China's Communist Party Takes Aim at the Concepts of Human Rights, Media Independence, Civic Participation, Pro-Free Market Viewpoints, and Criticisms of the Party’s Genocidal Past

Xi Jinping

You know, it's good for China to occasionally remind us all that Marxism is built upon genocide, the most intimate and personal government coercions, a ridiculous economic theory, demonizing of politically convenient targets, secrecy, government misinformation, and lots and lots of heavy-handed propaganda. So many of us choose not to read about North Korea and we tend to forget the hundreds of millions of deaths that Marx has caused.

From The New York Times article by Chris Buckley (via Drudge):

Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society.  

These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past.  

[...]  

“Western forces hostile to China and dissidents within the country are still constantly infiltrating the ideological sphere,” says Document No. 9, the number given to it by the central party office that issued it in April. It has not been openly published, but a version was shown to The New York Times and was verified by four sources close to senior officials, including an editor with a party newspaper.         

Opponents of one-party rule, it says, “have stirred up trouble about disclosing officials’ assets, using the Internet to fight corruption, media controls and other sensitive topics, to provoke discontent with the party and government.”  

[...]  

Mr. Xi’s edicts have been disseminated in a series of compulsory study sessions across the country, like one in the southern province of Hunan that was recounted on a local government Web site.  

“Promotion of Western constitutional democracy is an attempt to negate the party’s leadership,” Cheng Xinping, a deputy head of propaganda for Hengyang, a city in Hunan, told a gathering of mining industry officials. Human rights advocates, he continued, want “ultimately to form a force for political confrontation.”  

[...]  

“Constitutionalism belongs only to capitalism,” said one commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily. Constitutionalism “is a weapon for information and psychological warfare used by the magnates of American monopoly capitalism and their proxies in China to subvert China’s socialist system,” said another commentary in the paper.

Well, I'm sure it's just a phase for Mr Xi, and a little "smart diplomacy" from Obama's State Department will clear this all up. Maybe Obama can send Kerry over to China with a big, candy red reset button.

China's slide back into harder Left socialism is a problem that should not be overlooked. Hard Left socialism tends to eventually lead to either expansionism to pull in foreign resources, or genocidal scales of death to lessen the number of people needing resources. It's a tragic fact, but that's been the case in past for North Korea, China, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Cambodia... It's a sad list.

If China continues down this road, I can see several worst case possibilities that could lead to great instability (read that as possibly a war) in Asia. First, China could continue to contest the China Sea Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands with Japan. There's not a whole lot in the way of resources on the islands, but it could lead to a pretext for the Chinese to envelop more of the China Sea including more resource significant islands. Japan and other powers would not take to that lightly.

Second, it could lead to closer relations with North Korea. And should North Korea's saber rattling get really out of hand, China might become directly involved in a military conflict with South Korea and the United States. The severity of this conflict could range from naval vessels lobbing warning shots at each other to a war. Right now, I don't believe that China would go to the mat for North Korea and this keeps North Korea's provocations with South Korea and Japan slightly in check. If China were to get very chummy with their Marxist brother-in-arms for the glorious revolution and embolden North Korea, well...

Third, China could overstep their provocations against Taiwan. China tends to play provocateur toward Taiwan, both politically and militarily, with depressing frequency. With the United States' rather ambiguous military stance regarding a Chinese attack on Taiwan due to President Carter's annulment of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, these provocations could increase, both in frequency and intensity, and lead to war. What the U.S.would do, especially with an Obama-like appeasement attitude, is uncertain.

But hey, it could be that China's slide to the hard Left is temporary. That, of course, would be best for everyone, but I honestly wouldn't hold my breath on that hope. And frankly I see the time as ripe for China to expand their military influence in Asia.

I believe that interesting times are ahead.