Karl Marx

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. China celebrated it by a 2 parts TV documentary ( Marx Forever) of his life and a speech by President Xi Jinping attended by all politburo members. I am of course familiar with Marx and Marxism as I attended schools in the 50s in China, yet I was not that knowledgeable about his life until I saw the documentaries, and I was deeply moved by his life story. During the 60s when I attended college, there was a short revival of Marxism in the West because of the intersection of civil rights and anti-war protests. Due to the backlash against the excesses of Cultural Revolution and the economic liberalization in the 90s, China generally moved away from Marxism and ideology and I felt estranged even though I felt proud of China’s achievements. Now Xi has returned to the root of Marxism as China proclaims to the world of Socialism with Chinese characteristics. I feel rejuvenated by the positive activities happening in China, from the poetry competitions, folk songs, reevaluations of Chinese histories and philosophies, to hopefully, a more even evaluation of the first 30 years of People’s Republic.
The media in the West such as NYT has been evolving from openly hostile to grudgingly acceptance and taking pot shots instead. They recruit people like Helen Gao to write columns that really irritates me. I guess she can be described as part of the second generation of rich or/and official families who benefits from China’s rise. I look up her profile, going from Beijing University attached high school to Deerfield Academy, Yale, East Asian Studies of Harvard, and presently working in a think tank in Beijing. She embraces the liberal ideology that’s very much part of the Ivy League schools. The most recent column she bemoans the loss of investigative reporting such as championed by Southern Weekly and indirectly attacks the corruption which she thinks Xi unable to attack structurally. She didn’t really think through whether investigative reporting is declining in U.S., after all it took 20-30 years before Weinstein and Crosby are dethroned, and now someone like Trump triumphs here. I think people like her should have read Marx’s high school graduating speech on what career choice one should make upon leaving the school. It was a moving speech on devoting one to the rest of humanity. She probably discount recent news of reversal of 2 high profile murder cases where innocent men were executed for rape and murder during the 90s, and government admitted errors and paid compensation to their families, while in U.S., wrongfully murdered men and lynching victims stand witness in the recently opened museum in Birmingham.