In 2012, Hu Jintao (leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 2003 to 2012) erected a nine-ton (including the base) statue of Confucius on the east side of Tiananmen Square. After only three months, it was ordered removed by the “supreme elder” Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin remembered Mao Zedong’s words: “If Confucius is brought back, the Communist Party will be finished.” To this day, the Confucius statue remains stored away in a museum. After Xi Jinping came to power, he once visited Qufu, Confucius’s hometown—not to pay homage, but merely to put on a show. He picked up the Analects of Confucius and pretended to say, “I must study and research this carefully.” The Confucius statue, however, has continued to sit untouched in museum storage.

To welcome the arrival of a “Confucian Century,” the United States could offer a high price to purchase the nine-ton Confucius statue and erect it in front of the Capitol, or at another prominent location in Washington. The United States accepted Confucius long ago; as early as 1862, President Lincoln said, “Confucius belongs to America.” Announcing the beginning of a Confucian Century would surely shock the world. With the revival of Confucius, the peaceful transformation of the Chinese Communist Party would arrive.

For political reasons, Xi Jinping might refuse to sell the statue even at a high price. In that case, the United States could simply commission an identical Confucius statue and erect it in front of the Capitol or at another prominent site in Washington. This would likewise cause a global sensation, and would also symbolize that Hu Jintao—who was escorted out by Xi’s guards—has been “taken in” by the United States, signaling American support for Hu Jintao’s ideals of freedom and democracy, and opposition to Xi Jinping’s one-man dictatorship.

The idea of peacefully transforming the Communist Party was proposed as early as the 1950s by the famous U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, but the proper path was never found, and there was no way in. During President Clinton’s era, it seemed that the path had been found through large-scale economic assistance, but this only fattened the Chinese Communist Party, while freedom and democracy failed to materialize. In the Biden era, finding Confucius is the correct path. If the United States takes the lead in reviving Confucius, seizes the discourse power of Confucian revival, and thereby leads Xi Jinping by the nose, then peaceful transformation will achieve twice the result with half the effort.