COMMUNIST CHINESE FOUR PLAY: Deng’s Four Modernizations and Four Cardinal Principles and now Xi’s Four Confidences:
The CCP and the Chinese people must be “confident in our chosen path,” “confident in our political system” and “confident in our guiding theories,” and demonstrate “confidence in our culture.”
What does Xi mean by “our culture”? Ethnic Han Chinese culture, or, more accurately, Han Chinese culture as curated by Beijing’s 21st-century urban communist authoritarian elites.
Yes, it stinks of ethnocentrism, which could be a euphemism for racism. Here’s an example. Human rights activists and crusading reporters have a tough time getting into the Xinjiang province’s Turkic Uighur areas. Though officially designated the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the region has little autonomy.
In fact, Beijing is pursuing a “Sinicization policy,” a euphemism for settling ethnic Han in Xinjiang.
In July 2009, riots pitting ethnic Han against Uighurs erupted in Xinjiang, leaving some 200 dead and a thousand injured.
An estimated 300 million non-Han human beings live in mainland China. Since the CCP’s political interests cleanse troubling statistics, the figure could be higher.
The predominantly Muslim Uighurs reject Xi’s Four Confidences game. Han Chinese living in Hong Kong definitely reject Confidences one through three.
My latest Creators Syndicate column.