The biggest challenge the Chinese communist regime faces is its relationship with the United States, said economist Xue Lan, dean of Tsinghua University’s Schwarzman College in Beijing.
Xue said the second-biggest challenge facing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is an aging population and sub-replacement fertility or declining birth rate.
The third involved correcting deficits in food supplies and energy plus financial debt security.
The fourth referred to problems in the income distribution gap.
Lastly, he said, the pressure to reach a reasonable balance between ensuring economic success while protecting the environment, i.e., responsibly reducing carbon emissions.
On top of the five challenges, Xue stressed that the CCP must prepare for the world’s “decoupling” from China where the global community reduces its dependence on Chinese products and supply chains.
Xue said that the world’s economic and supply chain difficulties caused by the pandemic and the trade war with the United States will further cause the “decoupling” of other countries from their over-dependence on China.
The AXIS Act requires the U.S. executive branch to track and report evidence on the CCP’s support for Russia during the war with Ukraine. The sponsor of the bill, U.S. Rep Andy Barr (R-Ky) said the alliance between these two countries is a new axis of evil that threatens the United States and the rules-based international order.
Biggest Obstacle to Communist Hegemony
In speaking with The Epoch Times, Lee Jung-soo, a military expert and research associate with the Taiwan National Policy Research Foundation, suggested the United States is China’s biggest obstacle to its goal of becoming a world power by 2049, the centennial of the CCP coming to power.“Former U.S. President Donald Trump set the obstacle to contain the CCP’s ambition for domination,” Lee said.
“From 1971, when President Nixon visited China, to when Trump took office, relations between the U.S. and China remained relatively stable for more than 40 years. During this period, the U.S. hoped the CCP would change its totalitarian system by engaging with the West, learning about the international order, and developing its economy,” he said.
“Trump tried to contain, control, and even encircle the CCP through economic, trade, technology, and financial wars. This made it difficult for the CCP to surpass the U.S. and achieve its goal of world domination. It’s why the CCP feared and hated Trump.”
Growing Distrust of the CCP
During Xue’s presentation, he said that the foundation for improving China-U.S. relations is to strengthen communication and narrow the knowledge gap between the two sides. While this could increase U.S. familiarity with China, Xue said Schwarzman College was going a step further. It aims to cultivate “future global leaders who understand China in depth.”Lee Jung-soo said Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s plan to improve U.S. relations was to “tell China’s story well.”
Lee went on to say that Schwarzman College was using enormous financial, human, and material resources to export communist ideology to the outside world. But the desired results had become elusive since the world has a growing distrust of the CCP’s leadership and communist political system, he said adding this lack of trust had become the “CCP’s greatest Achilles heel.”
“Frankly speaking, not only does the world distrust the communist regime but so too do the Chinese people,” Lee said.
“The lockdown of Shanghai is the best proof of this. It is the biggest crisis the regime has faced so far. The ‘April Voices’ internet video has gone viral, proving that the Chinese people are like ants in the eyes of the CCP leaders.”
“April Voices” is a six-minute video released on April 22 that includes a collection of recorded conversations during the Shanghai lockdown, describing the plight of residents. It was uploaded and deleted soon after, but has since gone viral.
“It seems to me, the wish of Stephen Schwarzman, the American tycoon, is good because he wants the world to understand China. But the more people understand China, the more they feel the communist regime is not sustainable,” he said.
Schwarzman College
Stephen Schwarzman is the founder, chairman, CEO of Blackstone Group and Schwarzman College is named after him.
Much like China’s Confucius Institutes located in 134 countries, Schwarzman has been criticized as a being a conduit for expanding the CCP’s international influence.
But the communist regime does maintain strict rules about what colleges and universities can teach. Those rules regulate the content of lessons in history and politics. Mandatorily excluded from textbooks and lectures is content about universal values, Western human rights, and the tenets of democracy.
Schwarzman College’s Chinese name is “Schwarzman Shuyuan”. “Shuyuan” means the Academy of Learning.
Li Yuanhua said that the essence of CCP’s education is authoritarianism, while the “Shuyuan,” which was popular during the Southern Song Dynasty in China, was characterized by ”freely teaching different theories.” The Song Dynasty (960-1270) was perhaps the most open and intellectually brilliant era in China’s history.
Li said the CCP is masking the true essence of its authoritarian ideology to students by referring to Schwarzman College as “Schwarzman Shuyuan.”
