Garside wrote, “Much of the Chinese elite is deeply opposed to the course to which Mr. Xi is committed. They recognize that economic reform without political change has created problems that damage China as a nation and pose a risk to their own interests.”
However, at present, due to Xi’s totalitarian rule, political reform will not happen. What to do? Garside believes that there are two possible options: one is to overthrow Xi through a coup d’état—the strained U.S.-China relationship could play a key role in launching a coup against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The second is to prevent Xi from becoming the Party leader again at the 20th National Congress. Xi’s opponents can use this opportunity to push China onto the path of change. The United States and its allies can take advantage of economic, financial, and technological advances to “engineer conditions to facilitate regime change in China.”
Garside’s views seem reasonable on the surface. However, I believe there’s a lack of thorough understanding of the current state of the CCP and the crux of its problems.
Garside’s two proposed options are essentially the same—to oust Xi. For now, Xi has indeed turned to the left, and many of his practices at home and abroad have sickened many people. The idea of expelling Xi is very compelling to some people. For example, Cai Xia, the former professor of the CCP’s Central Party School, has repeatedly claimed that Xi must step down.
However, based on my observations of the CCP, the Party members are unlikely to stage a coup against Xi.
The CCP worships the phrase coined by Mao Zedong, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” The one who owns the gun (military power) is the true boss.
Now, Xi has military power.
Xi replaced all key positions in the Security Bureau of the Central Office (Security Bureau) with his own confidants. The Security Bureau is responsible for the security of the CCP’s General Secretary, the Chairman of the State, the Chairman of the National People’s Congress, the Premier, and members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
Xi’s confidant, Wang Xiaohong, executive vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security, concurrently serves as the director of the Secret Service of the Ministry of Public Security (Secret Service). The Secret Service is responsible for the security of the Vice Chairmen of the State, the Vice-Chairmen of the National People’s Congress, the Vice Premiers, State Councilors, the Vice-Chairmen of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the President of the Supreme Court, and the Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Procuratorate.
As for preventing Xi from being reelected as the Party leader next year, it is also unlikely. The CCP has never conducted a real election. The candidates for the 20th National Congress leadership team are all predetermined. Who is leading the election of the 20th National Congress? It is Xi, not his political opponents.
Judging from the CCP’s history, in 27 years of dictatorship under Mao Zedong until his death on Sept. 9, 1976, there was no successful coup. After Mao’s death, the highest level of the CCP had four power changes similar to coups: The first time was on Oct. 6, 1976, when Hua Guofeng, then the first vice chairman of the CCP Central Committee, arrested Mao’s wife Jiang Qing with the support of the CCP’s marshal Ye Jianying. After that, Hua became the CCP leader. The second time was when General Secretary Hua was ousted in 1981. The third time was when General Secretary Hu Yaobang was ousted in 1987. Finally, the fourth was when General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was ousted in 1989.
The key reason for the last three abnormal power changes lies in the fact that there was a strong man in the CCP, Deng Xiaoping, and Deng had the support of the military.
The CCP Is Rotten to the Core
In my opinion, the CCP’s fundamental problems do not lie in Xi’s personal qualities, but in that the CCP is a Party guided by Marxism. Marxism is the soul of the CCP, and all of the CCP’s problems in internal affairs and foreign diplomacy originate from it.On June 24 last year, when the then-U.S. National Security Adviser Robert C. O'Brien delivered a speech in Arizona, he reflected on how over the years the United States had tried to expand economic and technological cooperation with the CCP in an effort to democratize it, but the result has been just the opposite.
He said, “We could not have been more wrong—and this miscalculation is the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s. How did we make such a mistake? How did we fail to understand the nature of the Chinese Communist Party?
The answer is simple: because we did not pay heed to the CCP’s ideology.”
“Let us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The Party General Secretary Xi Jinping sees himself as Josef Stalin’s successor,” said O'Brien.
This view captures the crux of the CCP issue. Marxism, no matter how fascinating it sounds on the surface, is essentially falsehood, wickedness, and struggle. These three words are the golden key that unlock the mysteries of 170 years of international communist movement history, 100 years of the history of the CCP, and 72 years of the history of the People’s Republic of China.
The so-called falsehood is to tell lies, the so-called wickedness is to achieve the goal unscrupulously, crossing the moral and legal bottom line; the so-called struggle is to fight against the heavens, the earth, and the people. The CCP has been engaged in falsehood, wickedness, and struggle for 100 years and it has turned the CCP into the most corrupt Party in the world.
Many Western scholars are trapped in the false hope that political reform would occur with new leadership. They fail to see that the CCP is rotten to the core. In fact, it’s a fatal and common error of several Western scholars with the unilaterally emotional and naïve ideal of wanting to treat the CCP as an ordinary and normal Party—one that has not even a trace of humanity.
Take Xu Caihou, a former member of the Politburo and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, as an example.
On March 15, 2014, Xu’s mansion in Beijing was searched after the CCP suspected him of taking bribes. The basement of his 21,528-square-foot mansion was filled with the following: more than one ton of cash, including U.S. dollars, euros, and yuan; countless gold and silver jewelry, famous Hetian jade stones, known as the Chinese national stone, some of which were as heavy as 220 pounds and others more than 440 pounds; precious hardwoods and rare jadeite artifacts, and various antique utensils, calligraphy, and paintings from the Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. The confiscated property took more than a dozen military trucks to transport.
This was only Xu’s wealth in one mansion. The CCP has never dared to publicly disclose the total illegal assets Xu collected. I believe that the CCP is worried the amount could be high enough to cause a rebellion in the military.
Xi has been fighting corruption for over eight years since coming into power, but as his leadership continues, the corruption only gets more and more serious. Just this year, for example, Lai Xiaomin, a corrupt official who was executed on Jan. 29, received $270 million in bribes. On Feb. 27, the CCP’s media reported that the corrupt official Li Jianping accepted more than $460 million in bribes. On March 28, the state-owned media reported that Xu Changyuan, a corrupt official, illegally obtained a huge profit of more than $1.55 billion.
The Disintegration of the CCP Is the Only Option
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist regimes was a catastrophic failure for Marxism.Mikhail Gorbachev, former head of the Soviet Union and the key player during the dissolution of the republic in 1991, was asked in an interview with The Guardian in 2011 to name the things he most regretted 20 years later. He replied without hesitation, “The fact that I went on too long in trying to reform the Communist Party.”
In a public speech to students at Columbia University in 2002, Gorbachev also admitted that “Soviet politicians operated with lies.”
‘‘We, including I, were saying, ‘Capitalism is moving toward a catastrophe, whereas we are developing well.’ Of course, that was pure propaganda. In fact, our country was lagging behind,’’ Gorbachev said.
He told the students that by the time he rose to power, with Soviet satellites in space, the ruling politicians ‘‘were discussing the problem of toothpaste, the problem of detergent, and they had to create a commission of the Politburo to make sure that women have pantyhose,’’ according to the report.
It took the Soviet Union 69 years to demonstrate the failure and lies of Marxism-Leninism. The collapse of the Soviet Union is only a historical trend and destiny.
After all, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, the former first president of Russia, along with 2.7 million Party members, had already left the Party in 1990.
In the first six months of 1991, more than 4 million members, or nearly a quarter of the total, either left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or were expelled from it for holding anti-Party positions, refusing to obey Party orders, or refusing to pay Party dues.
It is only a matter of days until the collapse of the CCP regime.
