TOKYO -- The first pledge Xi Jinping made as leader of the Chinese

Communist Party eight years ago was to never allow the party to suffer the
same fate of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

"Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party
collapse?" he asked his fellow members in December 2012. "An important
reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered," he said during an
internal speech that was not carried by state media.

"Finally, all it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the
dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone," he
reportedly said.

Those words -- spoken mere weeks after the dark-horse candidate became

general secretary -- foretold of the U.S.-China tensions that years later would
relentlessly haunt Xi.

Because establishing absolute party rule -- his prescription to prevent China

from following the Soviet Union's path -- has been the one policy Xi has stuck
to ferociously during his tenure. It is also the core reason Sino-American
relations have sunk to their lowest point since 1972, before then-President
Richard Nixon visited Mao Zedong.

It is ironic for Xi that the Trump administration today is treating the Chinese
Communist Party as Washington did its Soviet counterpart, trying to push it to
its grave.
Mao Zedong welcomed U.S. President Richard Nixon to China in February 1972, a development that in some parts of
Asia became known as "the Nixon shock."   © AP

In a blistering speech last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Xi "a
true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology." He pulled no punches. "If
the free world doesn't change," Pompeo snapped, "Communist China will
surely change us."

It was as if the American diplomat was showing Xi the exit, beckoning him to
walk the same path as Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.

To China, the secretary of state's words reek of the dreaded "Peaceful

Evolution" theory formulated by John Foster Dulles during the early years of
the Cold War. Dulles, who held Pompeo's position from 1953 to 1959, talked of
a political transformation of the Chinese socialist system by peaceful means.
Beijing has been on alert against such a move for decades.

Pompeo's speech was so provocative it has not been squarely reported inside
China. Harsh rebukes of the speech have been carried by Xinhua News
Agency, but Pompeo's speech itself has not been.
Troubling for the party, the speech was filled with phrases aimed at driving a
wedge between it and the people of China, clearly distinguishing between
them.

Symbolically, Pompeo delivered the speech at a museum built in memory of

Nixon, whose surprise visit to China paved the way for the normalization of
diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1979.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on July 23, 2020. His speech in Yorba
Linda, California, used phrases intended to drive a wedge between the Chinese Communist Party and the people of
China.   © Reuters

The establishment of U.S.-China ties changed the course of modern history.

The Chinese Communist Party decided to part ways with the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, which in many ways it had followed, and instead joined
hands with the U.S., which until then it had accused of imperialism.

Nixon himself made the bold choice of teaming with communist China to
contain America's No. 1 adversary, the Soviet Union.
The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 left China as the only re