blessed, good luck comrade

WHO lauds Chinese response to coronavirus, says world 'at important juncture'

The World Health Organization (WHO) praised China on Wednesday for its efforts to tackle the new coronavirus outbreak and expressed optimism that the transmission could be halted.

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U.S. sees Chinese communist party as 'central threat of our times,' Pompeo says

China is the central threat of our times and the United States and its allies must ensure they have the military and technological power to ensure that this century is governed by Western principles, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.

➖ @ReutersWorldChannel ➖

They're scared. Welcome to Cold War 2.

Heroes

党性的核心是全心全意为人民服务，包括以下几个方面：
1. 以马列主义、毛泽东思想作为自己行动的指南；
2. 坚持党的最高纲领，愿意为共产主义奋斗到底；
3. 大公无私，全心全意为人民服务；
4. 具有严格的组织性、纪律性，保持思想上政治上的高度一致，维护党的团结和统一；
5. 密切联系群众，坚持群众路线；
6. 认真开展批评与自我批评，勇于承认和改正自己的缺点和错误。

The core of Party spirit (dangxing) is wholeheartedly serving the people, incorporating the following aspects:
1. Taking Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as the guidebook for one's own actions;
2. Upholding the Party's supreme guiding principles and being willing to struggle to the end for communism;
3. Selflessly and wholeheartedly serving the people;
4. Having the nature of strict organization and discipline; maintaining a high degree of ideological and political consistency, and upholding the solidarity and unity of the Party;
5. A close relationship with the masses, maintaining the mass line (a Party term for a policy aimed at broadening and cultivating contact[s] with the masses);
and 6. Earnestly criticizing and self-criticizing and being brave enough to acknowledge one's shortcomings and correct one's mistakes.

This is just from 百度百科 (essentially, the Chinese Wikipedia), so this is not really anything that complex, nor was it written by the Party itself (although this is debatable). However, some notes:

At the core of 党性 is what has been the core of all of 中国特色社会主义's philosophy of development: the earnest and reflective nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Throughout all of the history of this new China, and particularly under Xi Jinping, we have witnessed the last two points be realized — maintaining the mass line and earnest criticism and self-criticism, as well as being brave enough to acknowledge one's shortcomings and correct one's mistakes. China is no stranger to shortcomings, but, on the other side of the coin, it is also no stranger to confronting them.

Xi Jinping's strength lies in his ability to guide the Party, and the strength of the Party lies in its ability to confront its problems and maintain the socialist road. We are witnessing a new Chinese era. A new era does not come to being without mistakes. What is unique, I think, about the introduction of the Chinese century, is the honesty of the Party in being able to face its fears (metaphorically, of course).

The Party is a courageous one. The Party and its cadres are not afraid of the West nor the lies of the West's constituents.

The Party's discipline is another important factor. We should not ignore the role of Party unity and the ideological health and safety of the Party. Whatever the Party does the Party must do as a unified force! It must not separate into factions, it must not divide itself. Disagreement on ideological points is healthy, even necessary, yes, but the Party must not allow itself to be divided by factionalism!

"The history of this great nation of ours goes back several thousand years. It has its own laws of development, its own national charactertistics, and many precious treasures. As regards all this, we are mere schoolboys. Today's China is an outgrowth of historic China. We are Marxist historicists; we must not mutilate history. From Confucius to Sun Yat-Sen, we must sum it up critically, and we must constitute ourselves the heirs to this precious legacy. Conversely, the assimilation of this legacy itself becomes a method that aids considerably in guiding the present great movement. A Communist is a Marxist internationalist, but Marxism must take on a national form before it can be put into practice. There is no such thing as abstract Marxism, but only concrete Marxism. What we call concrete Marxism is Marxism that has taken on a national form, that is, Marxism applied to the concrete struggle in the concrete conditions prevailing in China, and not Marxism abstractly used. If a Chinese Commmunist, who is part of the great Chinese people, bound to his people by his very flesh and blood, talks of Marxism apart from Chinese peculiarities, this Marxism is merely an empty abstraction. Consequently, the sinification of Marxism — that is to say, making certain that in all its manifestations it is imbued with Chinese characteristics, using it according to Chinese peculiarities — becomes a problem that must be understood and solved by the whole Party without delay. We must put an end to foreign formalism. There must be less repeating of empty and abstract refrains; we must discard our dogmatism and replace it with a new and vital Chinese style and manner, pleasing to the eye and to the ear of the Chinese common people. To separate internationalist content from national form is the way of those who understand nothing of internationalism, and we must link the two inseparably." 毛泽东

This is why I say that Maoists are the worst Maoists. I am not generalizing all Maoists as counterrevolutionaries — far from it. I think, personally, they are of incredible aid an use (for lack of a better, less sociopathic term) to the furtherance of the Party's ultimate objective: the establishment, implementation and eternal (i.e. never-complete) development of socialism with Chinese characteristics. However, there is also a negative trend within the hardline Maoist camp: the very dogmatism that Mao decries here. They are looking towards the theory and the relics of the West or an archaic China which no longer exists. They consider themselves Maoists without accounting for the evolution of Chinese socialist theory that continues to this day in accordance with the ever-changing conditions of modern China. They may consider themselves great socialists and great allies to the cause, but their dogmatism is not only flawed, it is directly detrimental to the path down China's socialist road. A static ideology which does nto adapt to the times is one that is doomed to fail, and it will fail again if its influence is permitted to seep into the higher ranks of the Party.

One can look into the annals of Chinese history to find endless examples of this being the achilles heel of Chinese governments, even during the tianxia / tianming period. In fact, just as this clinging to Maoist theory can hurt China at present, so can the pure ideological nationalism and cultural puritanism that Mao was trying to set as standard during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. It is not a new issue! In the tianxia period the dynasty would routinely reject what were, objectively, scientific innovations introduced to China, and they would lose wars as a result; this not only crippled China in concrete, literal terms, but it also crushed the power of the government to command respect from the people. Of course we are no monarchists, and quite the opposite in fact, but the parallels are clear: a China that stands too religiously attached to any idea of itself, whether political dogmatism or extreme nationalism and absurdist cultural supremacism, will not stand the test of time.

And the test of time is one that is truly taxing in China's case at present. Look back as well to the dynasties' shifts in their official cosmology. At one period in Chinese history (the exact period slips me, but I want to say it was in the Tang dynasty) the government decided that in order to harmonize more efficiently with the people and gain their popular support they would regiment the exercise of national duties and executive decisions based on the calendar and cosmology of Confucianism. This failed because, of course, though China and the Chinese people likely assumed China was the logical centre of the entire universe (and thus the most advanced country on Earth), the world does not exist in states of conformity. So, they adapted! And the dynasty survived what would have been, in Europe even, its fatal mistake. The way that dynasties suceeded and survived was through their adaptation, not their inherent superiority or ideological purism. Of course they had endless problems — but we can use them as a model for understanding the present here (especially with the understanding that the past is the lens with which we look at our present, rather than a way of coldly observing and making objective analysis about past events).