On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping, the top leader of the CPC, has recently launched a campaign to “learn and educate about the history of the Party”. This is the first Time in the history of the Communist Party that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has launched a party history study and Education campaign in its name. According to some analysts, the move aims to further consolidate Xi’s “one” authority and elevate him to the same status as Mao and Deng, paving the way for him to remain in power at the 20th Communist Party Congress in 2022 and unifying the Party’s thinking.
Reinforcing Xi Jinping’s “One Honored” Status
The Communist Party’s Xinhua News Agency reported on Feb. 24 that the Communist Party’s Leading Group for Party History Study and Education issued a notice on the same day about seriously studying and implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech at the mobilization meeting for Party history study and education.
The notice said that Xi attended the mobilization meeting of Party history study and education on Feb. 20 and delivered an important speech, and that carrying out good Party history study and education is important for “promoting the Party’s in-depth study and understanding of Xi Jinping’s thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era” and “striving to seize the great victory of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. It is of great guiding significance”.
The notice also asked the CPC to “unify thoughts and actions to the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech”, “to study and implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech as an important political task at present to grasp”, “to further learn to understand and do. “to further learn to understand and understand to do the actual Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and constantly enhance the “four consciousness”, firm “four self-confidence”, to achieve the “two maintenance The “four consciousnesses”, “four self-confidence” and “two safeguards” will be strengthened.
Hu Ping, a U.S.-based political commentator and editor-in-chief emeritus of Beijing Spring magazine, told VOA that Xi is expected to use the 100th anniversary of the CPC’s founding to launch a new version of the party’s history, and that the party history study and education campaign is a prelude to this, reinforcing Xi’s central leadership position as the “one” in the party.
The Communist Party has always attached great importance to party history,” he said, “and in 1938 Stalin launched a history of the party after the purge, establishing the Stalinist line. The first time I saw the film, I was able to get to know it. He (Xi Jinping) will take the opportunity of this 100th anniversary to launch a new version of Party history to further strengthen the status of Xi Jinping as ‘one honored’ and the so-called ‘one honored’ status of Xi Jinping’s thought, to reach the same status as Stalin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping back then. and Deng Xiaoping.”
Li Nanyang, the daughter of Mao’s former secretary Li Rui and a Writer who has broken with the Communist Party, told VOA that Xi Jinping is a man who only knows how to “drop books” and has no ideas of his own, and only knows how to wield power and authority.
She said: “I am not interested in everything he proposes to change, one moment is what to return to traditional Chinese Culture, another moment is to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Hua Guofeng, and now …… The only sole purpose of what he has done is to take a position that is simply incompetent and use the power he holds in his hands to turn it into an authority that is out of this world. He can only become a joke.”
The history of the CCP party is the history of struggle
According to an analysis, the history of the CPC is actually a history of struggle within the party. The “ten line struggles” in the history of the CPC include Chen Duxiu’s right-leaning surrenderism, Li Lisan and Qu Qubai’s left-leaning blind movement, Luo Zhanglong’s left-leaning adventurous opportunism, Zhang Guotao’s split and Wang Ming’s separatism and left-then-right opportunism before 1949. These fierce struggles were not only at the ideological level, but even included political and military struggles within the Party, such as the AB regiment purge, the Yan’an rectification of the trial of cadres and anti-traitors and the rescue campaign, etc. The extent of these struggles was quite brutal and killed countless people.
The line struggles after the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party included Gao Gang, Rao Shushi’s anti-Party group, Peng Dehuai’s right-leaning opportunism, Liu Shaoqi’s bourgeois command, and Lin Biao’s counter-revolutionary group, among which Gao Gang committed suicide, Rao Shushi died in prison, Peng and Liu were brutally persecuted to death, and Lin Biao fled to the Soviet Union and crashed his plane.
In addition, brutal political struggles and campaigns have been incessant, from the crackdown, the three anti-fives, Hu Feng counter-revolutionary group, the purge, the anti-rightist, the four purges, the ten-year catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, and the purge of the May 16 counter-revolutionary group during the Cultural Revolution, the fight against the three anti-revolutionary groups, the criticism of Lin and Confucius, the criticism of Deng to counter the right-leaning reversal, the arrest of Jiang Qing, the “Gang of Four” and its campaign to expose and investigate And so on.
The failed policies, including the Great Leap Forward, the People’s Commune, and the overtaking of Britain to catch up with the United States, led to the death of tens of millions of people from starvation, but the Communist Party officially blamed them on the so-called “natural disasters”. In the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party deployed field troops to suppress the massacre of hundreds or more students and people. The massacre was whitewashed as a “political storm” and “political turmoil”.
Statistics on the number of unnatural deaths during the Cultural Revolution alone, including official executions, armed struggles, lynchings, suicides, and criticism, range from several million to 20 million.
According to the 2011 book “Crossfire: The Three Emancipations of Thought in Contemporary China” by Ling Zhijun (senior editor of the People’s Daily) and Ma Licheng (former director of the commentary department of the People’s Daily) published by the People’s Daily Press, and the 2011 book “The Wrongful Deaths: The Redress of Injustice” by Dong Baoxun (professor of the history department of Shandong University) and Ding Longjia (former deputy director of the Party History Research Office of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee) published by the Anhui People’s Publishing House, the number of deaths caused by the Cultural Revolution was between several million and 20 million. In 1978, after the fall of the Gang of Four, Ye Jianying, then vice chairman of the CPC Central Committee and one of the ten founding marshals, said at a central working meeting that during the Cultural Revolution, “20 million people died, 100 million people were made whole, and 800 billion yuan were wasted. “.
Analysis: control of the discourse of the whole party brainwashing
Overseas media commentary said that although the history of the Communist Party of China began in 1921, party history education will focus on the “historical achievements” made by Xi Jinping since he became the top leader of the Communist Party at the 18th National Congress in 2012. Xi’s opposition to “historical nihilism” suggests that the CCP will not allow or tolerate any views that differ from the official view of Party history.
After Xi launched an educational campaign to study Party history and stressed his opposition to historical nihilism, some netizens asked, “Does the history of the CPC stand the test of history? “Who is actually engaging in nihilism?” After Xi took power, Party history issues, including the anti-rightist and Cultural Revolution, have become taboo topics that cannot be discussed.
Hu Ping said Xi’s party history study and education is actually a way for the Communist Party to master the discourse of party history narratives, eliminate murmurs and unify the party on “Xi Thought.
He said: “His so-called opposition to historical nihilism, this doctrine and that doctrine, that is, to prohibit, of course, over the years in fact in the party history of the discussion and research has been controlled quite tightly. It is conceivable that after this year’s July 1 commemoration, on the issue of party history, more intolerant of other so-called murmurs, more to set it at ‘one respect’. The Communist Party it is by recounting history that it establishes its own status.”
Wang Juntao, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese Democratic Party and a doctor of political science at Columbia University, analyzed the campaign-style education on Party history as a “brainwashing” exercise to unify ideas.
He said: “The Chinese started with Confucius, to engage in authoritarianism, we must first rule history, rule people first to rule history, to rule the mind. Therefore, he (Xi) to establish a so-called historical perspective. In fact, he originally said not to engage in historical nihilism. His meaning is not the same as the Communist Party history. This time he wants to engage in mass education, political campaign-style education. Secondly, he may want to rectify the wind, that is, on the basis of the previous period of power struggle to begin to unify ideas. The same way as Mao Zedong. The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into.
Commemorating Hua Guofeng has a source
Wang Juntao recently tweeted that Xi Jinping’s call for a correct view of party history and the CCP’s recent high-profile commemoration of Mao Zedong’s designated successor, Hua Guofeng, foreshadow a new round of earthquakes and reshuffling in the CCP’s political arena, because revising party history will re-set some of the old scores of political struggles, and the factions and families formed after the CCP’s Cultural Revolution will be implicated.
The Chinese government’s top leader from 1976 to 1981 after the death of Mao Zedong, Hua Guofeng, insisted on the “two-forever” pro-Mao line, that is, “we firmly uphold all the decisions made by Chairman Mao; all the instructions of Chairman Mao, we have always followed. “
Deng Xiaoping, who rose to power for the third time after Mao’s death, joined forces with Hu Yaobang, then secretary-general of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Propaganda Department, and Chen Yun, a veteran of the CPC, to criticize Hua Guofeng’s “two-forever” line as an “extreme leftist error” and gradually sidelined him from the top leadership.
Wang Juntao also told Voice of America that the high-profile commemoration of Hua Guofeng may require a reinterpretation of some of the claims made in Party history. And the ideological education and rectification campaign is actually related to the big purge.
He said: “If he (Xi) really think Hua Guofeng endured the humiliation, then who did Hua Guofeng endure, if it is Deng Xiaoping this humiliation, in this direction, then it is, because the whole political edifice of China’s reform and opening up is built on the basis of the fall of Hua Guofeng, then it is the same as the political reshuffle. Now he (Xi) may want to start reorganizing the Family forces. The biggest party faction is this family power, it crosses the financial ah and so on. If you start with the re-evaluation of Hua Guofeng, you also have to reshuffle the political slate and political structure that has been formed over 30 years of reform and opening up.”
The top of the Chinese Communist Party is rumored to ban delusion about the 20th National Congress
Some commentators believe that the party history study and education initiated by Xi will continue beyond the 100th anniversary of the CCP’s founding, as part of Xi’s efforts to maintain his position as top leader at the 20th Communist Party Congress in 2022.
“In his latest YouTube program on Feb. 25 about the broader political context and background of the India-China border conflict, Hanwha Defense Review founder and overseas military commentator Ping Keefe referred to the power struggle and Xi Jinping’s attempts in the run-up to the 20th Communist Party Congress. He said that, according to his sources, the current political situation in the CCP is so bizarre that the top brass ordered a ban on anyone talking about the 20th Congress last year.
The political atmosphere in Beijing right now is very bizarre,” he said. I have obtained information that officials at the central level in Beijing issued a document that the 20th National Congress could not be discussed, that is, not to talk about the 20th National Congress. The seal is sealed to the inner and outer governments, central committee members and ministerial cadres. He, Xi Jinping, also benefited from promotion by relying on the formalization of the Party’s organization and the openness of Party discipline.
“During the Hu Jintao era, personnel issues regarding the central government, all kinds of policy issues, as long as they do not involve opposing aspects, can be discussed openly, at all levels of the party committee, and even the central government can have open discussions, general discussions. This is Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao since the party’s democratic reform continues to go very hard, can more or less still have a little forward. It can be to this year last year, the twentieth Congress of any issue can not be discussed. The twentieth Congress, including before and after is to discuss the issue. You can imagine the weirdness of the power struggle.”
Chen Xinxin, the secretary-general of the CCP’s Political and Legal Committee and a close friend of Xi Jinping, said emphatically at the mobilization meeting of the Party history study and education of the Political and Legal Committee on February 22, “We should learn valuable experience from the Party history, resolutely do ‘two maintenance’, consciously in ideology, politics and action with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Party Central Committee. We should learn from the Party’s history, resolutely achieve the ‘two safeguards’, consciously maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, and resolutely safeguard the core position of General Secretary Xi Jinping in the Party Central Committee and the Party as a whole. According to Ping, the ban on delusions of grandeur at the top of the Communist Party reflects Xi’s lack of self-confidence and his inability and inability to fully control the Communist Party, the Central Committee and the Politburo.
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