Xi trailing in Mao’s footsteps
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been playing the Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) card lately in an attempt to use the 30th anniversary of his death to polish up his contributions. They are going all-out in their praise for China in the same way that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is going all-out in his praise for Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
In China, history classes in all elementary and junior-high schools have been changed this year. The Cultural Revolution, which used to be described as a “cultural disaster,” is now described as a “difficult exploration.”
This “cultural disaster” statement used to be followed by a statement saying that “Mao mistakenly thought that revisionism had appeared within the central party leadership and that the party and the state were facing the risk that capitalism would be restored,” but the mistake has been removed and it has now been changed to “Mao thought the party and the state were facing the risk that capitalism would be restored.”
This is tantamount to abandoning Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) view that 30 percent of what Mao did was good and 70 percent was bad in favor of all-out praise for Mao. This change is in line with the claim that Xi is emulating Mao’s political line.
Domestically, Mao used the Cultural Revolution to eliminate all of his revolutionary partners that he did not see eye to eye with, but it also affected the lives of tens of millions of innocent Chinese.
He also adopted policies to strengthen the Chinese military with the help of slogans such as “we will develop nuclear weapons even if everyone has to go hungry,” “we do not want trousers, we want nuclear weapons” and “Chinese do not fear the US imperialists, it is the US imperialists who fear Chinese.” He also described the Chinese dream as consolidating the people’s “patriotic awareness.”
Externally, he advocated opposing the US and assisting North Korea, brought China into the Korean War and later displayed his underhanded and ruthless ways and bellicose attitude during the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict.
Following in Mao’s footsteps, Xi has used a war on corruption as a means to purge the ranks and eliminate former Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s (江澤民) people and the children of the old revolutionary guard that he does not like, and he has sacrificed freedom of expression to control Internet access and block dissenting opinion.
On so many occasions lately that it is beginning to raise suspicions, he has demanded the loyalty of officials and told the military that they should “listen to the party and follow the party’s instructions,” and that the reformed People’s Armed Police should “listen to the party and safeguard government stability.”
At the same time, he has described the Chinese dream as being “the mighty awakening of the Chinese race” and talked about consolidating the “patriotic awareness” of Chinese.
Internationally, he has displayed China’s military might along the Taiwanese and Japanese coasts, as well as along the coastal areas of the countries surrounding the South China Sea, looking for opportunities to create an incident.
In all this, he has displayed the same underhanded and ruthless ways and bellicose attitude the Mao was capable of.
Yu Kung
China-based businessman
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