'Is China under the CCP’s rule an authoritarian or a totalitarian regime? So far, this issue has not been clearly understood by either party in the US..
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It is important to remember that the People’s Liberation Army is a “party-army”, responsible solely to the CCP as the ruling party and not the nation, state, or government of the PRC.'
- Cai Xia
'..As a former member of the CCP system, looking back at the changes in China-US relations over the past fifty years, I have three basic perspectives that I wish to share with Americans, so that they can more clearly see the CCP and its strategies for what they are.
First, in the more than seventy years since it came to power, the CCP has treated domestic and foreign affairs as “one integrated game,” with the top priority of strengthening the CCP’s control and preventing the collapse of the regime. In this regard, diplomacy is an extension of domestic affairs and is seen as a device to keep the party in power.
Second, as far as the CCP’s global strategic objectives are concerned, China-US relations are the primary, and most important, factors among all. Therefore, the CCP’s attitude toward China-US relations and the engagement policy is determined by how well they serve the CCP’s internal political needs.
Third, international engagement and economic development have failed to soften the political character of the CCP regime. Its combination of ideology and extreme repression make it a totalitarian regime, and the sophisticated digital nature of its surveillance and repression has given totalitarian control a new dimension. All of this makes China a more dangerous adversary for the United States. (p. 2 & 3)
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As a leading Chinese propagandist, the former head of the State Council’s Information Office, Zhao Qizheng, cynically explained, “The ‘peaceful’ is for foreigners, and the ‘rise’ is for us Chinese.”
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Americans are too naïve. There are many differences between the cultures of Americans and Chinese. One basic cultural tradition of Americans is not to lie, to obey the rules, and to respect the spirit of contracts. In Chinese culture deception is in our blood. There is no spirit of the contract, no sense of fairness, and people often say different words to mean the same things under different circumstances. Something said today can change tomorrow. American people don’t have to care what the CCP says--but they must be careful about what the CCP does. If Americans naïvely believe the benign words and empty propaganda slogans that the CCP propagates, then they will be deceived and cheated. This is Chinese-style cunning. The Chinese Communist Party does not think that this is morally bad. On the contrary, they think that it is a “strategy,” as Sun Zi long ago instructed that “there can never be too much deception in war”. (p. 13 & 14)
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The CCP’s penetration of the United States and other countries, especially ideological penetration, began at the start of the twenty-first century. But at that time the scope and scale were limited. After Hu Jintao mentioned the need to build China’s “soft power” in his report to the 17th Party Congress in 2007, external propaganda activities have received much greater priority. As China’s economic strength increases, its ambition to expand internationally and even to dominate the world has grown larger, and its infiltration and influence activities have become more and more pervasive and invasive. The propaganda penetration overseas initially occurred in the name of cultural exchanges, but then expanded to media, finance, economy, technology, education, think tanks, museums, and other fields and institutions. Reportedly, almost all independent Chinese-language media in the United States have been bought up and are now controlled by the CCP, and the CCP interferes with academic freedom in American universities and think tanks. Also, the CCP’s “long arm control” has reached Chinese students and Chinese organizations across the US, and the party has even set up CCP branches in American universities (this is the case in many other countries as well). Meanwhile, China has progressively closed its doors to American and other foreign scholars. (p. 17)
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..the CCP has embarked on the path of militarism, conspiring to wage war, and it regards the United States as its most threatening enemy. In fact, no matter which political party is in power in the United States, it is impossible for the CCP to change this perspective.
COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, but the CCP concealed the truth and delayed prevention and control. This caused the virus to spread around the world, and it has not ended yet. Hundreds of millions of people have been infected and millions of people have died. In 2020, the CCP took advantage of the pandemic to spread false news, replacing normal communication between countries with “wolf warrior” verbal abuse in its diplomacy, falsely alleging that the virus originated in the US and trying to shirk its own responsibilities. The CCP has used every means to conceal the truth, preventing the World Health Organization and governments of other countries from investigating the origin of the virus, obtaining information on patient zero, and discovering the true situation at the beginning of the pandemic. (p. 19)
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Many Americans deplore the sad ending of the engagement policy, which is completely understandable. But in my view, this is an inevitable outcome. This is because the engagement policy was based on the faulty assumptions that international integration and economic development could transform the CCP into a modern political party that is willing to give up or share its hegemonic rule. But the CCP’s founding mission and organizing principles are to eliminate capitalism and achieve proletarian dictatorship, which institutes a completely opposite value and political system from those of the US. The two conflicting systems cannot be reconciled, and they cannot indefinitely coexist. As a result, China-US relations will inevitably move toward a standoff and/or confrontation (cold war or hot war is the external manifestation of confrontation). In fact, it is the CCP that has unilaterally ruined the engagement policy, because it believes engagement has served its purpose and is no longer useful.
The CCP regards the United States as a hostile adversary, even an enemy, while the US regards the CCP as its “competitor.” These are different concepts, which generate different strategies for bilateral relations, with different policy consequences. An adversary or enemy poses a relationship of life and death, but competitors only seek to gain advantage in a perpetual contest. (p. 20)
The CCP has always regarded the United States as its adversary or enemy, for two reasons. First, it fears that its regime will be overthrown. This insecurity and paranoia, and the need to justify its dictatorship, are the rationale to create an archenemy. Therefore, from my childhood to today, the slogan that “the US imperialists have not given up the wild ambition to subjugate our country” incessantly lingers on. Inside China, the CCP launches a political campaign every few years to eliminate domestic opposition, and it always guards against the influence of the US and other Western countries on China--in its words, to “oppose peaceful evolution.” Whenever the CCP and the people have intense conflicts, the CCP will use the pretext of “the hostile black hand of foreign forces behind the scenes” to justify suppressing the protest. After decades of anti-American propaganda within and outside the CCP, anti-American sentiment has become an indisputable political correctness. Second, the CCP always regards “eliminating imperialism and liberating all mankind” and “planting the red flag all over the world” as its political objectives. For more than seventy years, from Mao Zedong’s “anti–peaceful evolution” and “all imperialist reactionaries are paper tigers” rhetoric to Deng Xiaoping’s “calm observation, holding a firm foothold” and “hiding one’s capacity and biding one’s time,” or Xi Jinping’s “bottom line thinking,” “maintain political security, regime security” and “build a community with a shared future for mankind”--the fundamental point has always been to treat China-US relations as a hostile relationship of “life and death.” Up until now, only China’s lack of strength and the influence of the international community constrained China. But now that the CCP perceives American weakness and has an inflated sense of China’s own strengths, Beijing is adjusting its strategy toward the US accordingly.
On the other hand, no matter how many doubts it has about the CCP, the United States has continued to treat China as a normal country. The US government granted China Permanent Most Favored Nation trade status (PNTR) and supported China’s accession to the WTO. At that time the US was happy to see China’s national strength rapidly increasing, under the assumption that economic freedom would bring about political changes. While well intended, such actions were profoundly naïve. (p. 21)
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..The CCP just used and took advantage of the goodwill and benign intentions of the Americans. The reason why the engagement policy ended sadly is due to the fundamental misjudgment by the United States about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and regime, which in turn has made the US a victim of its own policy. The consequences of misjudging the nature of the CCP regime can be described in a Chinese idiom: “leaving a carbuncle unchecked will lead to endless troubles.”
Is China under the CCP’s rule an authoritarian or a totalitarian regime? So far, this issue has not been clearly understood by either party in the US. While unprecedentedly harsh, even former secretary of state Pompeo’s speeches referred to the CCP as an authoritarian country. In fact, the CCP regime has always been a totalitarian, one-party dictatorship. (p. 22)
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..In short, the CCP is the greatest threat to American security and world peace, and the CCP regime has no moral compass. (p. 25)'
- Cai Xia,
China-US Relations in the Eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, June 28, 2021
Context The Broken Promises of China's WTO Accession: Reprioritizing Human Rights - '..reduce supply chain reliance on China.'China's Xi Faces no 'Power to Constrain Him' - Xi Brings 'Era of Exquisite Totalitarianism' - '..ever since Xi took office in 2012 .. It is as barbaric and ferocious as Hitler’s rule..' - Cai Xia(War)(The threat to world order is China) - '..rigorous analysis of Chinese political warfare and a warning of its effects on democracy.' - ..‘Insidious Power: How China Undermines Global Democracy’(The New Alliance)(China is 'threat to world') - '..the only way to truly change communist China is to act not on the basis of what Chinese leaders say, but how they behave..''Some are just psychopaths': Chinese detective in exile reveals extent of torture against Uyghurs(Like the Third Reich) - '..we are in a moment right now .. right before the Berlin Olympics in 1936. The Beijing Olympics are approaching..'(The Republic of China) - Taiwan Can Win a War With [Communist] China - '..[Taiwan] .. the freedom to purchase the sort of arms that make invasion unthinkable.'Kissinger's folly: The threat to world order is China'..We have a revanchist Russia .. And we have a China, which is still Leninist..''Far too many American multinational corporations have kowtowed to the lure of China’s money and markets by muzzling not only criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, but even affirmative expressions of American values.' - Pence'What do we do about China now?' - '..the Chinese manipulated Western politicians and business leaders into thinking China was evolving toward democracy and capitalism.''..the West’s 25-year bet on China has failed.' - How the West got China wrong - '..China uses business to confront its enemies. It seeks to punish firms directly, as when Mercedes-Benz..'(The Chinese Communist Party is a threat) - ' “Made in China 2025” .. “Civil Military Fusion” .. Xi Jinping speaks regularly of “preparing to fight and win wars.” From Europe to the Middle East, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific..''..a boycott on the Beijing 2022 Winter Games..'For Freedom, Justice, and Love - '..Chinese people learned about freedom, rule of law, human rights, and civil society. In some places, they found ways to practice democracy and freedom..'(Spanish, English, Chinese) - The Values: 'You only have to read one book, "The History of Spain" by Father Juan de Mariana.' - Thomas Jefferson