"Communist Party" considers any ugly means legal to achieve its goals! 【Knowings Lecture Hall Cao Xingcheng】ft. Yu Maochun EP115

Yu Maochun and Cao Xingcheng deeply discussed the history and nature of the Chinese Communist Party's rule on the program, pointing out that the CCP uses lofty communist ideals as a façade, but in reality adopts Leninist authoritarian dictatorship and legalizes all means. The two analyzed the CCP's brainwashing mechanisms, "sauce‑jar" culture, persecution of human rights in Xinjiang, and the united front risks behind internal exchanges in Taiwan. In the end, Yu Maochun believes the CCP regime will inevitably collapse, and the key lies in how to achieve democratic transformation of Chinese society after the regime falls.

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So this is the history of the Communist Party, extremely bloody, extremely self‑righteous, using its lofty communist ideals as a pretext to kill countless Chinese civilians. So, regarding this sense of historical mission, you just called it a cult; I think it is an obsession with a utopian idea, a doctrine, a leader, a thought. The Communist Party defines a communist regime, the CCP has that definition, but after so many reforms and opening‑up, it has become westernized and also corrupted. How many genuine cadres still believe in this system? The reforms and opening‑up are a tool of the CCP, not its goal; it is not about turning China into a democratic, free country— the Party will never allow that. Look at its “Eight No‑Nos” and the “Document No. 9”: the CCP is the CCP, its so‑called democracy is essentially intra‑party democracy, which is completely at odds with democratic centralism. It cannot logically achieve true democracy and freedom. As long as there is one‑party dictatorship, one‑party authoritarianism, true freedom and democracy are impossible, because a free, democratic society is built on freedom, multiparty competition, and pluralism. The CCP has this problem. The reforms and opening‑up use the free capitalist world and free trade to strengthen its economy and military, but its core remains the Party’s one‑party rule. When Deng Xiaoping launched reforms, he spoke of the “four persuasions,” which were very Marxist‑Leninist, and it remains the same today. Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian principle has not relaxed at all. It is hard to say how many of the roughly 100 million Party members truly believe in Marxism‑Leninism versus those who joined for career advancement. The top leaders who monopolize CCP power do believe in Marxism‑Leninism, even Li Keqiang, who never advocated multi‑party politics, pluralism, or freedom of speech; he only had differing views on economic and political matters with the Party leadership, and perhaps on Xi personally. Many may disagree with my view, but one can also argue that the CCP monopolizes employment opportunities for the Chinese people and has mechanisms to enforce that monopoly. In China, if you want to succeed, the best way is to join the Party. Many may not believe in the Party, but there is no other path; once inside, the Party continuously reforms you, imposing Party discipline, and gradually you come to believe it. That is why the Party is like a jar of sauce—once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. Moreover, the Party emphasizes the purity and theoretical advancement of its members. The CCP runs many higher‑education institutions, essentially Party schools at all levels, where members are sent to study Marxist‑Leninist theory, a constant brain‑washing mechanism. So the biggest problem of the Chinese Communist Party is not just that Xi or Deng are bad individuals; the system itself is the issue. If Xi were to step down, the next leader might be even worse, because this mechanism cannot produce people with genuine liberal democratic ideas. For example, some legislators in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan have attended CCP‑run schools—those united‑front training courses likely have a huge impact. I’m not very familiar with Taiwanese people, but I have seen some of your videos and Taiwanese reports, and I think this is a big problem. The Party uses highly deceptive classes and opportunities to lure Taiwanese people to the mainland to enjoy some benefits, but everyone knows the CCP is a massive ruling machine with various methods to make you voluntarily become its prisoner. Its greatest skill is that even when you are its slave, it makes you feel you are not a slave—that is a major strength of the CCP. Thus, this ideology, this governing philosophy, this Leninist sense of moral supremacy, not only reflects the arrogance and irrationality of the Chinese Communist Party and the state, but also its highly deceptive tactics. Only by fundamentally understanding the CCP’s worldview can this problem be truly solved.

The Chinese Communist Party perceives the world, and it has many aspects as just mentioned. It faces a question of purpose and means; the purpose is so lofty that any means to achieve it are considered legitimate. This is why the CCP’s mode of rule is a significant threat to the free‑capitalist cause, because the existing free‑capitalist world is built on a strong emphasis on the balance between good and evil, trust and credit. If you were to round up over a million Uyghurs and subject them to brainwashing, the external world would find this intolerable—a blatant violation of human rights. In the CCP’s style of governance, such actions are natural and carry no moral self‑condemnation. That is why the Party believes its actions are justified, speaking with righteous authority and confidence, convinced it cannot be wrong. This is terrifying. If we describe it this way, the CCP becomes like a virus that does not care about right or wrong; it simply infiltrates, atomizes, and eliminates you to achieve its goal. In softer terms, the CCP claims that bourgeois thought is a spiritual pollution, while in reality the bourgeois endeavor is a normal society. The CCP’s rule is abnormal; communism itself is portrayed as spiritual pollution. The virus metaphor may fit better, but using the CCP’s own language, ordinary people might understand that once you are drawn into the CCP’s vortex, it is hard to escape. It is a kind of jam jar that forces you to accept its concepts and basic principles of its worldview. Many Chinese terms and concepts have become commonplace and deeply ingrained. Whenever the United States criticizes the Party, it is seen as an attempt to curb China’s rise, to suppress and hinder its development. Under CCP leadership, espionage against the United States, theft of commercial intelligence, and theft of military secrets, when uncovered, lead to countermeasures and sanctions, which the Party interprets as the entire Western world, especially the United States, suppressing the Chinese nation and its government. It views these actions as nothing extraordinary, not criminal. Therefore, understanding the CCP’s way of thinking and its cognitive philosophy is key to addressing the Party problem. We must not look only at the surface, as that is difficult; once infected like a virus, it decides, for example, that Taiwan is its territory and must be eliminated by any means—this is frightening. Moreover, it trains a group of people inside Taiwan who share its ideas and carry out these actions. It sounds terrifying, and I feel that many of those who execute these tasks do not even realize they are committing heinous acts, which is the most frightening aspect. In the study of authoritarianism and German history, there is a theory called “willing executioner.” During Nazi Germany, many ordinary Germans performed atrocious deeds as routine matters, believing them to be reasonable and inconsequential. Jewish scholar Hannah Arendt wrote a book titled “The Banality of Evil,” describing how ordinary people commit horrific acts. I grew up in China and know that Red Guard violence sometimes stemmed from a lofty devotion to ideals; they believed killing and arson against class enemies was justified, their humanity completely replaced by party loyalty. This is deeply terrifying—a society that has lost moral boundaries, the distinction between truth and falsehood, is a terrifying society. The so‑called Marxist dialectics severely damage Chinese society’s perception, the good and evil of human nature. Today China’s moral climate is deteriorating, not due to money or capitalist corruption, but because of CCP culture, a very direct product.

So you think that the Communist Party has about 80 to 90 million members, and the rest of the Chinese populace are not Party members. Do they understand the Party enough? I think these non‑member citizens have a lot of instinctive resentment toward the Party, yet many still believe that many grassroots cadres of the Chinese Communist Party are loyal and serve the people. This is very deceptive. The Chinese Communist Party is an enemy of the people; it puts the Party’s cause above everything else. Yet it always uses the banner of the people to suppress the people. In China, as I have said before on this program, the term “people” appears everywhere in the Party’s rhetoric—People’s Bank, People’s Army, National People’s Congress, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, renminbi— all in the name of the people. In reality, the people of China have the least power in the country; they are the bottom layer, the enemy of the state, the target of authoritarian rule. Ordinary citizens essentially have no rights. The Chinese Communist Party spends all its time figuring out how to tightly control the populace. Its Great Firewall, its economic policies, are all for the Party’s benefit, extracting as much wealth as possible from the nation and its citizens. Its international political agenda pursues militarism and builds an authoritarian machine. Many of China’s armed forces and military units are truly aimed at the people. The armed police are a huge force, and security personnel at all levels, including the Ministry of State Security, are crucial. They aim to prevent so‑called foreign forces—normal social interactions—from influencing the people. Thus the country is an extremely unhealthy society.

So, do you think there is still hope for China now? Of course there is hope, and that is why this, China’s hope, I think many things depend on humanity, on continuous revival. Why? Because of reform and opening up. Of course it serves the Communist Party’s highest purpose, but reform and opening up has an objective effect: it allows a large portion of ordinary Chinese people to see the outside world, to see a normal society. A person who is confused, locked inside a madhouse, gradually begins to recognize some of the madhouse’s practices, but then one day he goes out for fresh air, sees the outside world, inhales fresh air, and he feels his normal thinking and normal concepts will gradually revive. I think in Chinese society there are many people, possibly some elite members of the Chinese Communist Party, because they have privileges to the outside world, many points of contact with it, and their concepts will gradually make them see that the Party’s rule is not only cruel and deceptive, but most importantly absurd. You see many ordinary people find this incomprehensible. To ask Xi Jinping to launch a Cultural Revolution‑style mass‑ignorance policy across all of China, to create an absolute leader, absolute loyalty, a dance of loyalty—this is very difficult, not impossible, but I think it is relatively hard. That is hope. This hope is certainly faint, but I think it still exists. After all, China now, in the information age, has the most efficient government control of information, yet the higher the moral, the higher the devil’s trickery. No matter how crazy you are, a somewhat capable person can still see the truth. I think between truth and lies, sometimes many people do not have the truth, but through debate and various angles of information colliding, they eventually find a truth. So many people in China live under a one‑voice environment; if everyone has various information channels, they can compare and discern, and that discernment can separate truth from illusion. I think China, although it spends a lot of effort controlling these channels, cannot control them completely. That is why Xi Jinping is so hysterically anti‑globalization, kicking out international companies and Western NGOs—this is no different from the late Qing era, using nationalism. Has it now become fascist? Nationalism is terrifying; it is built on blind recognition of national interests. He seems to think programs like ours are anti‑China, which is not true. If there are programs like Mr. Cao’s, they are actually helpful to the Chinese people, not anti‑China. The Chinese people need diverse information channels. So nationalism is based on this blind recognition, but any nation’s people naturally care about their country’s rise and fall, its fortunes. However, I think the greatest enemy of the Chinese people, of the Chinese nation, is not the outside world at all, but the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese people cannot lift their heads in many places, not because they are not diligent or lack entrepreneurial spirit, but because the Party has completely destroyed the concept of China in the Western world. Many people do not trust many things related to China, not because they distrust Chinese people, but because of the Party. Look at Chinese Americans in the United States: the Party spends huge effort and money to turn Chinese communities into patriotic overseas Chinese, conducting united front work. In the eyes of ordinary Americans, many Chinese in the U.S. cannot distinguish between the Party’s interests and their own American interests. This is why the biggest benefit and need for self‑protection among Chinese Americans is to clearly separate themselves from the CCP; if you do not, you will deepen American people’s discrimination and misunderstanding of you. The same applies to Taiwan. Your opposition is, of course, very important; democracy works this way, with various factions competing for power through democratic processes. But if your hatred toward domestic political enemies is so deep that you fail to recognize the enemy that threatens the very space of democratic survival, that is extremely dangerous. Now the blue camp keeps saying they want to engage with them. Do you think engaging with the Party is useful? Engagement can be a tool, but it is definitely not the goal, and you must constantly recognize that engagement is for self‑survival, not to sell yourself out. So this is very important. Engagement has several levels: one is state‑to‑state communication, which is essential; the green camp also says there should be equal status in communication. Another point is on many issues...

You need to engage in open communication. If we say that mainland China could also be freely open, allowing the ordinary people of China and Taiwan to freely exchange among civil forces, that would be fine. However, that is not the case now; when Taiwanese civilians go to the mainland to communicate and do their own things, they get arrested. There are many such examples. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party controls all normal channels of communication and distorts the concept of communication. In my view, Taiwan, as a democratic society, should have confidence and should promote genuine communication, not view communication as something entirely negative. Communication should be made public. For example, if a politician goes to mainland China to communicate, they must first recognize that they are a Taiwanese politician elected by the people, and they must respect Taiwan’s sovereignty. Before communicating, they must clearly state to the central government the purpose of the communication, who the counterpart is, and what their own objectives are. Only then can the communication be a positive act. One cannot betray national interests under the guise of communication; that is very wrong. For instance, after last year’s presidential election, many blue‑camp legislators refused to attend the president’s inauguration, completely rejecting it. The president elected by the Taiwanese people went to Beijing to meet Wang Huning, but what was discussed is unknown and unspoken. That is not communication; it is united‑front work, not communication, and it will deepen internal division among the Taiwanese people, which I think is very wrong. Taiwan should have a legal basis to define who is a Taiwanese citizen, what the rights of the Taiwanese people are, and what restrictions and regulations apply to communication with hostile states—every country has such rules. In practice, the United States also encourages communication. The Dalai Lama, the Taiwanese government, and the Chinese government communicate; the Chinese government is unwilling, claiming that we are interfering in its internal affairs. The Chinese government sees communication with the Taiwanese people and the Tibetan people not as dialogue but as bullying: you must kneel before me, and only then will I talk to you. That is not equal communication; it is a gift, not equality. Society is no longer the one from over a hundred years ago, so this is not communication. Previously, the CCP told the green camp that you must first recognize the “One China” principle before we can communicate. Recognizing “One China” essentially means self‑annihilation: the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, two Chinas, and recognizing “One China” means that if Taiwan acknowledges it, it must eliminate the PRC, but now acknowledging it means letting the PRC eliminate the ROC—one China means eliminating one of the two. Under this principle, you must first destroy your own sovereignty to meet, which is the hypocritical part of the 1992 Consensus. It claims “One China, each side expresses its own interpretation,” but you automatically give up the right to express your own interpretation. If I were a former president of the ROC and wanted to go to mainland China to meet the Chinese central secretary‑general, I must first insist on being called a former president of the ROC, not a local leader, to have equal status. Each side’s expression must be fully articulated. Many proponents of the 1992 Consensus actually do not want to express it; they cannot assert the ROC’s truly independent status. Thus, the 1992 Consensus is a highly problematic concept, incomprehensible from an American perspective. Of course, communication is important; through communication we can avoid war and conflict, which is crucial. However, people must understand that communication can serve as self‑protection to avoid war, but it is not the ultimate goal. Using communication to destroy one’s own country’s existence is problematic. Finally, when will China collapse? The CCP regime will inevitably collapse; it’s a matter of time and opportunity, which is hard to predict. Before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, few predicted the rapid downfall, because that state was built on an absurd governing philosophy and ideology. The populace already harbors deep resentment toward the regime, but lacks a public outlet to express it. As Lu Xun said, “If you do not die in silence, you will explode in silence.” I think the mainland CCP appears outwardly as a scene of singing and dancing, but internally there are deep contradictions. You asked when the CCP will collapse; I think it could happen at any time. The real concern should be what happens after China collapses—how to deal with a massive country that has been ruled by the Communist Party for over 70 years, a highly distorted society.

Society will gradually let it revive to normalization, which will require many things to be done. For example, people in think tanks in the United States, like the think tank I organize, the Hudson Institute’s China Center, are studying these issues. After China collapses, how to have a relatively normal transition is a very important question. I am not worried about the Chinese Communist Party’s collapse; the key is how to turn the CCP into a normal country after the collapse. However, its economy has been sliding down recently, basically showing a deflationary downward cycle that cannot be stopped. Will this accelerate the collapse? Of course, it is a major factor. The collapse of Eastern European communist parties was due to basic necessities like oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar. It started with Poland, where prices rose uncontrollably, leading workers to organize unions first for the price of milk and bread, then to fight for their political rights, forming independent unions, which gradually became a direct challenge to the regime. I think we must do one thing: we must not have any fantasies about the long‑term stability of the communist regime. When it comes to reformists or reformers inside the CCP, there should be no illusion. Many people mistakenly think that many of China’s problems are Xi Jinping’s problems, but they are not. Even after Xi’s fall, the system would still exist. Therefore, many issues must be addressed from outside the Communist Party’s ideology and political system, doing what a normal person should do, putting very simple and clear principles into practice. People talk about democracy, freedom, freedom of speech—very small things—starting from the beginning. All countries that have transitioned to democracy in the world have done so outside the authoritarian system and regime, implementing democratic practice and designing the grand blueprint for their own nation. This is the urgent priority. Okay, we have talked for a long time today. Thank you, thank you for giving me this opportunity.