Chinese Regime Fears Repeating the Collapse of Former Soviet Union, Expert Says

At a recent meeting of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping stressed that anti-corruption efforts need to target both "flies" and "tigers," referring to lower and senior level officials. Ed Jones-Pool/Getty images

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda magazine Qiushi Theory reprinted party leader Xi Jinping’s talk to cadres of Central Party School in March 2022.

The talk, reprinted on July 1—which the party claimed to be its founding day in 1921—was filled with Xi’s concern that the party is at the brink of collapse if cadres fail to adhere to Marxism and communism.

Xi said that if cadres do not believe in Marxism, communism, and fail to recognize the CCP’s socialism, China will repeat tragedies such as the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

Song Guo-cheng, a researcher at National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations, believes the talk showed Xi in a state of extreme sense of crisis.

Song said the CCP is in the most dangerous situation since its founding: constant and turbulent international relations, a stagnant economy after three years of pandemic, a surging unemployment rate, and the exodus of Chinese people and companies could all combine to “shake the red power.”

“It reflects that Xi Jinping is very anxious,” Song told The Epoch Times.

In the talk, Xi also emphasized that leading cadres with motives for fame and fortune, lacking ideals and beliefs, will lose the spirit to fight for communism.

Li Yuanhua, a historian in Australia, said Xi is clearly aware of the fact that cadres’ ideals and beliefs, as well as the rhetoric, have long collapsed.

“Those who followed Xi and touted the red Chinese dreams are only interested in the gains from joining the corrupt officials and their deeds,” he said.

Xi also stressed the serious issue of corruption within the party in the talk.

In fact, as early as when Xi first came to power in November 2012, he recognized that corruption will “ultimately lead to the demise of the Party and the ruling regime,” Xi said in his first talk as the CCP leader at the Politburo, the supreme policy-making body of the regime.

Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has continued for a decade since it started in 2013. However, as a party magazine “Theory and Reform” pointed out last year, the corruption has taken a hidden and cunning form like a virus that’s constantly mutating.

Haizhong Ning and Luo Ya contributed to this report.