Mao Zedong, together with Hitler and Stalin, stands as one of the three great demons of the twentieth century. Among these three, Mao ranks first.

In both cruelty and the sheer number of those he killed, Mao Zedong far surpassed Hitler and Stalin. The number of deaths under his rule exceeded the total number of people killed during peacetime across all dynasties in our nation’s three thousand years of history. The thirty years during which the Chinese nation suffered under Mao Zedong constitute the darkest period in Chinese civilization.

During Mao Zedong’s rule, people attempted to flee abroad but were unable to do so. The Maoist regime sealed off all border passages with armed force, implementing a policy akin to “shutting the door to beat the dog.” For thirty years, the people struggled on the brink of hunger and semi-starvation. Even having enough to eat was a luxury—how could anything else be discussed?

After Mao Zedong’s death, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao carried out economic reforms and opened up the country. Gradually, the people were able to fill their stomachs, living conditions improved, and the economy developed. Politically, however, the Chinese Communist Party continued to inherit Mao Zedong’s political legacy. Relations with the United States were generally friendly, avoiding direct confrontation. Commercial exchanges benefited both sides, with China gaining more, and the United States deliberately offering assistance. Sino-American exchanges progressed relatively well.

Since Xi Jinping came to power, especially over the past five years, confrontation with the United States has become the central axis of policy. In the South China Sea, China has militarized and sought to control international sea lanes, confronting both the United States and neighboring countries. Cyber forces have been expanded, efforts to collect American technological and commercial secrets intensified, and personnel have continually been sent to the United States to conduct infiltration activities. Through commercial, cultural, and academic channels, pro-China and anti-American figures have been cultivated, posing a threat to U.S. national security. Xi Jinping is eager to replace the United States as the dominant world power and aspires to be a global leader. This ambition has caused many countries to fear that he may treat them with the same authoritarian harshness he uses toward the Chinese people, fostering caution and apprehension worldwide.

Since 2018, the United States has been compelled to comprehensively reassess its China policy, gradually drawing clearer boundaries between itself and the Chinese Communist Party to prevent continued communist infiltration. The strategy has shifted from engagement to containment, forcing the authorities in Beijing to exercise some restraint.

Domestically, Xi Jinping has vigorously steered China back toward Mao Zedong’s far-left politics, promoting a cult of personality, concentrating power to an extraordinary degree, and implementing a Mao-style dictatorship with the intention of securing indefinite tenure as a lifelong ruler. At home, social control has been tightened, political participation by the people further restricted, internet policing made comprehensive, and the public’s freedom of information suppressed.

Although Xi Jinping continues to speak of reform and opening up as a slogan, in substance he is retreating toward Mao Zedong’s far-left communist policies. The reason Xi can do this lies in the fact that in the forty years since Mao’s death, the Chinese Communist Party has never reckoned with Mao’s crimes nor eradicated his toxic influence. Mao Zedong’s colossal crime of starving forty million people to death is still concealed and covered up by the Party, and the public is not permitted to know the truth. On the contrary, propaganda continues to portray Mao Zedong as a great leader, a “Red Sun,” and such materials flood the internet. Mao’s doctrines continue to dominate China politically and ideologically. Xi Jinping comprehensively imitates Mao Zedong, and the cult of personality he promotes even seeks to surpass Mao’s. To change the course of “Emperor Xi” as he advances down a mistaken path, it is necessary to uproot Mao and destroy Mao Zedong’s enduring influence.

Zhong Wen’s envisioned “Journey of Mao Zedong’s Repentance” is precisely an effort to dig into the roots of Mao Zedong’s crimes. If Mao Zedong must repent in the realm of spirits, then Xi Jinping must all the more reflect on Mao’s errors, abandon the founding patriarch Mao Zedong, renounce communism, and give up the mistaken policy of confrontation with the United States. Only then can China find a path for development in the world.

Zhong Wen was a journalist covering the Chinese community in New York during the 1980s. I was also a reporter at another newspaper, and we frequently met at various occasions. Though Zhong Wen was not a man of many words, he possessed distinctive personal views on many current affairs, especially modern Chinese history and Sino-American relations. Now Zhong Wen has published the book The Trial of Mao Zedong, which is in effect a call for Xi Jinping to repent his mistaken path and abandon the road of Mao Zedong. This deserves the serious attention of our compatriots overseas and, it is hoped, may help change the wrongdoing of the current ruling authorities of the Chinese Communist Party and guide them toward a just and righteous path.

NEXT: Preface II: Will He Willingly Repent?