Xi Jinping Loves Mao

By: Carlos Alberto Montaner - 23/10/2022

It was the consecration of Xi Jinping. On mid-October 2022, during the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, 1,500 delegates, all wearing ties and dark suits, in a packed theater, swore to love Mao even though, at this stage of the reforms, they were at the antipodes of Marxism. The great contradiction is that they must vindicate Mao and Marxism, the causes of the Chinese disaster prior to the reforms. Xi did.

In 1985 Xi Jinping spent two unforgettable weeks in Iowa learning something from food farmers. He was 31 years old. It was spring. (That summer he would turn 32). It had been nine years since Mao had died (1976) and China embraced enthusiastically Deng Xiaoping's reform.

I read this fragment of his life in The Economist, the best popular international magazine. He got along very well with the hosts. It was love at first sight in both directions. He slept in a room decorated with posters of TV series about the conquest of space, ate popcorn for the first time, and I guess he loved everything he saw.

What did he see in those two amazing weeks? He saw an extremely efficient country that produced, with less than 3% of the population, all the vegetables and meats that the nation consumed and, in addition, exported a substantial amount of that production. The contrast with his country of origin was very remarkable. He attributed China's poverty and unhealthiness to the cleanliness of the atmosphere, so neglected in China, and to the presence of rampant corruption, typical in a situation in which officials had powers and attributions poorly designed by tax law regulations. In the two weeks Xi spent in Iowa, he became "green" and launched a moralizing crusade against corruption.

When he had power in China, he declared the creation of a kind of "natural Chinese wall." They are in the phase of replanting the trees and creating a huge forest, the world's largest. As expected, until 2050 it will not be finished. Simultaneously, to the delight of his compatriots, he has dedicated himself to fighting corruption.

What did Xi not see in those two weeks in Iowa? He did not see the loose structure that had made the United States the first power on the planet. And he didn'tsee it because it is invisible. He did not see it because there are no political parties. Above all, Xi is a Communist Party man. His father, Xi Zhinxun, was a Vice Prime Minister in charge of the State Council, which did not free him whatsoever from Mao's reprisals, including torture.

China had been implementing the "Cultural Revolution" for several years. It lasted a decade, exactly until the death of Mao Zedong. And it had put Deng Xiaoping, among others, in jail, and put many more into forced labor or exile, far from Beijing, including Xi Zhinxun, Mao's companion in the uprising against the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, making perfect the comparison between the revolutions and Saturn. It seems that they devour their children.

Xi Jinping, who is called "the Prince," joined the Communist Party in 1974, two years before Mao's death, when his downfall during the "Cultural Revolution" at the hands of the reformists was already in sight. According to The Economist, Xi is a restorer rather than a reformer.

The United States, fortunately, is not Democrat, Republican, or Independent. It is a mixed society. If the values of order prevail, it will be Republican. If social values are on the rise, it will be overwhelmingly Democrat. It depends on the situation. Before 1933, and for a long decade, it was Republican. Then came F.D. Roosevelt for four consecutive terms and a fifth if we consider Harry Truman. The social values prevailed. Generally, they alternate in power. Today they are accused of "Bolsheviks" and "fascists," but there is no such thing. Neither the Democrats are "Bolsheviks," nor the Republicans are "Fascists." Those are epithets that are used in the midst of media campaigns.

It's all about entrepreneurship. The model is sustained by the enterprise. Most voters are pragmatic. They admire the winners deeply. They don'tcare at all if the winners are way above the average income. There is no envy whatsoever. They love Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Amancio Ortega. As long as they have made the money within the law. On the other hand, they love some people who have made their way against all odds. American universities are full of entrepreneurship courses that later metastasize in the West.

As long as Xi Jinping continues to look after the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, and as long as he tries to "liberate" (really subjugate) Taiwan, it is assured that the first place in the world ranking will continue to be occupied by the United States. It's that simple. [©FIRMAS PRESS]

*@CarlosAMontaner. CAM's latest book is Sin ir más lejos (Memories). Published by Debate, a label of Penguin-Random House, the book is available through Amazon Books.

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