Patriotic Youth, Preparing for RCEP & the Party's History

Below are the stories that I found noteworthy from the People’s Daily’s February 04, 2021, edition.

Page 1: The front page provides you the guidelines for Strengthening the Work of the Young Pioneers in the New Era. The principles driving this policy are to uphold the Party’s leadership and cultivate “in children and adolescents the lofty ideals of communism and the common ideals of socialism with Chinese characteristics, continuously strengthening political enlightenment,” cultivating affection for the Party and the socialist motherland from an early age, and ensuring that the red gene is passed on from generation to generation.

To do this, there are lots of things that need to be done from an organisation point of view. But here’s the primary task: one needs to “tell the story of the history of the Party, the history of new China, the history of reform and opening up, the history of socialist development, to guide the majority of pioneers to realize that the great achievements of the construction of the motherland and today's happy life comes ultimately from the correct leadership of the Party, from the heroic sacrifice of the revolutionary martyrs, from the hard work of the people, from the superiority of China's socialist system…”

Next, Li Keqiang presided over the State Council meeting. This one focussed on hearing reports about preparations to make the RCEP operational. Xinhua English says that “competent departments have accelerated domestic work for its implementation. To date, legal review of the provisions, and formulation of the conversion plan for the tariff concession commitment schedule on trade in goods, have been completed. Substantive progress has been achieved in the technical preparations for implementing the cumulation provisions of the rules of origin. As much as 85 percent of the 701 binding obligations stipulated in the agreement are ready to be enforced.”

In addition, “the meeting also required more training regarding RCEP implementation, to familiarize enterprises, especially micro and small firms, with the provisions and the tariff concession by participating countries, and with the application procedures and documentation required for the certificate of origin.”

Page 3: A couple of stories to note. First, Wang Wenbin’s comments (English report) about China providing 10 million vaccine doses to COVAX. He added that the WHO has begun to review the emergency use authorization of China's vaccine. Second, MoFA’s comments about the situation in Myanmar. PD and Xinhua English have the same report.

Wang said that the Security Council discussed this. He said “the international community should create a sound external environment for Myanmar to properly resolve the differences. All actions taken by the Security Council should be conducive to Myanmar's political and social stability, peaceful reconciliation and avoid exacerbating tensions and further complicating the situation.” 

Also, there’s this controversy about the draft statement which has been put forward by Britain. Reuters reports (not covered in PD, although MoFA’s reaction was covered) that the draft condemned the coup, and called for the military to respect the rule of law and human rights and immediately release those detained. China said that it was baffled and shocked by the leak of the draft to reporters, saying that it would make discussions difficult. The foreign ministry spokesperson also refuted charges that the political change in Myanmar may have taken place with China’s support or acquiescence.

Finally, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and chief of the International Liaison Department of the CCP Song Tao engaged with their counterparts from Laos. The reports say basically nothing other than the fact that a call was held and that they reaffirmed the relationship, while pledging to continue working together. 

Page 4: A piece on the Yan’an spirit. This refers to a couple of things; the revival of the Party after it fled to Yan’an amid the conflict with the Nationalists. Mao’s oratory and ability to rekindle a sense of purpose. And of course, the years-long purge and factional contest that eventually resulted in Mao’s rise to the helm of the Party. Or as the piece puts it that this was when the CCP “achieved unprecedented unity in the entire party.” Here’s what Xi thinks about the memory of that time: “The Yan'an spirit has nurtured generations of Chinese Communists and is the precious spiritual wealth of our party. It is necessary to persistently use the Yan'an spirit to educate the majority of party members and cadres to nourish the original aspiration, temper the soul, and draw the power of faith from it.”

Page 9: On the Theory page today, we have a few interesting pieces. First, Yang Guangbin, Dean of the School of International Relations, Renmin University of China, writes that “History has repeatedly proved that a democratic system as an important element of a country's political system must be rooted in the soil of its own society...Some countries have blindly transplanted Western democratic systems, resulting in ineffective governance in the lighter cases and national unrest in the more serious ones.”

He then talks about the difference between China’s “democratic centralism” and “consultative democracy” as opposed to Western democracies.

“The system of people’s congresses is the fundamental political system of China. The deputies of the people's congresses at all levels in China are democratically elected to exercise state power on behalf of the people in a unified manner. The system of people’s congresses fully reflects the requirement that the people be the masters of the state and is broadly representative, with a corresponding proportion of representatives from all localities, nationalities and industries, so that the resulting laws must reflect the will of the people. This is fundamentally different from the Western democratic system, where the legislature is a conglomerate of interests and the resulting “veto-based politics’.” Of course, when he says that deputies are “democratically elected,” he doesn’t tell you what the process is and that the public has no role to play in this election. 

Anyway, he ends with this: “Facts show that consultative democracy is a substantive and constructive form of democracy, a kind of whole-process democracy, and has a broad development prospect.”

Next, we’ve got Gao Xiang, VP of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the president of the Chinese Academy of History, writing that “a large number of facts fully illustrate that the Chinese Communist Party has always been working for the happiness of the people over the past century.” He offers a short summary of the Party’s perspective on modern Chinese history. This entails the “invasion of Western powers and the corruption of feudal rule” reducing China “to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, with its mountains and rivers shattered and its people living in poverty.” 

He talks about the Opium Wars and the period of flux with internal turmoil, such as the Taiping Rebellion and Boxer Rebellion. And then he says that amid the flux came the CCP’s birth. “The founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 was a great event that opened up the heavens and the earth. As soon as it was established, the CPC took up the historical mission of achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the Chinese nation was finally given a new lease of life in a desperate situation.”

And then there’s this: “our Party united and led the Chinese people in a bloody battle for 28 years, defeating Japanese imperialism, overthrowing the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang, completing the New Democratic Revolution, and establishing the People's Republic of China, completely ending the humiliating history of the Chinese nation of being invaded and enslaved for more than 100 years after the Opium War.” These are useful narratives to keep in mind because they drive the Party’s power while reality is far more complex.

He then talks about how the Party has worked for the betterment of the people, pursuing the goal of rejuvenation. After this, he gets to the Party’s contribution to the global cause, historically. Here, history has been truly butchered. China’s WWII experience is very different from the West. It is important to appreciate that from a Chinese perspective, the war began much, much earlier than Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. It is also important to recognize that this hasn’t historically gotten much attention and neither have the tragedies that the people of China suffered during the violence. From some Chinese perspectives, the war began with the Mukden Incident or Japan’s invasion of Manchuria of 1931. Others would date it a bit later to the Marcopolo Bridge incident of 1937. 

Gao looks at 1931 as the starting point and says: “In the world anti-fascist war of the 20th century, the 14-year-long war of resistance against Japan by the Chinese people began the earliest and lasted the longest, and was truly the main battlefield in the East. During the anti-Japanese war, at the historical juncture of national peril, the Chinese Communist Party guided the direction of China's resistance war with outstanding political leadership and correct strategic strategies. The Chinese Communists fought bravely at the forefront of the war against Japan, supporting the Chinese nation's hope for salvation and survival, and becoming the mainstay of the national war of resistance. As a national pioneer in winning the war against Japan, the Communist Party of China made great contributions to the cause of world justice and the development of human civilization.” Arguing that the CCP led the war effort is simply not true. A good place to get a sense of this history is this episode of Jordan Schneider’s ChinaTalk with Rana Mitter.

Anyway, Gao then brings all this to present times. He quotes Xi to say that the Party has always “made it its mission to make new and greater contributions to mankind.” And then he talks about the community of common destiny, BRI, building of a new type of international relations and global governance reform efforts by China within this context.