‘Painful lessons’: call for China’s Communist Party to avoid ‘strategic mistakes’

Former top ideologist He Yiting says consequences of such mistakes would be dire – pointing to the Cultural Revolution
He made the remarks in an article, the latest in a propaganda push in the lead-up to next month’s five-yearly party congress

China’s 20th Party Congress

Josephine Ma

Published: 6:00am, 27 Sep 2022

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The Communist Party cannot afford to make “strategic mistakes” as it did during the Cultural Revolution, the former executive vice-president of the Central Party School has said.

He Yiting made the remark in an article published in Study Times, the school’s official publication, on Monday.

He also said the party needed a “grand strategy” to lead the nation through the current turbulent and challenging times.

He Yiting, former executive vice-president of the Central Party School. Photo: Handout

“The pace of change in world patterns, global governance and international order has accelerated, and together with the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, [we face] many new variables and uncertainties,” He wrote.

“This has also made international strategic competition much more breathtaking and frightening.”

He was a top ideologist before he retired in 2018. He is now chairman of the Social Development Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, which oversees the drafting of regulations and laws related to labour, social protections and other civil affairs.

His was the latest in a string of recent articles and speeches by President Xi Jinping and other officials about the importance of having a grand vision and a paramount leader to take the country forward. They are part of a propaganda push in the lead-up to next month’s five-yearly party congress, when Xi is expected to secure an unprecedented third term as party chief.

It was the second time this month that He has written about the need for a broader strategy – his article in the state-run Economic Daily in early September highlighted the international challenges facing China.

In the Study Times article, He reflected on the enormous cost of the Cultural Revolution.

“The Chinese Communist Party is a big party and it is leading a big country … it absolutely cannot make any strategic mistakes,” He wrote.

“Should there be any strategic mistakes, the consequences would be dire and the cost would be serious. We’ve suffered painful lessons before.”

He said the party had made the wrong decision when it launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 – plunging China into a decade of chaos and upheaval – because of “wrong assessments about class [struggle] and the national political situation”.

But he also said it was right for the party to crack down on the pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He said the party had made the right decision after the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown that one-party rule must never be abandoned, and that Mao Zedong Thought must never be rejected as the party’s guiding principles.

He also pointed to the fall of the Soviet Communist Party, saying it was a tragic mistake and that the former Soviet Union was wrong to engage in an arms race with the United States, abandoning Marxism and neglecting the economy.

It comes two weeks after a 2018 speech given by Xi was published in full in party journal Qiushi. Xi said in the speech that senior cadres in the Chinese Communist Party were now the standard-bearers for the global socialist movement, and that the party must learn how to continuously self-correct if it is to avoid the fate of the former Soviet Union.