In a landmark 1979 speech, Deng announced the Four Cardinal Principles, which distill the CCP’s communist convictions: “1) We must keep to the socialist road; 2) We must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party; 4) We must uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.”139 In 1982, the CCP wrote the Four Cardinal Principles into the PRC Constitution; the principles also form an essential part of the party’s constitution. Since then, party leaders have emphasized that the CCP’s loosening of state control of the economy in some areas beginning in the late 1970s — a decisive factor in unleashing China’s economic potential and propelling China to great-power status — did not diminish China’s dedication to communism. In 2019, Xi lavishly celebrated the 40th anniversary of the declaration of the Four Cardinal Principles.140
Central to the CCP’s understanding of world affairs is the Marxist teaching that throughout history human societies have been divided into an oppressed class and an oppressor class. In the modern era, the emergence of two opposed economic and political systems dividing the world heightens the contradiction. On one side, according to the Marxist view, stands capitalism, with its fraudulent commitment to a political and economic freedom that inherently exploits the individual. On the other side, Marxism teaches, stands communism, based on central planning and the conscription of the people in service to the party, and devoted to what communism believes to be true human emancipation.141
Xi embraces this Manichean view of world affairs. In 2013, shortly after he came to power, the CCP issued “Document No. 9,” which enumerated seven perils to Chinese society emanating from the West.142 These include constitutional democracy, human rights, free speech, robust civic participation, and a vigorous free market. Daniel Tobin stresses that for the CCP, “individual human rights, including freedom of speech, assembly, and religion are to be subjugated in the name of the collective ends of security, development, and the Chinese nation’s status in the world.”143 At the 19th Party Congress in 2017, the CCP reaffirmed that China offered a new model of socialism that would prevail in the great struggle with capitalism and, by so doing, overcome the division between oppressor and oppressed and bring harmony to world affairs. As some Central Party School scholars have noted, the party intends to replace the post-World War II order which, in its view, is grounded in unjust Western political and economic principles, with a new one rooted in the CCP’s socialism.144 Despite Xi’s promises
