Socialism ‘With Chinese Characteristics’

By Dr. Murray Bessette and Frank Gaffney

When President Richard Nixon visited China in February of 1972 and ended a quarter century of silence in official U.S.-China relations, the assumption on the part of American policy makers was that engagement would lead—slowly but inexorably—to the liberalization of China’s social, economic, and political systems. Opening China, in other words, would normalize China and bring it fully into the global community.

This didn’t happen as the Chinese leadership found ways to exploit Western efforts to normalize relations with China without giving up their communist ideology or the Chinese Communist Party’s official doctrine that sees the United States as a strategic enemy that will inevitably be destroyed.

We discuss in this occasional paper how China accomplished this over the past 40 years by adopting “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” an extremely deceptive strategy to make the world – especially the United States believe that China is becoming a responsible and law-abiding member of the community of nations and that China is moving towards a more socially and politically open society.  This is in fact a ruse to exploit gullible and naïve to believe the ideological character of the Chinese party-state has changed.  It has not and we must understand that socialism with Chinese characteristics is still communism and derived in theory and practice from Marxism-Leninism.  China has successfully used this ruse to exploit global trade to become the second largest economic power and build a large military to exercise absolute control at home and, wherever possible, to project power abroad.

Recognizing and acting on the reality that China remains a communist country that is slowly and stealthily advancing its agenda of global domination is crucial to the future security of the United States.

Gaffney Socialism Report