Explosive! Xi Jinping Encounters a Large-Scale Fiscal Noncooperation Movement

Explosive! Xi Jinping Encounters a Large-Scale Fiscal Noncooperation Movement

[People News] At the very beginning of the new year, New Year’s Eve events were canceled across the country; CCP stability-maintenance forces carried out dense arrests in public places and banned fireworks. On the other hand, an unexpected “revolution” quietly arose on the Douyin platform: 50 million Chinese smokers collectively announced that they would quit smoking, launching the first online, non-violent noncooperation movement of the new year. Its slogan is clear, simple, thorough, and highly unified: “Don’t support those grandsons!”

The Party bans fireworks; the people quit tobacco. These two scenes form an ironic contrast, yet they reflect the doomsday fissures of the CCP’s totalitarian era.

Residents’ Wealth Shrinks by 200 Trillion in Three Years; Tobacco Price Hikes Ignite a Quit-Smoking Revolution

The trigger of the incident appears ordinary. The CCP officially announced that starting January 1, 2026, tobacco prices would be raised by 20%, and the sale of low-priced cigarettes under 10 yuan would be halted. This is not merely a price adjustment; it is a dimensionality-reduction strike against Chinese smokers.

In the past, a pack of cigarettes at 10 yuan, one pack a day, amounted to 3,650 yuan a year. Now, low-priced cigarettes are forcibly removed from the market; smokers estimate that the premium on low-priced cigarettes will exceed 20%. If a pack costs 15 yuan, that is 5,475 yuan a year—directly burning one to two months of wages for third- and fourth-tier cities.

As China’s economy declines, all industries face a major depression, and public wealth has shrunk drastically. A recent article on mainland Caixin titled “The Mystery of Economic Temperature Differences” revealed that over the past three years, Chinese residents’ wealth has evaporated by more than 200 trillion yuan, mainly due to the collapse of the real estate market. Because it directly hit the CCP’s economic pain points, the article was quickly taken down.

On December 25, Zhao Jian, president of the China Western Economic Research Institute, published an article titled “The Mystery of Temperature Differences,” incisively pointing out: “One of the main contradictions of China’s economy today is the contradiction between the more than 200 trillion yuan of national wealth shrinkage over the past three years and the 20 trillion yuan GDP growth. Because micro-level individuals are heavily affected by wealth shrinkage, macro-level GDP growth is difficult in the short term to make up for the wealth losses and translate them into a sense of gain for micro-level individuals.” “That is to say, three consecutive years of 5% GDP growth, with a total increment of 20 trillion yuan in national output, cannot make up for the more than 200 trillion yuan total wealth shrinkage caused by three consecutive years of housing price adjustments.”

Both articles strike at the core of the CCP’s economic execution system: GDP surges by 20 trillion yuan, yet the public’s lived experience is “ice and fire”—high unemployment, weak consumption, halved property values, sharply reduced incomes for ordinary people, and more middle-class wealth evaporating overnight, falling from tens of millions to deep debt.

The articles further expose the “water content” in CCP statistical data and the injustice of wealth distribution. CCP party media proclaim an improving economy, with emerging industries such as AI and biomedicine surging forward and cultural and tourism consumption booming as never before. Yet people at the bottom shiver in an economic winter, feeling only the humiliation and helplessness of mounting loans and negative credit records.

Facing massive mortgages, life pressures, and systemic distribution injustice, a pack of 10-yuan cigarettes was perhaps the greatest daily comfort for many migrant workers, food-delivery riders, and flexibly employed workers. Now the sheep are skin and bones, yet the CCP still intensifies its shearing. Even this small bit of “little happiness” in ordinary people’s eyes has been ruthlessly stripped away by Party Mother.

“Smoking Is Supporting the Grandsons! Quitting Smoking Supports the Sons”

China’s tobacco industry operates under a state monopoly system. The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China National Tobacco Corporation are “one organization, two nameplates,” combining government and enterprise, vertically led, and highly monopolized. The tobacco system is a typical model of “family-style” and “inbreeding” operations; living off tobacco, personnel corruption has formed an unshakable, generationally inherited chain of interests.

Fallen “tobacco tigers and tobacco flies,” such as Yu Yundong, former director of the Yunnan Tobacco Monopoly Bureau; Pan Jiahua, former Party group member of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and former head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s resident inspection team; Ling Chengxing, former director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration; and Chen Wenzhu, former director of the Shanwei Tobacco Bureau in Guangdong, all had “family-style corruption” networks that were deeply rooted and intertwined, shocking to behold.

The phenomenon of “second-generation tobacco” and “third-generation tobacco” within the tobacco system is extremely serious and egregious. Together with second-generation tax officials, second-generation police, and second-generation state-owned enterprise officials, they form a systemic parasitic ecosystem of interests within the CCP system. In 2023, a video circulated online in which a self-proclaimed third-generation tobacco scion flaunted wealth and showed off. His parents gave him a monthly allowance of as much as 200,000 yuan; his family owned seven or eight apartments; he wore luxury brands and raced luxury cars. After the video was released, netizens sighed and were furious.

China’s tobacco industry is a high-profit monopoly sector, yet from 2018 to 2020 it recorded consecutive annual losses totaling about 4 billion yuan, including a loss of 2.28 billion yuan in 2019. Netizens mocked: “Tobacco people are generation after generation steadfastly guarding this severely loss-making industry. Success really isn’t the accumulation of just one generation.”

As China’s overall economy rapidly declines and local finances are stretched thin, the tobacco industry can hardly remain immune. Tobacco officials, and the children and grandchildren of second and third generations, redouble their efforts and use every possible means to make black-hearted money. Numerous Douyin videos reveal many hidden tricks in the quality of domestic cigarettes. For example, domestic brands burn significantly faster than imported cigarettes. An imported cigarette takes seven minutes to burn out, while a domestic cigarette, due to added combustion aids, burns out in just four minutes. Domestic cigarettes contain large amounts of reconstituted tobacco leaf; some netizens mistakenly think it is paper. Veteran smokers explain that it is not paper—it is reused material made by crushing leftover cigarette butts, stems, and the like. What we are smoking is essentially a piece of chemical waste with a trademark.

Tens of thousands of smokers have spoken out on social media, striking straight at the CCP’s throat. “Smoking is supporting the grandsons! Quitting smoking supports the sons.” “Not for anything else, just to fight for a breath of dignity. I don’t want to support these grandsons anymore.” “Because you smoke to support them, they use the capital you provided to harm your descendants.” “Supporting those grandsons—eight hours a day, ten or twenty thousand a month, plus year-end bonuses. We grandpas screw bolts more than ten hours a day, monthly wages three or four thousand, tired like dogs. From the 1st, I quit smoking.” “Quitting smoking is an act of conscience.” “On January 1, all I see are people quitting smoking.” “Join the quitting army—already 60 million.” …

Many smokers have truly understood and awakened. You ban fireworks; I quit tobacco leaves. After cutting off supplies comes cutting off cigarettes—who hurts more, who feels it more, only they know.

Late-CCP Anti-Smoking Movement: 300 Million Smokers Dismantle the CCP’s Fiscal Support Chain

From the late Qing to the late CCP, livelihood and political-economic crises triggered by anti-smoking movements seem to be undergoing a century-long historical cycle.

Public data show that by the end of 2025, China has more than 300 million smokers, accounting for nearly one-third of the world’s total smokers. More than half of adult men smoke, and one out of every three cigarettes is consumed by Chinese people.

How much tax is in a pack of cigarettes? Luo Xiang, a law professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing, said: “What counterfeit goods do we have interest in cracking down on? Right now, what we mainly crack down on are fake cigarettes and fake liquor. Do you know why? Because fake cigarettes and fake liquor infringe on national interests—that’s the essence. A pack of ordinary cigarettes has to pay 45% consumption tax, 17% value-added tax, and other circulation taxes. For a 10-yuan pack of cigarettes, the cost may not even reach one yuan. The more you smoke, the more you contribute to the state. My personal awareness is too low. Many years ago I quit smoking. Once I saw how much tax I had to pay to the state, I quit smoking.”

Before this tax increase, taxes accounted for 55%–60% of an ordinary pack of cigarettes. After the tax increase and the ban on low-priced cigarettes on New Year’s Day 2026, taxes in an ordinary pack will stabilize at 70%–72%, significantly higher than before the adjustment.

CCP propagandist Jin Canrong once proudly claimed that China’s annual tobacco tax revenue equals its annual military expenditure—that is, hundreds of millions of smokers sacrifice their health to support the CCP’s national defense construction. Today, the CCP’s treasury is tight, yet military spending continues to grow at over 7%. Raising tobacco taxes aims to provide the CCP with sustainable funding for reckless militarism.

The CCP’s military is a Party-guard army. Interpreted in Xi Jinping’s words, it exists to seize the country and strike the people, to sit on the country and sit on the people. On New Year’s Eve of January 1, 2026, in Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, Ningbo, and other cities, military and police forces treated the situation as a major threat, densely deploying in city squares and key roads, standing ready for action. Police-civilian clashes occurred in many places. In the end, aren’t these stability-maintenance costs paid out of treasury tax revenues?

In 2024, China’s tobacco industry contributed approximately 1.6 trillion yuan in industrial and commercial taxes and profits, while China’s military budget that year was about 1.67 trillion yuan. Although there is no direct linkage, as a fiscal pillar the tobacco industry is roughly equivalent to supporting the military system. It is therefore promoted as a “patriotic industry”: a pack of cigarettes equals buying rivets for an aircraft carrier and bullets for the military and police.

People lament that the blood-and-sweat money of ordinary citizens supports these “lords and their grandsons,” as well as CCP enforcers. Many smokers, when posting videos online announcing collective quitting, said that the taxes they paid through smoking are no longer “bullets fired at the enemy,” but “bullets fired at themselves”—hurting not only the lungs but also the heart. They call on everyone to unite and quit smoking so as not to support these “grandsons.”

This quitting-smoking movement can be called a tax revolt. It represents the collective awakening of the Chinese people and a silent counterattack by those at the bottom against the CCP system. In recent years, from young people “lying flat,” to the middle class cutting off payments, to smokers quitting, a nationwide noncooperation movement is escalating in an orderly manner. The CCP’s fiscal support chain and economic fundamentals are being profoundly dismantled.

The Greatest Enemy of Totalitarianism Is Not Opposition, but Refusal

In his book The Power of the Powerless, Václav Havel pointed out: “If the pillars of society are living within a lie, then living within the truth must inevitably threaten it at its very foundation. That is why this crime is punished more severely than any other.” Havel believed that citizens’ disobedience and noncooperation with lies and evil governance, and their insistence on living in truth and reality, would ultimately lead to the collapse of totalitarianism. In fact, this is precisely how communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe eventually collapsed in the last century.

At this moment in history, Chinese smokers, relying on steadfast willpower to overcome the physiological shackles of nicotine addiction and resolutely quit smoking, are not merely achieving personal health self-redemption. They also mark a profound cognitive awakening and fearlessness toward the CCP, writing a powerful expression of public opinion that firmly resists the CCP system.

The diversification and resilience of grassroots resistance models foreshadow the wildfire of popular upheaval, which may ignite suddenly from any dark corner of society or any seemingly trivial livelihood issue. Grassroots resistance movements are maturing and gathering momentum, and may at any time evolve into a systematic wave of national political transformation.

2026 is destined to be extraordinary.

(First published by People News) △