In a series of propaganda events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) foundation in 1921 [庆祝共产党成为100周年] a national elite of primary and secondary school students assembled Jul 1 on Tiananmen Square to declare their absolute and complete submission to the Chinese nation. Paramount leader Xi Jinping observed the spectacle in a front row seat.
China Youth People’s Magazine [中国青年报], the party’s media outlet for Chinese youth, published on its wechat video channel a five minute long video which summarizes the mass event. The video has been each viewed, liked and shared by more than 100k users and has been during the last week the top content on the Chinese social media platform wechat.
China Youth People’s Magazine [中国青年报], the party’s media outlet for Chinese youth, published on its wechat video channel a five minute long video which summarizes the mass event. The video has been each viewed, liked and shared by more than 100k users and has been during the last week the top content on the Chinese social media platform wechat.
4 model students lead a battalion of 1068 pupils from 37 schools from across the nation and share a message to their national age peers behind TV sets: CCP, be at ease, my country has me to stay strong! [“请党放心，强国有我!] Several battalions of soldiers from all Chinese war forces surround the students as if they were already part of one large army.
A frightening scene, in particular if one remembers Nazi-Germany youth rallies from the 1930s. The Hitler Youth has been identified by some historians as the cradle of war and destruction. Will it be any different with the CCP youth? What are Xi Jinping’s plans with the next generation of labor and armed forces? World dominion or saving the world?
Nationalism is an obsolete concept in the era of the Anthropocene. Global challenges like the climate crisis or the radical transformation of labor markets through automation and digitization call for a post-national mindset, which offers truly global and paradoxically also truly local solutions. Political entities like nation states might sooner than we think be part of our collective history. If they are not, our species will be.
The future – and our all survival - belongs to trans-national and trans-organizational movements like One Army, which empower people from all walks of life without any bias of race, gender, nation, religion or ethnicity. What counts is contribution to challenges our species faces by thinking globally and acting locally.
The future – and our all survival - belongs to trans-national and trans-organizational movements like One Army, which empower people from all walks of life without any bias of race, gender, nation, religion or ethnicity. What counts is contribution to challenges our species faces by thinking globally and acting locally.
Its truly distressing that not even educated Chinese realize how dangerous the waters in which captain Xi navigates are. When I shared my concerns about the Beijing Youth Parade in a wechat group which I moderate, two Chinese with completed academic education replied in a brain washed manner, that I have no right to make any analogy with historical events: China is unique and cannot be compared to anything that ever took place in human history.
As somebody who grew up in the country where Adolf Hitler was born, I am particularly entitled to make such analogies. On the contrast to most contemporaries I still remember accounts from my own grandmother about how nationalism unfolded in Germany and Austria and how it transformed into vicious fascism. Comparative historian Barrington Moore showed in his seminal work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy social development and culture formation are subject to systemic laws. Laws which the average citizen does not see, but nevertheless laws which guide the evolution of societies.
Only societies with a strong and independent bourgeoisie turn out to be democratic. All others go down the route towards dictatorship, no matter whether it is called fascism or communism. The size of a country or its cultural hemisphere are insignificant variables in this equation. China’s bourgeoisie has either sided with the government or left the country in a diaspora throughout the last decade which can only be compared with what took place in the years preceding Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany.
Neither democratic capitalism which has evolved out of European 19th century nation state entities, nor Chinese state capitalism will save this planet and the next generation. The adaptive governance the CCP has installed might react faster upon systemic challenges, it is however still subject to the laws of nature. State capitalism as practiced in by the CCP devours natural resources in unprecedented scale and rejuvenates the words of economist and Nobel laureate Fritz Schumacher:
“The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”
Schumacher has shown that all of traditional economics is wrong and that small is beautiful. 21st century China is the largest capitalist economy humanity as ever seen and thus the ugliest human organization one can imagine. If it proceeds to evolve in the manner it has done so far, we must expect similar consequences to what we have seen emanating from Nazi Germany. Events like the July 1 youth parade are confirmation of that trajectory.
As somebody who grew up in the country where Adolf Hitler was born, I am particularly entitled to make such analogies. On the contrast to most contemporaries I still remember accounts from my own grandmother about how nationalism unfolded in Germany and Austria and how it transformed into vicious fascism. Comparative historian Barrington Moore showed in his seminal work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy social development and culture formation are subject to systemic laws. Laws which the average citizen does not see, but nevertheless laws which guide the evolution of societies.
Only societies with a strong and independent bourgeoisie turn out to be democratic. All others go down the route towards dictatorship, no matter whether it is called fascism or communism. The size of a country or its cultural hemisphere are insignificant variables in this equation. China’s bourgeoisie has either sided with the government or left the country in a diaspora throughout the last decade which can only be compared with what took place in the years preceding Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany.
Neither democratic capitalism which has evolved out of European 19th century nation state entities, nor Chinese state capitalism will save this planet and the next generation. The adaptive governance the CCP has installed might react faster upon systemic challenges, it is however still subject to the laws of nature. State capitalism as practiced in by the CCP devours natural resources in unprecedented scale and rejuvenates the words of economist and Nobel laureate Fritz Schumacher:
“The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”
Schumacher has shown that all of traditional economics is wrong and that small is beautiful. 21st century China is the largest capitalist economy humanity as ever seen and thus the ugliest human organization one can imagine. If it proceeds to evolve in the manner it has done so far, we must expect similar consequences to what we have seen emanating from Nazi Germany. Events like the July 1 youth parade are confirmation of that trajectory.
Sources:
- Oriental TV youtube video on 100 year commemoration (Chinese)
- Soho article on Beijing 2021 Youth Rally (Chinese)
- 请党放松，强国有我 京都青少年在行动
- Youth Rally 1935 Nuernberg
- German youth parade 1937
- https://www.onearmy.earth//
- Barrington Moore: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
- 移民Leaving China
- E.F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People mattered.
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