From Lies to Unfinished Projects’ Turning Point?

[2025 Year-End Special Review]

From Lies to Unfinished Projects’ Turning Point?

—The Bankruptcy of Governing Credit and the Gray Rhino of 2026 and Great Fearless Responsibility

Archer Hong Qian

Foreword: The Martyr’s Question Pierces the Ironic Echo of “Original Aspiration”

At the end of 2025, as the red walls in Beijing once again resound with the anthem from “The Battle of Xiangjiang” about “original aspiration,” the reality outside the walls is a scene of desolation. The martyrs ask across a century: “Have the people lived a good life?”

And the answer in 2025 is: the heavy debts of redundant officials, redundant troops, and redundant expenditures, the statistical black hole of youth unemployment rates, the middle-class wallets shrunk by half, and the endless unfinished projects in sight… and the arrogance of power continues to explode!

In particular, the cancerous transformation of traditional bureaucratism has made the “three redundancies” terminally ill: the broad fiscal dependents exceed 70 million, the active military is 2 million, and personnel expenses account for nearly 40% of public expenditures. Local debts have broken through the 100 trillion yuan mark, and official expenditures continue to increase without reduction, while people’s livelihood debts cannot be repaid. This is not only fiscal exhaustion but also the most absurd dissolution of the martyrs’ blood.

I. 2025: The “Prosperous Age” Woven by Lies Pierced by Reality

Reviewing 2025, it can be said to be the year with the most severe tear between propaganda slogans, macroeconomics, and the people’s micro-perceptions in the 13 years of governance.

The Debt Crisis of Ineffective GDP: The official claim of over 5% GDP growth in 2025 (let’s not quibble about whether it’s fabricated, as Gao Shanwen said the 2023 and 2024 were overestimated by 2 percentage points), yet the people’s income growth is not obvious. Essentially, it’s the disconnection between “wealth creation” and “digital growth,” i.e., ineffective GDP. Filling the fiscal burden left by “ineffective GDP,” future national income is pre-spent, leading to stagnant people’s income, “subtraction of social wealth.” Those massive debts (whether local debts or those of the railway corporation) will ultimately be repaid through future taxes, fees, or hidden inflation, which is undoubtedly a dilution and overdraft of the wealth of future generations. The current feeling of weak income growth is precisely the “repayment period” for the past extensive development model, and it’s hard to imagine what kind of days future generations will have to endure to get through it. Where is the U-shaped “future we will surely have another peak” imagined by some experts?!

The Facade of “New Quality Productive Forces”: Similar to the “contrast between macroeconomics and national perceptions,” this concept proclaimed by the officials has not driven technological innovation, industrial upgrading, or green transformation, propelling the economy from extensive to efficient and sustainable modes. Trillions in chip subsidies have yielded inefficient capacity and repeated unfinished factories, with zero core technological innovation; the internet, under high-pressure regulation, has plummeted from an innovation pinnacle to stagnant waters, with layoffs rampant and entrepreneurs fleeing; overcapacity in new energy has provoked international blockades and sharp order declines. In 2025, foreign capital withdrawal not only persisted but evolved into a wholesale relocation of industrial chains. New quality productive forces may have narrowed the gap with the US in certain tech fields, but they create a glaring resource misallocation with China’s overall economic development, having almost no connection to boosting employment and consumption or improving livelihoods, leaving only conceptual hype and the anguish of the grassroots people. In mindset, it remains stuck in the old thinking of the Great Leap Forward’s “catching up with Britain and surpassing America”—what’s there to compare in terms of winning or losing?

The Truth of “Common Prosperity”: This year, people discovered that “common prosperity” has turned into “common impoverishment.” The harvesting of private enterprises has not filled the social security hole but instead led to large-scale wage reduction waves. Taxpayers’ money is squandered on empty buildings in Xiong’an New Area, squandered on bad debts of “One Belt One Road,” but never returned to the people’s medical insurance cards.

The Cage of “Safety First”: Digital monitoring has reached its peak. The so-called “people’s country” has turned into “defending against the people like thieves” in actual operation. From strict network censorship and grid surveillance to pervasive “social credit” reviews, over 13 years, this land has completed a gorgeous regression from “embracing the world” to “closing the country.”

II. 13-Year Bill: One Person’s Willfulness, Debts for Generations

From 2013 to now, this is not only 13 years of “lying” but also 13 years of “squandering the family fortune.”

Resource Misallocation: Trillions in chip subsidies exchanged for a pile of unfinished factories, the construction of South China Sea islands and reefs exchanged for the collective defection of neighboring countries.

Credit Zeroed Out: The bankruptcy of promises to Hong Kong, contempt for international rules, letting “Made in China” encounter unprecedented tariff blockades in 2025.

Dead End: When all policy tools are exhausted and ineffective, yet at the end of 2025, they launched the “new chapter of full island closure in Hainan to build a free port.” What about “‘first line’ open, ‘second line’ control, island interior free”? What era’s mindset is this? After decades of reform and opening up, they still lack confidence in whether the people in the “mainland” thirty administrative regions can “enjoy freedom,” yet they take it for granted to open another free trade window externally in a manufacturing low ground not on the international main shipping route, using the island people’s production and life for trial and error. Not to mention comparing advantages with Singapore, Vietnam, or Hong Kong, can it be better than the original “One Belt One Road” or “Xiong’an New Area” or “Tongzhou New City”? Even thinking with toes knows that it’s highly likely another unfinished experimental field enclosed by walls and ruthlessly smashed with money.

III. 2026 Outlook: The “Gray Rhino” of Dual Political and Economic Crises

Standing at the end of 2025 looking at 2026, the “big ship” is sailing into a dead sea without buoys and densely covered with hidden reefs.

Economy: From Deflation to “Hard Landing” and “Social Disconnection”

In 2026, real estate debt landmines will explode in chain reactions. Local governments’ fiscal exhaustion will lead to paralysis of grassroots governance, and public employee salary arrears will spread from the borders to first-tier cities. More terrifying is that society will enter a “disconnected” state: no marriage, no children, no investment, no trust. This nationwide passive resistance will render any macroeconomic regulation instantly null and void.

Politics: High-Level Purges and the System’s “Bloodless Trip”

To maintain absolute authority, 2026 will usher in a new round of political purges in the name of “anti-corruption,” especially concentrated in finance, military, propaganda and united front, and intelligence systems. The outcome of everyone in danger is: no truth can be heard, decisions become extremely rigid, blind, and unbalanced. Power is still in hand, but the system’s peripheral nerves are already necrotic, commands can’t go down, feedback can’t come up, and the regime will face a physical “Bypass (bypass) bloodless trip.”

External: Geopolitical United Front and the “Surrender Certificate” Behind

2026, as the outpost of the “2027 node,” nationalism will be pushed to madness. However, “benefit, harm my country,” neighboring countries have formed a substantive “anti-adventurism united front.” The most alarming is that with the end of the Ukraine war, Russia, to reintegrate into international society, is highly likely to hand over a “surrender certificate” by selling out “unlimited” ally interests. At that time, Beijing will face a historic “attack from both front and back.”

Epilogue: The End of Lies is a Cliff

As the saying goes: “History’s ledger must always be settled.” The various chaos in 2025 is nothing but the interest accumulated from the lies of the past 13 years. In 2026, when taxpayers’ money is exhausted, when slogans can no longer fill stomachs, when the “martyr’s question” evolves into “universal anger,” that grand narrative woven for 13 years will face its most severe credit trial. Power is still in hand, yet suddenly bypass “bloodless trip.”

In 2026, the keyword for Chinese people is no longer “revival,” but “survival.”

Finally, I want to speak of a turning point as both reader and author.

As the old saying goes, “Where the mountains and rivers are heavy with doubt and no road, the willows are dark and the flowers are bright in another village,” there is a turning point.

As a reader, I want to say: As the saying goes, “Heaven never cuts off a man’s way,” after reading this [2025 Year-End Special Review], I still believe “everything is the best arrangement”!

As the author, I recall the general preface “Rewriting the Spring and Autumn of Modern Thinkers” written in the early 1990s for the “Masters of Chinese Studies Series.” Now thirty-five years have passed, the only turning point I can think of is with great fearless sentiment and responsibility: starting from the PRC mainland taking the lead in reciprocal recognition of the ROC Taiwan’s sovereign status.

The question is, is there such great responsibility: wisdom, courage, and ability? If there is such great responsibility, all the problems in the [2025 Year-End Special Review] will be solved easily, and the wrongs and evils cast over 13 years can be written off in one stroke, safe landing!

Why take this step, how to take it? Refer to the short article “Strategic Opportunities in the Emerging Geopolitical Order—Whether Recognizing ROC Taiwan Will Become a Global Focus in 2026.”

Symbiosis Network http://symbiosism.com.cn/11373.html

Creeders Blog https://blog.creaders.net/user_blog_diary.php?did=NTM1MzEw

If interested, please continue to read “Reimagining the People’s Republic with Holographic Symbiosis Thinking— Qian Hong Archer and xAI Grok’s Dialogue on Contemporary Civilization”…

Symbiosis Network http://symbiosism.com.cn/11351.html

Creeders Blog https://blog.creaders.net/user_blog_diary.php?did=NTM1MDE3