Xi Jinping Officially Revives the ‘Red China’ Threat

ANALYSIS – ‘Red China' is back. The latest 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress has made it crystal clear that any hope (if there still had been) for a peaceful, open and reformed China is dead.

Instead Party Chairman (and ‘leader-for-life') Xi Jinping has now finalized his aggressive bid to consolidate total power in himself. 

He has also revived a variation of communist Marxist-Leninist ideology as the core of his rule.

How should the West see this?

Kevin Rudd argues in Foreign Affairs that:

[This] means foreigners must set aside the comfortable analytical frameworks many of them have used to analyze China for the last two generations. Most countries, including many in the West, are predisposed to think that when China's leaders speak in ideological terms, it is not to be taken seriously (or that if it is, the ideology purely applies to the party's domestic politics). But that is no longer the case. 

Xi is a communist ideologue and this ideology matters.

He states that party members are now required to “grasp both the worldview and the methodology of Marxism-Leninism” and apply the “analytical tools of dialectical and historical materialism” to understand “the great challenges of the time.”

So, for Xi, the old militant revolutionary communist thinking of Mao Zedong's ‘Red China' is back.

And it's time to dust off the old Cold War thinking and books on Marxism.

Along with this shift, Xi has also officially ended China's so-called ‘peaceful rise' and replaced it with China's belligerent drive for global dominance. 

Some call this a Marxist-Nationalist agenda.

What does this mean in practical geopolitical terms?

Disturbingly, Xi declared that his administration had “acted with resolve to focus the entire military's attention on preparing for war.” He said that Beijing had “coordinated efforts to strengthen military struggle in all directions and domains.”

As Rudd explains, Xi's vision:

…calls “national security” the “foundation of national rejuvenation.” And Xi used the report to ingrain his earlier statements about the need for a “total security” agenda to ensure that the country has ideological security, political security, economic security, and strategic security. Indeed, it calls for the “securitization” of virtually every aspect of society. He also directed the party to apply this concept of total security across all of the party's internal processes. Xi, it seems, is signaling that the CCP and China's People's Liberation Army must now be ready to fight a major war. And domestically, that means keeping the Chinese people under even tighter surveillance and control.

And of course this coming war will most likely be over Taiwan.

And it may be coming sooner than we like.

Rudd adds:

[XI] is preparing for China's renewed long-term struggle against the old enemy: the separatists in Taiwan.

The CCP was previously hesitant to embrace any kind of public timetable or deadline for retaking Taiwan. Xi, by contrast, has stated that retaking Taiwan is critical to China's “national rejuvenation” and that he aims to complete that rejuvenation by 2049.

All this shows that the Red China threat is now officially back. 

Except now it has a powerful economy and modern military to force its communist views on the world.

And under Xi, China will be far more willing to risk a major war to do it. ALD

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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