On April 28, 2021, the daily newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Daily, introduced to its readers the recently published book “Questions and Answers on the Study of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想学习问答), published by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP.

It is yet another book whose study will be mandatory for Party members, government employees, teachers, university students, and many other Chinese.

What is interesting in the book for international readers is the strong emphasis on a vision of the world that remains firmly rooted in classical Marxism. While China often accuses the United States of promoting “a new Cold War,” in fact the book is filled with Cold War language.

The world, the book says, is an arena for the “competition of two ideologies and two social systems,” Marxist Communism and bourgeois democratic ideology and capitalism. The “laws of human social development revealed by Marxism” predicted as much.

History, Xi Jinping assures us, should be interpreted through “the fundamental point of view of historical materialism.” The historical “truth” should be determined by applying Marxist tools.

In fact, “Marxism himself is the truth,” “a truth that is scientific, popular, practical, and open, and its brilliance as truth is constantly manifested in its continuous development through times and practice.” In fact, Xi Jinping explains, when the CCP uses the word “truth”, “this truth refers to the truth of contemporary Marxism and the law of social and historical development” as formulated by Marx.

Marx believed that the ultimate outcome of the epic struggle between Communism and bourgeois democracy was not in doubt. Communism will win. Yet, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many doubted. Some lost faith and suspected that Marx might after all have been wrong.

Happily, Xi Jinping assures us, China reversed this narrative, and this “miracle” is happening right now, with the whole world looking in astonishment. COVID-19 offered the final evidence that Marxism is winning.

“China’s epidemic prevention and control,” the book insists, “has achieved major strategic results, and among the major economies in the world only China was able to achieve these results. The economy is growing, and it has delivered an answer to the crisis that pleased the Chinese people, attracted worldwide attention, and will be recorded in the annals of history.”

China is now at “the centre of the world stage”, and the leading non-Communist countries are being pushed to the side. This “demonstrates the vigorous vitality of scientific Socialism with irrefutable facts.”

As a result of Xi Jinping’s dual victory against COVID-19 and the economic crisis, “the number of people in the world who look at Marxism and socialism as solutions and believe in them is constantly increasing... The historical evolution and competition in the world between two ideologies and two social systems is being solved in favour of Marx.” 

The conclusion cannot be avoided, the book concludes, that “the CCP is invincible.” “No force can stop the progress of the Communist Party of China” towards the global victory of Marxism. 

And those who stubbornly deny that Xi Jinping and the CCP are Communist and Marxist will continue to play the role of useful idiots in this struggle.

This article has been republished with permission from Bitter Winter.