Xi’s Great Leap Backwards

A new Iron Curtain

Xi Jinping is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and has spoken at length about his father’s banishment and his own tough dealings with its Red Book-carrying soldiers. This is not preventing him from ushering in the era of the Great Leap Backwards, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing to deconstruct the fundamentals of Chinese culture.

China has the largest diaspora on Earth and this diaspora’s strong links to the mainland has been a key ingredient to China’s awesome economic development since 1979.

Xi has decided to use COVID19 as cover to erect a new Iron Curtain, by stopping passport renewals and the issuance of new passports, as well as discouraging foreign travel, unless deemed utmost necessary.

Chinese culture venerates education, which is often the top family expense.

The CCP is resorting to cultural terrorism and saps the fundamental element of their country’s culture by essentially telling its middle class their children cannot compete anymore. In just weeks the CCP has killed 50% of university slots, called for students to switch to more technical schools, and banned after school tutoring. 

In this writer’s opinion, Xi is being extremely short-termist and lacks any political vision other than the survival of his own clan.

He is killing the middle class’s upward mobility and having the CCP mess with the nuclear reactor of its citizens’ tolerance for authoritarianism. 

Deng’s masterful deal with the population in 1979 can be summed up as: “we will make you comfortable and your children can aspire to the best, in exchange the CCP remains the sole guardian of Chinese power”. 

Xi Jinping demonstrates just how far China has fallen as no one before him had the gall to sap the middle class’s aspirational vessels. 

This will not end well for Xi and he will soon see that his Great Leap Backwards will be the CCP’s death knell.