For some time now, the ruler of China has been talking about destroying the United States and the liberal world order that Washington helped create in the wake of World War II.
Uncovered documents and never-before-translated speeches shine light on what Xi Jinping has in mind. His words are disquieting.
Five years ago this fall, the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) held its 19th National Congress in Beijing. To mark the occasion, Xi gave an iron man speech in the Great Hall of the People, standing in the limelight and reading his prepared remarks out loud for over three hours. Buried amid jargon-heavy prose was a remarkable line: “Ever since the Chinese Communist Party was first established, realizing communism has been the party’s supreme ideal and ultimate objective.”
That following spring, Xi gave another major speech in the Great Hall of the People. “Even though world socialism has had twists and turns in its path as it developed, the overall trend of human social development has not changed,” Xi declared. “We must deeply understand that realizing communism is an objective that happens in a historical process. It occurs in stages, one step at a time … We must struggle for communism our entire lives.”
The date was Friday, May 4, 2018, and China was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. The Chinese government launched an intense propaganda campaign and commissioned a towering, two-ton bronze statue of the philosopher, which was erected to the delight of hundreds of flag-waving Communist Party members in his hometown of Trier, Germany.
Karl Marx was the co-author of “The Communist Manifesto,” a document that opposed the institutions of family, religion, democracy, free markets and even nation — a document that urged followers to violently overturn their governments and establish a new system where all power was centralized in the hands of the state via “despotic means.”
Marx’s manifesto was published in 1848 as the platform for a secret society in England, the Communist League. It was translated and disseminated, ultimately catalyzing revolutionary movements that established a raft of one-party dictatorships. Beginning with the Soviet Union in 1917, Communism took root in nations such as Afghanistan, Congo, Cuba, North Korea and, of course, China.
