The Cult of Xi

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

Many people have asked us in recent years to share more about the wave of rabid persecution sweeping China. They are genuinely confused about why it is happening and they have requested we share the reasons behind the current situation. Normally, we prefer to share encouraging testimonies with you about the great things God is doing in China and throughout Asia. Now, however, we feel it is time to also report on the reality of the horrific situation that is unfolding in China.

For several years we have warned about the massive increase of persecution in China, and that many Chinese church leaders have described the situation as even worse than during the evil events of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). 

Recently, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. In this and future newsletters, we will take a look at some of their “achievements,” and we will reveal who we believe is the Great Hero of the last century in China. 

It is not our desire or intention to become political statesmen. We exist to serve the Church in Asia, but sometimes in order to give a clear view of what is happening to God’s people, we have to share the bigger picture of what is happening in the country, as it affects the Gospel. 

The problem is that in China, everything is framed in political terms by the Communist Party. They see everything as a massive ideological struggle. If someone doesn’t obey them, they are an enemy of the state. If a foreign Christian wants to reach people for Jesus, they are considered spies and imperialists; and over the years tens of thousands of pastors who refused to bow their knee to the atheistic system have been imprisoned and tortured as counter-revolutionaries.

The China We Love. It has been said that the 21st century will be China’s century; the time when they will rise up to lead the world, replacing Western powers as the dominant force in global economics, culture, and military might.

We want to start by stating that we love China and the Chinese people! They have so many wonderful God-given gifts and natural talents, and have been kind and hospitable to us for over three decades. The great Chinese civilization has changed the world in countless ways, with just four of their inventions being the compass, paper, printing, and gunpowder.

If the Chinese people themselves would rise to global prominence in the coming decades, we would not be upset. Their sharp minds, strong work ethic, and ability to solve problems is extraordinary.

But there is a major problem. One hundred years ago, in a leafy suburb of Shanghai, a small group of just 12 men (representing 57 members nationwide) met together to discuss establishing a new political party in China. Among them was a balding, round-faced peasant named Mao Zedong, from rural Hunan Province.

 A Room full of Fools. At the inaugural meeting, the group discussed various philosophies and were especially attracted to the teachings of a German man named Karl Marx, who had died nearly 40 years earlier. His father, Heinrich, was a liberal Christian who had Karl and his siblings baptized in the state Evangelical Church of Prussia.

Marx had written a Communist manifesto to outline his philosophies. One of the foundation stones of his belief was that “religion is the opium of the people.” He hated religion, especially Christianity, and saw it as an obstacle to achieving the societal changes he wished to bring about. 

The founding members of the Chinese Communist Party adopted Marx’s teachings as the bedrock of their new system. There would be no room for religion in their new China. In so doing, they set themselves irrevocably against God, whose Word declares: “The fool says in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.” (Psalm 14:1). 

China had been religious for thousands of years. For countless generations they worshipped the Creator God in their annual sacrifices, before idolatry brought corruption to their society. In 1921, for the first time in Chinese history, a small seed of atheism took root, and since that time the seed has grown to produce a bitter harvest of brutal persecution, death and suffering for untold millions of people. 

By effectively declaring war on God, a battle ensued between the Communists and the kingdom of the Living God, whose ways cannot be thwarted. There is ultimately only ever one winner when foolish people set themselves against the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! 

A Century of Slaughter. The legacy of the Chinese Communist Party over the past hundred years has been one of killing, stealing and destroying. It has largely been a century of slaughter. Even before the Communists seized full control of China in 1949, hundreds of thousands of people had been butchered in Mao’s pursuit of revolution. Christians were particularly targeted and eliminated, if the Communists thought they were in the way of their destiny to rule the country with an iron fist.

Our education into the horrors of China’s recent past began 33 years ago in south China, when we sat on the banks of the Pearl River, which is half a mile wide in many places. A local man told how, during the Cultural Revolution which had ended little more than a decade earlier, the entire river at that place turned red from the blood and entrails of people killed by the Communist Red Guards, who chopped bodies to pieces before the remains were flung into the river. Over the ensuing years, interrogations by the Chinese police for sharing the Gospel gave us a tiny glimpse into what our Chinese brothers and sisters have had to endure for decades. There is a very dark spiritual side behind all such encounters.

The political scientist Rudolph Rummel has estimated that the Communists were responsible for 77 million deaths in China. Others have estimated “only” in the range of 40 to 60 million. Since Mao’s death, a further 400 million precious lives have been slaughtered by the Chinese Communist Party, either directly through forced abortions, or indirectly through the disastrous “one-child” policy, which China is just now beginning to reap the dire consequences of. The death count doesn’t include the tens of millions who starved to death in China due to famines resulting from foolish government policies.

A prisoner executed by a Red Guard in 1966.

And no, at this stage these figures do not include the millions of deaths currently occurring around the world from the Covid pandemic, which happened to start just down the road from the only Biological Weapons Laboratory in China. You will need to make up your own mind about the origins of Covid, although the Communist Party is determined to never let any evidence escape out of Wuhan, and some of the key scientists who could have spoken out have disappeared and their voices are heard no more.

If you think the Chinese Communist Party’s track record of death and destruction is not necessarily evidence of their involvement in the pandemic, it may be worth knowing that the People’s Liberation Army General, Qiao Liang, wrote a book in 2015 about new biological and chemical weapons. One of the ways he predicted China could achieve world domination was by releasing a virus that would destroy the economies of other nations. Other top leaders have echoed similar sentiments.

The War Against the Church. In the late 1950s, a severe wave of persecution swept over the Church in China, as thousands of pastors and church workers were arrested, killed, or sent to prison labor camps for many years. The situation grew even worse during the 1960s and 1970s. Whenever an individual, a group, or a nation despises Jesus Christ and hardens their conscience against anything godly, their sins fester and grow, and their behavior becomes increasingly vile.

When all fear of God or acknowledgement of His existence is rejected, human life becomes worthless. All that matters to them is controlling the masses and holding on to power, even if they must crush their own people beneath tanks and mow them down with machine guns like in Beijing in 1989. These leaders sleep without a troubled conscience, which has been “Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” (1 Timothy 4:2). All death and suffering inflicted on the masses is seen as collateral damage in the great vision of establishing their God-hating socialist utopia.

Because they have erased God from their conscience, they do not have the slightest fear that they will one day be held to account by God, or that they are commanded to govern people with fairness and equity. Slaughtering tens of millions of babies either inside or outside the womb through forced abortions and other evil policies doesn’t register the slightest concern for them.

As persecution reached fever-pitch during Mao’s awful Cultural Revolution, Christians around the world wondered if there would be any believers left inside China should the doors of the nation ever reopen. Indeed, when foreign diplomats were allowed to visit China, one of them asked Jiang Qing (Mao’s fourth wife) if there were any Christians left. She arrogantly replied: “Christianity in China has been confined to the history section of the museum.”

In the past 40 years, Communist Party leaders have avoided publicly revealing their war against Christians, although occasionally they have let it slip, such as when President Jiang Zemin said in 1995: “We are engaged in a secret struggle against the Church.”

The current leader of China, Xi Jinping, appears determined to finish the job that Mao failed to do, by eliminating Christianity from China once and for all. Now armed with invasive technology and weapons that Mao could never have dreamed of, the Body of Christ is being attacked in new and evil ways. Little news of this will ever be reported, because the government has systematically expelled most foreigners from China, leaving few ways to report events on the ground. 

When he came to power, many people around the world mistakenly thought Xi looked like a nice, charming man. Beneath the cuddly veneer, however, his true intentions soon surfaced. In 2016 he warned Communist Party members that they must be “unyielding Marxist atheists,” and in 2018 he encouraged the nation to “grasp the power of the truth of Marxism.” 

To celebrate 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party, the world might have expected Xi Jinping to reach out in some kind of conciliatory way. Instead, the hardliner militant atheist, and President-for-life, used his speech to issue this threat to the world: “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on a Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese.” 

Again, we wish to make a clear distinction between the normal Chinese people, who we love and respect, and the Communist Party, which seems hell-bent on world domination at any cost, and believes society can only progress through the “glories of militant atheism.” If the 21st century is to be “China’s Century” with the Communist Party at the helm, then may God have mercy on the world. 

The true hero of 100 years of Communism in China is not Mao, Xi, or any other God-hating hardliner atheist. The Great Hero has been none other than the Lord Jesus Christ! When the Communists took control of China in 1949, most experts estimate there were about 750,000 Christians in the entire country — a tiny number in such a vast sea of humanity. The children of God felt like the Israelites when they were overwhelmed by a massive Aramean army: “When the Israelites were also mustered and given provisions, they marched out to meet them. The Israelites camped opposite them like two small flocks of goats, while the Arameans covered the countryside.” (1 Kings 20:27).

The Communists declared war on God but found they could not touch Him, so they declared war on His followers instead. Bibles were burned, church buildings demolished, and the entire leadership of the Body of Christ was rounded up, tortured, and sent to die in remote prison labor camps. In the eyes of the Communist Party, Christianity had indeed been consigned to history.

The Chinese Communist Party had viciously crushed the Church for decades, removing all signs of its existence. At best, it remained just a tiny seed that would never have any influence on society again. But there was One who had other ideas! As He has done repeatedly throughout history, the Lord Jesus Christ decided to interrupt the plans of evil men. After allowing His children to go through a season of intense purification, His truth again triumphed, for the Lord had taught:

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” (John 12:24-27).

Hallelujah! The Living God breathed His life onto the incorruptible seed of His people in China, and after being underground for years, they finally poked through the soil again, enjoying the warmth of the sun’s rays!

In response to this shocking development, the Communists have tried to crush God’s people repeatedly over the past three decades, but their failure to destroy the Body of Christ has left them confused, frustrated and angry. Being atheists, they have willfully blinded themselves, and cannot perceive God’s hand at work against them. They have been left dumbfounded, much like another ruler many centuries ago who discovered that “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites” (Exodus 1:12).

From 750,000 scattered sheep in 1949, the Church in China today numbers over 100 million people (see our “Christians in China Stats” page on our website, where we provide detailed estimates of believers in every province, resulting in a total of 129 million Christians in China today).

As we celebrate “100 Years of Chinese Communism”, we bow our knees in awe at the greatness of Jesus Christ, for He has been the dominant figure throughout Chinese (and all) history. We pray that as dark and troubling storm clouds gather on the horizon in your part of the world, you will not focus on the looming darkness, but “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28). Always remember that though heaven and earth may pass away, His Word will never pass away. 

“The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” (Psalm 33:10-11) 

Jubilant house church Christians worshiping God in 1983.

The Kingdom Marches on in China. Despite many troubles and challenges, our work continues to progress in China. As we have stated many times previously, as long as the Lord continues to hold the door open, we will continue to print as many Bibles as possible and to equip the house church believers while there is still daylight, for “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” (John 9:4). In fact, by God’s grace and great power, we recently passed the all-time milestone of 15 million full Bibles printed and delivered to the Chinese house churches, which has added fuel to the revival fires blazing in that great land.

In an upcoming newsletter we plan to share an interview with a key house church leader, who is hardly known outside of China even though he oversees thousands of fellowships. In it, he shares some of the challenges facing the Church in China today, and ways the Body of Christ is adapting daily, as they continue to find ways to share the Gospel and lead multitudes of hungry people to Jesus.

A Red Guard in 1966.

We appreciate your prayers and partnership in the Gospel, and we realize without your support not a single Bible would be printed nor workers supported.

God bless you as we serve together in the harvest,

The Team at Asia Harvest
www.asiaharvest.org

Chinese Military Network

A woman walks past a Xiaomi logo outside a Xiaomi service center in Beijing on Aug. 5, 2015. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Xiaomi, the world’s third-largest cell phone maker and China’s second-largest, denied its connections to the military after it was blacklisted by the Trump administration as a military-owned company controlled by the CCP, but a closer look at the background and connections of its founder and CEO, Lei Jun, led to the discovery of a huge and tightly interwoven network of ties with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military.

Xiaomi: Blacklisted and Denial. On Jan. 14, the Trump administration added nine Chinese firms, including Xiaomi, to a list of companies that are owned or controlled by the CCP’s military. Businesses on the list are subject to restrictions, including a ban on American investment.

Xiaomi Group’s share price immediately plunged after this announcement, with its share price in Hong Kong falling 13.6 percent at one point. Xiaomi quickly issued a statement on the following day, stating that “the company confirms that it is not owned, controlled, or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a ‘Communist Chinese military company’ defined under the NDAA.” Xiaomi has attempted to develop its own chips but has not been successful. Despite that, its global expansion has been very rapid, with major markets in India, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

Digging Deeper: The People Behind Xiaomi. A surface look at the business operations or shareholding structure of Xiaomi does not reveal direct ties to the CCP’s military. However, an investigation into a more important factor—the people who founded, control, and run the company—reaches a different conclusion. Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun is a senior executive and shareholder of Chinese software company Kingsoft. He joined the company in January 1992 and became the general manager as a young man of only 25 years old in 1994. In 2007, under his leadership, Kingsoft became a listed company in Hong Kong.

Zhang Kaiqing. Bypassing Western Restrictions and Shipping Chips to China. Zhang Kaiqing from China was the founder of Kingsoft. According to a feature story published in 2019 by Tencent, a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate, Zhang Kaiqing was born in Mauritius and moved to China in 1935. After graduating from Tongji University in Shanghai, he joined the communist army‘s Southward Service Corps in Fujian, where he was in charge of education and culture at the Quanzhou Military Management Committee and later served as the director of the teaching department at the Quanzhou School of Health.

In 1972, Zhang Kaiqing’s mother died in Hong Kong. He went to Hong Kong hoping to inherit some of her wealth, but ended up not getting anything. After that, he stayed in Hong Kong and entered the chip business. During that time, Western countries were restricting technology exports to China under the Coordinating Committee for Export to Communist Countries agreement (pdf). As a result, the CCP couldn’t buy chips directly from the West. But Zhang Kaiqing used his personal connections to ship chips to China from abroad, according to Sohu.

Later, the CCP’s Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND) asked Zhang Kaiqing to set up a company so they could buy chips from him in the future. The chips obtained through Zhang Kaiqing were used by the CCP to build submarines, satellites, and other applications.

COSTIND directly belongs to the Central Military Commission of the CCP, but was under the dual leadership of both the State Council and the Central Military Commission. It managed the CCP’s defense scientific research and the production and foreign trade of military products on behalf of the Central Military Commission.

In March 1998, through an organizational reshuffle, the former COSTIND was reorganized as the Ministry of General Armaments, and a separate COSTIND that belongs to the government branch was established.

Zhang Xuanlong. A Favorite of Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. In 1978, after supplying chips to the CCP for several years, a new Kingsoft was set up. Three years later, in 1981, Zhang Kaiqing’s son Zhang Xuanlong took over the company and specialized in the chip business.

In 1984, Zhang Xuanlong moved to Zhongguancun in Beijing, where he successfully worked with big companies like Sitong (known as Stone in 1984), Peking University’s Founder Group, and Lenovo. He eventually won himself the title “Godfather of Zhongguancun.” Zhongguancun is a technology hub in Haidian District in Beijing. Many high tech companies are located there.

Zhang Xuanlong became so successful that he was accompanied by both CCP heads Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao when they went overseas to attend Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as members of the entrepreneurial delegation.

Qiu Bojun. Winning an Award Personally Delivered by Jiang Zemin. In the late 1980s, Zhang Xuanlong decided to build and sell his own software. He opened an office in Shenzhen and recruited then 24-year-old Qiu Bojun, who developed WPS, a Chinese word processing software similar to Microsoft. Kingsoft was later moved to Beijing in 1988 and handed over to Qiu Bojun.

Qiu Bojun graduated from the National University of Defense Science and Technology of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In 2001, he won the second prize National Science and Technology Progress Award and was personally received by Jiang Zemin. This was the highest national honor ever awarded to the software industry.

Lei Jun and Qiu Bojun. Brothers and Comrades of 30 years. In 1992, Qiu Bojun recruited one of his big fans, then-23-year-old Lei Jun, to become the sixth employee of Kingsoft. Since then Qiu Bojun and Xiaomi’s Lei Jun have been as close as “brothers” and “comrades.”

In an article entitled “Thirty Years of Qiu Bojun and Lei Jun,” Lei Jun was quoted as posting on his Weibo social media account: “30 years of my life, 30 years of brotherhood, all are so dear to my heart. How many 30 years can one have in one’s life, and how many such comrades can one obtain in his entire life?”

Lei Jun and Qiu Bojun experienced together and managed to pass through some very difficult times in the early 1990s. In 1998, Kingsoft was able to obtain a $4.5 million investment from Lenovo, and 28-year old Lei Jun was promoted to CEO. Lei Jun resigned as the CEO of Kingsoft in 2007 and was then re-designated from an executive director to a non-executive one in August 2008. Lei Jun has been the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Xiaomi since 2010.

Xiaomi and Kingsoft. An Interwoven Military Background. In 2011, when Kingsoft Office Limited was established, Lei Jun became the executive director. He is currently the director of the issuer and the honorary chairman of the board.

The above facts show that Xiaomi’s founder, Lei Jun, has deep ties with Kingsoft, which has a strong military background and was established at the request of COSTIND, the CCP’s military commission.

Lei Jun and GalaxySpace. However, Lei Jun’s ties to the CCP’s military don’t stop at Kingsoft. He is also an investor in GalaxySpace, whose mission is to “mass produce low-cost, high-performance small satellites” and create a “global converged 5G communication network.”

Interestingly, Lei Jun’s name is only listed on the “about” page of the Chinese version of GalaxySpace, as one of the only three most important figures, but not on the English version of its “about” page. One would wonder what the company wants to hide from the English-speaking readers.

The other two most important figures on GalaxySpace’s Chinese “about” page are its Chairman and Founder Xu Ming and Chairman of the Technical Committee Deng Zongquan, who is an academician from the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

National Defense Project 973. Deng also has the following titles: Director of Aerospace Institutions and Control Technology National Defense Key Discipline Laboratory; and National Defense 973 Project Chief Scientist, Head of The National “111” Project.

Then what is the National Defense Project 973? According to the Chinese search engine Baidu, the full name of the National Defense Project 973 is the National Security Major Basic Research Program, also known as Military 973. National Defense Project 973 initiatives are strategic, fundamental, and forward-looking projects.

They are national-level key basic research projects selected by the Ministry of General Armaments of the CCP in conjunction with the trend of future equipment technology development, and are conducted in cooperation with leading research institutions in related fields in China.

As a matter of fact, most of the projects in this category are confidential and are not disclosed to the public. The predecessor of the Ministry of General Armament is COSTIND, the CCP agency behind Kingsoft.

GalaxySpace’s Starlink Benchmark. The background of GalaxySpace is even more mysterious.

According to its own website, “GalaxySpace was founded in 2016. We are committed to mass produce low-cost, high-performance small satellite through agile and fast-iterative development mode, and build the world’s leading LEO broadband satellite constellation and a global coverage with 5G communication network.”

After only over a year, GalaxySpace had developed China’s first low-orbit broadband communication satellite with a communication capacity of 10 gigabits per second. The satellite was launched on Jan. 16, 2020, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was a Kuaizhou 1A developed by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation. The satellite successfully entered its intended orbit.

One of GalaxySpace’s missions is to provide “global coverage with 5G communication network.” This mission is similar to SpaceX’s Starlink program, which the CCP is closely watching and cares about a lot. According to a report in Chinese media, “the main target competitor for GalaxySpace’s business is SpaceX’s ‘Starlink’ program.”

According to a report (pdf) by China Galaxy Securities published on Dec. 31, 2020, Xu Ming, the CEO of GalaxySpace, said in February 2020 that after GalaxySpace launched its first satellite, it compared its technical indicators with those of the public tests of Starlink and came to two conclusions: firstly, it is possible to create satellite internet through low-orbit satellites that provide 4G and 5G network connections; secondly, Chinese satellite internet companies can fully use Starlink as a benchmark in terms of technology.

Shortening the Gap With the US Within 2 Years. On Nov. 11, 2020, the Chinese version of the Global Times published an article titled “GalaxySpace Receives New Financing. CEO Xu Ming: Building China’s Internet Satellite.”

According to the article, GalaxySpace’s second independently developed broadband communications satellite has now entered the final assembly stage. Xu Ming was quoted as saying, “Next, GalaxySpace will focus on building a super factory in Nantong to produce 300 to 500 satellites per year. Upon completion, the factory will be the first smart production line in China’s commercial space industry to match the Starlink program, and is expected to shorten the gap between China’s next-generation satellite production capacity and that of the United States to within two years.”

Xu Ming. Connecting GalaxySpace and Kingsoft. According to GalaxySpace, Xu Ming is also the co-founder and former president of “Cheetah Mobile”, as well as the former technical director of “Qihoo 360.”

According to Cheetah Mobile’s website, in 2010, “Kingsoft Security merges with Conew Image to create Kingsoft Network (later renamed Cheetah Mobile).” From this, one can see that Xu Ming also has ties with Kingsoft, which has strong military ties.

Satellite Internet. New Infrastructure for the CCP. In April 2020, the Development and Reform Commission of the Central Committee of the CCP also included satellite internet in the scope of “new infrastructure.”

At present, the CCP’s official national teams represented by the CCP’s Space Science and Technology and Aerospace Science and Industry Group have proposed the “Hong Yun Project” and “Hong Yan Constellation” respectively. In the meantime, private enterprises represented by GalaxySpace have also joined the CCP’s satellite internet industry.

Starlink Targeted by the CCP as a Core Strategic Interest of the US. Starlink is a satellite internet constellation project first proposed by SpaceX in January 2015 to provide high-speed internet access worldwide through satellites in near-Earth orbit.

The company plans to launch approximately 12,000 satellites into near-Earth orbit between 2019 and 2024, building a giant three-layer satellite network that will eventually link all satellites into a giant “constellation” to provide 24/7 high-speed and low-cost global satellite internet coverage.

With more than 700 satellites already launched and deployed, Starlink plans to provide services that can almost cover the entire earth by the end of 2021 and will consider expanding to 42,000 satellites in the future.

In November of last year, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command revealed the U.S. Space Force’s Starlink program, stating that the U.S. Space Force was working with SpaceX to deploy a massive space satellite network chain, adding military satellites to the Starlink program.

The CCP’s media has repeatedly and publicly claimed that the CCP’s development of satellite internet is in the context of the CCP’s national defense and that it targets the United States’ Starlink program. What it wants to challenge is the core strategic interests of the United States.

Lei Jun and Shunwei Capital’s Role in the CCP’s Satellite Internet Program. As a member of the CCP’s National People’s Congress, Lei Jun has put forward proposals at the CCP’s Two Sessions meetings for two consecutive years. At the 2019 National People’s Congress, Lei proposed “Proposals on Improving Innovation Capability and Vigorously Developing the Industrial Space Industry.” In the 2020 session, he proposed “A Proposal on Promoting the Development of Satellite Internet Industry.”

Lei Jun also used his Shunwei Capital venture capital firm to directly invest in a number of aerospace enterprises. After GalaxySpace successfully launched its first satellite, Lei Jun said on Weibo, “We at Shunwei Capital are very fortunate to have invested in GalaxySpace early and become a major investor in GalaxySpace.”

Lei Jun said, from 2018 to 2019,  Shunwei Capital had survived based on its investments in GalaxySpace. Public information shows that Shunwei Capital was founded by Lei Jun and  Xu Dalai in 2011. It manages a $2.96 billion fund and a 2 billion RMB fund.

According to China’s National Business Daily, Shunwei Capital started paying attention to the commercial space field in 2015 and 2016. From 2017, it has invested in four commercial space companies, including Interstellar Glory and Deep Blue Aerospace in the rocket field, and Qiansheng Exploration and GalaxySpace in the satellite field.

Just one day before Xiaomi was blacklisted by the United States government, Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau announced on Jan. 13 that Interstellar Glory planned to become a listed company on The Science and Technology Innovation Board of China. If the company is successfully listed, it will become the first private rocket stock.

According to public information, Interstellar Glory was founded in October 2016 and is the first private enterprise in China to complete the launch of a carrier rocket into orbit. The company’s self-developed small scale solid carrier rocket was successfully launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on July 25, 2019.

How Much Have Americans Invested in Xiaomi? Currently, the United States government is using two different blacklists of sanctions against Chinese companies with ties to the CCP regime: a list of entities compiled by the Department of Commerce and a list of the CCP’s military companies compiled by the Department of Defense.

There are different sanctions for each type of target company. Xiaomi and Huawei are both on the Pentagon’s list, while Huawei is also on the Department of Commerce’s list.

Companies listed on the Department of Commerce’s list are prohibited from doing business with United States companies without permission from the United States government, while companies on the Department of Defense’s list of Communist Chinese Military Companies are prohibited from receiving investment from U.S. persons.

According to information on the Hong Kong CCASS (Central Clearing and Settlement System) website, as of Feb. 9, U.S. firms hold a large proportion of Xiaomi’s shares. Among them, JP Morgan holds 2.468 billion shares, accounting for 9.79 percent of the issued share capital; Citibank holds 2.327 billion shares, accounting for 9.23 percent; Goldman Sachs holds 722 million shares, accounting for 2.86 percent; and Morgan Stanley holds 469.8 million shares, accounting for 1.86 percent. Altogether, these four United States companies hold 23.74 percent of Xiaomi’s shares.

Under former President Donald Trump’s executive order issued on Jan. 14, United States investors are required to divest their securities in nine Chinese entities, including Xiaomi, by Nov. 11, 2021. The Trump administration has argued that United States investment in Chinese companies supports the development and expansion of the CCP’s military, which has been pursuing a strategy of integrated civil-military development.

This strategy supports the CCP’s military modernization goals by ensuring that the military has access to Chinese companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities, in order to acquire and develop advanced technology and expertise.

In 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping proposed for the first time to elevate “military-civilian integration and development” to a national strategy for the CCP. According to Reuters, a senior administration official said that the Jan. 14 executive order “ensures that the United States retains a key tool to protect U.S. investors from funding Chinese military modernization.”

On Jan. 27, in a statement posted on the U.S. Treasury Department website, the Biden administration said most investments in companies “whose name closely matches, but does not exactly match, the name of a Communist Chinese military company” would be allowed until May 27.

Trump Administration Strengthens Order Banning US Investment in Chinese Military Companies

The executive order was amended by President Joe Biden to push back the Jan. 28 cutoff date when no further investments would be allowed.

Sexual Torture of Detained Falun Dafa

Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in a file photo. (Verna Yu/AFP/Getty Images)

After acclaimed human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng began investigating the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign of “persecution” against adherents of the “Falun Dafa” spiritual practice, he was horrified at the scale of the “brutality.”

But what shocked him most was the discovery that, among the wide variety of “torture methods” used on Falun Dafa prisoners of conscience, “sexual torture” was routine and widespread, of both women and men.

 “Among the true accounts of unbelievable brutality, among the records of the government’s inhuman torture of its own people, the immoral acts that shocked my soul the most were the lewd yet routine practice of attacking women’s genitals by 6-10 Office staff and the police,” Gao wrote in an open letter to top regime officials in 2005.

“Almost every woman’s genitals and breasts or every man’s genitals have been sexually assaulted during the persecution in a most vulgar fashion. Almost all who have been persecuted, be they male or female, were first stripped naked before any torture. No language or words could describe or re-create our government’s vulgarity and immorality in this respect. Who with a warm body could afford to stay silent when faced with such truths?”

Incarcerated Falun Dafa adherents in China are routinely subjected to sexual torture and violence, including gang rape. (Minghui.org)

Gao, a Christian, was himself “sexually” tortured, including having toothpicks jabbed into his genitals, according to “Dark Night, Dark Hood, and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia,” an account he wrote of being physically and emotionally tortured for more than 50 days while in custody in 2007.

“Two people stretched out my arms and pinned them to the ground. They used toothpicks to pierce my genitals. There are no words to describe the helplessness, pain, and despair that I felt then,” he wrote.

Gao’s sense of justice was so strong that he took the risk of writing three open letters to regime officials between December 2004 and December 2005 urging them to end their persecution of practitioners of Falun Dafa (also called Falun Gong). The campaign was launched in 1999 by then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin who feared the immense popularity of the traditional practice, which had 70-100 million adherents by the late ’90s.

Gao’s letters, however, incurred the “wrath of the regime” and they went after him with a vengeance, leading to numerous detentions and “savage torture” over the past dozen years, despite his standing as one of China’s most respected human rights lawyers.

Gao Zhisheng, a rights lawyer, in Beijing in 2010.

In 2001, the Ministry of Justice named Gao one of the country’s top 10 lawyers for his pro bono work on public interest cases. Born April 20, 1964, he grew up in a very poor family that couldn’t afford to send him to school, but he learned by listening outside the classroom window.

He eventually took a law course and opened a practice after passing the bar exam. He is often referred to as “the conscience of China” and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

Gao was unflinching in his criticism of the CCP’s rights abuses and unrelenting in his quest for justice for the Chinese people, and he paid the price. His law license was revoked and his practice shut down in 2005. In August 2006, after numerous death threats and continued harassment, he disappeared while visiting his sister’s family.

That was followed by a three-year jail sentence that was commuted to five years probation. He was taken into custody again in September 2007 and that’s when he was tortured for over 50 days.

Reenactment of sexual torture. (Minghui.org)

In September 2007, Gao wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress decrying the lack of “religious freedom” in China and the Party’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, House Christians, and Tibetan Buddhists.

The letter also slammed the regime for the suppression of human rights lawyers, crimes against property owners and farmers, corruption of the legal system, and allowing rampant pollution of lakes and rivers.

Also in 2007, Gao’s memoir “A China More Just” was published in English in the United States. In one chapter he criticized the CCP for employing “the most savage, most immoral, and most illegal means to torture our mothers, torture our wives, torture our children, and torture our brothers and sisters” and renounced his Party membership.

The constant monitoring, harassment, detentions, torture, and disappearances continued, despite condemnation by the United Nations and other international organizations and individuals.

Soon after he was released from a stint in jail in August 2014 and placed under house arrest, Gao escaped, despite being in poor health. He spent about three weeks on the run before his recapture the following month. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

Gao’s wife and two children escaped to the United States in 2009, fleeing China through Thailand. At the launch in Hong Kong of “The Year 2017: Stand Up, China,” a book Gao wrote during one of his house arrests and released in 2016, his daughter, Grace Geng, said reading the book only increased her respect and admiration for her father.

Grace Geng, the daughter of the human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, presented her father’s book, whose Chinese title translates to “The Year 2017, Stand Up, China,” in Hong Kong.

“I think he is a very strong person. I am very confident that my father is one of the most sober men this era in China. He and those striving for the betterment of China are the glory of China today and the hope of China tomorrow. I am proud of them,” said Geng, who hasn’t seen her father in 10 years.

“To him, for whatever he thinks is right, he is prepared to bear the consequences. I think what is important for him is to have no fear; if it is right, if it is something righteous, be persistent and finish it.” 

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4 Cases of Sexual Torture of Falun Dafa Adherents Documented by Gao Zhisheng
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Forced Organ Harvesting: Overseas Patients Flocking to China for Transplants
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China’s Top Gestapo

Chinese regime announced that Peng Bo, deputy director of China’s “Gestapo,” secret state police, was dismissed and under investigation in Beijing, China.

The Chinese regime announced that Peng Bo, deputy director of China’s “Gestapo”—secret state police—had been dismissed and is under investigation.

Peng has become the first high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, known as “tigers,” to be ensnared in party politics after the regime’s most important annual political conference, its “Two Sessions” meeting, which concluded on March 11.

After the CCP made the announcement, all Chinese media quickly removed Peng’s official resume and photos, an unusual move.

“This is so extraordinary. Even Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai haven’t been treated in this way,” Heng He said in a podcast on March 13. Zhou and Bo are among the most senior CCP officials that have previously been “sacked” by the party.

The CCP’s “anti-corruption” watchdog, the “Central Commission for Discipline Inspection” (CCDI), announced that Peng was “suspected of seriously violating discipline and laws, and is under investigation and inspection.” This is the standard sentence used by the CCDI to sack most officials.

On the announcement, Peng’s title was deputy director of the “Central Leading Group on Preventing and Dealing with Cults”, a Gestapo-like security agency under both the CCP central committee and the state council. This is the first public information about Peng working at the group.

Falun Gong practitioners hold a banner condemning the 610 Office in a protest opposite the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., on April 21, 2004. Minghui.org

The group, normally known as the “610 Office,” was established on June 10, 1999, and is dedicated to implementing the persecution and eradication of Falun Gong, a Buddha-school spiritual practice that teaches the values of “truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.”

As a secret office, the “610 Office” doesn’t have an official website, and it has been difficult for the public to know who works for the office from public information. Before his placement at the “610 Office,” Peng was deputy director of the “Cyberspace Administration of China” (CAC), China’s internet regulator, censor, monitor, and control agent.

The CAC’s website cache shows Peng’s official resume.

Peng, 62, used to work at “Beijing Youth Daily” that is operated by the Beijing city government, the financial newspaper “China Industrial and Commercial Times” that is owned by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the China Youth Press that is a subsidiary of the Communist Youth League Central Committee, and the propaganda bureau of the CCP Central Committee.

Peng was CAC deputy director from September 2012 to August 2015, and then worked as leader of propaganda at the CCP’s “Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission” (PLAC) until September 2018.

Beijing News, a media outlet operated by the Beijing city government, reported that the CCP’s central committee might have started investigating Peng as early as the summer of 2016.

“The political acumen and discernment of some officials [at the ‘610 Office’] aren’t good. They should strengthen their capabilities to predict and cope with major sensitive events,” the report quoted from a 2016 internal document of the CCP’s central committee. “ The committee has received the clues that reflected some officials’ disqualifications, and handed them over to CCDI and the Central Organization Department for further investigate.”

The Central Organization Department is CCP’s agent to appoint or dismiss officials according to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s order.

Overseas Chinese websites have commented that Peng is loyal to the retired Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan and retired PLAC head Meng Jianzhu, both who were members of the rival Jiang Zemin faction that fights Xi for power. Peng’s investigation is being seen by analysts as the latest action in Xi’s “anti-corruption campaign” that has targeted his political opponents.

The Shanghai city government-operated “Jiefang Daily” reported that the CCP has sacked several “tigers” from the “610 Office” in recent years.

From the CCP’s announcements, former directors Zhou Yongkang, Li Dongsheng, Zhang Yue, Sun Lijun, Xu Yongyue, and Zhou Benshun were sacked from their positions at the “610 Office.” Among them, former “610 Office” leader, PLAC head, and member of Politburo Standing Committee, Zhou was sentenced to life in prison with the crime of abuse of power and corruption in June 2015.

Independent Tribunal Finds Chinese Regime Still Killing Prisoners of Conscience for Their Organs

Butcher of Beijing

Li declares martial law in a televised speech on May 19, 1989. Photo: Hong Kong ATV screen grab.

Former Chinese premier Li Peng, who was known as the “Butcher of Beijing” for his role in 1989’s notorious Tiananmen Square massacre, who had previously been treated for bladder cancer, died of an unspecified illness in Beijing aged 90, state media reported.

Li became a despised symbol of repression after gaining global notoriety for the role he played in the crackdown on mass pro-democracy demonstrations in the capital Beijing on June 4, 1989, and stayed at the top of the Communist regime hierarchy for more than a decade after the massacre.

File photo taken on June 4, 1989, shows an armored personnel carrier in flames as students set it on fire near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo: AFP/Tommy Cheng

On May 19, 1989, then-Chinese Premier Li Peng, a newly-installed standing member of the Communist Party’s Politburo, declared in murderous tones a State Council curfew order, leading to the People’s Liberation Army’s brutal crackdown on student protesters in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Li proclaimed martial law on May 20, 1989, after massive crowds of students, workers and others camped for weeks in Tiananmen Square to demand reform. Two weeks later, in the early hours of June 4, the military put a bloody end to the demonstrations, murdering hundreds of unarmed civilians, by some estimates more than 1,000.

The decision to send in the troops was made collectively, but Li was widely held responsible for the atrocity. In the years that followed, Li often defended the decision to open fire on the protesters as a “necessary” step. “Without these measures China would have faced a situation worse than in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe,” he said on a tour of Austria in 1994.

As Li was dying in early June of 2019, on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, authorities made extra efforts to make sure he would not take his last breath in that sensitive month. In China’s official obituary, issued a day after his death, he was hailed for his rock-ribbed “loyalty and decisive role” in quelling the 1989 student unrest.

“Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, Comrade Li adopted resolute measures to end the anti-revolutionary riot and stabilized the situation, in his key role in quashing the unrest that determined the upshot of the entire struggle and the future of the party and the state,” read the obituary.

File photo dated April 22, 1989, shows students gesturing and shouting slogans as they pay their respects in Beijing to former Chinese Communist Party leader and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang as thousands of students gather near the monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square. Photo: AFP

The “Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China,” a political entity that hosts the annual “candle lit vigil” for the victims of Tiananmen, called Li a “sinner for a thousand years” in its statement.

Albert Ho, the alliance’s leader who is also a prominent pro-democracy politician in the city, said Li fed party patriarch Deng false information about the students’ “sit-in” at Tiananmen Square in his bid to wrestle more power in the party’s factional schism and ease out the party’s General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was sympathetic towards the students throughout the protests.

“Li maligned the students, who demanded rule of law, clean governance and democracy, as rioters and traitors of the state, inflaming Deng’s fear of losing his grip on the nation and ultimately leading to Deng’s edicts to send in troops to slay protesters and clear the square,” according to Ho.

Li Peng meets with student representatives in the Great Hall of the People in May 1989. Photo: China Central Television screen grab.

Other observers say Li can hardly absolve himself of the blame since he was more than a mere executor of Deng’s orders, as he was heavily involved in Deng’s strategizing for a sharp-elbow approach.

During Li’s premiership that ended in 1998, China’s nascent social movement and democratic reforms that emerged in the early 1980s were squelched, and he and then-president Jiang Zemin opted to spur economic development and market liberalization to put China on the mend.

Li made a bid to exonerate himself and sought to publish a “memoir” about the Tiananmen incident, only to be dissuaded by the party’s top leadership. His unpublished book hinted that it was the arbitrary Deng who mandated the killings and that he had clean hands throughout the matter.

Protesters set fire to a Li Peng effigy during a memorial service for Tiananmen victims. Photo: Twitter

Despite his notoriety, Li remained unchallenged as China’s number two leader through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, second only to then-president Jiang Zemin, as the ruling Communist Party tried to present a united front.

However, Li’s preference for state control over market forces in running the economy led to him losing influence as premier to his lieutenant Zhu Rongji, handpicked by Deng Xiaoping to revive stalled economic reforms and market liberalization.

After Li, who was trained as an engineer in the Soviet Union, had a heart attack in 1993, Zhu gradually assumed more responsibility for the country’s economic policies and eventually took over from Li as premier in 1998.

However, Li retained his number two rank within the party hierarchy, moving to the “National People’s Congress”, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, and presiding over the legislature until he retired in 2003.

Other than Tiananmen, Li is also known for his family’s wheeling and dealing with the nation’s power and electricity conglomerates, as well as the high-flying lifestyle of his scions.

Li, groomed in the Soviet Union and majored in hydro-power generation, bulldozed the Three Gorges project through the NPC to dam and harness the Yangtze River despite rare, widespread concerns among lawmakers and engineers about the project’s safety and environmental and social impact.

He is also accused of cronyism when appointing senior executives to major state-owned power generators in his capacity as electricity minister and then premier.

His son Li Xiaopeng was the general manager of the state-owned electricity utility enterprise “China Huaneng Group” and governor of the resource-rich central Shanxi province and is now China’s minister of transportation.

Li Peng’s daughter Li Xiaolin (right) dances on the sidelines of a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference meeting in Beijing.

Li’s daughter Li Xiaolin, aka “China’s electricity queen,” who has a penchant for expensive fur coats, jewelry and handbags as well as dancing the “cha-cha-chá,” was also a talking point when she was at the helm of “China Power Investment Corp.”

Li Xiaolin, wearing a pink Gucci suit and Roger Vivier shoes, with Xi Jinping. Photos: Weibo

Li Xiaolin was demoted to another power company and offered to retire amid rumors that she opted to bow out of the electricity industry as Xi Jinping aimed to short-circuit an investigation and trial to nab “bigger tigers” in his graft-busting campaign.

China’s Paramilitary Police

Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken another step to increase his power over the world’s most populous nation in consolidating and tightening his control over the “Paramilitary Police”  by moving the People’s Armed Police (PAP) to the Central Military Commission, of which he is chairman.

Previously, the paramilitary police force of about 1 million officers was controlled by the State Council, which Xi does not directly lead. The move began to go into effect on January 1.

Paramilitary police conduct disaster and kidnapping rescues, special human trafficking and drug trafficking operations, protest control and other duties.

The Nikkei Asian Review said the move was seen as a “hedge against a coup.”

It has been suggested that Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, plotted to carry out a coup against the Xi administration by teaming up with Bo Xilai, a former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing who once was the president’s major rival. Zhou had a strong influence over the paramilitary force.

The South China Morning Post added that the previous structure “gave lower-level authorities the power to deploy the PAP to tackle natural disasters, protests and hostage crises.”

The Communist Party’s People’s Daily reported that the paramilitary police would remain separate from the military.

Assuming control of the People’s Armed Police looks like a continuation of Xi’s reforms, which were given wide news coverage at the recent 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last October.

There, Xi proclaimed a “new era” of Chinese power. Xi has also made strides toward “re-centralizing” China’s economy by rebuilding government-controlled monopolies, fortifying national enterprises, and limiting opportunities for competitors—both in China and abroad.

Meanwhile, Xi has muzzled “dissenting voices” within Chinese society, making the country considerably less free than it was during the time of his predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

Regarding China’s military might, Shanghai-based military affairs commentator Ni Lexiong says Xi now “not only controls the military but also does it in an absolute manner.”

Now Xi is adding control over the “paramilitary police” to the power of his regime.

Emperor For Life

Five years ago, Xi was basically unknown in Chinese politics. Now he has been lifted to the status of the hallowed Mao Zedong. What does this mean for Beijing and the world?

Walking through the streets and hutongs of China’s vast capital city Beijing, it does not take long to notice that two faces are virtually everywhere. They peer benevolently at shoppers from countless commemorative key chains and plates.

They look out at bustling streets from the covers of books, magazines and newspapers. They gaze with Mona Lisa smiles upon pedestrians from larger-than-life posters.

They are the faces of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. Mao was the founder of the People’s Republic of China who ruled the nation with an iron fist from 1949 until his death in 1976. Xi is the nation’s current leader.

The fact that Xi’s status is now equal to that of the legendary authoritarian Mao has sobering implications.

From Obscurity to Potency 

Five years ago, Xi Jinping was an obscure figure in Chinese politics. The public knew little about him except that his wife was a celebrity singer, and that his father had been a comrade to Chairman Mao. As Xi assumed the office of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, many experts believed he would lead in the tradition of his most recent predecessors, unobtrusively and unambitiously maintaining the status quo. But Xi’s first five-year term confounded those early forecasts.

Instead of maintaining the “first among equals” style of leadership used by his recent predecessors, he adopted a strongman approach. He bypassed State Council authorities by forming policy making party groups, many of which he chairs himself. He took personal control of writing policy on everything from China’s economy and international relations to its environmental strategies and Internet regulations. He implemented painful military reforms that positioned him as unchallenged commander in chief of the enormous People’s Liberation Army. “He not only controls the military but also does it in an absolute manner,” said Shanghai-based military affairs commentator Ni Lexiong. And Xi has used his military power to assert China’s authority on the global stage.

Xi also waged an anti-corruption campaign resulting in the arrest or imprisonment of many CCP members and others being fired from important government positions and, in many cases, incarcerated.

These moves placed Xi at the center of what Time’s Hannah Beech called “a personality cult not seen in the People’s Republic since the days when frenzied Red Guards cheered Chairman Mao’s launch of the Cultural Revolution” (March 31, 2016).

Here is an important reminder: “Under Mao’s despotic reign, between 65 and 75 million people were starved, tortured, bullied to suicide, or executed as traitors.”

Lifted to Mao’s Level

During his first term, Xi accumulated more power than any Chinese leader since Mao. But that was not the end of his rise. About the time that his first term ended in October, the CCP held its 19th National Congress. And as powerful as Xi was when this once-every-five-years meeting began, he emerged from it considerably more so.

At the Congress, Xi unveiled the new lineup in China’s top decision-making bodies, the 25-member Politburo and seven-member Politburo Standing Committee. Both are now heavily stacked with Xi loyalists. These individuals are unlikely to challenge Xi in any meaningful way, thus greatly strengthening his grip on the most important levers of government.

Another momentous outcome from the Congress was Xi’s break from the convention of naming a successor. Precedent stipulates that after a president completes his first term, he and the CCP name his successor during the National Congress. Five years later, after the president finishes his second term, the named successor becomes the new president. Xi’s decision not to name a successor at the 19th Congress strongly indicates that he has no plans to relinquish power at the 20th Congress in 2022. This would give him an unprecedented third term and position him to rule China for the rest of his life.

Also notable was that none of the new Standing Committee members are younger than 60. This is the pool from which the next president is selected. And since committee members serve two five-year terms, and since CCP guidelines say Chinese politicians should retire at age 68, none of these men would be eligible to serve for two terms as Xi’s successor.

Even more astonishing about the 19th Congress was the CCP’s decision to etch Xi Jinping’s name and personal ideology into the Party Constitution.

This is the rarest of honors. Both of Xi’s most recent predecessors, presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, made contributions to the Constitution, but neither was named in the document. Even the contributions of the revered Deng Xiaoping were never named after him while he led China. Only after Deng’s death in 1997 was his name added alongside his contributions.

The only other sitting ruler to have his name and ideology written into the Constitution was Chairman Mao. This essentially equates “Xi Thought” with “Mao Thought,” lifting the president’s status to the level as that of the near-mythical and notoriously despotic Mao.

The message this sends to Xi’s potential rivals is that to defy him at this point would be ideological heresy. It makes any challenge to his power equal to an assault on the CCP itself. “I think it’s intended to give Xi an ideological status that can’t be challenged, like Mao in that sense,” said Beijing-based analyst Wu Qiang.

Asian affairs analyst Chris Buckley said this also means “Xi Thought” will now permeate all aspects of China. “While there may be no ‘Little Red Book’ of quotations for mass consumption like in the bygone Mao era, Mr. Xi’s thinking will now infuse every aspect of party ideology in schools, the media and government agencies” (New York Times, Oct. 24, 2017).

Preparing for a Turbulent Era 

It would be easy to view Xi’s rise as the result of an ambitious individual maneuvering to make himself an authoritarian. But his rapid ascent could not have happened without the full consent and assistance of the upper echelons of the CCP.

The Chinese elite see that the global order is unraveling. They see American power declining and leadership vacuums opening up. They see that the international stage is primed for conflict, that there is a chance for China to take advantage of the volatility and to emerge as a superpower.

There is clear recognition in the highest echelons of Chinese power that, in order to attain superpower status, China’s 1.4 billion people will need a ruler whose hands are not bound by red tape and who is not limited by checks and balances. They need a strongman at the helm who is free of political encumbrances and capable of streamlined decision-making. They need a new Mao.

It was based on these sentiments that the CCP elite created room for Xi’s political star to rise so rapidly and so high. Now he is the man who will guide China into the turbulent new era.

The fact that Xi’s face in China is now as ubiquitous as Mao’s is deeply significant. His ongoing rise and increasing control over China’s military and foreign policy is vital to watch, as it indicates how the Chinese president could fall in line with his fellow strongman in Russia, and how China will be brought onto its collision course with Europe. It also indicates how near this future clash could be.

Vladimir Putin is Russia’s most powerful leader since Joseph Stalin. Some of his countrymen consider him Russia’s 21st-century czar.

Xi Jinping is China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. During the 19th Party Congress in October, Xi formalized his total control over the Communist Party, which controls all of China. He is now poised to rule “China for life.”

The ideology that is now certain to infuse so much of Chinese culture is officially called “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics in a New Era.” Unwieldy as it may be, that phrase is saturated with significance.

“Xi Jinping thought” consists of 14 key principles. They include handing “absolute authority” of the military to the CCP; reforming the rule of law; closely following socialism with Chinese characteristics; and pursuing environmental conservation.

Its foundational message is that China must continue its rise to become the primary world power. During Xi’s first five years in office, this ambition had already prompted him to focus his attention on muzzling domestic dissent, boosting China’s military power, and earning Beijing a larger role in international affairs. With Xi’s eponymous ideas enshrined in the Constitution, the president will now be able to push toward these goals with redoubled intensity.

Also included in the constitutional revision were the formalization of several of Xi’s core policy initiatives, including his “One Belt, One Road” plan to build infrastructure linking China to the West, and his desire to boost the government’s role in China’s economy.

The most important phrase of the “Xi Thought” expression is “new era.” Xi breaks China’s modern history down into three main epochs: Chairman Mao “liberated” the nation; Deng Xiaoping made it “wealthier;” now in this “new era,” Xi is making it “strong.”

Has Xi Jinping Become “Emperor for Life”?
Xi Jinping ‘Emperor for Life’. But really?