China Briefing | Will US bid to split the Chinese people from the Communist Party work, or is it wishful thinking?

Name: Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says
Uploaded: 2020-07-25T01:00:23.000Z
Duration: 3 min 1 s
Description: Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says

In considering an entry ban that could affect up to 300 million Chinese, Washington is trying to drive a wedge between the people and the regime

Ironically, since Xi Jinping came to power, such a tactic has become less likely to succeed

Reading Time:5 minutes

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Communist Party members mark the 99th anniversary of the founding of the party at the Yuhuatai Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery in Nanjing city. Photo: Imaginechina

Wang Xiangwei

Published: 9:00am, 25 Jul 2020Updated: 9:00am, 25 Jul 2020

“The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” On July 15, the Qiushi Journal, one of the party’s leading mouthpieces, published under this title a collection of excerpts from President Xi Jinping’s speeches and reports from 2013 to 2019.

Among other things, it said that the greatest strength of China’s socialist system was the party’s leadership and that the party was the highest force for political leadership, Xinhua reported. “The party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavour in every part of the country.”

On the same day, The New York Times published a bombshell report online saying that Washington was considering banning Communist Party members and their families from the United States. Such a sweeping ban could put as many as 300 million Chinese nationals under a cloud and prevent them from setting foot in the country.

The timing of the two reports published on the same day may be purely coincidental but their implications have added another dimension to the already-tense China-US relationship, which has been in a tailspin over the past year.

03:01

Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says

The publication of Xi’s extracts of speeches is the party leadership’s most forthright declaration of strengthening the single-party state while Washington’s consideration of a blanket ban on Communist Party members and their families represents its most audacious idea for how to undermine that very system by making a distinction – and thus attempting to drive a wedge – between the Chinese people and the authoritarian regime.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a sharply worded speech that the engagement policy with China had failed and urged an international alliance to pressure the party to change its behaviour, according to American media reports.

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