What to do when the law and basic humanity are in opposition? The Chinese internet has an answer: “Aim the rifle an inch higher” (枪口抬高一厘米, qiāngkǒu táigāo yī límǐ). The phrase is shorthand for subverting orders that violate one’s conscience.
“Aim the rifle an inch higher” has its origin in historical fact. In 1992, two former East German border guards were convicted of fatally shooting Chris Gueffroy as he fled across the no man’s land that divided East and West Berlin. While rendering the guilty verdict, the presiding judge of the trial stated: “At the end of the 20th century, no one has the right to ignore his conscience when it comes to killing people on behalf of the power structure.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an apocryphal version of the German judge’s closing statement began to circulate on the Chinese internet: “You had the power to aim your rifle one inch higher.” The phrase’s true origin stretches back even further, to the 1954 film “Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze.” In that film, a veteran Nationalist soldier advises a new recruit not to shoot to kill at advancing Communist troops so as to accrue potential amnesty in case they are defeated and taken prisoner: “When we’re in battle, aim your rifle an inch higher; that’s how you accumulate hidden merit.”
The phrase is now ubiquitous. As rapt Chinese netizens watched South Korean civilians block the military from occupying the National Assembly in Seoul last week—scenes that brought to mind the “Tank Man” of 1989—some commentators mocked the military’s restraint. In a now-censored essay, one author hailed the South Korean military’s decision not to use force, noting it as a real-life example of “aiming the rifle an inch higher.” Some have also used the phrase metaphorically to encourage China’s domestic security forces or online censors to shirk their duties so as to allow citizens greater freedom of expression. In a note addressed to China’s internet police after authorities shut down a 2016 in-person symposium of former Tsinghua University Red Guards, organizer Sun Nutao wrote:
“As ordinary internet police, to make a living and put food on the table, you have no choice but to perform bad deeds such as surveilling us, censoring our posts, or even demanding that we shut down this symposium. But if you’ve still got any conscience left, you could turn a blind eye to our online symposium. You could ‘aim the rifle an inch higher.’ I hope that you do not fully suppress your conscience, and instead remember to aim the rifle an inch higher.” [Chinese]
Some Chinese commentators have taken issue with the "aiming high" formulation. In 2011, the late blogger Zhang Rengang argued that the concept of “aiming high,” if taken to its logical conclusion, is pernicious: "If the law requires us to weigh [the morality] of everything we do, eventually even things explicitly permitted under the law will be liable to ex post facto punishment under the hazy doctrine of ‘conscience.’ In such a society, no one apart from priggish moralists and hypocritical preachers will dare to stand up for their own inalienable freedoms." Zhang’s argument holds that liberal adoption of "aim high" actually grants more power to the state.
In another essay published in 2011, the writer Chang Ping similarly argued that while "aim high" makes sense as "weapon of the weak" used as a means of strategic resistance to authoritarian terror, it should not ever replace a true system of just laws: "As Marx once wrote, ‘The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons.’ As such, ‘popular wisdoms’ [like ‘aiming high’] should never divert us from the pursuit of clear, principled justice."
“Aiming high” has also been deployed cynically. In an interview translated by CDT in October, a Gen Z internet censor pointed out the phrase was a fiction, and argued they had no personal culpability for silencing the voices of others:
A: Yup. I’ve never felt guilty. It’s just a job. And if I’m going to do it, I should do it well. It’s really uncommon for anyone to “aim high.” I doubt that really happened. It sounds like some intellectual dreamed it up. Could anything like that happen in real life?
That phrase “aim your rifle an inch higher” must have originated from the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? All day long, those guards were trained to do this or do that. That sort of environment must have completely eroded their sense of morality. There’s no way they’d ever shoot to miss. And if a soldier did dare shoot to miss, and got caught by a superior officer, can you imagine what they’d do to him? And how few people would even care? [Source]
