With Xi Jinping at the helm of affairs, the Chinese Communist Party has come full circle. Let us tell you how. Mao Zedong founded the CCP and led the Communist Party into killing rich land-holders as a means of creating an ‘equal’ society. But by the 1980s, the CCP realised that killing all the rich people and taking away their money doesn’t work, because you eventually run out of wealth-creators. So, it resorted to what CCP leaders called “State Capitalism” and let rich people power economic growth.
But now Xi Jinping is turning into a Communist leader just as radical as Mao Zedong. He wants to do what all imprudent, radical socialists do- rob money from the rich and distribute them among the poor. He has been doing it for quite some time and now the Chinese President is explicitly exhorting the CCP to pursue the goal of “common prosperity”.
Speaking at a key economic leadership meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China must pursue a goal of “common prosperity”. He wants wealth to be fairly divided amongst all the people as a key objective of the next stage of China’s economic growth. What Xi has said virtually translates into a warning- the CCP will start stealing wealth from the rich and feed the poor out of it.
Xi was chairing a meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs on Tuesday, during which he emphasised the need of ensuring “common prosperity”. As per the Chinese President, it is an essential character of socialism and China’s style of modernisation.
Xi Jinping is making the CCP take an oath of ensuring “common prosperity”. As per a summary of the meeting was published by the Chinese-State run Xinhua News Agency, pledges were made to adjust excessive income and encourage the rich people to “give back to society more”.
The report added that the meeting vowed to “strengthen the regulation and adjustment of high income, protect legal income, reasonably adjust excessive income, and encourage high-income groups and enterprises to give back to society more.”
Xi’s goal of “common prosperity” is the final blow to China’s growth trajectory. He is already ransacking the Chinese economy with crackdowns on a number of private sectors including private education, edutech companies, tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent.
At the end of the day, it cannot be denied that China has become the world’s second largest economy because of Capitalism and not Communism. Xi and his stooges would hate to admit it, but China is a secret fan of capitalism. The paper Dragon has registered stunning economic growth for the past few decades on the basis of capitalism.
It was because China opened up itself to the private sector in the 1980s and 1990s that many entrepreneurs like Alibaba founder Jack Ma created globally competitive business enterprises and pumped China’s economic growth. They have created a number of industries within the Communist country which boost employment and also generate a lot of wealth.
To be fair, China’s private sector has been doing well. China’s private entrepreneurs are doing their bid. But President Xi Jinping wants something more out of them. He wants them to give away all their wealth or else the CCP will steal it without their permission. To put it simply, Xi Jinping wants the kind of radical socialism which has been implemented in countries like Venezuela.
What Xi Jinping said on Tuesday is actually a culmination of his actions over the past few months. He started off last year by cancelling a record IPO by Ant Financial, an affiliate of Jack Ma’s Alibaba. This was followed by a crackdown against other tech enterprises as a result of which Chinese tech giants have registered a loss of over $800 billion.
Xi Jinping’s paranoia has led to crackdowns against other sectors, including a sweeping ban on for-profit online and offline tutoring and vindictive action against English teachers. Xi Jinping’s message is loud and clear- if you are rich, you are not safe. Literally, every money-making sector is registering losses in China and Xi is seemingly ready with even more crackdowns at his disposal.
Xi’s actions against the rich come as a setback for China’s wealthy people, but it is not really a surprise for them. China’s rich people know that they are ruled by a Communist Party and therefore they remain apprehensive of what consequences might ensure if a crazy man like Xi takes over and the CCP goes back to its Communist roots.
China’s wealth-owners show tremendous loyalty to the CCP for the sake of survival, but they are not really nationalistic from inside. This is why Chinese entrepreneurs and wealthy CCP office-bearers always keep a window of opportunity to migrate into the free world and avoid local crackdowns. Every Chinese businessman, CCP member or both always has one leg in USA, Canada, Australia or any other free capitalist nation. They keep a fall back plan for the inevitable eventuality wherein their wealth is suddenly nationalised by a radical communist leader.
In fact, even Xi Jinping’s daughter has been rarely seen in China. Top CCP leaders usually keep their children away from the Communist nation and get them enrolled in foreign universities. Therefore, they are kept immune from the Communist system in China that can get activated any moment and swallow the rich wealth crreators and job-makers first. Xi is therefore, turning into his alter-ego Commie-Man and this might as well hark mainland China back to the Moaist era where famines, poverty and human rights violations fill the void left by growth-fueling businesses.