China is just a global rival for the West, while Russia is a mortal enemy

Sabirjan Badretdinov, journalist

On July 1, 2021, China will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of its Communist Party. And on July 23rd, the 100th anniversary of the first congress of the CPC will be celebrated. Between these days, various festive events will be held with the participation of high-ranking foreign guests from all over the world.

The CCP celebrates the anniversary with pride in its success. Indeed, a country that was very recently backward and agrarian is today one of the two economic and military superpowers in the world. The country's industrial and technological progress is evident. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty to join the ranks of the middle class. From the bordering Russian cities, and remaining backwaters, Chinese skyscrapers soaring up are visible.

The heirs of the Soviet communists, members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, look with envy at their Asian colleagues. "What did we do wrong? What mistake did we make?", - the leaders of the Russian communists are probably perplexed. The answer to these questions is quite simple: Soviet communist leaders began reforms with political transformations, while Chinese communists - with economic ones. This seems to have predetermined the success of some and the failure of others.

The Communist Party of the People's Republic of China (the last two words should probably be put in quotation marks, since a dictatorship cannot be either a republic or a people's one) from its very inception had amazing flexibility and adaptability. Including in matters of ideological dogma.

Its founders, a group of young people in Shanghai, inspired by the Russian revolution, at first differed little from the Bolsheviks. The founders of the party believed that the proletariat would be the driving force of the revolution. But by the 1930s, they realized that in an agrarian country where there is practically no proletariat, only the peasantry can be the driving force. This was the first major change in Marxist dogma. Naturally, as a result of this, it was also necessary to abandon the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when disagreements arose between the CPSU and the CCP, the Chinese communists had to abandon the principle of internationalism. This was the second change in dogma.

And in the 1970s, at the initiative of Deng Xiaoping, the CCP abandoned the idea of state control over all means of production. Capitalist relations, elements of a free market, began to take root in the country. They have led China to unprecedented economic success. The use of free market mechanisms was the third major change in ideological dogma.

These successes overshadowed all the terrible events that happened through the fault of the Communist Party: the deadliest famine in the history of mankind, purges and show trials, arrests and executions of millions of innocent people. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book Out of Control (1993), estimates the CCP's death toll at 29 million.

The CCP's flexibility and adaptability, including in matters of Marxist dogma, is also evidenced by the fact that China does not seek to destroy or fundamentally change the liberal world order created by the advanced capitalist countries after World War II. No, China is only striving to fit into it and gradually modify it to suit its interests.

China has a huge military and economic potential, and if it wanted to replace the current order with its own, going into confrontation with the West, it could easily have done it, but it does not. Simply because the Chinese leadership has different priorities. It is fully focused on economic growth, international trade and cooperation. China does not have any messianic global ambitions.

This contrasts sharply, for example, with the geopolitical ambitions of Russia, which does not want to integrate into the liberal world order and is constantly trying to undermine it.

For this reason, the Western world (represented by the G7), and above all the United States, should differentiate its approach to China and Russia. If China for the West is just a global rival, then Russia is a mortally dangerous enemy.

Therefore, if Biden, Macron, Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders of the Western world are invited to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the CCP, then it would not hurt them to agree.

Original is here.