CONTENTS

  I.   Breaking News — The Human Realm Website Abruptly Shut Down

  II.  Essay — From The Human Realm to Renjing.net

  III. Poem — To the Tune "The Moon over the West River"

  IV.  A Veteran Speaks — You Cannot Cover the Mouths of the People

  V.   Editor's Note — Revisionism and Fascist Dictatorship

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I.  BREAKING NEWS

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[Breaking] The Human Realm Website Abruptly Shut Down!

Zuo Ping · September 8, 2026, 18:21

Zuo Ping has learned from sources close to the matter that the website of The Human Realm (Renjing.net) has been abruptly shut down; the site can no longer be opened. It is understood that the platform acted on instructions from the relevant authorities to cancel the Renjing.net domain name, without any reason being given.

The Human Realm was an emerging left-wing cultural website, founded on July 1, 2024. Since its launch it had held to the mission of "carrying on the red classics and promoting revolutionary culture," of being "a platform for the proletariat, a voice for the laboring people"; it upheld a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist standpoint, devoted itself to exploring the possibilities of twenty-first-century socialism, and had considerable influence among the broad community of internet users, particularly the young.

That The Human Realm should be shut down on the very eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Chairman Mao's passing struck many users as unacceptable. A person responsible for The Human Realm said: Better to be a martyr than to play the servile scholar. The website may have been shut down, but the flame of our conviction will not be extinguished.

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II.  ESSAY

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From The Human Realm to Renjing.net; From "One Person" to "A Group of People"

Left Review · September 12, 2026, 08:05 · By Tu Men

After Renjing.net was shut down, its editor-in-chief Feizhou composed a ci poem under the title "The Fallen," casting an administrative act as a death suffered in a state of war. This escalation in narrative strategy points to the key that unlocks the intellectual bond between Liu Jiming and Renjing.net: the two characters renjing—"the human realm"—name not merely a website but a whole political image distilled out of literary creation, one that, in the instant of "falling in battle," completed its transformation from a literary sign into a political one.

I. The Human Realm: How a Novel Became the "Matrix" of a Body of Thought

The novel The Human Realm, published in 2016, holds a pivotal place in Liu Jiming's body of work. Critics have regarded it as a founding work of "New Socialist Literature," taking up the socialist literary tradition of Liu Qing's The Builders and Hao Ran's Bright Sunny Skies. Its protagonist, Ma La, after riding the swells of the business world and suffering a spell in prison, returns to his home village of Shenhuangzhou, organizes the "One Heart Cooperative," and sets out to explore whether a collective economy might be rebuilt. Ten years later, in May 2026, Liu Jiming visited Nanjie Village, where he shook hands and posed for a photograph with "Squad Leader" Wang Hongbin beneath the slogan "Serve the People," and held an in-depth exchange with him. Some commentators called the meeting "an encounter between two idealists."

This narrative frame already contains the germ of the Renjing.net that Liu Jiming would go on to found: a subject who "goes against the current," building an alternative form of collective organization within a space eroded on two fronts, by capital and by power. It mirrors Ma La in the novel, who "presses upstream against adversity," facing every kind of unfavorable condition—"farmland lying abandoned in the countryside, the draining away of labor, capital moving into the villages, the setbacks of socialism on a world scale." This tragic heroism of "doing what one knows cannot be done" was transplanted almost untouched into the positioning of Renjing.net—forming a structural correspondence with Liu Jiming's public role as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and a critical intellectual.

More telling still is the meaning carried by the word renjing itself. It is drawn from Tao Yuanming's line, "I built my hut in the human realm, yet hear no clamor of carriage and horse," but in Liu Jiming's usage the image is charged with a wholly new cultural-political content. Renjing points to "the condition of the people"—the lived circumstances of those at the bottom under the logic of capital, and the question of how "the people," as a political subject, might recover a voice. In taking over this name, the website signaled its intent to convert the concept of "the people" constructed in literature into a political signifier waiting to be filled.

II. From the Practice of "One Person" to the Practice of "A Group of People"

Some have compared Liu Jiming to Pun Ngai, the scholar long concerned with labor, but what sets Liu Jiming's practice apart among contemporary left-wing intellectuals is that it was never confined to solitary study or writing at a desk: he moved from the practice of "one person" to the practice of "a group of people." In 2017 he broke with the literary establishment; in 2020 he founded Midstream Magazine; in 2022 he advanced the concept of "the People's Left," setting off a debate in left-wing thought; in 2023 he founded a writing workshop; in 2024 Renjing.net went live. The trajectory is unmistakable.

The founding of the writing workshop especially repays analysis. Its stated aim of cultivating "red writers" required students to pass "the gate of feeling, the gate of standpoint, the gate of language," and raised these to the level of "class consciousness and the tempering of revolutionary will." At the graduation ceremony Liu Jiming stressed that the workshop "cares not only whether you write a good essay, but whether you can hold firm to communist conviction." Writing, in other words, was redefined as a form of political training, literary skill made subordinate to class standpoint.

Renjing.net institutionalized this logic: through a linked "workshop-website" model it trained its own authors, achieving a "self-generating" cultural production. In July 2026, Renjing.net was thoroughly reorganized, with outstanding graduates of the workshop stepping into editorial and managerial leadership—read by observers as "an institutional arrangement Liu Jiming made to keep the website from veering off course."

The significance of this step goes beyond the running of a platform. What it sought to build was a mechanism of cultural reproduction independent of the mainstream media system—editors, managers, and authors all emerging from the workshop, the readership cultivated within its own circles. Once such a mechanism begins to turn, "the front" ceases to be a mere figure of speech and becomes an organizational form capable of perpetuating itself, converting the practice of one person into the practice of a group.

III. The Politics of Naming: "Neither Wholly With Nor Wholly Apart"

The predicament of Renjing.net is rooted in part in the very tension the name renjing carries. As one analysis noted, Renjing.net "shares with official mainstream discourse such core symbols as 'red,' 'revolution,' and 'the laboring people,' while in its concrete interpretations it keeps a certain critical distance."

This posture of being "neither wholly with nor wholly apart" was no accidental tactic but an extension of the inner logic of The Human Realm. In the novel, Ma La's rebuilding of the cooperative draws its legitimacy from the shared symbol of "socialism," yet its concrete practice—organizing a collective economy against the tide, in an age of capital moving into the countryside—constitutes a swerve away from the established order. The shared symbol provides the opening through which one may speak; the critical interpretation marks off the distance from mainstream discourse.

The website carried this logic forward: it took "red," "revolution," and "the laboring people" as its core vocabulary, yet steered them toward a direction other than the official reading. Liu Jiming stated this position plainly in the "People's Left debate," faulting the nationalist left for "abandoning the 'total theory' of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" and thereby leaving the left "like water without a source, a tree without roots." He was attempting, that is, to redefine the left through "genuine Marxism-Leninism-Maoism," and to draw a sharp line between himself and the "People's Left."

To name is to draw a boundary. The very name "Renjing.net" was a declaration of a positioning distinct from that of most left-wing platforms. Where the latter play the role of a "bridge"—speaking from within the mainstream framework—the "front" implied by renjing points toward an independent cultural production. Once that capacity for independent production began to operate as an organization, the activation of the logic of governance came as no surprise.

IV. The "Narrative of the Fallen": The Re-Politicization of a Literary Sign

After Renjing.net was shut down, Liu Jiming composed two ci poems in a relatively restrained key: "Do not lament that the front lies scattered; / why fear the frost-wind's battering— / the seed of fire was never spent." The response of the website's editor-in-chief Feizhou and deputy editor Yunkai—Liu Jiming's own students from the writing workshop—ran far hotter: under the title "The Fallen," the imagery rose from "the seed of fire" to "blood and sword."

The construction of this "narrative of the fallen" completed the final transformation of renjing from literary sign to political sign. In the novel, Ma La's cooperative is at last swept away by a flood, yet he keeps his dignity in defeat—an intertext with the figure of the "hero in his twilight years" in the poems Liu Jiming wrote after the website's closure. Renjing is no longer a space waiting to be filled with content; it has become a symbol that must be defended. When supporters describe the event with lines like "though dead, still living, they pass on the torch" and "the seed of fire was never spent," what they are in fact doing is using the tragic narrative of literature to absorb a political setback.

When renjing—a literary concept describing "the condition of the people"—turns into a political symbol commemorated through "falling in battle," the loop of Liu Jiming's intellectual trajectory closes: literature furnishes the imagination, organization furnishes the vehicle, and falling in battle furnishes the meaning. As one commentator observed, the website can be deregistered and the domain reclaimed, but "renjing," as a sign that has already entered the circulation of discourse, may find that its political and cultural life is only now beginning—just as Feizhou wrote in his "Fallen" poem: "Today you seal us in; / tomorrow we split open heaven and earth."

The literary rhetoric of that line cannot conceal its political imagination: a prophecy that an alternative future will, in the end, arrive. This confidence in a historical teleology is precisely the core inheritance Liu Jiming has drawn from the left-wing cultural tradition. As a platform, Renjing.net's life has come to a full stop; but its practice, from "one person" to "a group of people," has left a deep rut and endless illumination in the contemporary left-wing movement. It is, therefore, less an ending than a new beginning.

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III.  POEM

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To the Tune "The Moon over the West River": On the Closing of Renjing.net

Renjing.net · By Sheshui Nongfu · September 9, 2026

When the human world is unjust, it cries out;

the harder the circumstance, the firmer it stands.

Forever it voiced the workers and farmers aloud,

its heart set on pressing forward, yielding to none.

Two years steeped in the red,

and a cohort of writers came forth.

Though dead, still living, they pass on the torch—

from this day, the seeds of fire spread on and on.

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IV.  A VETERAN SPEAKS

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Renjing.net Is Banned; Gu Zhenghua, a Hundred-Year-Old Veteran of the New Fourth Army, Speaks Out: You Cannot Cover the Mouths of the People!

Tian Qingqing (person in charge of Renjing.net) · September 19, 2026

This past Wednesday, together with red comrades from Wuhan, I went to visit Comrade Gu Zhenghua, a hundred-year-old veteran of the New Fourth Army. Though ailing and able only to rest in bed at home, the old man was overjoyed to see us all, and could still call out each of our names one by one. Spotting me in the crowd, he at once reached out his right hand, grasped mine warmly, and asked: "Has Renjing.net really been shut down?" When he learned that Renjing.net had been shut down on September 8, 2026, the old man was filled with indignation and said in a loud voice: "Renjing.net is a progressive website that holds firm to Marxism, and it is dearly loved by the broad masses. You cannot cover the mouths of the people—those who carry on like this will not last long!"

I conveyed to the old man the greetings of all the comrades of Renjing.net. Gu cannot hear, so I could only write it down for him to read; when he had finished reading, he said: "Whenever you need me to do something, tell me—I support it all. Let me sign my name, as a show of support!" And with that he solemnly signed his name.

Watching this, I was deeply moved. I thought of the last words of the late Wei Wei—"Continue the revolution, never surrender!"—and my faith in communism grew all the firmer.

Seeing how stirred Gu had become, the nurse, worried it might affect his health, came in to remind us that he had been thinking of our visit and had woken especially early that day. To let the old man rest sooner, we took our leave early. As we walked out of the room, Gu again shook hands with each of us in farewell.

Gu was born in 1926. As a primary-school pupil he resisted Japanese students and went off to join the New Fourth Army; with his unit he braved death again and again, defeated the Japanese, drove Old Chiang onto the island, and with his own hands helped liberate his own home city—Wuhan. After the founding of New China, Gu threw himself wholeheartedly into the revolutionary construction of Hubei. As Gu put it: "From my teens onward, my life, my studies, my interests, my everything—all of it has been bound up with the Communist Party." Most admirable of all, in his later years Gu joined the veteran revolutionary Comrade Li Erzhong, former governor of Hubei Province, in taking up the pen as a banner and the internet as a platform, vigorously carrying forward Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Writing under the pen name "Chou Niu" (Ox), he produced powerful essays such as "The Black Brick Kilns—Where Does the Blackness Lie?", "One Photograph, One Era, the Great Contest of Two Classes," "The Long, Long Road of the 'Mass Line' and the Long, Long Road of the Masses' Petitions," "The Last Mile of the State-Owned Enterprise—Where Does It Go?", and "Reflections on '12.26'"—exposing the harsh persecution suffered by worker and peasant masses in enterprise restructuring, forced demolitions, and other struggles to defend their rights. For nearly fifty years he has cried out for the ordinary people and fought for the truth. On his hundredth birthday, this century-old revolutionary veteran called out to the red comrades who had come from across the country to "carry the revolution through to the end, never halting," urging everyone to defend Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, and to go on "opposing imperialism and revisionism."

The banning of Renjing.net is no isolated incident. It is a long-premeditated "extermination" of believers in communism by the historical nihilists—a dictatorship of one class over another. But the laws of history tell us that a just cause will not stop advancing because it is banned. As the old man said: "You cannot cover the mouths of the people!"

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V.  EDITOR'S NOTE

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Editor's Note — Revisiting One of Chairman Mao's Judgments: Revisionism and Fascist Dictatorship

After Renjing.net was banned, a reader, in the course of discussion, cited words of Chairman Mao's: that once revisionism takes power it is capitalism—the worst kind of capitalism—and it is fascism. Others asked whether these were Mao's exact words. It is worth establishing the sources, so that the judgment may stand on firmer ground.

This widely circulated saying, in its polished "quotation" form, is of somewhat uncertain word-for-word provenance. But the thought it expresses is Mao's own, line for line, and can be traced to formal documents.

First, on January 30, 1962, speaking at the Enlarged Central Work Conference—the "Seven Thousand Cadres Conference"—Mao said: "If a socialist economy is not built, what sort of situation would result? The country would become a revisionist state, would in effect become a bourgeois state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat would be transformed into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie—and one that is reactionary, of a fascist kind."

Second, in May 1963, in his "Comment on Seven Good Reports from Zhejiang Province Concerning Cadres Taking Part in Labor," Mao warned that should the enemy corrupt and infiltrate the ranks, "the Marxist-Leninist party would surely become a revisionist party, would become a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its color."

The chain, then—revisionism, dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, fascist dictatorship—was a judgment Mao himself set forth again and again; it is no later embellishment. Revisited today, it strikes one as all the more grave and clear-eyed: the encirclement and suppression of believers in communism by the historical nihilists, the dictatorship of one class over another, is precisely the confirmation of this judgment in our own time.

You cannot cover the mouths of the people. Truth does not lose its force because it is banned; in being banned, its edge only shows the sharper.

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A Record Concerning Copies of 

the Black and White Anthology Sent into China

Vero Publishing

After the anthology Black and White: A Research Anthology came off the press, we sent twelve copies into mainland China.

Of the twelve, only one arrived—reaching Mr. Liu Jiming, and in an early edition that had not yet gone through our rounds of revision. Professor Kong Qingdong, who wrote the preface to this book, never received the volume that carries his own preface; the copies due to the editors of Renjing.net were all detained at customs, not one delivered.

We set this down plainly—not to protest, but to place it on record.

An anthology gathering more than a hundred and sixty essays by readers, scholars, the author, and the translator; a book Professor Kong Qingdong called "a demon-revealing mirror, a monumental milestone"—twelve copies sent in, eleven turned back. The very tightness of that net is itself an answer to this book: writing that truly had no power would not need to be guarded against so fiercely. What they held back was not paper, but the thing they feared.

Yet there is one thing they cannot hold back: this book now exists. It is registered in the international bibliographic record under the name of Vero Publishing; its digital edition passes from reader to reader; and the "people's verdict" it preserves has already entered the record of time. Customs may confiscate the physical copies sent in, but it cannot erase the book from the memory of the world.

A book passes quietly from hand to hand; a company has already set out.

The iron net will rust. The book will remain.