Return to trial and failure in China

When in 1949 Mao Zedong came to power China was a broken hellscape: The Qing dynasty had proved unable to fend off English opium merchants, consequently millions of lethargic addicts could not contribute to the economy. Warlords corrupted and exploited the people. Chiang Kai-shek’s unsteady government could not fend off the Japanese. Although they were defeated by the Americans three years before so ending WWII, the Chinese still suffered from the aftermaths of their cruel reign. The Russians kept Haishenwai that Tsar Alexander II had conquered in 1860.

Mao founded the Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army. He unified the country and ensured its sovereignty. He integrated Islamic East Turkestan in 1949 and conquered Buddhist Tibet in 1950. Then Mao closed off the country so ending the ‘Century of Humiliations’.

In the Chinese Civil War, Mao led the Long March to the North in 1934 to 35. Of the 120,000 who started only 8,000 survived, 2.6 million nationalists of Chiang fled to Taiwan.

To remedy China, Mao broke with the past and tried completely new ways. In 1958 he began the Great Leap Forward collectivizing agriculture and industrializing every village. The result was famine and mass starvation of between 30 to 45 million dead. The environment was denuded of trees burnt in the iron furnaces.

In 1966 Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution sending ‘bourgois elements’ who wanted to restore capitalism to do forced labor in the countryside. Millions of Chinese --among them young Xi Jinping-- walked indefatigably in unending files bringing soil in flat wicker baskets carried on their heads and singing “we are building a barrage dam.” No trained engineers were asked for advice. Mao’s people did it.

Mao put forward a personality cult that manifested itself in the ubiquitous wearing of badges depicting the face of the venerated chairman and people carrying his Little Red Book which they studied and quoted on every opportunity.

When Mao died in 1976, China was united but was weaker and poorer than before. Utterly detrimental for the future proves the one-party system with one strongman who --in the absence of an opposing corrective-- is prone to error and failure. All his attempts for improvement had failed. The only tangible remaining boon was that he had forbidden to cripple the feet of baby girls. He needed women walking swiftly to carry soil and tilling the earth.

When Deng Xiaoping come to power, he terminated the cult of personality, decentralized authority, and introduced a system of collective leadership at the highest echelons of the Communist Party. Deng laid the economic base for Chinese success by introducing capitalism and market economy. In 1979 he decided the one-child policy, not foreseeing that 30 to 40 years later the population would shrink dramatically.

Deng would rotate in his grave if he knew that just when China’s economy thrived, haughty Xi Jinping would revert all his reforms. Xi reinstituted an unprecedented personality cult, issued a Mao bible-like Xi Jinping Thought, abandoned market economy, returned to the ‘essence of socialism’ and to ‘blood and heroism’ rhetoric. Xi espoused all the communist practices that had failed under Mao. That is why he is failing too.

The Chinese businesspeople realize that their taxes are invested in prestigious non-performing projects like the nuclear armament and the utopic pet-city Xiong’an. In order to impress the world and to boast the superiority of his despotic system over the ‘decadent democracies’, Xi hosts lavish Olympic games and Asian Games with great splendor and electronic gimmick shows. He spends billions on propaganda in foreign --language media world-wide including the Philippines.

But worse, for his dream of world domination he splurges China’s trillions for questionable projects in 140 foreign countries. Weaponizing his Modern Silk Road and debt-trapping tactics do not win him friends. Arming artificial islands in other nations’ Exclusive Economic Zones turn friends into enemies.

Export is shrinking since nations follow a ‘de-risking policy’. They diversify their raw material sources away from China. As a defiance reaction to the faltering external demand, Xi Jinping now urges stronger domestic consumption. He values self-reliance over export. Stricter border controls affront foreigners.

It is easy to regain confidence of Chinese and foreigners if Xi only gave up his plan to wage war on Taiwan and if he abided by international law in the East and South China Seas. Immediately investments would flow in profusely. China’s economy would thrive and so would global development. But as long as Xi targets to replace a functioning world order with one that has failed in the past there is no way to avoid economic failure.