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 Stalin’s successor. In fact, as the journalist and former Australian government official John Garnaut has noted, the Chinese Communist Party is the last “ruling communist party that never split with Stalin, with the partial exception of North Korea.” Yes, Stalin­—the man whose brutal dictatorship and disastrous policies killed roughly 20 million Russians and others through famine, forced collectivization, executions, and labor camps. As interpreted and practiced by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, communism is a totalitarian ideology.

Under communism, individuals are merely a means to be used toward the achievement of the ends of the collective nation state. Thus, individuals can be easily sacrificed for the nation state’s goals. Individuals do not have inherent value under Marxism-Leninism. They exist to serve the state; the state does not exist to serve them.

These ideas sound remote and outdated to us. They are, after all, old ideas—they were born a century and a half ago in Europe. They were implemented a century ago by Russia, and then discarded 30 years ago as the most costly failed political experiment in history. But in China, these ideas remain as fundamental to the Chinese Communist Party as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are to us as Americans.