Global Hegemony and Chinese Communism

Chinese soldiers shout as they march in formation during a parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of communist China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Commentary

Most analysts of both major parties in the United States now agree that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking global hegemony.

Hegemony is generally defined as “the dominance of one group over another,” according to Britannica. That this is the CCP’s goal, which concerns every man, woman, and child on this planet, means that the CCP ultimately seeks to rule every man, woman, and child on this planet.

The propensity of the CCP to commit genocide against nationalities that it previously conquered, like Tibetans and Uyghurs, makes the CCP’s goal of global hegemony a life-or-death matter. The CCP’s disastrous economic policies led to famine and lower GDP per capita for China than its peers in Asia, including most notably Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. These CCP policies are based on the communism of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin, which Xi Jinping also uses to rule China.

During the Trump administration, Miles Yu worked as a key China adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Yu wrote to The Epoch Times in an explanation of Xi’s rule: “Marx didn’t rule but laid the framework of communism. Lenin ruled with the dictatorship of the proletariat and the supremacy of the vanguards of the proletariat, i.e., the Party. Stalin ruled with [an] ‘I’m the Party and I am the Revolution’ Cult of personality. Xi rules with all of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, calling it ‘communism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.’”

Stalin was a totalitarian, as is arguably Xi. Both seek world revolution and communist hegemony but in different ways.

In April, Yu wrote an article for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University titled “The Importance of Being Communist—Evolution of China’s Ideological Orthodoxy and Its Vision for Global Dominance.” In the article, Yu points to how the CCP uses its “proxies” Russia, Iran, and North Korea “to create global strategic distractions and diversions for the U.S.” Yu argues that the CCP is actively preparing for “a final military showdown with the U.S.”

Yu says the CCP thinks it will win, “which would mark the end of the United States’ global leadership, and the emergence of the CCP’s global hegemony, moving ever closer to the original goal of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Xi Jinping’s ideological fulfillment, i.e., a global communist Internationale, no doubt under the preponderant influence and control of the world’s only remaining communist state of consequence led by the forever ideologically correct Chinese Communist Party.”

Yu speaks ironically here about the CCP seeing itself as perfect. This gives the CCP the self-validation it needs to culturally eradicate groups and individuals who might pose a threat to its “perfection,” even if that eradication is technically a form of genocide according to the U.N. definition.

Democrats have similar concerns about CCP hegemony. Rush Doshi wrote a book titled “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Doshi worked as an Asia policy adviser for both the Clinton and Biden campaigns.

In the book, Doshi wrote, “China has pursued a variety of strategies to displace the United States at the regional and global level.” The two main strategies include “blunting” U.S. political, economic, and military power and institutions in order to build CCP power and institutions in their place.

Some definitions of hegemony include support by norms and ideas that legitimize the coercion and persuasion of the hegemon or ruler. Beijing has a set of norms around international communism that attempts to legitimize CCP hegemony. Still, these norms lost power after the excesses of Stalin’s totalitarianism became well-known, including his alleged use of famine as a tool of genocide against Ukrainians. While the CCP denies that it engages in genocide and seeks hegemony, these claims are easily disproven.

For example, according to a 2022 CCP document, “China stands firmly against all forms of hegemonism and power politics, the Cold War mentality, interference in other countries’ internal affairs, and double standards, Xi said.”

However, the CCP’s actions belie its words. First, the CCP claims to speak for all of China, but the Chinese public has not given it permission to do so through free and fair elections.

Second, the CCP claims to stand against “power politics” and “the Cold War mentality” while refusing to engage in the kinds of nuclear weapons limitation agreements that ended the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Third, the CCP claims to oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs while using TikTok, for example, to politically influence over 1 billion users globally and 170 million users in the United States. The CCP bans U.S. social media networks from China.

Finally, the CCP claims to be against “double standards” while using international law to claim undersea mining rights near Hawaii while ignoring its rulings on the South China Sea.

This single sentence from the CCP contains the most obvious duplicity. The CCP is responsible for entire libraries full of similar falsehoods meant to justify the expansion of its misrule to the point of global hegemony.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.