EDITORIAL - Communist delusions

Yesterday the China Communist Party celebrated its centennial anniversary with lavish fanfare and a show of military force, the kind only communist nations like to throw to show their power.

During his speech, China President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping heaped the usual praises on himself and his men, even going as far as to say that everything good that has happened to China is thanks to the party and to Communism.

What a joke.

Someone should tell Xi that China stopped becoming a communist country a long time ago. The truth is that China has joined the ranks of capitalist nations it pretends to so revile.

Just like the South China Sea is in name only, China is communist in name only as well.

The way it encourages its citizens to strive for wealth, how the country itself amasses wealth, not to mention how it seeks to expand its economic influence in the region as well as Africa, all point out to how it has abandoned the communist ideals and embraced the doctrine of economic domination.

Need more proof? It just so happens that the party’s top leaders also happen to be some of the richest men in China. The ones leading the party are not actually the staunchest communists, or those with the firmest belief in communist ideals, it’s those who have more in the way of money and influence.

How easily Xi forgets that it was the initiative of other Chinese leaders before him to open China’s economy to the world that made it the economic giant it is today. Had the backward communist principles prevailed, it would not be where it is now.

This is not a dig against the Chinese, just a mere pointing out of the facts. Their leaders, or rather their misleaders, continue to use the guise of communism as a way to perpetuate their power, even as they call out the West for their amassing of riches as well as their decadent lifestyle.

A lifestyle many so-called “communists” are all too willing to embrace.