The former top ideologue at Central Party School says Xi Jinping should go. Kicked out of the CCP and deprived of her retirement benefits, she can soon be arrested.
by Massimo Introvigne
Handcuffs and a judge’s hammer. Never known for its subtlety, the CCP propaganda organ Global Times used these images to illustrate an article of August 17 about Cai Xia. The Global Times calls her a “top Party School retired professor,” and announces that she has been expelled from the CCP and deprived of her retirement benefits. The handcuffs may indicate her future, although rumors are that Cai is currently abroad.
Once a top CCP ideologue, Cai became controversial in recent years for defending figures who were expelled from the Party or jailed without due process. She crossed the red line in May with a video where, although carefully avoiding the name “Xi Jinping,” she discussed somebody who has hijacked the CCP and made a mockery of the Chinese Constitution. China Digital Times has published an English translation of her speech.
Cai described “one person, a central leader who has grasped the knife handle [police apparatus], the gun barrel [military], and faults within the system itself—that is: one, corruption among the officials; and two, the lack of human rights and legal protection for Party members and cadres. With these two grasped in his hands, he has turned 90 million Party members into slaves, tools to be used for his personal advantage. When he needs it, he uses the Party. When he doesn’t need it, Party members are no longer treated as Party members. He can easily put you somewhere and label you as a corrupt official.”
Currently, “the whole Party [is] revolving around one person. Can you even still call this a political party? It is no longer a political party, and hasn’t been one for a long time. It is just a tool in the hands of a mafia boss.Therefore, this party has become a political zombie.” Cai called on the other members of the ruling CCP elite to be brave and “replace the person,” to avoid “another period of major chaos.”
However, replacing “the person” would only be “the first step.” Cai is still talking about the violated human rights of the members of the CCP, not of all Chinese. Yet, she is no longer persuaded by the ideology, and claims that “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” has made the CCP “the laughing stock of the world.”
Offering an implicit answer to those in the West who claim that China is not Communist because it has a market economy, Cai reminds her audience that the latter includes a factor market and a commodity market. China can give the impression of having moved to market economy because it has introduced some private property (in the hands of selected “friends” of the CCP) in the commodity market, but the factor market is still firmly socialist, i.e. the CCP controls the resources (factors) crucial for the productions of goods and services.
The fact that under “the person” state control is increasing rather than decreasing, concludes Cai, “tells us that this system is going nowhere. It is useless to try and change it. Fundamentally speaking, this system must be abandoned. As for the reform we are talking about, it is no longer about changing within the framework of the current system.”
These considerations would appear obvious to many readers of Bitter Winter. But the interesting part is that they come from the mouth of a lady who was until recently a powerful CCP ideologue.
