How to Stop a Color Revolution: A User Manual
New translation from the Center for Strategic Translation
NEW TRANSLATION
What do China’s leaders fear most? How can the Communist Party of China “end the cycle of decline and fall” and secure its rule for generations to come? What is the relationship between ideology and the security of the Chinese regime? The latest translation published by CST provides Beijing’s official assessment of these questions—and more.
Originally published as the sixth chapter of The Total National Security Paradigm: A Study Outline《总体国家安全观学习纲要》, this an authoritative outline of the threats that endanger the Communist Party’s “political security” [政治安全], and the tactics cadres must adopt to defeat these threats. Xi Jinping’s understanding of this problem lies at the center of his “Total National Security Paradigm” [总体国家安全观], a formal framework of ideas that millions of cadres are now expected to implement. Published to some fanfare last year, the Study Guide was distributed to party committees across the country in order to provide a systematic, accessible, and unclassified overview of state security doctrine to millions of ordinary cadres.
“At its most fundamental,” the Study Outline instructs, “political security means safeguarding the ruling position and leadership status of the Chinese Communist Party and safeguarding the institution of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” For the CPC, political security depends on obtaining victory in the “ideological struggle” [意识形态斗争] that “hostile forces” [敌对势力] are waging against the Party. The Study Outline warns that these forces are a “real and present danger” to the survival of the regime:
Hostile forces persistently seek to ferment a "color revolution" within our state, vainly attempting to subvert the leadership of Chinese Communist Party and the socialist institutions of our state. This is a real and present danger to the security of our sovereign power. As they plot “color revolutions” Western countries often target their attacks on political institutions, especially its party institutions. They distort public opinion and amplify narratives that condemn the institutions and ruling parties of countries that are simply different from theirs, and incite the masses to take politics onto the streets. As a result, many countries fall into political turmoil and social upheaval, with their people uprooted and displaced.
The Study Outline describes at length several key “battlefields” in this struggle for political security: the internet, China’s the universities and schools, China’s ethnic and religious minorities, and the Party itself. Though the tactics for securing political security in each of these domains differ, for each the overriding imperative is the same:
Once the defensive line in thought has been breached it is difficult for other defensive lines to hold. In the realm of ideological conflict, we have no way to compromise and no place to retreat to. We must obtain total victory.
Read the full translation HERE.
NEW GLOSSARY ENTRIES
With each new translation comes a slew of new glossary entries. Each entry summarizes the meaning and traces the history of crucial keywords commonly used in communist party rhetoric. Among our newest entries are “Peaceful Evolution [和平演变],” “Hostile Forces [敌对势力],” “Discursive Power [话语权],” and “Total National Security Paradigm [总体国家安全观].” Visit our Glossary page to read more of these!
SUCCESSFUL DC PANEL EVENT
Last week we gathered at the National Press Club in Washington DC to ask a panel of experts this question: What can the writings of China’s establishment intellectuals teach us about politics in Beijing? Our distinguished lineup of speakers included Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair of China Studies at CSIS and Co-director of CSIS Interpret, David Ownby, director of Reading the China Dream, and Nadège Rolland, Distinguished Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
Next week we will publish a transcript of this event on this newsletter. To have it delivered to your inbox—and to be notified of future Center for Strategic Translation events—sign up for this Substack newsletter below.