When former President Donald Trump took the stage in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Nov. 18, he praised Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping as “strong,” “smart,” and “fierce.”
President Trump made the comments while comparing the CCP leader to President Joe Biden.
“[Biden] walked up with a man who looks like a piece of granite, right, he’s strong like granite, he’s strong, I know him very well—President Xi of China. And he’s standing there, you know he’s a fierce person,” President Trump said.
“The press doesn’t like it when I say good things, but what can I say, he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron hand, and they say, ‘Whoa, he said good things about him.’ He happens to be a very smart person.”
These statements aren’t only misguided, but risk President Trump’s own legacy and the support of Asian Americans.
Whether you like Xi on a personal level or not, he’s the leader of the CCP, which is the last major communist regime. Under communist rule, more than 80 million innocent Chinese people have been killed—a number far greater than the death toll in all wars of the past century combined. And the CCP has never stopped killing its citizens.
Xi has had the opportunity for years to steer China away from a communist system to a democratic one. Maybe, he has thought about it, but to this day, he has failed to do so. Instead, he has used the CCP to further consolidate power, tying his own fate to that of the Party. In recent years, he has published books championing communist leadership and got the whole country to read his books, just like Mao did with his Little Red Book.
Under Xi’s rule, innocent Chinese citizens such as Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and political dissidents continue to be imprisoned, with many tortured to death. In September, an 87-year-old woman was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing to renounce her practice of Falun Gong.
Xi has made his top priority the stability of the Communist Party, not the stability of the economy or the daily lives of the people. For fear of losing power, the regime continues to suppress private companies, take away the wealth of business owners, and jail influencers who refuse to follow the CCP’s narrative. Furthermore, with its draconian lockdown policies during COVID-19, it has destroyed its economic engine.
Most Chinese people think of Xi as the opposite of “smart” and “strong.”
Currently in China, half the people make less than 1,000 yuan (around $150) a month. The small group of people who do make big money are trying to transfer their wealth outside China through underground banks. Foreign investments are fleeing the Chinese market. No one feels secure under the CCP’s rule.
How do Chinese people view Xi? Chinese people call Xi the “accelerator”—the accelerator causing the economy to decline, the accelerator causing China to reverse away from its opening to the world, and the accelerator leading the CCP to its ultimate demise.
Communists have always viewed freedom as a threat. The idea of freedom directly opposes the regime’s dictatorship. Communist ideology has always viewed human tradition and morality as a threat, because communist ideology at its root despises humanity.
The CCP has always viewed the United States as its biggest enemy; it sees the flagship nation of the free world as a threat. In the past 30 years, as a result of its business ties to the West, China has made a lot of money and has tried to copy U.S. technology and military systems, but without changing its own system. It merely took advantage of the free trade system to extend the life of communist rule.
Former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping noted that the countries that made friends with America all got rich. Deng’s visit to the United States in 1979, and the regime’s strategy to tie itself to the United States and steer away from the Soviet Union, rescued China from an economic breakdown following its cultural revolution in the 1960s and ’70s.
With Xi’s recent visit, once again, the CCP is trying to rescue its economy from its free fall. By making deals with the United States, Xi hopes to stop China’s economic decline and stabilize his position.
But he’s facing a domestic crisis. The political infighting is fierce. Recently, high-level military officials have been removed. Xi has been clearing out his opponents nonstop.
With the recent economic decline, people’s voices against Xi are growing more prominent. During the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, for the first time on such a large scale, many Chinese organizations held banners with slogans such as “CCP Step Down” and “Xi Jinping Step Down.” These are the voices of not only overseas dissidents, but people inside China who have asked them to help convey their views.
When President Trump was in office, he appeared friendly to Xi. Many people assumed it was part of his strategy, along with his well-known negotiation skills. President Trump did make a great contribution to this country by shifting America’s focus to China from the Middle East. Yes, at that point, if the United States had continued to be distracted by the Middle East and had given the CCP more time, the CCP would have gutted not only the United States’ manufacturing base, but its technology base as well.
In dealing with China, President Trump believed a good trade agreement would change the situation. But communism and its regimes are built on lies and sustained on lies. Communists will never keep any promise or follow any agreement. Communists are fierce because they follow a true evil that is trying to destroy humanity.
Understanding the Chinese regime’s threat from just an economic perspective isn’t enough. To truly understand the threat of the CCP, it’s necessary to understand the communist specter, the depth of its deceit, and the danger it poses to all of humanity.
It’s dangerous for a candidate for U.S. president, a position that leads the world, to lack a clear understanding of communism in China. President Trump risks losing the support and votes of Asian Americans as well as those looking for a strong American leader.
