Ronald Reagan once wanted to throw Marxism-Leninism on the rubbish heap of history.
In the case of the Soviet Union, it succeeded.
There is no shortage of voices that also predicted the downfall of the Chinese “communists”.
But this week the Chinese Communist Party is celebrating its centenary. The Chinese ambassador in London took this as an opportunity to lay flowers at the grave of Karl Marx. Party leader Xi Jinping has long presented himself as the proud heir to Lenin and Stalin. When he came to power in 2012, Xi Jinping himself was concerned with the question of how his party could escape the fate of the CPSU. His answers to this question put China on a collision course with the West.
In China, hardly anyone is really interested in communism.
Xi Jinping, however, made use of Lenin's, Stalin and Mao's toolbox to create a system in which ideology serves to control thoughts and discourse and those who think differently are ostracized as traitors to the fatherland.
China regularly accuses the United States of having a Cold War mentality.
Xi Jinping declared Western values in science, the media, art and schools to be a threat to national security nine years ago.
No export of the Chinese model
The challenge for the West is not that China would export its system one-to-one to the world, like the Comintern once did.
But Beijing wants to spread the idea that authoritarian systems are more efficient and more crisis-proof than democracies.
To this end, China exports elements of its control apparatus such as standards, laws and technology for data use, face recognition and internet censorship.
In international organizations, Beijing is pushing for a new world order in which human rights should no longer play a role.
In contrast to his predecessors, who acted cautiously in terms of foreign policy in order to concentrate on developments in their own country, the incumbent head of state and party shows a very high willingness to take risks.
Whether with America, Europe, India or Australia, Xi no longer avoids any conflict.
In his opinion, with Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and finally the pandemic, a window of time has opened in which China can shift the balance in its favor.
Standing up to the West under Xi Jinping has become a new source of legitimation for the party, since it has become increasingly clear that the promise of social advancement will remain unrealizable for many.
Farewell to the old recipe for success
In domestic politics, too, Xi Jinping has said goodbye to many things that were once considered a recipe for success and a guarantee of survival for the Communist Party.
After the excesses of violence in the Mao era, the political elites agreed to defuse their power struggles through collective leadership and regulated changes of power.
Pragmatism, de-ideologization, economic liberalization and the opening towards the West paved the way for an unprecedented economic miracle.
Hundreds of millions were able to escape poverty in this way.
The unbridled economic boom also led to corruption and social inequality.
When Xi Jinping came to power, he saw the party in a legitimacy crisis that threatened its very existence.
The Soviet Union went under because the CPSU had forgotten its convictions and because no one was “man enough” to oppose the decline.
So he founded a re-ideologization that has meanwhile encompassed all areas of life, and the concentration of all power in his hands.
He abolished the term limit and theoretically secured a rule for life.
In doing so, he has made China more powerful and more fragile at the same time.
Because how one day the succession of Xi will be regulated is completely unclear.
After the brutal turmoil of the Mao era and the preceding civil war, the party made two promises: prosperity and stability.
The Chinese’s fear of a return of chaos guarantees the Communist Party a great deal of popular approval to this day.
Under Xi Jinping, however, the personality cult that his predecessors warned against after the experience of the Mao excesses is spreading.
The result is a system in which homage to the party leader counts more than reason, pragmatism and the balancing of interests.
Even the innovative high-tech industry, which has contributed a lot to China's economic success, is now having to buck because CEO Xi Jinping has become too powerful.
This logic now also determines foreign policy. The so-called wolf warrior diplomacy serves the diplomats to show themselves to be particularly loyal to the line. But it damages China's image and increases the risk of miscalculations. One can only hope that there will not soon be tendencies in the military to ingratiate themselves with the party leader through daring maneuvers.