Must-Read: An Insider Breaks With Beijing

Cai Xia on the Failures of the Chinese Communist Party | [Foreign Affairs]( [| The Chinese Communist Party's 19th Congress |]( [The Party That Failed]( [An Insider Breaks With Beijing]( [By Cai Xia]( “Once a fervent Marxist, I had parted ways with Marxism and increasingly looked to Western thought for answers to China’s problems. Once a proud defender of official policy, I had begun to make the case for liberalization. Once a loyal member of the CCP, I was secretly harboring doubts about the sincerity of its beliefs and its concern for the Chinese people. So I should not have been surprised when it turned out that Xi was no reformer.” From 1998 to 2012, Cai Xia was a professor at the Central Party School in Beijing, the core of the Chinese Communist Party’s system of ideological indoctrination. For the first time, she [chronicles]( her decades-long process of grappling with China’s official ideology, culminating in a complete break with the CCP. [点击此链接阅读中文版]( | [Read in Chinese](. Read more from Foreign Affairs on Chinese politics: “[China’s Coming Upheaval](” by Minxin Pei “[China Is Done Biding Its Time](” by Kurt M. Campbell and Mira Rapp-Hooper “[China’s Troubling Vision for the Future of Public Health](” by Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Julian Gewirtz “[Without Democracy, China Will Rise No Farther](” by Jiwei Ci “[The New Tiananmen Papers: Inside the Secret Meeting That Changed China](” by Andrew J. Nathan [Subscribe to Foreign Affairs]( © 2020 Council on Foreign Relations | 58 East 68 Street, New York NY | 10065All Rights Reserved. [Privacy Policy]( | [Terms of Use]( If you have questions for us, please visit our [Frequently Asked Questions.]( Reset your password [here.]( [Click here to manage your email preferences.]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from ALL Foreign Affairs emails, including newsletters, [unsubscribe here.]( To ensure we can contact you, please add us to your email address book or safe list.