[Russia] Yuri Tavrovsky, Translated by Yan Xiao: The Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee Promotes the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation
The significance of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee, held from November 8 to 11, 2021, lies not only in its resolution of current issues; its content extends far beyond the framework of existing problems. The Sixth Plenary Session was a historic meeting at which the assembly deliberated and passed the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party’s Centennial Struggle (hereinafter referred to as the Resolution). Similar documents have appeared only twice before in the hundred-year history of the Communist Party of China (CPC)—once in 1945 and once in 1981. On both occasions, on the eve of opening new paths and achieving major breakthroughs, the CPC conducted an analysis and summation of its past trajectory. In 1945, the Seventh Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee discussed and passed the Resolution on Certain Historical Issues, summarizing the CPC’s path of struggle over more than 20 years against the backdrop of the Kuomintang’s reactionary policies and the Japanese invasion of China. In 1981, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee deliberated and passed the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, providing a scientific summation of historical experiences and lessons since the establishment of the New China.
The historical significance of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee lies in its deep insight into the past and its clear outlook for the future. The new Resolution both summarizes the indisputable achievements the CPC has led the Chinese people to attain over the past 100 years and does not shy away from past errors. More importantly, the Resolution provides planning and vision for China's development over the coming decades leading to the mid-21st century. In 2012, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the program of "realizing the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," aiming to build China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful great modern socialist country by 2049.
Forward-looking tasks inherently inspire progress, solidify strength, and accelerate the pace of development. China’s general development plan for the next 30 years has been meticulously considered and divided into several strategic stages. Key components include the "new normal" in the economy, "law-based governance" in social life, the "Belt and Road" Initiative in the international arena, and the "eradication of absolute poverty." In 2021, China completed the first stage of its plan as scheduled: in 2020, China’s GDP reached 100 trillion yuan ($15.4 trillion), per capita income reached $10,000, the goal of completely eradicating absolute poverty was achieved as planned, and the proportion of the middle-income group increased. All these achievements were secured under extremely unfavorable conditions—the COVID-19 pandemic and the containment strategies deployed by the United States against China.
The creation of a "high-income society" began in 2021. By 2035, China's per capita income and GDP are set to double again, which will bring China fully into the ranks of "high-income societies" and, in the words of the relevant resolutions, "basically realize socialist modernization." Thereafter, the "Chinese Dream" program will enter its third stage: by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China will be built into a "great modern socialist country." Although it is not yet clear how this goal will be expressed in specific parameters, there is no doubt that China will occupy its rightful place in the world. Its economic potential will determine the state of the global economy, its scientific potential will enable unprecedented human progress, and its military potential will guarantee its own security and global stability.
Meanwhile, following the 19th National Congress of the CPC in 2017, the Party has increasingly emphasized the word "socialism" while implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. On the premise of not affecting the country's overall development prospects or growth rate, the livelihood and welfare of ordinary people have received increasing attention. The "staying true to our original aspiration and founding mission" [1] thematic education campaign was launched across the entire Party. As the Resolution emphasizes, "Since its founding in 1921, the Communist Party of China has always made seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its original aspiration and founding mission, and has always remained committed to communist ideals and socialist convictions."
Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era is increasingly becoming the mainstream of world socialism, igniting hope for all who support justice and genuine democracy. Concurrently, China’s socialist model has become a new form of human civilization and is the only efficiently functioning development model in the modern world. This holds significant reference value for Russia, which is struggling to find its own path to "great rejuvenation." At the same time, the Russian people are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the liberal capitalist values imposed upon them, and their interest in returning to the socialist path is growing. Recently, the "Russian Dream and Chinese Dream" Research Center under the Izborsk Club (Изборский клуб), a Russian anti-capitalist patriotic think tank, held a roundtable meeting. At the meeting, Chinese experts explained the origins and achievements of the theory and policy of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era to Russian scholars and journalists. After lengthy discussion, participants concluded that socialism with Chinese characteristics proves the vitality of Marxism; only by achieving the Sinicization of Marxism and linking it to the actual conditions of socialist construction at various stages can one avoid theory becoming detached from practice, mobilize healthy social forces, and realize the synergistic operation of a socialist planned economy and a market economy. Reports on this roundtable were synchronized across the Russian newspaper Zavtra (Завтра) and major social networks, attracting widespread attention and providing new inspiration for people to reflect on Russia's development path.
The appeal of the Chinese development model is not only being noted by those on the left and by socialists; even the most "farsighted" anti-socialists believe that the hegemony of liberal capitalist ideology is being challenged by China. "The real danger from China is not military or geopolitical at all, but ideological. China's continued success poses the greatest threat to the US political system," wrote Richard Hanania of the Washington-based "Defense Priorities" think tank in Palladium Magazine. Zach Cooper and Laura Rosenberger, writing in Foreign Affairs, agreed: "In the struggle against authoritarianism, the United States must realize its strength lies in democratic values... China and Russia, in particular, have seized the initiative in the political, economic, technological, and information spaces. Throughout the world, American leadership is in decline."
Since Biden took office, hostility toward China and its socialist ideology has not diminished in the slightest. Washington has confirmed the predictions of so-called experts through words and deeds: that under Biden’s leadership, the United States will increase its efforts to confront China while maintaining hostility toward Russia. Thus, in the document Interim National Security Strategic Guidance signed by the 46th U.S. President on March 3, 2021, it is written in black and white that China is the only competitor capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to challenge a stable and open international system. Almost simultaneously, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated in a policy announcement on national foreign policy that China is the greatest challenge facing the United States in the 21st century, a challenge exceeding those from Russia or the Middle East.
Washington does not view a rising China as the greatest challenge to a declining United States without reason. In 2020, for the first time in both Chinese and world history, absolute poverty was eliminated; in China, the COVID-19 pandemic was effectively controlled, and economic and social life returned to normal. The Chinese people demonstrated strong discipline and a spirit of solidarity. Meanwhile, the U.S. government, built on the foundation of liberal ideology, demonstrated incompetence; the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, unemployment soared, and rioters ran rampant under slogans of "universal values" and "multiculturalism." The dilapidated state of the electoral system raised doubts about the Democratic Party's victory and led to unprecedented riots and the occupation of the Capitol.
President Biden, who became a "lame duck" at the very start of his term, first affirmed Trump’s "Cold War" policy toward China. Unlike his predecessor, however, Biden focuses not on the growth of China's trade surplus or so-called "technological borrowing," but on China's socialist ideology. As their name suggests, the Democratic Party has always paid relatively close attention to ideological issues, with Neoconservatives becoming the mainstream of its leadership. Traditionally, they have held powerful influence in American politics, intelligence agencies, the media, and Hollywood. The inner circle of the Biden ruling group includes influential senior Neoconservatives from the Clinton and Obama eras, as well as their then-assistants who are now senior officials, such as Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. They are proceeding to push Biden to restore the influence the U.S. lost in international organizations during the Trump era and to form new military-political alliances, such as the "Quad" composed of the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia, and "AUKUS" composed of the U.S., UK, and Australia.
The "Summit for Democracy" held on December 9–10, 2021, under the slogan of "stopping the backsliding of democracy and human rights," demonstrated a profound fear of socialism. The United States invited more than 100 countries to participate, believing its own strength sufficient to resist its opponents. Currently, Washington’s main opponents are China and Russia. But in the foreseeable future, China—which holds high the banner of socialism and successfully advances socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era—will become its primary target, because today’s Russia does not produce ideas of world significance or ideas capable of threatening "democracy with American characteristics."
This is not the first time the United States has gathered allies to contain China. In the Korean War, troops from 15 countries were assembled to support the U.S. Eight countries participated in the Vietnam War, also launched to contain China. But these were regional wars. Now, Washington convenes a "Summit for Democracy" in an attempt to patch together something like an "Anti-China International" from more than 100 countries on a global scale. The U.S. promised $424.4 million in so-called "foreign aid" funding to protect media freedom, combat corruption, and support free elections around the world.
However, Biden and his Neoconservatives have almost no possibility or time to implement such a long-term plan, and this has nothing to do with the dubious prospects of the Democratic Party remaining in power after the next election. The reason is that an increasing number of countries are questioning the set of democratic values preached by the United States and are disillusioned with America’s global governance capabilities. The disastrous American defeat in Afghanistan, reminiscent of the aftermath of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, proved once again that even with outdated rifles, one can defeat a "paper tiger" [2]. Another reason is that more and more countries are linking their own development and prosperity to China, planning to expand economic and trade relations with it. Undoubtedly, a powerful China has already become an essential market for most economies, including the closest allies of the United States.
There is yet another crucial reason why the United States' all-around geopolitical encirclement of China is virtually impossible to achieve. Russia, which shares a common border of more than 4,000 kilometers with China, will not participate in America’s adventurous actions. Relations between Russia and China continue to draw closer, while Russia continues to move away from the West; even the Western "moral values" that flooded in after the collapse of the Soviet Union are increasingly devalued. Russia is actively searching for its own development model—that is, "democracy with Russian characteristics." In Russia, traditional concepts of social justice and democracy are being revived, but "capitalism with American characteristics" values will not exist in Russia's future development model. At this stage, Russia is satisfied with a middle path emphasizing traditional values, which President Putin calls "healthy conservatism."
The possibility of creating a global "Anti-China International" based on American "democratic values" is minuscule. This is because the foundations of the American version of "democracy" are undergoing self-destruction: national history is being erased, normal life is being disrupted, social morality and behavioral norms are being destroyed, national division is evolving into a reality, and civil war seems to be just around the corner. Countries around the world are terrified that such phenomena of chaos, under the label of so-called "democracy," will be transferred to their own soil. In this context, the "Summit for Democracy" appears all the more absurd and preposterous.
China does not intend to impose its own developmental model on other countries. At first glance, this social system and social structure appear as unusual and difficult to understand as Chinese characters. Chinese has no letters or alphabet; any word or concept is written using ideograms. The modern political system of the People’s Republic of China differs from Western forms just as ideograms differ from alphabets. However, this does not mean that this system is backward or ineffective. China's political traditions and forms of democracy focus not only on the individual but, more importantly, on society as a whole. China's political system is based on the principle of "putting people first" [3] and has achieved immense success in several aspects. On the foundation of this system, China has created a prosperous economy, rising to become the world's second-largest economy in a short period. Over the past 10 years, China has eliminated absolute poverty, achieved the goal of doubling national GDP and per capita income, and the number of people in the middle-income group has exceeded 400 million. Admittedly, significant income gaps still exist between various social groups and regions, as well as between urban and rural areas, but with the introduction of various policies to benefit the people, this gap has begun to narrow rapidly.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) clearly understands that the socialist path China follows is fundamentally different from the path of liberal capitalism. Several sentences in the Resolution [4] adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee are particularly important:
“Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out that the great social transformation in contemporary China is not a simple continuation of the master script of our country’s history and culture, nor a simple application of the templates imagined by the classical Marxist authors, nor a reprint of other countries’ socialist practices, nor a carbon copy of foreign modernization developments. As long as we have the courage to continuously promote theoretical innovation in combination with new practices and remain adept at using new theories to guide new practices, we will certainly be able to allow Marxism to demonstrate an even stronger and more persuasive power of truth on the Chinese land.”
The Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee not only highly affirmed the path taken by the whole Party and the whole of China under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping since the 18th CPC National Congress [5], but also clarified the goal of continuing to strive for the realization of the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Under these circumstances, it is particularly important to consistently emphasize “resolutely upholding Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole, and resolutely upholding the Central Committee’s authority and its centralized, unified leadership” [6]. The Chinese people, along with all those who support the socialist path and the cause of human progress, understand very clearly that to effectively govern the world's largest political party and the most populous country, one must defend the comprehensive leadership of the CPC, and especially Comrade Xi Jinping’s core leadership position.
The planning for the “Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” has entered its next important strategic stage—the basic realization of socialist modernization by 2035. The convening of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee and the adoption of the Resolution are guarantees for the success of this critical stage and for the realization of the goal of great rejuvenation by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.