Forgetting his roots in Mao Zedong’s 1949 Communist Revolution, China’s 64-year-old President Xi Jinping praised Karl Marx as the greatest thinker in modern times. “The greatest thinker of modern times,” Xi confused his loyalty to the Chinese version of Marxism expressed by Mao. Mao differed sharply from Marx in his emphasis of elevating Chinese peasants to rebel against Capitalist elites, today known as oligarchs. As Xi rhetorically battles 71-year-old President Donald Trump on his threat to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, Xi knows that China’s communist government was stuck in the doldrums before President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opened up Chinese markets when Nixon visited China Feb. 21, 1972, eight months after Kissinger visited July 15, 1971. Only after Chairman Zhou Enlai hosted Nixon did China open up capital markets.
Addressing the Beijing’s Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi commemorated the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth May 5, 1918 in Germany. Ironic that Xi would pick a Jewish man of the Enlightenment like Marx as the role model for Chinese communism. Before Xi gives all the credit to Marx, he should consider the modern-day comparison between the economies of South and North Korea. Nowhere in history has their been a more stark comparison between Marxism and capitalism. With a nominal GDP of $1.56 trillion ranked 11th in world markets, South Korea stands as proof of economic prosperity under capitalism. North Korea, on the other hand, a strictly managed Marxist economy, stands at a GDP of 12.38 billion, ranked between Mauritius and Mozambique at 128th. Xi credits Marxism for China’s success but it completely overlooks the facts.
Had Nixon and Kissinger not opened up Chinese markets, China would continue the same kind of widespread poverty and starvation seen in North Korea. Recent overtures by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to South Korean and Trump to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula stems directly from the intolerable economic conditions faced in North Korea. Kim wants to jump on the capitalist bandwagon, much like Marxist Vietnam did in the years after the Vietnam War ended in April 30, 1975. Under capitalist reforms, Vietnam now enjoys a nominal GDP of $202.6 billion, ranked 52, just above New Zealand, nearly 20 times the size of North Korea. “We must win the advantages with the initiative, and win the future. We must continuously improve the ability to use Marxism to analyze and solve practical problems,” said Xi, knowing that Marxism only leads to poverty and social misery.
While there’s nothing wrong with venerating Marx’s 200-year birth date, there’s something very wrong attributing China’s economic development to Marx. Marxist, Leninist and Stalinist economic policies practically destroyed Russia’s economy before President Ronald Regan and his Secretary of State James Baker helped open up free markets in the former Soviet Union. Regan worked closely with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev who started Glasnost [open government] and Peristroika [restructuring] to open Russia up to free market capitalism. Under Gobachev’s successor, Boris Yeltsin, the Kremlin disbanded the Soviet Union Dec. 26, 1991, creating more economic opportunity for Russia’s stagnant economy. Admitting that Marxism plunged the Russian economy into stagnation and recession isn’t something Russian President Vladimr Putin likes to admit.
Giving China, Russia, Vietnam and now North Korea’s Marxist regimes to exercise some measure of free-market capitalism pays dividends. No one knows whether North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is really serious about disbanding his nukes and ballistic missiles. With Trump due to meet Kim something in late May or June, you’d like to think he would gladly trade his nukes and ballistic missiles for economic prosperity. But given Kim’s family history, giving up his nukes and ballistic missiles won’t be easy. Focusing on a peace treaty, not the current armistice, would be the best path to avert war on the Korean Peninsula. Signing a peace treaty would be the first step for Kim to begin, like Vietnam, to dig his economy out of its current hole. Whatever Kim has in terms of nukes and ballistic missiles doesn’t yet threaten the U.S. homeland. A peace treaty would help end the nuclear threat.
Ending presidential term limits March 11, Xi’s focus on Marsim hopes to divert attention away from what looks like a more authoritarian regime. Xi knows that Marxism, and its cousin Maoism, failed to deliver economic prosperity to China or any other communist state. “Today, we commemorate Marx in order to pay tribute to the greatest thinker in the history of mankind and also to declare our firm belief in the scientific truth of Marism,” said Xi, preaching to the Central Committee’s communist fanatics. North Korea’s atrophied economy offers the most glaring proof of Maxist-Lenninist-Stalinist principles. Praising Marx preaches to the choir but doesn’t tell the real story about China’s prosperity since Nixon and Kissinger opened China to free-market capitalism. Marx offered some radical ideas in 1885 but only reminds historians today about the failures of communism.
