While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) media are loudly shouting the slogan “building a harmonious society in China,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection on behalf of the Central Committee of the CCP has requested that Chinese officials at or above the county level watch an internal movie entitled “Peace with Sword in Hand: The Historical Lesson from the Collapse of the Soviet Union Communist Party.” The movie was planned and organized by Li Shenming (pen name Xiao Li), vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Li is viewed as a close friend of Hu Jintao, Chairman of the CCP. After viewing, all participants are asked to join a group discussion and a record of the discussion must be submitted to upper level officials.
This is a significant event for the CCP since many Chinese people have quit the CCP and its related organizations, and also after the failure of the activity “maintaining the advancement of the CCP education movement,” which was initiated and led by Hu when he came to power. According to an internal document, the event is aimed to halt “the death of the CCP” and “save the CCP from its crisis.”
Top Secret Uncovered
Experts in Chinese affairs believe that since Li Shenming is Hu’s favorite reporter, Li’s opinion is a strong signal that should not to be ignored; the importance of the movie is the same as the speech made by the CCP’s military general Zhu Chenghu last year. The movie itself reflects that the internal crisis assessed by the CCP is quite grave. The captions in the movie illustrate the CCP’s strategies to deal with the internal crisis, which are required to be studied by members of the CCP.
The propaganda tones internally and externally are quite opposite. Externally, the CCP emphasizes “harmony,” “prosperity” and “a rising China,” while internally it emphasizes “Think of the danger,” “Dying Party,” and “Lesson from the Soviet Union.” This phenomenon indicates that the actual situation in China is not harmonious as reported by Chinese media or the overseas media directly or indirectly controlled by the CCP.
The movie has eight episodes including “The Historical Path Of The Communist Party Of The Soviet Union’s (CPSU) Prosperity And Decline,” “The Basic Theory And Guiding Principles Of The CPSU,” “CPSU’s Ideology,” “CPSU’s Spirit,” “CPSU’s Privileged Stratum,” “CPSU’s Organizational Principles,” “CPSU’s Leadership” and “CPSU’s Fighting Back Strategies Toward The Westernization And Split [Of The USSR].”
Regret for Discarding Stalin
The movie’s first episode review the power politics of the CPSU, and acknowledges the great achievement of the theory of dictatorship of the proletariat, and specially praised the dictator Stalin, but regrets that Stalin was eventually discarded by the CPSU.
The movie concludes that the reason for the CPSU’s loss of power after 74 years was due to the CPSU itself, and claimed that the lost control of ideology resulted in the prevailing capitalist liberalization, which changed the opinion of their carefully educated elites. These elites along with some institutional and economy management officials, some gray economic powers as well as crime forces became gravediggers for the CPSU.
The movie also acknowledged that the inter-party atmosphere of the CPSU was completely ruined through, for example, mutual flattery, embezzling and bribing, privileged rights, exploiting officials, seeking the personal gains, etc.
Movie Claims Withdrawal from CPSU Paralyzed the Party
The movie claims that withdrawal of memberships nearly paralyzed the Party. Within two years, from January 1989 to January 1991, more than 2.9 million members had publicly announced their withdrawal and the majority of members that did not resign had lost their confidence in the Party as well.
The Ural Auto manufacturer, the largest in Soviet Union, had more than 9,000 Communist members in the year 1989, but only 1,600 people still kept their membership by January 1991. Among these more than 300 members did not pay their Party dues. In Briansk region, there were 6,000 members in the year 1986, and 750 in the year 1989, but only 4 left in the year 1991. One-fifth of the Party organizations in factories and half of the Party mini-branches had been dismissed or stopped their routine activities.
Analysts suggest that, given the captions of the movie and the discussion after watching the movie, the CCP is extremely panicked. The perceived crisis has forced the CCP to find a way to survive, asking all its members to “consider dangers while living in peace” to prevent them from losing their privileged status.
Forced Viewing as a Warning
Just prior to the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published the “Yellow Paper of International Socialism.” Li Shenming personally wrote the preface for the yellow paper entitled “Perspectives of Socialism in the 21st Century.” The article claimed that “China, with one-fifth of the world’s population, has made great achievements in the past by adhering to socialism, the open door policy and the economic reform.” “The International socialism movement is coming out of the valley and moving gradually towards revival.” Li also predicted that USA-led global capitalism would finally be replaced by CCP-led global socialism.
CCP’s Top Secret Uncovered
Experts in China affairs suggest that the global strategy of the higher echelon of the CCP hidden in the movie should be a matter of concern.
Through careful review, the captions for the movie disclose the top secret agenda of the CCP: the ultimate goal is to “liberate the entire human race.” The CCP has stated repeatedly that in order to achieve “global socialism” and “control the world,” the only means is to resort to “military power.”
One very important sentence in a caption is “Just as Mao Zedong said, since then the CPSU has discarded Stalin, the knife.” Then the movie flashes a sign “Peace with Sword in Hand” to warn CCP officials through silent display of Mao’s ultimate violence theory—the Theory of Knife.
