'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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..Nixon forgot to ask if communist China could be easily integrated into the international community. (p. 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 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
Notes[7] An internal CCP narrative at the time argued that, on the one hand, the governments of developed countries in Europe and the US publicly announced sanctions against China, but secretly big European and American companies lobbied their governments to relax sanctions for their own interests and they maintained contacts through some unofficial channels. This emboldened Deng Xiaoping and other high-level CCP officials. I clearly remember the content of this talk circulated internally at that time.
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[30] For example, Spain realized peaceful democratic political transformation, and its foundation was established in the last ten years of General Franco’s rule. At that time Spain was already a de facto authoritarian regime. Yet in the former Soviet Union, although there was no large-scale bloodshed in the process of political upheaval, it did not smoothly move toward a democratic political system, and in fact stayed at the stage of Yeltsin-Putin’s strongman-type authoritarian rule. This shows that the totalitarian system cannot directly advance to the democratic political system, but authoritarian rule can.
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