By Stephen Brawer, Chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden
This article is republished here courtesy of China Global Television Network (CGTN).
There are many sides to the story of the founding of the Communist Party of China. This year marks the 105th anniversary of its founding. Among the most undebatable facts that deserves the highest praise from the international community is the rapid and unprecedented success of China’s internal economic development, especially since the opening-up policy under former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. This exceptional economic development in such a short period of time is unique in human history. Lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty and thus eliminating extreme poverty in China is among the greatest of these achievements. There are no other models in economic history that have successfully advanced the common good and the common interests of a nation’s population as rapidly as has been achieved in China in the last 48 years.
Yet, despite this unique success, European leadership and EU strategists remain opposed and skeptical to China’s strategic policy as embodied in the Belt and Road Initiative and the additional Initiatives of China’s President Xi Jinping, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative and the latest, the Global Governance Initiative. The positive developments in economic trade and bilateral business and financial agreements are not unimportant, yet they lack substance in the form of establishing genuine trust and friendship. This requires a more profound understanding between Europe and China that cannot be achieved without significant reflection on policy questions. However, the general security policy of Europe and the United States in the form of the NATO alliance within Europe, however, now stretching outward to include “out of area deployments,” in Asia such as AUKUS, is part of a clear and active containment policy directed against China. Japan, under the right-wing leadership of Sanae Takaishi and her party is again being used to increase its military presence and escalation against China. This is a clear violation of all post WWⅡ agreements that stated never again to allow Japan to manufacture or to develop a military arsenal. The point is not always stated openly but, nonetheless an intricate part of this containment policy is the ideological condemnation of China’s Socialist or Marxist political system.
The CPC is seen as an enemy and a threat to so-called western freedom and democracy. China’s President Xi Jinping is often cited as “a dictator” and China’s government under the CPC is accused of human rights violations in Xizang(Tibet) and Xinjiang. Although these accusations have no basis in fact, they continue to circulate as part of the propaganda campaign directed against the European populations to instill a mentality of fear and suspicion. A most important access for the Swedish and European population to free itself from this disinformation would at the very least include the writings of President Xi Jinping on “The Governance of China.” Yet, his writings are neither reported on anywhere in the mainstream press nor is there at present any translation of his writings into the Swedish language. The mainstream media here in Sweden and in Western Europe functions as the microphone for these lies and different forms of disinformation. This is a necessary tactic to shape a cultural matrix of ignorance and mistrust in the population to indoctrinate them to accept conflict and war as inevitable or even desirable to contain outside threats from tyrants and dictators. The impact of this downward spiral is a cultural matrix that has nearly destroyed the independent thinking process of the European population in general. This is, however, not an accident but rather a deliberate policy using ideological manipulation as a means of steering international events in a very dangerous and unstable direction.
The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921. China was undergoing an extremely challenging transition from an impoverished agricultural society to a more modern industrial society. The country was politically fragmented and with the death of Sun Yat Sen in 1925, the founder of the Republic of China in 1911, the political fight between the Communists and the Nationalists was only temporarily halted to fight the common military aggressor Japan. The story of American military General Joseph W. Stilwell during the wartime fight against Japan reveals a part of history that led to the ultimate success of the Communist Party forces against the corrupt leadership of General Chiang Kai Shek. The Stilwell Papers and the best-selling book in 1946 Thunder Out of China by Theodore White, document the United States policy fight regarding China. It is a story that needs to be told again for its relevance in both recognizing the ultimate victory of the Communist Party at that time and its role in representing the many millions of Chinese peasants fighting for a life that until that time had been denied them and was never to be attained through the Kuomintang. The founding of the People’s Republic of China united the nation in the direction that has led to what is now identified by the CPC leadership as the goal in building China into a modern socialist country in all respects.
Learning this real history in its truly profound dimensions and depth is a pathway that lights up the possibilities for greater understanding and friendship between people and nations, not simply upon the surface of formal agreements but upon the substance and spirit and people to people communication.
Without it, humanity presently risks the decline of civilization into conflicts and wars shaped by reducing international relations to the brutality of the law of jungle. Better to travel the highway to the stars and the evolution of human civilization without poverty and shaped by the individual creative minds of billions of people giving meaning to their lives by celebrating in the happiness of making life better for those generations that will follow us.