Thirty years ago, a group of East Germans yearning for freedom toppled the Berlin Wall, the Cold War-symbol of communist brutality. However, the specter of communism remains at large in an axis of authoritarian regimes led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules a growing superpower of 1.4 billion captive subjects.
In the generation since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet bloc, the CCP has expanded its malign influence around the globe, promoting its totalitarian model in a direct challenge to the democratic values of the free world.
This clash is most evident in Hong Kong, where millions of people have stood up to the threat of communist encroachment on their city’s rule of law and civil liberties.
The Nine Commentaries has triggered an awakening among hundreds of millions of people living under the communist jackboot. Today, from China to the United States, from the protesters resisting the CCP’s dictatorship on the streets of Hong Kong to serene annual rallies put on in the Chinatowns of New York, the Nine Commentaries is writing an unprecedented epic of modern history. And nowhere has this history unfolded in more dramatic fashion than with Tuidang, the movement to quit the Chinese Communist Party and break with the malign influence of the communist specter.
On the 15th anniversary of the Nine Commentaries’ publication, the tally of people in mainland China and around the world who have renounced their ties to the CCP and its two affiliated youth organizations stands at over 346 million.
30 Years After Berlin, Hong Kong Stands Up to Repression
The Hong Kong protesters who risk their freedom and safety to say no to the Communist Party are among those using their own blood and conscience to pen a fresh chapter in the contemporary epic.Hong Kong, the southern Chinese port city and former British colony where the “high level of autonomy” promised by the CCP in 1984 has suffered gradual erosion since the 1997 handover, has experienced citywide pro-democracy demonstrations for over five months. It has been held up by the international community as a “new Berlin” in the confrontation between freedom and tyranny.
Hongkongers have been demonized by the authorities, the CCP’s state mouthpieces, and media aligned with the CCP for daring to push back against Beijing’s tyranny. Selective reporting casts them as rioters who deserve harsh punishment by the Hong Kong police.
The Nine Commentaries notes that the Communist Party has never changed its unscrupulous nature. In China, while the CCP cracks down on dissent under the guise of “maintaining stability,” the CCP itself is the greatest cause of instability.
“With its several million troops and armed police, the CCP is the real source of turmoil,” says the last of the Nine Commentaries. “Ordinary citizens have neither the cause nor the capability to initiate turmoil.”
The source of all violence in Hong Kong today lies with the city’s CCP-controlled police force and triad gangs.
Many Hongkongers have paid dearly for resisting the CCP. Thousands of protesters, a third of them students, have been jailed. Some have been tortured or raped by the police, and the number of people who have been allegedly murdered in secret continues to grow. Meanwhile, the police are stepping up their repression, as seen in the violent storming of Hong Kong’s university campuses and indiscriminate mass arrests.
However, the people of Hong Kong are not alone. They have seen that the dignitaries and citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom and the world stand with them. In addition, they can count on righteous media of the world, including The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty Television, to tell their true story.
The Hongkongers have also learned from practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, who have tirelessly clarified the facts about their faith and its persecution by the CCP for the last 20 years. Through leaflets, face-to-face conversation, or other means, the people of Hong Kong are becoming fully aware of the CCP’s lies and brutality. Many of them have read the Nine Commentaries and understand everything that the Communist Party and the Hong Kong government have in store for their city.
Hongkongers have woken up to the fact that their only hope is a future without the CCP.
And vice versa, as written in the Nine Commentaries, “when people recognize the CCP’s villainous nature and resist being deceived by its false images, the end will arrive for the CCP and its unscrupulous nature.”
Lao Zi, the ancient Chinese sage of Daoism, said: “If the populace doesn’t fear death, what good will it do to threaten them with death?” When violence reaches the limits of its effectiveness, so too does the vitality of the totalitarian project.
As the CCP’s pernicious nature is revealed to all, fear can no longer shackle the human soul.
Only Without the CCP Will There Be a New China
Nearly 100 years ago, the specter of communism manifested itself in China in the form of the Chinese Communist Party. Seventy years ago it succeeded in seizing political power, appropriating China’s name whilst ruthlessly persecuting and transforming the Chinese people. Working overseas, the CCP has spared no effort to export the communist model in a bid to extend its hegemony to every corner of the earth.From Confucius Institutes to “One Belt and One Road,” from Huawei 5G networks to the recent forays into blockchain, the CCP has infiltrated the fields of culture, economy, and technology to vigorously export its corrupt models of economic and social governance. The “community of shared future for mankind” is the name by which the Party dresses these attempts to export varying strains of socialism around the world in preparation for all-out communist revolution.
As the confrontation between the CCP and the free world reached a watershed moment, the Editorial Board of the Nine Commentaries released two new books: “The Ultimate Goal of Communism” and “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World.”
These two volumes, published in 2017 and 2018, offer a comprehensive breakdown of the communist specter’s roadmap for the corruption and destruction of culture, morality, and eventually humanity itself.
The Nine Commentaries concludes:
In addition to the hundreds of millions of Chinese who have broken free of the Communist Party’s demonic spell, free nations around the world are rapidly awakening to the threat posed by the CCP to universal values everywhere. They are beginning to draw a clear distinction between the Communist Party and the Chinese people.
On Nov. 7, 2017, on the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution that brought communism to Russia in 1917, U.S. President Donald Trump made a historic statement, declaring that day as “the National Day for the Victims of Communism.”
On Feb. 6, 2019, Trump reiterated in his State of the Union address that the United States would “never be a socialist country.”
In a speech delivered in October 2018, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence condemned the pernicious operations of the CCP and questioned its legitimacy.
On Oct. 30, 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stressed that the CCP was a Leninist regime bent on “international domination,” and that “freedom-loving people of China everywhere” rejected the CCP’s model.
America’s conflict is with the CCP, not China, Pompeo said at a Nov. 8 event commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. “It’s the challenge between the Chinese Communist Party and its authoritarian regime and freedom-loving peoples all across the world.”
In recent years, the United States has launched comprehensive investigations into the myriad channels through which the CCP has built and exercised influence. Washington has taken effective action to resist the CCP’s aggressive policies by confronting the Chinese regime in the realms of trade, technology, and human rights.
The United States has gradually stepped up support for religious freedom, especially in countries governed by communist regimes. It has also passed statements and legislation to stand with Hongkongers in the battle for the Chinese-ruled city’s democracy and rule of law.
Truth Laid Out in the Nine Commentaries Shows the Way for the Future
The fall of the Berlin Wall three decades ago delivered a powerful message from the people of East Germany to the entire world: that democracy and rule of law would triumph over the forces of oppression and tyranny.Today, Hongkongers are tearing down the Chinese Communist Party’s “Berlin Wall” by offering peaceful yet steadfast resistance.
The ruthlessness of the CCP that the people of Hong Kong face today echoes the nationwide persecution of Falun Gong, which began in July 1999. Since then, across China, tens of millions of Falun Gong adherents, who aspire to spiritual perfection in accordance with the universal values of “truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance,” have risked their lives and livelihoods to meet the evildoers in the CCP regime with truth and kindness.
For twenty years, the CCP has devoted immense resources to the persecution of Falun Gong. Countless Falun Gong practitioners have endured unimaginable suffering, from being rejected from school or employment to being sentenced to labor camps, where they face torture, sexual violence, and murder by having their organs harvested while still alive. Yet the unprecedented cruelty and evil of the CCP never defeated their will to speak the truth to China, Hong Kong, and the whole world.
Many Hongkongers, though previously blinded by the CCP’s propaganda campaign against Falun Gong, now understand the significance of Falun Gong practitioners’ ceaseless efforts to clarify the facts and awaken the world’s people to the true nature of the CCP.
As Hong Kong faces the imminent threat of deadly crackdown, Chinese around the world have drawn direct comparisons between the CCP’s conduct in Hong Kong and the ordeals that have been visited upon Falun Gong practitioners for so many years.
“I owe Falun Gong an apology,” and “thanks Falun Gong for 20 years of perseverance in telling the truth,” are among the lines heard among growing numbers of Hongkongers. “Only now do I realize how cruel the suppression of Falun Gong by the CCP has been” and “I apologize, as I have been deceived by the CCP all this time,” many have said, in light of the increasing lists of young Hongkongers declared dead by “suicide,” victims of gang rape being openly slandered by the Hong Kong police, and the government’s sinister claims about “floating corpses.”
The Editorial Board of the Nine Commentaries has made it clear that the nature of communism is not that of an ideology or a movement, but an evil specter composed of hatred and all manner of corrupt forces. It is from hatred and struggle that the Communist Party absorbs the strength needed to feed the existence of this evil specter.
And though with the CCP’s threat looming, the people of Hong Kong have hope.
Because in line with what the Nine Commentaries had expounded 15 years ago, the international community is coming together to reject the CCP.
Because countless Falun Gong practitioners have made every sacrifice to hold a light to the darkness of communist tyranny.
Because the universal values Falun Gong teaches are restoring traditional Chinese morality and culture, and have awakened the unparalleled power that exists in every human being—kindness.
The authors of the Nine Commentaries wrote:
“Even though the CCP appears to possess all the resources and violent apparatus in the country, if every citizen believes in the power of the truth and safeguards morality, the evil specter of the CCP will lose the foundation for its existence. All resources may instantly return to the hands of the just. That is when the rebirth of China will take place.”
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet communist empire proved that even the most brutal tyranny cannot destroy the kindness in people’s hearts. When tyrants use violence to oppose the people, all they achieve is to dig the graves of their evil regimes.
Kindness can conquer fear, eliminate hatred, and inspire courage. With hearts of kindness, we can tear down this wall and embrace a future without communism!
