Genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping declared that Beijing will “surely be reunified” with the sovereign nation of Taiwan in an address marking the 130th birthday of mass murderer Mao Zedong on Tuesday, an apparent threat to invade and colonize the neighboring country and attempt to galvanize fanatical communists.
Mao led China’s communist revolution and won a bloody war against the Chinese nationalists in 1949, establishing the “people’s republic” and forcing nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek to retreat to Taiwan. Taiwan, formally the Republic of Taiwan, has never been governed by the “People’s Republic” – or any government headquartered in Beijing – and has always operated as a sovereign state with no government ties to the Communist Party. Despite this, the Party insists that Taiwan is a long-lost province of China that must be “reunified” with the “mainland,” routinely threatening a military invasion.
(Original Caption) Taipei, Taiwan: President Chiang Kai-Shek smiling and waving hat during mass rally celebrating the 59th anniversary of Nationalist China’s founding. (Bettmann via Getty Images)
“The complete reunification of our motherland is an overall trend, a righteous cause, and the common aspiration of the people. Our motherland must be reunified, and it will surely be reunified,” Xi said on Tuesday, addressing communist leaders in Beijing for a “symposium” on Mao for the Party’s elites.
“[We] firmly oppose anyone using any means to separate Taiwan from China,” Xi insisted, according to a translation by the South China Morning Post. Japan’s Nikkei translated Xi as saying, “[we] will resolutely prevent anyone from splitting Taiwan from China in any way.”
In reality, Taiwan and China have already been “split” for decades. Taiwan is a democratic, sovereign nation with independent civilian and military institutions. Taiwan is scheduled to have a presidential election on January 13 in which the ruling anti-communist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has maintained a significant lead in polls.
Mao attempted, but failed, to colonize Taiwan, and the issue remains an emotional one for hardline communists – many of whom do not trust Xi. Xi has attempted to elevate himself and his “Xi Jinping Thought” to the level of veneration that the Communist Party demands for Mao, inadvertently fueling a resurgence in pro-Mao nostalgia. Chinese authorities for years have been forced to suppress Maoist labor movements that denounce Xi as a corrupt elitist and demand a return to allegedly “pro-worker” communism.
“Xi’s comments hint at an intention to elevate himself beyond Mao through unification,” Nikkei observed.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Xi reportedly described the full “modernization” of communist China as the “unfinished work of the previous generation of revolutionaries like Mao Zedong,” promising to expand efforts to grow the Chinese economy.
Xi also allegedly declared that Mao was “devoted to national prosperity, rejuvenation, and people’s happiness,” according to the state propaganda outlet Xinhua.
In reality, Mao was one of history’s most prolific mass murderers, presiding over an era of butchery and unspeakable atrocities such as mass infanticide, torture, and cannibalism. A 2016 report citing anonymous eyewitnesses described communist Cultural Revolution celebrations in the 1960s during which “the hearts, livers and genitals of victims were cut out and fed to revelers.” The victims were often those identified as “bourgeois,” such as teachers and doctors, or anyone considered anti-communist. That report listed other atrocities committed as “beheadings, beatings, live burials, stonings, drownings, boilings, group slaughters, disembowellings, digging out hearts, livers, genitals, slicing off flesh, blowing up with dynamite, and more.”
The Cultural Revolution is estimated to have killed 150,000 people. The Great Leap Forward, a separate Mao initiative, killed 45 million.
Mao “is a great internationalist who made significant contributions to the liberation of the oppressed nations of the world and the cause of human progress,” Xi said on Tuesday.
The Chinese state-run Global Times propaganda outlet claimed that “tens of thousands” of people gathered in China on Tuesday to celebrate this history.
“The Global Times learned from authorities in Shaoshan [Mao’s birthplace] that people from all over the country spontaneously flocked to Shaoshan to commemorate the birthday of the late Chinese leader,” the newspaper reported.
China monitors all citizens through a “social credit system” that ascribes numerical scores to individuals based on their behavior. China rewards behavior it deems positive and punishes those who behave in ways contrary to Party orthodoxy with low scores. Insufficient revolutionary fervor – as well as perceived overenthusiasm about religions outside of communism – could lead to a low social credit score, so the system encourages outlandish displays of worship for communist leaders such as Mao.