The meeting between members of the standing committee of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee in Beijing, Oct. 23.
Photo:
Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
‘What does the Chinese Communist Party fear most?” Former Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo
asked me this question during a private meeting in Washington in January. Having been persecuted by Beijing for more than seven years for my human-rights work, I know that it is crucial to ask these fundamental questions. It’s the only way to begin to break down the bulwarks that prop up tyrants everywhere. “What the CCP fears most,” I told Mr. Pompeo, “is that its own illegitimacy will be exposed.”
Even the most strident authoritarian regimes know that real power lies in the legitimacy gained through democratic elections. That’s why many dictators—from
to Saddam Hussein—make a ritual show of holding elections even when few are convinced the results will be legitimate. Real elections would mean an end to the dictators’ power. The simple truth is that people everywhere want freedom.
The people of China are no different. The communist regime took over by force in 1949; in the subsequent seven decades it has never held free or transparent elections, and instead has subjected the population to a steady stream of state-induced trauma, the reality of which it systematically and violently represses. But repression can’t extinguish the spirit. More often, the greater the repression, the greater the desire to find freedom.
No one understands this paradox more than the Communist Party. That is why in the post-1989 era it has focused on what it calls “stability maintenance” via a massive web of agencies tasked with stamping out the smallest inklings of political discontent. High-level officials are also leaders in propaganda or other domestic security offices. Tactics supported by the regime to achieve stability at all cost include extralegal measures…
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