Chinese state media recently touted Beijing’s “new cultural mission” of creating a “modern version” of China. However, critics told The Epoch Times that the regime aims to spread the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideology to the world.
To secure his power and communism in China, Mao launched a mass anti-cultural political movement in 1966 to wipe out capitalists and traditional elements, including the societal elites and scholars. In the following 10 years, countless artifacts, architecture, and antiques were destroyed, and tens of millions of people were persecuted to death.
‘False Image of Traditional Culture’
Xi said Chinese culture and Marxism are “highly compatible,” and the combination will form a new culture that’s “unified, organic and viable.”However, some China experts disagree.
“The atheistic core of Marxism stands diametrically opposite of the divinity of traditional Chinese culture,” said China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan.
“Chinese culture inherited moral values from Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism,” he said, and that “70-plus years of communist rule has destroyed the divinity of Chinese culture and replaced it with the Chinese Communist Party’s philosophy of horror and torture, so-called Party culture.”
“Many Chinese have mistaken the horror philosophy adapted by the ruling regime for the traditional Chinese culture,” Tang said.
“The CCP aims to create a false image of traditional culture but, in fact, it is Party culture, in which struggle is the core.”
A ‘Scam’
Yuan Hongbing, an Australia-based China expert, called Xi’s initiative to combine Chinese traditional culture and Marxism a “scam,” both politically and culturally.He said the CCP carries out cultural genocide against various ethnic groups in China. “The first thing the CCP did was to extinguish the soul of Chinese culture,” he said.
He explained that the New Culture Movement in 1915, a progressive movement that criticized classical Chinese ideas, had a clear goal: to destroy Confucianism.
“When Xi vowed, ‘A unity of Chinese civilization … a strong and unified country is the pillar upon which the well-being of all Chinese people depends,’ he was really preaching a global expansion of communism, and the target was Taiwan,” Yuan said.
“In the name of the reunification of the motherland, to invade and conquer free Taiwan is a key step in the global expansion of communist totalitarianism.
‘Spiritual Slaves’
In the June 2 meeting, Xi also said the inclusivity of Chinese culture determines “the harmonious coexistence of diverse religious beliefs in China” and “the open-minded and inclusive mentality of China toward various civilizations around the world.”Yuan said this is not the case under the CCP. “Instead, the CCP is now instilling communism in all religions. The so-called religions in China today are actually spiritual slaves controlled by the CCP’s United Front Work Department. They consolidate the CCP’s spiritual dictatorship by promoting Party culture under the cloak of religion,” he said.
Tang concurred with Yuan and said the Chinese “religion” is a branch of the CCP, a tool of the Party’s united front work. “In reality, it is to carry out the CCP’s tyranny, but with a superficial Chinese civilization,” he added.
Tang said the CCP has a history of brutally persecuting religious groups. “Mao Zedong destroyed Chinese culture through violence—the physical destruction of cultural relics, historic sites, and the human body. And Xi Jinping undermined Chinese culture from within—to hollow out traditional culture. It’s covert and deceptive and, thus, far more invasive.
“Both Mao and Xi strived to consolidate the absolute dominance of ‘Party culture,’ which will not tolerate any orthodox religion,” he said.
Yuan stressed that Beijing’s “new cultural mission” is “the CCP’s evil idea to involve all Chinese in its battle against the divinity inherent in traditional Chinese culture. It is the CCP’s final struggle as it is on the brink of collapse.”
