Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) issued a blistering statement attacking Chinese communist dictator Xi Jinping over a new title that he received that hearkens back to former Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong – the most murderous human being in history.
“During a two-day meeting that ended Friday, chaired by Mr. Xi, the party’s 25-member Politburo hailed his policies as visionary and described him as the renmin lingxiu, or ‘people’s leader,’ a designation that directly echoes an accolade most closely associated with Communist China’s founder Mao Zedong,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The title doesn’t give Mr. Xi any more authority than he already wields as the party’s general secretary, his most powerful post. But the reverential tones in the Politburo’s pronouncement—issued late Friday by state media—projects an aura of party unity behind Mr. Xi as he confronts wide-ranging economic and political challenges at home and abroad.”
Sasse issued a statement on Xi’s new title, writing:
If Chairman Xi is the “people’s leader,” who are the people? When Chairman Xi talks about “the people,” he doesn’t mean the Uyghurs in torture camps. When Chairman Xi talks about “the people,’ he doesn’t mean the Falun Gong prisoners whose organs are harvested. When Chairman Xi talks about “the people,” he doesn’t mean the baby girls who were left to die under China’s one-child policy. When Chairman Xi talks about “the people,” he means what every communist hack before him has meant: not the people but the communist party.
The statement from Sasse also mentioned that the title was “previously reserved for Mao Zedong.”
A 2016 report from The Washington Post highlighted Zedong’s cemented place in history as the largest mass murderer in world history:
Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.
China has been under intense scrutiny as the communist nation has millions of Muslims locked in concentration camps, is harvesting organs from detainees, and has created a massive surveillance state that it is reportedly exporting to countries around the world.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a statement on Saturday, tweeting, “From #Tibet to #Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive campaigns are not about combating terrorism. The #CCP is attempting to erase its own citizens’ faiths and cultures. All societies must respect and protect religious freedom.”
From #Tibet to #Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party's repressive campaigns are not about combating terrorism. The #CCP is attempting to erase its own citizens’ faiths and cultures. All societies must respect and protect religious freedom.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 28, 2019
Pompeo’s tweet comes at approximately the same time that a New York Times report was published that highlighted how China is targeting children whose parents have been away to concentration camps.
“Nearly a half million children have been separated from their families and placed in boarding schools so far,” the Times reported, adding, “The schools are off limits to outsiders and tightly guarded, and it is difficult to interview residents in Xinjiang without putting them at risk of arrest. But a troubling picture of these institutions emerges from interviews with Uighur parents living in exile and a review of documents published online, including procurement records, government notices, state media reports and the blogs of teachers in the schools.”