Communists

Thai academic Sittithep Eaksittipong explains how the Thai rulers of the past used emotion as a political tool to assimilate the Chinese overseas in Thailand. Fast forward to today and the Thai Chinese are more confident of their identity, and feeling Chinese has less to do with developments in China. If anything, the latter is used as a means to chastise the Thai government.

The US’s recent release of its new National Security Strategy (NSS) represents its vow to outcompete its rivals, especially China, on the international stage. Political commentator Jin Jian Guo says that the ideological tussle between China and the US is becoming a new Cold War and for the NSS to be released during the period of China’s 20th Party Congress, the starter’s pistol has been fired in a strategic competition where there can only be one winner.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was sudden and shocking, not least for China, with which it once shared a similar ideology. Commentator Zhou Nongjian explores what China can learn from the missteps of the Soviet Union’s last leader Mikhail Gorbachev that ultimately led to the country’s downfall.

Commentator Lew Mon-hung notes that recent public opinion in China has been advocating a closed-door policy, sharply diverting away from the national policy of reform and opening up taken in 1978. Will China change course and reverse its decades-long process?

Because of China’s soft power, some Yunnanese Chinese in Northern Thailand — known as KMT Chinese and who are descendants of KMT supporters who left Yunnan and eventually settled in Northern Thailand — have gradually shifted from being pro-Taipei to being pro-Beijing. Out of the 110 private tutoring Yunnanese schools in Northern Thailand for instance, more than 40 have begun to accept Beijing’s support and modelled their school structure in accordance with PRC’s guidance. How many more converts can China's soft power yield?

While the last thing it wants is to be caught up in the crosshairs of US-China competition, Nepal is in the spotlight with the recent passing in the Nepali parliament of the US$500 million MCC-Nepal compact with the US. The US and Nepal have both denied that this grant is tied to the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy, but China is riled up as India watches closely.

With the changes to provincial party committee members complete, the run-up to China’s 20th Party Congress continues. Major questions remain: who will take over from Li Keqiang as premier? And who will make it into the Politburo? Zaobao correspondent Chen Jing tells us more.

Amid a changing global order, Russian academic Artyom Lukin analyses the different ideologies of the US, China and Russia and explains why it would be hasty to lump Russia and China in one camp or to dismiss the similarities between the US and Russia. In the end, the ideology that rules the emerging new world may not even be that of any of the three countries.

Although the Chinese Communist Party believes in the great future of socialism, the basic contradictions of socialism that caused the demise of the Soviet Union are yet to be fully resolved in China, says Lance Gore. As a matter of fact, President Xi Jinping’s mantra of “returning to the party’s original mission” is inadvertently resurrecting some of the same problems that bedevilled classic communism.