Yu Maochun: On the CCP's "Mutual Respect"

As President Trump is about to depart for a highly watched meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has, as expected, once again high-profilely emphasized its old cliché—that so-called "mutual respect" should be the foundation of US-China relations.

This phrase sounds reasonable, even somewhat noble. But in reality, what it truly wants to express is a demand for others to shut up, acquiesce, and even bow down morally.

Looking deeper, when the CCP demands that others "respect China," it is actually engaging in a carefully designed bait-and-switch of concepts, and on multiple levels.

First, it deliberately makes people believe that the root cause of the tension in US-China relations lies in the US "not respecting China," rather than Beijing's own behavior and the hostility it has long shown toward the United States. These behaviors include destructive trade policies, large-scale theft of intellectual property, cyberattacks targeting US infrastructure, and exporting fentanyl precursor chemicals to the US, indirectly causing the deaths of a large number of Americans.

In addition, there are ubiquitous espionage activities, election interference, disinformation campaigns, as well as harassment, intimidation, and transnational repression within the United States. At the same time, the CCP continues to prop up some of the most anti-American regimes in the world—all of which is built on ideological hostility toward the US political system and is part of its strategy to permanently replace US global leadership.

Therefore, the "mutual respect" spoken of by the CCP is actually not "mutual" at all.

Second, the CCP always deliberately equates itself with "China" and the "Chinese people," as if criticizing the CCP is equivalent to being hostile to China. But the problem is: the CCP does not equal China.

The CCP has neither genuine political legitimacy nor cultural orthodoxy. It is essentially an imported, imposed ideology and political system—a radical communist ideology originating from the West, forced upon Chinese society. It has not only attempted to eradicate China's original cultural traditions and spiritual foundations, but has also turned Marxism-Leninism, socialism, and the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat into official beliefs through institutionalized brainwashing.

Third, the CCP also frequently packages itself as a "victim of US hegemonism," borrowing the historical memory of China's modern "century of national humiliation" to demand sympathy and obedience from the world. But in fact, what has caused the greatest humiliation and harm to China is not foreign powers, but precisely the CCP itself.

What truly plunged China into its deepest disasters was not the history since the Opium Wars of the 1840s, but the more than one hundred years since the CCP was established in Shanghai by Comintern agents in 1921.

Interestingly, many Western leaders—especially those friendliest to Beijing—have actually not truly "respected" the CCP for a long time.

For decades, many US political leaders did not treat Communist China and its extreme destructiveness as a serious major power and factor capable of influencing the global landscape, but merely as a "China card" to be played. By playing this card, they aimed to achieve other strategic goals deemed more important. During the Cold War, it was used to contain the Soviet Union; later, it was used to restrain North Korea; and still later, it was treated as a tool to maintain global economic stability.

This is not true respect, but rather a patronizing, utilitarian exploitation that does not take the CCP seriously.

In a sense, it was the Trump administration that, for the first time, abandoned this "China card" mentality, publicly took the CCP's destructiveness seriously, and viewed it as America's primary strategic adversary and peer competitor. Half a century after Nixon, Washington truly acknowledged for the first time that Beijing has become a major force in disrupting and reshaping the global order.

From a peculiar but real perspective, this is actually "respect" in a true sense—treating the other party as a powerful opponent that must be seriously confronted, and even defeated.

But being viewed as a major power does not equate to automatically possessing moral legitimacy. A regime that has long and systematically disrespected the world does not deserve the world's respect.

China under CCP rule is the world's largest polluter, yet it always talks big about environmental responsibility; it has long stolen others' technology and trade secrets on a massive scale, making it the world's worst intellectual property violator; and it continuously provides economic and diplomatic support to evil regimes such as North Korea, Iran, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela.

A regime is only worthy of others' respect if it truly respects its own people. And historically, no foreign empire has killed more Chinese people than the CCP, nor has any force destroyed Chinese culture and Chinese families on such a massive scale as the CCP.

The "Great Leap Forward" caused the most severe famine in human history; the "Cultural Revolution" destroyed temples, traditions, scholarship, and the most basic trust between people.

While the CCP claims to have "saved China," it is precisely the primary creator of modern China's suffering.

Since 1949, at least 70 million people have perished under communist rule, and this does not even include the hundreds of millions of lives that were never born under the family planning policy.

To this day, the CCP continues to build the world's most advanced high-tech surveillance state, persecuting ethnic minorities, censoring speech, cracking down on dissent, imprisoning journalists, persecuting religious figures, and criminalizing free expression.

A government that is so afraid of the truth and treats its own people so cruelly has absolutely no right to talk about or demand "respect" from the world.

The CCP likewise shows no respect for neighboring countries. It threatens Taiwan, exerts economic pressure on South Korea, creates conflicts on the Sino-Indian border, bullies the Philippines in the South China Sea, coerces Vietnam, and continuously provokes Japan.

Any country that publicly criticizes Beijing is often subjected to retaliation.

Since establishing its regime, the CCP has initiated or manufactured more wars and regional conflicts than any other government in post-war Asia. Today, it controls the world's largest military force, and this military belongs to the world's largest Marxist-Leninist party. The "Chinese Dream" advocated by its leader is essentially a grand ambition for China to dominate the global order.

The CCP's predatory economic system is likewise not worthy of respect. It has long distorted global markets through massive government subsidies, forced technology transfers, market blockades, currency manipulation, and the "weaponization" of supply chains and rare earth resources.

But at the same time, Beijing has always portrayed itself as a victim of "Western hegemony," especially as a victim of the United States.

It harms others while claiming to be the victim; it condemns "foreign interference" while conducting large-scale cyber espionage and political influence operations globally.

Of course, this does not mean one should be hostile to China or the Chinese people. In fact, the greatest victims of the CCP are precisely the Chinese people themselves—ordinary people who are deprived of freedom of speech, judicial independence, true history, religious freedom, and basic human rights.

The world must clearly distinguish: the Chinese people do not equal the CCP regime.

The way to truly "respect" the CCP is not to appease it or cater to its deliberately manufactured victim narratives, but to force it to actually behave in a way that is worthy of respect.

Democratic nations should publicly confront CCP leaders, directly expose false narratives, and stop listening to empty slogans, instead using concrete actions to verify every commitment.

The world should also stand firmly with those who are bullied, suppressed, and silenced by Beijing—whether they are neighboring countries or the Chinese people themselves.

Without truth, there can be no trust; without reciprocity, there can be no true respect.

And a regime that has long and systematically deprived others of their dignity and freedom has absolutely no right to demand "mutual respect" from others.