Why We Need This Victory More Than Zhang Xue | Yellow River Commentary

AI Q&A · How does Zhang Xue’s victory give ordinary people the certainty to keep striving?

Zhang Xue, galloping far ahead, firmly holds the top spot in public opinion these days.

As the interview video from 20 years ago—when he chased a car in the rain—goes viral again, in today’s discourse dominated by workplace “involution” and spreading anxiety, this entrepreneur from a poor background, with only a middle-school education and a life path full of hardships, has once again reignited public enthusiasm for traditional narratives such as grassroots counterattack and changing one’s fate against the odds. As some netizens put it, “Chinese people’s passion for the story of heroes rising from the grassroots will always be boiling with excitement.”

And just before Zhang Xue became famous, in the public discourse of recent years, these traditional narratives had actually gradually lost momentum. People were often hesitant about the idea that giving will surely bring returns and that persistence will always lead to victory—so how should we view this contrast? What collective social emotions are contained in Zhang Xue’s rise to fame?

Grassroots Narrative 2.0

Actually, if Zhang Xue had failed, his painful experiences early on might have become material for some pessimists: no matter how hard a boy from the bottom tries, he cannot escape the fate of capital controlling the board and class solidifying.

To some extent, Zhang Xue’s popularity reconstructs the traditional narrative of grassroots counterattack. As mentioned above, in recent years, the public has largely looked down on narrative styles that promote grassroots counterattack and individual breakthroughs, seeing them as nothing more than watered-down spiritual chicken soup. This is because the social soil on which grassroots survival depends has been undergoing profound changes; the old yardsticks for evaluation and the old mechanisms for delivering on promises no longer fit.

For most people, the traditional example of grassroots counterattack that leads to financial freedom is the generations of entrepreneurs who grew up alongside reform and opening-up. They used their personal courage, perspective, and decisiveness to leap hard at the turning points of the era, achieving major class mobility. What they relied on was the fact that China’s economy was in a takeoff phase, with blank space in the market. But Zhang Xue’s era is completely different. As economic and social development has entered a mature stage, the market space that used to be relatively easy to capture has already reached its peak. Take the motorcycle manufacturing industry, for instance: it is a mature market monopolized by industry giants like Honda and Ducati for decades. It’s not just motorcycles—over the past few years, grassroots entrepreneurs in other high-end areas such as artificial intelligence and chips have faced similar conditions as well. When constrained by monopolies and being “choked at the neck,” the traditional traits of grassroots narratives—being bold and meticulous—have very limited room to play their role.

In the future, grassroots may no longer represent opportunism and luck, but instead a kind of steadiness and the power of accumulation. The future exemplar of the grassroots will not be the kind of rough-and-ready hero who can conquer ground in business empires purely through luck and audacity. On the contrary, he must be calm, persistent, resilient, and highly professional—breaking the status quo in stock/existing markets, and finally waiting out the moment when clouds part and the moon appears.

Grand Narratives and a “New Way” of Personal Striving

In recent years, the public has become wary of certain hollow grand narratives. Just as after winning the championship, when faced with reporters’ “leading interview questions,” Zhang Xue didn’t go along; instead, he joked that he hadn’t received any local financial backing in actual, tangible terms.

In an objective sense, Zhang Xue’s success is inseparable from the advantages of Chongqing’s industrial clusters. As disclosed, Chongqing has 51 motorcycle complete-vehicle enterprises above a designated size, and more than 410 parts companies. Supporting capabilities for major components such as engines, clutches, frames, shock absorbers, wheel hubs, tires, and instruments are relatively complete, and the local supporting rate for fuel motorcycles exceeds 80%. These are precisely the foundation that China’s complete manufacturing system has laid to help individual striving.

Judging from the cheers for the “miracle” achieved by China’s motorcycle manufacturing industry after Zhang Xue won, it’s clear that the public still holds deep respect for grand narratives. But what the public hopes for is not hollow calls or moralizing lectures—it wants to see grand narratives and individual striving mutually validate each other through real life. This shows that in the future, people’s belief in grand narratives will become a tangle of “you influence me, and I influence you.” It may not attract attention on ordinary days, but when every ordinary individual stands at the crossroads of fate and makes a choice, these narratives will silently dedicate themselves to injecting strength into personal breakthroughs. And individual striving will become the most real, tangible flesh and blood of grand narratives.

In short, today’s favor toward the grassroots by destiny is no longer a “heaven-sent benevolent patron,” but rather China’s economic and social development naturally playing out in the course of its own growth. People are not that they don’t believe in changing one’s fate against the odds; what they worry about is that individual effort may turn into a kind of suffering-as-aesthetic. Therefore, while continuing to encourage individuals to break through, how to provide more solid supporting strength for individuals is clearly a question worth deep thought.

Compared with Zhang Xue needing to win, it’s more that ordinary people need to use Zhang Xue to complete their own “championship.” This kind of victory is about finding a sense of certainty through Zhang Xue’s story—this certainty is a confirmation of the notion that “if you pay, you will reap a return.”

And today, this confirmation is especially worth cherishing for our society.

Commentator: Li Ming Editor: Yang Zimeng Proofreader: Yang Hefang