Commentary
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) styled itself a mythical phoenix in a 1959 propaganda poster. The phoenix rises from a sheaf of wheat to govern China, depicted as a dragon emerging from the smelting pot of industrialization.
That phoenix now boasts a formidable nuclear arsenal.
The CCP’s rapid military buildup could make it, like the eternal phoenix, a near-permanent fixture of the future. Nuclear weapons will deter the CCP’s foreign adversaries, and its techno-totalitarianism can quash internal dissent. No dictatorship as powerful as the CCP, or as technologically sophisticated, was ever defeated in war or by internal enemies.
The mythic phoenix was red and gold, like the CCP’s flag. Like Beijing’s state-owned mouthpieces, including Phoenix TV, the regime attempts a melodious cry that, to free ears, sounds more like the siren song of an ideologue….
