Culture has many dimensions, but the most important is power culture. To borrow Lin Biao’s words used by the Chinese Communist Party, “With power, one has everything; without power, one loses everything.” Therefore, for the Communist Party, power comes first, the seizure of power comes first. For the sake of power, nothing is off limits.

Since the Han dynasty, China’s political system has remained essentially unchanged. Successive dynasties largely followed the Han system, whose cultural foundation came from Confucius. The Communist Party likes to criticize imperial autocracy, yet imperial rule had its limits, whereas Communist imperial rule has no limits. By the Ming dynasty, the Wanli Emperor even protested that ministers provided him only with finished products and not with raw materials, and he went on strike from court. The emperor became a rubber stamp, responsible only for signing and sealing documents, without knowing their background. When the emperor stopped attending court, the ministers could accomplish nothing, and in the end they had to compromise, providing some of the raw materials so that the emperor could understand the context and causes.

The Party culture of the Chinese Communist Party comes from the Soviet Union. From Lenin to Stalin, the Soviet system was one-man rule, and Mao Zedong learned from Stalin to practice one-man dictatorship as well. Only Mao had the final say. At the CCP’s Seventh National Congress in 1945, the standing committee members did not know where to sit and had to wait for Mao Zedong’s instructions. Mao called out Liu Shaoqi’s name, and Liu went up and sat down; then Mao called Zhu De, who sat down; then Zhou Enlai, who followed suit. This arrangement remained unchanged until the Cultural Revolution, for twenty years: Mao, Liu, Zhu, and Zhou.

When power passed to Xi Jinping, Xi immediately made the concentration of power his top priority upon taking office. He assumed the leadership of twelve central leading groups, monopolizing major powers across the Party, government, military, and economy—everything from commander-in-chief of the Central Military Commission to head of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission. At the recent 20th Party Congress, right up until the closing ceremony, the list of the new Politburo Standing Committee was kept secret in his hands. Even Hu Jintao, the elder statesman who had handed power to him ten years earlier, was kept in the dark. At the closing ceremony, Hu wanted to take a look, but was refused. When Hu reached out to take it, Xi reacted with extreme sensitivity, treating it as an attempt to seize his power. Xi not only grabbed Hu and refused to let go, but summoned guards and, citing “poor health,” forcibly escorted Hu out to the 301 Hospital under a form of soft detention. This was meant to display his authority of exclusive power: whoever he wants to arrest, he arrests; whoever he wants to take away, there is no negotiation. No matter if you are the number-one elder, he would demonstrate in public that the power in his hands is absolute and cannot be shared—must be monopolized by one person—just like Mao at the Seventh Congress, calling names one by one to take their seats.

When the Communist Party makes exclusive power and power-grabbing its first priority, ordinary people and officials below inevitably lose freedom and democracy. When speaking of freedom and democracy, people say that over the past hundred years, Communism is inferior to the Republic of China, the Republic of China is inferior to the Qing dynasty, and the Qing dynasty was the most free. The Communist Party is the least free and least democratic. Recently, under pandemic control, Xi’s regime became even more authoritarian: “One person infected, the entire city locked down.” People were not allowed to leave their homes; freedom of movement was lost, and public anger was at its peak, yet Xi ordered that obedience was mandatory. During the great famine of the 1960s, Mao ordered that peasants were not allowed to “flee famine” as vagrants; even if they starved, they had to die in their villages. Now, even if one starves, one must die at home.

China has only two major cultures: Confucian indigenous culture and Communist foreign culture. At present, the Communist Party is dominant, with one person monopolizing power. Culture itself has become Communist red culture. The so-called cultural revival and national rejuvenation promoted by the CCP are all false slogans, mere decorations to conceal Communist autocratic culture. True revival can only mean the revival of Confucian culture. During Hu Jintao’s administration, there were attempts to reestablish Confucius: producing a film about Confucius and erecting a nine-ton statue of Confucius in Tiananmen Square. There was genuine intent to restore Confucian culture, but after only three months it was ordered removed by the “supreme elder” Jiang Zemin. Jiang remembered Mao’s words: “If the Communist Party brings Confucius back, the Communist Party will be finished.” Jiang Zemin clung firmly to Mao Zedong and rejected Confucius.

Over the past century, the Communist invasion brought Communist culture, resulting in decades of great disasters and catastrophes, with more than 100 million deaths. To revive Confucian culture, one must abandon the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, and his successor Xi Jinping; only then can Confucian culture be revived.

Confucian culture and Western Christian culture are cultures of the same nature. In the sixteenth century, the Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci came to the Ming dynasty to preach; the emperor accepted him as a Confucian scholar. Ricci also translated the Analects of Confucius and published it in Europe.

Confucian culture is also of the same nature as Buddhist culture. Traditionally in China, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism coexisted peacefully. Buddhist scriptures had to be translated using Confucian language; if translated literally, people would not understand them. Many famous figures in the Confucian tradition studied Buddhist scriptures. In modern times, the renowned thinker Xiong Shili was an authority on Yogācāra (Consciousness-Only) philosophy, and Liang Shuming also deeply studied Buddhism; the young Liang Shuming once even wished to become a monk.

In modern China, there are two cultures: if not Communist or Maoist, then Confucian. Contemporary scholar Xu Zhangrun, in his famous anti-Mao, anti-Xi, anti-Communist essays, may not have mentioned Confucius explicitly, but he undoubtedly belongs to the Confucian cultural camp as a person of great moral courage.