The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 after 69 years of tyranny and aggression. On October 1, the People’s Republic of China will officially turn 70. The brutal regime of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping has made China the world’s longest surviving Communist country, and unlike the Kremlin of old, Beijing seems stronger than ever.
The contrast between China today and the Soviet Union at its death could hardly be more stark. In the early 1990s, Russia’s military was swiftly losing ground to American investment and innovation, forcing a global retreat of influence and power. Today, the People’s Liberation Army is quickly closing the gap with the U.S. armed forces and is projecting its newfound power from the Arctic to Africa to Australasia.
Communist China is also sprinting economically. It overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy in 2011, and its GDP has nearly tripled since then. Many forecasters say it’s a matter of when, not if, China overtakes the U.S. By comparison, the Soviet Union struggled to keep its economy even half as large as America’s.
Finally, China is markedly more oppressive than the Soviet Union at a similar age. Where the latter was weakening its control over people through perestroika and glasnost, the former has imprisoned millions of Muslim Uighurs, initiated a new crackdown on Christian worshipers, and instituted a draconian social-credit system that monitors the Chinese people’s daily lives and ranks them accordingly. It even seems willing to initiate a Tiananmen Square–style crackdown on the escalating protest movement in Hong Kong.
Has Communist China discovered a fountain of youth? Yes, and it’s exactly where Ponce de Leon said it would be: in America.
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See Also:
(1) Huawei Wants the World’s Next Trojan Horse to Be Chinese
(2) Hong Kong protester in critical condition after being shot by police with live round
