Self-Flattery and Delusion on Parade
The celebration is notable, however, for its well-planned military parade, coordinated by Party members and intended to flatter the CCP, especially the top leadership. Consisting of 15,000 troops, 160 or more military aircraft and almost 600 weapon systems from 59 military units, as well as its strategic nuclear missile systems and the very dangerous DF-41 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the CCP’s show off of military hardware was actually worthy of the 20th century’s most dastardly totalitarian regimes.A China Stripped of Its Cultural Heritage
Despite the CCP’s claim that its communist system has “Chinese characteristics,” the reality is much different. The communist Chinese regime bears more similarities with the totalitarian systems of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany than with traditional China. Even down to the personalization of the state in a cult-like political figure, China resembles European totalitarianism, or even a theocratic dictatorship, more than any sort of traditional Chinese government.Sadly, since the Cultural Revolution, Chinese society has seen its cultural roots and heritage stripped from it, decade after decade. In his war against the nationalists and then later, against his own people, Mao chose communism as his guiding ideology, and spared no atrocity in order to destroy those who resisted him.
The Failed Hope of Sun Yat-sen
Recall that it was Chinese nationalist and American ally Sun Yat-sen who sought to modernize the country not by discarding the richness of Chinese culture the way Mao and the communists ended up doing, but by reviving and restoring it. In that spirit and in his respect for his nation’s ancient society, Sun wished to move all of China forward, without sacrificing its cultural soul.China’s New Nationalism
Consider China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s assessment of China and its position today. In the Communist Party publication People’s Daily, Wang said China’s relations with the world had seen historic changes over the past 70 years, with its global standing elevated to a new high and its diplomatic activism widely recognized.Such is the language of China’s new, robust nationalism. Today, China is a hyper-nationalist nation with global ambitions. And it’s not because China considers itself the vanguard of the proletariat, either. The religious zeal for international communism—was once a big deal among the intellectual elites of the world—has been long dead, well before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
No, according to China’s highest-ranking diplomat Yang Jiechi, China’s ambitions are as militaristic as they come:
The true number of lives destroyed at the hands of the CCP is probably even higher. The point, however, couldn’t be clearer. That which benefits the CCP usually does not benefit the people of China.
Of course, that outrageous claim is contradicted by the hundreds of billions of dollars of direct investment that the West, including America, has put into China over the past 40 years. It’s not the West that’s really hurting China today, it’s the CCP.
What western power, or combination of them, could turn China into the mass-murdering, soul-crushing totalitarian state that it has become?
In human costs and the vast destruction of its culture and the environment, the injustices of Western colonialism in China pale in comparison to what the CCP has done and continues to do. May the end of the CCP come soon; very, very soon.