The next step here is for a tea drinking session to threaten him and maybe an illegal detention for a month or three. He might still be in one piece after detention. Or they could just make him a prisoner in his own home, as is the case for hundreds if not thousands, right now across the country.

Who knows, maybe LXB type charges are in the offing. Its unlikely but possible. He knows the potential consequences for just asking for the right not to be censored, not to be repressed.

Indeed, “true stability is based in the happiness and freedom of the people and not derived from obedience enforced down the barrel of a gun,” is the crux of this letter, but despite the truth of this statement, it is this very truth in the face of the bleak reality that ensconces its futility.

This kind of writing is preaching to the choir, and will definitely invite back-slapping and that warm feeling of knowing you are on the side of Good without actually doing anything from readers, but what will actually shake loose the foundations of the CCP’s death grip on power? If Xuecun’s enemies take to heart one word of what he says here, then there would not be a problem.

Perhaps trying to get inside the heads of these people, knowing how they tick and what they desire and fear will lead to a way to get through to them? My guess is, not including sheer greed, they continue to censor because they actually believe the opposite of the above statement as some kind of security against their paranoid “practicality.”

Or perhaps this letter is just an attempt for Xuecun, aware of his personal impotence and that of his cause in the present day, to prove that he will be on the right side of history?