Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping’s relentless campaign of personal political aggrandizement was on display this week as the Chinese Communist Party’s 376-member Central Committee met for its Sixth Plenum.
The result, as expected, was more official promotion of Xi’s status as an equal of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping within the historical pantheon of People’s Republic of China leaders.
Read more at “Self-apotheosis doesn’t make Xi a good leader”
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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.
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)
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.
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
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Chinese military aircraft made a record 380 trespasses into the island’s “defense zone” during 2020, a spokesperson for the Taiwanese Defense Ministry revealed.
Defense Ministry’s Shih Shun-wen said the Chinese incursions, which were conducted by bombers, jets and surveillance aircraft, happened in the southwest of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over at least 110 days.
Analysts believe the main objective of these incursions was to conduct “real-life” military scenarios in preparation for actual “combat” against Taiwan.
Shih agrees, adding that the Chinese aircraft aimed “to test our military’s response, to exert pressure on our aerial defense, and to squeeze the aerial space for our activities.”
China has conducted such incursions in Taiwanese airspace in previous years, but not nearly so many. In 2016, for example, it held six long-distance training missions around Taiwan, and 20 in 2017. The surge this year suggests an intensified desire by the Chinese to “antagonize” the Taiwanese.
Beyond airspace violations, China’s navy has also been skirting dangerously close to Taiwan’s waters. Few weeks ago, China deployed its newest aircraft carrier, the Shandong, accompanied by four warships, through the sensitive Taiwan Strait. The Taiwanese Navy had to conduct 1,223 missions to intercept Chinese vessels in 2020. That’s 400 more than the previous year.
China has said such trips are “routine.” But their timing often indicates otherwise. Last year, for example, some incursions came during Taiwan visits by high-level United States officials. Taiwan split from China in 1949 after a civil war saw the defeated nationalist forces driven from the mainland by the brutal Communist regime of Mao Zedong.
Ever since, China has considered Taiwan a “breakaway” province and has vowed to put it under Beijing’s power by any means necessary. But U.S. political support of Taiwan, as well as weapons sales and security assurances, has so far prevented China from using “force” to conquer the island.
The Chinese are incensed by U.S. officials’ visits to Taiwan, and they are demonstrating their ire with these maritime incursions.
Examining both the sea and air trespasses, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a military think tank, said tensions between Taiwan and China are “now at their highest since the mid-1990s.”
Taiwan has lived under the “threat of invasion” by mainland China for decades. It still relies on the U.S. to keep from being assimilated into China, but in recent decades, America’s commitment to the cause has come into question.
In 1998, at the urging of Chinese officials, former U.S. President Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to publicly “oppose” Taiwanese independence. China has been boldly applying more and more pressure ever since—especially in recent times.
The people of Taiwan fear for their future. They feel betrayed. China has dramatically increased its “aggression” toward Taiwan. No one should “fail to see that Taiwan is destined to become a part of mainland China.”
Perhaps the U.S. will make another weapons deal with Taiwan as it did late last year. It might even send more officials on high-level visits.
But it is clear that Beijing has an unwavering “determination” to reclaim Taiwan.
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Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, the Vatican is turning a blind eye to an authoritarian regimes attempt to exterminate an ethnic minority.
That is the assessment of British human rights activist Benedict Rogers. In a July 29 Foreign Policy article, Rogers recounted how the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote a letter to the Chinese ambassador in London, comparing the plight of the Uyghurs in Communist China to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. Children have been taken from their parents and sent to state-run orphanages. Women have been sterilized. And drone footage shows Uyghur men, kneeling and blindfolded, waiting to be loaded onto trains.
Twenty-three nations have condemned China’s human rights abuses. But the Vatican has remained surprisingly silent considering that Pope Francis is hailed as an advocate for the oppressed.
The pope has condemned the United States government for temporarily separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. And he has spoken out against the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a U.S. police officer, saying, “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form.” Yet when it comes to Communist China, he has turned a blind eye. He has not uttered a public prayer for the Uyghurs, the Hong Kongers, the Tibetans, the Falun Gong practitioners, or any other group persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. Why?
According to Benedict Rogers, Pope Francis may not be allowed to criticize China’s treatment of the Uyghurs under the terms of a “secret concordat” between the Vatican and Beijing.
Two years ago, the Vatican asked Bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian and Bishop Joseph Guo Xijin to step down and make way for two new bishops approved by the Chinese government. This was a prelude to a deal between the Roman Catholic Church and the Communist Party of China. The text of this deal remains secret, but we know it gives an avowedly atheist regime a direct role in appointing Catholic bishops. And it may mandate the pope’s silence on Communist human rights abuses.
Before this deal was signed, about half of China’s 10 to 12 million Catholics worshiped in underground churches that refuse to recognize Communist control over their faith. The other half worshiped in government-managed churches run by clergy appointed by the Communist Party of China. The deal was supposed to be a strategic compromise in the name of Catholic unity, but no Catholic clergy have been released from prison. Instead, several more have disappeared since the deal was signed.
The last British governor of Hong Kong is warning that the Vatican is making a mistake by cozying up to China just as it is slipping back into the most hard-line dictatorship since Mao Zedong. And retired Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen has said signing a deal with Communist China is analogous to signing a contract with Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. Yet Vatican officials still plan on renewing their deal with China.
“The provisional agreement with China expires in September of this year and we must find a formula; we must see what to do,” Italian Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli said on an Italian television network. “We are trying to look toward the future, and we are trying to give to the future of our realizations a deep and respectful basis, and I would say that we are working in this sense.”
In summary: Pope Francis turns a blind eye to China’s egregious human rights abuses while praising Catholics who kneel at Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. This shows that human rights are not his primary concern. Instead, he is trying to accomplish a geopolitical goal.
Uki Goñi is an Argentine author whose research focuses on the Vatican’s historic role in organizing “ratlines” to help Nazi criminals escape to Argentina. In a 2015 editorial for the New York Times, he wrote that you couldn’t understand Pope Francis without acknowledging that his worldview was shaped in Juan Peron’s Argentina. That is why Pope Francis often warns about the “excesses of capitalism” while expressing sympathy for communism and other forms of socialism. He ascribes to the sort of Catholic socialism that was practiced in Argentina during Juan Peron’s presidency.
“If you were to read one of the sermons of the first fathers of the church, from the second or third centuries, about how you should treat the poor, you’d say it was Maoist or Trotskyists,” Francis said in 2010 when he was still archbishop of Buenos Aires. So while the pope disagrees with China’s atheism, he seems more sympathetic to China’s Maoist economic system than he is to America’s free-market system. And this fact is key to understanding the geopolitical rationale behind the Vatican’s China deal.
Suppose Pope Francis wanted to defeat American capitalism. To do so, he would need to convince Catholic nations across Africa, Europe and Latin America to adopt a more socialist way of running their economies. And what better way to accomplish this than a deal with the world’s leading Communist economy? This deal with China is part of the Vatican’s long-term campaign to achieve full diplomatic relations with Beijing, a vital step toward restructuring the world economy.
Biblical passages such as Revelation 17 reveal that a powerful religious entity will rise in the end time and become the guiding force over a great economic powerhouse that intoxicates all nations with its wealth and splendor. Revelation 18:3 says, “For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” Notice that these merchants are not only active in Europe and Latin America, they are merchants of the Earth doing business in all nations.
The religious entity referred to in Revelation 17 and 18 is headquartered in Rome. So atheist China is not going to lead the world’s new economic order. But atheist China will ally with a revived Holy Roman Empire to replace the current Anglo-American economic system.
The people of Rome once referred to the Chinese as the people of Cathay, after the Khitans on northern China. Both the Old Testament books of Isaiah and Ezekiel mention these people as Kittim. The Kittim form an end-time trade relationship with Tyre, which refers to the commercial heart of the Holy Roman Empire (Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 27).
Anyone concerned about the type of deals the pope is making with totalitarian dictatorships needs to understand the soon-coming alliance between “Catholic Europe” and “Communist China.” Both powers are prophesied to be instrumental in America’s downfall!
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Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping is now the master of all he surveys in China. Photo AFP / Vyacheslav Oseledko
Buried amid the “festive” decorations and the Christmas wrapping paper was a “present” from China’s powerful Politburo to the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party.
Conjuring images of the past, the 25-member Political Bureau of the CPC bestowed the title of “renmin lingxiu” or “People’s Leader” on Xi Jinping at the two-day talk fest in Beijing.
The accolade, according to media reports, rekindled memories of the cult of personality enshrined in Mao Zedong’s reign. It also cemented Xi’s claim as the “Chairman of Everything,” coined by the Australian Center on China in the World, a research institute.
With more than a dozen titles, the ones that matter include “General Secretary of the Party,” “Chairman of the Central Military Commission”, the country’s de-facto warlord, and “President of the People’s Republic of China.”
For now, the 66-year-old is the “master” of all he surveys. As Xinhua, the official news agency of the Chinese government, gushed:
“At the meeting, members of the Political Bureau were asked to conduct criticism and self-criticism in light of work experience and how they have taken the lead to implement Xi’s instructions and key Party regulations and policies, including the eight-point decision on improving Party and government conduct. The Political Bureau members emphasized in their speeches that they would take the lead in studying and implementing the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. They were also urged to study the latest speeches given by Xi in a timely manner.”
To put this into context, it is important to remember that despite problems in Hong Kong, the Taiwan question and the changing “dynamics” in Beijing’s relationship with Washington, Xi is in “complete” control.
Elizabeth Economy, of the Council on Foreign Relations, captured the mood perfectly in her latest book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (Oxford University Press).
She explained at length, his “Chinese Dream” and the vision for “the rejuvenation of the great nation.”
“One of the great paradoxes of China today is Xi’s effort to position himself as a champion of globalization, while at the same time restricting the free flow of capital, information, and goods between China and the rest of the world,” Economy said on the website of the “Council on Foreign Relations”, a New York-based think tank.
“What makes Xi’s revolution distinctive is the strategy he has pursued: the dramatic centralization of authority under his personal leadership; the intensified penetration of society by the state; the creation of a virtual wall of regulations and restrictions that more tightly controls the flow of ideas, culture, and capital into and out of the country; and the significant projection of Chinese power,” she added.
“An illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order.”
Many would find it difficult to question that last statement as Xi has “tightened his grip” on the CCP and extended the Great Firewall by strangling “online” debates while preaching, at times, an old brand of “nationalism” with Chinese characteristics.
Increased military spending has also transformed the balance of power in the East and South China Seas as Beijing’s new “naval” carrier groups flex their muscles under an umbrella of “stealth” fighters.
All this has become possible through the country’s unprecedented rise as an economic Goliath.
“After Xi announced the ‘China Dream of Great National Rejuvenation,’ the Communist Party of China identified three important stages of development under three different leaderships: the Chinese people ‘stood up’ under Mao Zedong; ‘became rich’ under Deng Xiaoping, and are ‘becoming powerful’ under Xi. Since Mao’s and Deng’s eras are long gone, naturally, Xi is the focus of this propaganda,” Palden Sonam, of the “China Research Program” wrote in a commentary for the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, an Indian think tank.
“With his rise as the CCP’s core leader, Xi has embraced an authoritarian form of nationalism based on his strongman leadership in the quest to transform China into a ‘Great Power,’ and has positioned nationalism as a route to realizing the ‘China Dream’,” he added.
How that scenario plays out is “open” to debate. But Beijing’s standing in the West, particularly in the United States, has changed significantly in the past two years along with its ties with near neighbors.
The 18-month long trade war, the network of internment camps across Xinjiang holding more than one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have “eroded” confidence in Xi’s administration. Then, there is the controversial Belt and Road Initiative, which is epic in scope and narrow in transparency.
“In early October 2018, US Vice-President Mike Pence delivered a searing speech at a Washington think tank, enumerating a long list of reproaches against China,” Yan Xuetong, the dean of the “Institute of International Relations” at Tsinghua University, said in his seminal paper, The Age of Uneasy Peace.
“The tone was unusually blunt – blunt enough for some to interpret it as a harbinger of a new Cold War between China and the United States. Such historical analogies are as popular as they are misleading, but the comparison contains a kernel of truth. The transition will be a tumultuous, perhaps even a violent affair, as China’s rise sets the country on a collision course with the United States over a number of clashing interests,” he added.
In response, China scholar Elizabeth Economy has come up with a different take on the challenges ahead. She has advocated that the US and its allies should support through “both word and deed,” fundamental values, including “democracy and respect for human rights, a market economy and free trade.”
“China cannot be a leader in a globalized world while at the same time closing its borders to ideas, capital, and influences from the outside world,” Economy concluded.
In the meantime, Xi has cemented his “strongman” image as the new “People’s Leader” even though he has never been “elected” by the people at the ballot box as “Chairman of Everything.”
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Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama prays during a long-life prayer offering dedicated to him at Tsuglagkhang Temple in McLeod Ganj, India, on September 13, 2019. Photo: AFP/Lobsang Wangyal
In a surprise spiritual “reversal” the Dalai Lama said his Tibetan Buddhist tradition of reincarnated dalai lamas “should end now” because the hierarchy created “a feudal system,” a description echoing decades of communist China’s “condemnation.”
The Dalai Lama’s public statement comes amid attempts by Beijing to “control” who can be legally recognized as a “reincarnated” lama in Tibet and what “laws” they must obey.
“Institutions need to be owned by the people, not by an individual,” the self-exiled 14th Dalai Lama said in a speech at his residence in McLeod Ganj, a small town on the outskirts of Dharamsala, India.
“Like my own institution, the Dalai Lama’s office, I feel it is linked to a feudal system. In 1969, in one of my official statements, I had mentioned that it should continue…but now I feel, not necessarily. It should go. I feel it should not be concentrated in a few people only. The tradition should end now, as reincarnation has some connection with the feudal system. There have been cases of individual lamas who use reincarnation for personal gains but never pay attention to study and wisdom,” he told college students from Bhutan and India on October 25.
Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, born in 1935), the traditional religious and temporal head of Tibet’s Buddhist clergy, seats under a canopy in 1959 in his residence of Birla House in the mountain resort of Mussoori, India after fleeing into exile in a 1959 file photo. Photo: AFP
In March 1959, there was an unsuccessful armed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule. As a result, the Dalai Lama, fled with some 100,000 supporters to northern India, where a government-in-exile was established. The Chinese ended the the former dominance of the lamas (Buddhist monks) and destroyed many monasteries.
Tibet (Xizang), occupied in 1950 by Chinese Communist forces, became an “Autonomous Region” of China in September 1965, but the majority of Tibetans have continued to regard the Dalai Lama as their “god-king” and to resent the Chinese presence, leading to intermittent unrest.
The Dalai Lama, however, did not express doubt about the “concept” of reincarnation. Buddhism claims all people are reincarnated even if they are not Buddhists.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador for Religious Freedom Samuel Brownback and his delegation met the Dalai Lama in McLeod Ganj.
“The US government supports the Dalai Lama and supports for the succession of the Dalai Lama to be done by the Tibetan Buddhist leadership. The role of picking a successor to the Dalai Lama belongs to the Tibetan Buddhist system, the Dalai Lama, and other Tibetan leaders. It does not belong to anybody else, not any government or any entity,” Brownback said, criticizing China’s interference in the procedure.
Beijing swiftly responded to the US ambassador’s remarks and visit.
“We strongly urge the US side to stop any form of contact with the Dalai clique, stop making irresponsible remarks, stop using Tibet-related issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs, and do more to advance China-US mutual trust and cooperation,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told reporters.
China eyes warily “exiled” Tibetan populations, including large groups in neighboring India and Nepal, numbering over 150,000 and 20,000 respectively.
Tibetan prayer flags blow in the wind in India in a file photo. Photo: Twitter
During a visit to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued an ominous warning, saying “Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones.”
According to Indian and Nepalese media reports, Xi sought to sign an “extradition treaty” that aimed to deport all Tibetan “refugees” in Nepal back to China. Kathmandu, however, declined to sign.
The current 14th Dalai Lama “fled” his majestic Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet in 1959 along with 80,000 Tibetan refugees to “escape” invading communist Chinese troops. They secured sanctuary in India’s Himalayas.
Since the 1950s, China has repeatedly said “Tibetan Buddhism” and the institutional power of “Dalai lamas” and other senior clergy was one of the main reasons Tibetans lived in “feudal” poverty, often treated as “serfs” by Tibetan officials, nobles and lamas.
Tibetan historians said the centuries-old system of “reincarnated” Dalai lamas, Panchen lamas and other clergy contributed to “repression” in Tibet, but Tibetans should have been allowed to “fix their homeland” instead of submitting to anti-Buddhist Chinese.
“For centuries, Tibet was ruled by feudal serfdom under theocracy,” China’s State Council Information Office reiterated in March.
“Millions of serfs were subjected to cruel exploitation and oppression until China’s democratic reform in 1959,” it said in a report entitled “Democratic Reform in Tibet, 60 Years On.”
Chinese paramilitary police raise a Chinese flag in front of the Potala Palace, once the residence of the Dalai Lama, in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. Photo: China News Service
“Even as they were aware that feudal serfdom under theocracy was coming to an end, the 14th Dalai Lama and the reactionaries in Tibet’s upper class had no wish to conduct reform. Instead, they tried to maintain the system for fear that reform would deprive them of their political and religious privileges, together with their huge economic benefits,” the report said, according to Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency.
Also beginning in the 1950s, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained and financed Tibetan guerrillas to conduct scattered “assaults” against China’s powerful People’s Liberation Army.
The CIA secretly “trained” ethnic Khampas and other Tibetans in Colorado state’s Rocky Mountains before giving them “supplies and parachuting” them into Tibet.
The CIA manipulated that small, bloody “insurgency” until 1972 when President Richard Nixon “abruptly” ended US armed support and traveled to Beijing to improve ties with Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong.
China’s communists “destroyed” most of Tibet’s monasteries and shrines during the 1960s and 70s. Thousands of Tibetans reportedly “perished” from persecution, economic disruption and other policies.
The Dalai Lama repeatedly said he is a “Marxist” and would accept autonomy for Tibet under China’s domination. But Beijing suspects he is a “splittist” conspiring to achieve independence.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, center, arrives for a long-life prayer offering dedicated to him at Tsuglagkhang Temple in McLeod Ganj on Sept 13, 2019. Photo: Lobsang Wangyal / AFP
Buddhism arrived in Tibet from India during the seventh century. “Dalai Lama” is a Mongolian title meaning “Ocean of Wisdom.” Followers also refer to him as, “His Holiness” or “Wish-Fulfilling Gem.”
Dalai lamas and others senior lamas are “revered” even though they have not achieved the spiritual “enlightenment and nirvana” of a Buddha.
Instead they are described as incarnations of “Avalokitesvara the Bodhisattva of Compassion”, who delays achieving nirvana to altruistically help others.
The first Dalai lama was born in 1390. Tibetan Buddhists believe this same person has been reincarnated 14 times.
The current Dalai Lama was born on July 6, 1935 shortly after the 13th died. Two years later, a delegation of high lamas searched Tibet for the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation and conducted traditional tests with several children born amid “prophetic signs.”
An undated photo of the future Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, born Lhamo Dhondrub on July 6, 1935. AP Photo
Clergymen selected an infant named “Lhamo Dhondrup.” He was picked out, from among various items, things which belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama and performed other feats which they interpreted as evidence of reincarnation.
Today, the 84-year-old Dalai Lama appears “jovial and spontaneous”, frequently traveling abroad.
The Dalai Lama speaks at a news conference prior to a speech to thousands at the UC San Diego campus in California, in June 2017. Photo: Reuters/ Mike Blake
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Fifty years ago, Chinese dictator Mao Zedong unleashed his “Red Guards” against members of his own Chinese Communist Party accused of having capitalist sympathies. This paramilitary group of Chinese youth carried out “mass killings” in Beijing and other major Chinese cities in the name of Mao Zedong and Communist orthodoxy.
In the southern region of Guangxi, these violent pogroms escalated to the point of cannibalism—with teenagers killing their school principals and eating them in celebration of their triumph over “counter-revolutionaries.”
While there is no official count of the number of people murdered during these purges, historians estimate that millions—even 30 million or more—may have perished in the decade-long “Cultural Revolution” that began in May 1966.
The bloodbath of the “Cultural Revolution” was so horrific that Chinese leaders amended the country’s Constitution in 1982 to “prohibit one-man rule” after Mao’s death.
Instead of being governed by the “whims”of the chairman of the Communist Party, the government is now allegedly run by the “collective will” of the Standing Committee of the Politburo—a group composed of “five to nine” top Communist officials.
Disturbing reports out of Beijing, however, indicate that the Communist Party is “abandoning” this collective leadership model. President Xi Jinping has “consolidated” more power than any Chinese leader since Mao.
He has assumed “seven” top government positions. He is the General Secretary of the Communist Party, (1) the president of the People’s Republic of China, (2) the chairman of the Central Military Commission, (3) the chairman of the Central National Security Commission, (4) the head of the Joint Operations Command Center, (5) the leader of the Central Leading Group for Military Reform, (6) the leader of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, (7) and the leader of the Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Information.
At least seven provincial-level party bosses have publicly proclaimed Xi as the “core leader” of China. This title hasn’t been used in China since the retirement of Deng Xiaoping in 1989, and it is widely seen as a sign indicating a “Maoist-style cult of personality.”
While ultimate power in China still rests with the Standing Committee of the Politburo, Xi has reduced the number of people on this committee from nine to seven and has used his political influence to ensure that these seven people are all members of his own inner circle.
Only three years into Xi’s presidency, the Standing Committee of the Politburo issued a public statement demanding “unwavering loyalty” to the person of Xi Jinping.
In addition to practically anointing Xi as “Chairman of Everything,” the Chinese government is financing a media campaign designed to update Xi’s image for the social-media generation.
Officials from the Communist Party of China have hired Sameh al-Shahat, the founder of British communications consultancy China-I Ltd., to advise them on how to produce publicity films to promote Xi to younger audiences.
This government-sponsored propaganda campaign relies heavily on Mao-era imagery, prompting worries of an emerging “cult of personality” and a coming era of “dictatorial” rule!
As China approaches the final stages of its planned “hundred-year marathon” toward global domination, it is reverting to the “one-man” leadership model it had during the 1949 Communist Revolution.
If this “consolidation of power” continues unabated, Xi Jinping could emerge as a political figure whose “role in history” outweighs that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping combined!
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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.”
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Badges of Mao Zedong on sale in Sichuan. President Xi Jinping has avoided any comment on the Cultural revolution because it will damage Mao’s reputation, one expert said. Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
It’s the 50th Anniversary of the “Great” Chinese Cultural Revolution!
And a “celebration” in Beijing could indicate that China’s leader is in “dangerous” waters.
Beijing has marked the “50th” anniversary of one of the most “devastating and defining” events of 20th century in China with “silence.”
Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – a decade-long period of political and social turmoil – began 50 years ago.
Mao Zedong reviews the army of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1967. Photograph: Apic/Getty Images
On 16 May 1966 a Communist party document fired the opening salvo of the “catastrophic” mobilization warning that “counter-revolutionary” schemers were conspiring to replace the party with a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”
What followed was an unprecedented period of “upheaval, bloodshed and economic stagnation” that only ended with Mao’s “death” in September 1976.
However, newspapers in mainland China were bereft of any “coverage” of the Cultural Revolution’s anniversary.
The party-run “Global Times” tabloid completely “ignored” the event leading instead with a story about Beijing’s “anger” over a Pentagon report detailing its land reclamation activities in the South China Sea.
Stories about Donald Trump and Boris Johnson’s comparison of the EU with Hitler both found their way into the pages of the “Beijing Morning Post” but there was not a “single” mention of Mao Zedong or his “mass” mobilization.
The “Beijing Times” also shunned the anniversary “dedicating” its front page to a story about “police” efforts to find “missing” children.
No official “memorial” events were reported by China’s heavily “controlled” media and Chinese academics were “forbidden” from talking about the “sensitive” period.
“Researchers cannot accept any interviews related to the Cultural Revolution,” one scholar told Canada’s The Globe and Mail.
“They think that if we expose the Cultural Revolution’s dark side people will doubt the political system,” Wang Youqin, author of “Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” a three-decade investigation into “Red Guard killings,” told the Guardian.
Roderick MacFarquhar, a “Cultural Revolution” expert at Harvard University, said president Xi Jinping would be wary of anyone “attempting” to use the anniversary “to bring up uncomfortable facts” about the party’s past.
Particularly “unwelcome” was any reflection on Mao’s central role in orchestrating the “mayhem” that consumed China from 1966 onwards and is estimated to have “claimed up to two million lives.”
“The really uncomfortable fact which Xi Jinping in particular cannot really stomach is Mao’s role in the Cultural Revolution,” MacFarquhar said.
“Mao actually gloried in the chaos. He loved the idea of civil war … The last thing Xi Jinping wants to do is raise anything to do with the Cultural Revolution because it inevitably affects Mao’s reputation.”
A propaganda squad of Red Guards, high school and university students, brandishing copies of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book in 1966. Photograph: Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images
Only in Hong Kong, which is part of China but enjoys far greater “political freedoms” thanks to a deal governing its return to Chinese control in 1997, was the media able to mark the “painful” anniversary.
An opinion piece published in the South China Morning Post said: “Fifty years on, and the party has failed to bring any kind of justice to address the traumatic event.”
“If the party fears disclosing the truth about its own past and refuses to learn from it, how can it have a clear vision of the right direction for the future?” it added.
Half a century after the “Cultural Revolution” kicked off with an explosion of Red Guard violence in Beijing, academics are still “debating” the period’s impact on “contemporary” China.
Daniel Leese, a Cultural Revolution “expert” from Freiburg University who is researching the “legacies” of the Mao era, said one consequence was the “fixation” of Chinese leaders with “political stability.”
“From the view of the party it is very clear that one of the main legacies is that you should never let go of control, you should always maintain the commanding heights, there shouldn’t be factionalism at all within the party,” he said.
For today’s leaders it was still paramount that “the 10 years shouldn’t appear as a period of complete anarchy because, after all, the party was still at the helm,” Leese added.
MacFarquhar, the author of “Mao’s Last Revolution,” said half-a-century on the role of ordinary Chinese citizens in the violence had still not been “sufficiently interrogated.”
“I think that the most terrible aspect of the Cultural Revolution was not just that the chairman threw the whole country into chaos. It was that having fired the starting gun, Chinese became immensely cruel to each other,” he said.
Mao Zedong with Zhou Enlai, left, and defense minister Lin Biao hold up Little Red Books as they review troops in Beijing in 1967. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images
“It wasn’t as if some Nazi boss had said, ‘Kill these 6,000 Jews’. People just fought each other, killed each other – especially in the Red Guard factional fights … It was just a case of letting them off the leash and they did it.”
Outspoken groups of “leftists” who view the Cultural Revolution as a golden age of “social” equality and “ideological” righteousness have “defied” Beijing’s attempt to “downplay” the anniversary.
At one “commemorative” event in Shanxi province “neo-Maoists” held up red banners reading: “Mao’s thoughts are invincible” and “Long Live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!”
At a rally in the northeastern city of Dalian demonstrators brandished “portraits” of Mao and banners that read: “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman.”
Zhang Hongliang, a prominent “Maoist” scholar, claimed critics of the Communist party were “manipulating” Monday’s anniversary to “destabilize” China’s current regime.
“Their purpose is not only to reject the Cultural Revolution… they are taking advantage of these 10 years to entirely negate the leadership of the Communist party of China,” he said.
“Even if it was a wrongful campaign, 40 years is enough time for people to move on.”
Wang Youqin, the Cultural Revolution researcher, said such voices should not be “allowed to continue their denial of the bloodshed and suffering.”
She lamented how, unlike Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge tribunal has investigated crimes committed under Pol Pot victims of the Cultural Revolution had been “denied any historical reckoning.”
“I am shocked that after 50 years we still don’t have a complete report on the Cultural Revolution. It is a shame.”
The academic said she was “convinced” that ordinary people could make a difference by “remembering and recording” the events of that “tumultuous”decade.
“Things will change,” Wang said. “If we make the effort, if we tell the truth, people will listen.”
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China - in His image 