Chinese officials are not very happy with Cai Xia. Not in the least.
A former professor at the elite Central Party School in Beijing, Cai was responsible for the education and indoctrination of rising Communist Party officials. No longer. Cai, who has now escaped China, was expelled from the Communist Party on Monday. The expulsion comes two months after an audio recording was leaked in which Cai attacked Xi Jinping as an arrogant and idiotic leader. Cai referred to Xi as “a total mafia boss who can punish his underlings however he wants.” She continued, “That’s why I say that this [Communist] Party is already a political zombie.”
Such rhetoric does not play well with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. After all, Xi is paranoid but also determined to become the new Mao Zedong, a leader beyond question or reproach. Further inflaming Beijing, Cai then gave an interview to the Guardian, again lambasting Xi Jinping’s leadership.
Xi’s minions aren’t just angry. They’re apoplectic. Evincing as much, Beijing’s primary Western-focused propaganda outlet on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on Cai.
According to the Global Times, Cai launched “incredibly malicious attacks” on the Communist Party, “betrayed her oath [from] when she chose to become a member of the [Party], and set an extreme example as one who is now against the red flag as a traitor.” Cai’s “harsh anti-system opinions which stepped on China’s bottom line from time to time” are only part of Cai’s injustice, the editorial argues. “No matter how Cai defines freedom of speech, as a retired professor from the Party school, she was supposed to support the [Party] leadership of the country instead of opposing the constitutional clause.” Instead, “She has betrayed not only the oath of the Party, but also the interests of China and the Chinese people. … Nothing can defend her.”
This visceral fury tells us a great deal about Xi’s regime.
For one, it instructs us in the totalitarian manner by which Beijing views the relationship between individuals and political power. Whereas we in the democratic world treasure free speech, China treasures only loyalty to Xi’s throne. China defines treason not as we do, as a physical act against the state, but as any act that questions the Communist Party’s ordained authority. There is a deep and immoral political rot here. China is quite obviously saying that even the act of questioning authority is unacceptable — not just unacceptable but cause for vicious rebuke. We can be confident that were Cai still in China, she would have faced the same fate as the dissident writer Ren Zhiqiang and found herself disappeared.
The similarities between the KGB disappearances of the Soviet Union and those of the Chinese Communist Party are not coincidental. This is just another reminder that, by political nature and strategic intent, Xi’s China is America’s new cold war foe.
