American Leftists, Chinese Communists Both Rewrite History

American leftists, led by Joe Biden, and Chinese Communists, led by Chinese President Xi Jinping, are both trying to rewrite their nation’s history – but for opposite reasons. While the American left is attempting to recast American history as a story of racism and oppression, Chinese Communists are working to erase the CCP’s sordid record of socialist oppression.

The American left’s efforts in recent years to portray the United States as a bad country founded on racist ideas have by now been well documented. Following a summer of violence in 2020 that saw leftists destroy monuments to America’s greatest heroes – including figures like Abraham Lincoln and famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass – Biden set about making the lie of American “systemic racism” the official government-approved narrative.

On his first day in office, Biden disbanded President Trump’s 1776 Commission, which was established to “better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776.” Biden has claimed that “systemic racism is a stain on our nation’s soul” and said America is an “idea” that has “never been lived up to.”

All of these actions are part of the American left’s crusade to erode Americans’ pride in their nation and its past – to replace a national story of hope and progress with one of discrimination and despair.

Halfway around the world, Xi Jinping, another leftist, is leading a similar crusade to rewrite the past – albeit with a different approach.

In February, a leading Chinese Communist Party ideological magazine published an urgent call by President Xi to the Chinese diaspora living around the world. In it, he urged Chinese nationals abroad to present China in “a positive, beautiful, and attractive way.”

Xi assured his audience that China had nothing to apologize for, especially since it had gifted the world its oldest, most noble civilization.

In an introduction to a newly published volume addressed to Chinese youth titled “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture,” the Chinese leader even more openly instructed readers “to show a credible, lovely, and respectable image of China.” The Chinese Communist Party “must enhance communication and increase influence” in the West, Xi said.

Xi has in the past called on the Chinese people to build what he pompously calls “a new form of human civilization.” He believes that China’s history – in particular the history of the CCP – makes his nation destined to spread their ideals to the world, and that “without a spirit rejuvenated by undeniable evidence about China’s glorious history, China cannot survive.”

Xi believes that instilling a deep self-confidence in the Chinese people based on “a spirit rejuvenated by undeniable evidence about China’s glorious history” is absolutely indispensable for China’s survival. “We must firmly embrace the mission of promoting China’s historical heritage to the world,” Xi said in another recent address. “Party committees at all levels must assume political and leadership responsibilities and prioritize propaganda and ideological work.”

Of course, the CCP-approved history textbooks will presumably not include such details as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the genocide of the Uighurs, or a host of other atrocities committed by the CCP.

The authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” published in 1997, details how a full 69 percent of all innocent people murdered by communist regimes between 1900 and 1989 lost their lives to the CCP – a staggering 65 million people. The book details how just one of Mao’s terror campaigns, known as the “Long March into Night,” had at least 10 million direct victims. More than 20 million died as a result of the famines that swept through the nation during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.”

As prominent Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng told me, the CCP has nothing to be proud of since most of China’s modern history is “written in blood.”

The death of millions at the hands of the CCP should be “evidence enough to reject the CCP’s socialist myths,” Wei said. “The CCP holds the entire country hostage, forcibly dragging the nation along a dangerous path to a destination unknown even to the party.”

Xi’s exhortations to the Chinese people to portray the history of the CCP as a valiant story worth being proud of contrasts sharply with Biden’s accusatory tone toward the American people and their history. But both men are effectively doing the same thing – reframing history to serve their political interests.

However, one thing Xi has correctly ascertained that Biden has not is that cultivating national pride is indeed a vital aspect of national unity and prosperity. Ironically, while Xi has to manufacture a false history to promote Chinese nationalism, Americans have a truly heroic history that they have legitimate reason to be proud of. America had slavery, yes, but it also sacrificed 600,000 of its young men to abolish that great evil, led a global blossoming of freedom and democracy, saved the world from fascist tyranny, and defeated the Soviet empire.

But as Biden weakens Americans’ confidence in themselves and their history in the Democrat Party’s turn toward Marxism, it has created a ripe environment for Xi’s lies to flourish. “Xi’s calls for the Chinese to publicly express their pride in Chinese communism should be a wake-up call for Americans,” Dr. Sung Xinyi told me. Sung was a former top official at the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party before defecting to the West in the early 1990s. “This propagation of Chinese history is a campaign to target the American mind,” he said.

Dr. Sung also said that the solution to this is the populist message of figures like Donald Trump and other American nationalists, who promote an honest accounting of American history and re-affirm that the United States has been an undeniable force for good in the world: “The ‘America First’ slogan sends shivers over the spines of top CCP officials because ‘China First’ is what they promised to their own people, but they miserably failed.”

Asked whether, in this context, he thought Beijing feared Trump’s return, Dr. Sung agreed, saying, “They are afraid of populism when people, not experts, govern the country… it is why portraying America as racist and evil serves the short and long-term interests of the CCP; such statements buoy the CCP propaganda department.”

Dr. Sung’s solution for Americans, the same one offered by Trump and rejected by Biden, was simple: “You can defeat the CCP by being proud of your history and heritage.”

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.