist at that time, treating sleep as the most valuable core activity in life.

Over four years of university, I followed my plan to hide myself and conserve energy, sleeping for four years. After all, the trauma of sleep deprivation that senior year inflicted on me required at least four years to slowly recover from. I also knew that nobody around me could possibly understand me, and I couldn't convince anyone to resist with me. This society absolutely cannot move in a hopeful direction, so I chose to endure in silence. After China's populist nationalism surged in 2019, I also wanted to be a pioneer — studying the copywriting of numerous patriotic bloggers, distilling their viewpoints, occupying the moral and public opinion high ground in daily conversations, at least to protect myself from harm while顺便 harvesting some foolish followers. During university, I gradually learned that political control was becoming increasingly serious in the domestic religious sphere. Buddhism and Christianity existed in name only, completely occupied by the Communist Party. China no longer had any pure land of religion. So for me, becoming a monk was already a dead end. The only viable strategy was to save money and run.

Three Warning Signals for Running

When to run was also a question requiring thought at the time. During university I summarized three warning signals for running: first, an attack on Taiwan (or other countries); second, reverse family planning (meaning forced childbirth, with fines for not having children); third, complete internet shutdown (implementing an internet whitelist system, making VPN impossible). If any one of these three occurred, I would immediately run — even joining a large group to secretly cross the border would still be timely enough. Even if none of these events happened, I would definitely run before 2048, because by then all the backbone forces in society would be barbarians produced by the new education system's brainwashing. When a Cultural Revolution 2.0 of catching traitors and mutual denunciation arrives, it's almost a foregone conclusion.

Of course, I wasn't idle during senior year either. Every day I explored future life development. After all, I only awakened at 18, so I needed to go through a very long period to perform a complete mental purge — subjecting all the incorrect information I received over 18 years to comprehensive examination and critique using reason and logic, extracting true viewpoints, completely rejecting the vast majority of wrong views, and finally taking root in wisdom and reason, establishing my own solid ideological structure.

AI Accelerated Everything

However, the release of AI headed by ChatGPT at the end of 2022 accelerated my life plan. Era > Choice > Effort. When you board an elevator going to the top floor, whether you do push-ups, running, or handstands inside the elevator, your speed of ascent will definitely be faster than someone desperately climbing stairs. In the next few decades, it will certainly be the era of artificial intelligence. Currently AI's potential is far from being fully developed due to power limitations. Even now in 2024, with so many AI products appearing, we can still say we're only刚 entering the eve of the artificial intelligence era, the dawn hasn't even arrived yet. Choosing the AI industry now is undoubtedly boarding the era's elevator. Like people who chose to go into business during China's reform and opening up — as long as they could let go, they all made fortunes. Such a huge temptation is hard not to excite.

Looking internationally, America's development in AI leads the world by at least two years, and this gap is further widening. China's AI industry has no hope at all. The moment this industry entered China, China released AI regulations requiring generative AI not to publish content against the Party or against the nation, and must promote socialist core values. If an AI cannot even critique authoritarian rule, cannot even question it, then it means discarding the most basic logic — how could it possibly generate creativity or value? Additionally, after Trump took office, he also announced chip controls on China, requiring all high-end chips not be sold to China. China's current chip manufacturing capability can at most produce 28nm chips. Under this pincer attack from inside and outside, China's AI future development can be said to be completely blocked.

So I chose to run now, primarily to join the global AI industry's wave, using the industry's momentum to boost myself — making a life transformation possible. The secondary reason was to escape China's authoritarian environment. After all, my prediction is that major turmoil won't come until 2048 (though 2027 might see a closing of the borders).

Parents and Reproduction

I know my family's financial situation. My parents saved money their entire lives, and it would barely be enough to send me to study for a CS graduate degree in America. But that would be extremely high risk with hard-to-see results, so I could only rely on myself. Over four years of university, because I slept every day and skipped classes, I didn't achieve a very high GPA (only 3.0). I self-studied and self-tested for TOEFL, achieving a maximum of 91 points. Applying for full scholarships was definitely out of the question, and other means couldn't get me to America either. I had to take a step back and first choose other economically prosperous, modern civilized countries with good job opportunities, participate in the computer-related industry, save enough money, and then go to America.

Returning to the original topic: if I now said that the grievances between me and my family are settled, that I don't need to support my elders in the future, that my family doesn't need to financially support my life, and that we're even — that would certainly be very wise and free-spirited behavior. But in my family's eyes, that would be pure ingratitude. From each person's perspective, everyone feels they've made tremendous contributions or suffered tremendously. But the difference in value judgment inevitably causes inequality in the exchange. The logic of reality isn't as simple as in Xia Luo's dream. Parents always feel that killing themselves working to pay for their children's education is a favor to the child, but in my eyes I only see these couples bearing the legal consequences of their erroneous reproductive decisions. Some also say that because children went through a parasitic stage in the womb, this naturally determines that children have no right to question parents for bringing them into this world without consent. But this argument ignores the causal relationship between parents' reproductive behavior and the child's birth. It's precisely the parents' reproductive behavior that caused the child's birth, and the child's parasitic state in the mother's body before birth is also caused by the parents' reproductive behavior. So if this child has an independent personality and independent thinking, they equally have the right to question parents on this matter. This is also why the law stipulates that abortion is not permitted after the fetus's brain has developed — because from this point, the fetus already has human rights.

It must be acknowledged that before a fetus's brain develops, the fetus truly cannot question parents — but this isn't because the fetus has no right to question, it's merely that they lack the ability to question. After all, from the moment sperm and egg cells combine, parents must bear responsibility for this mistake against the child. As Stephen Chow said, giving birth is merely a side effect — parents actually just enjoy the process of giving birth. So parents should acknowledge that bringing a child into this absurd world without the child's consent is something they naturally do to the child. Having children without the ability to protect them from harm is absolutely the parents' mistake.

Conclusion

A golden fish was never meant for a shallow pond — once the storm arrives, it transforms into a dragon.