The Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICSA-RAS) announced on Thursday it has created a “Xi Jinping Thought Research Laboratory” in Moscow — the first foreign institute devoted to studying the ideology of Chinese dictator-for-life Xi Jinping.
“We are well aware that today Xi Jinping’s ideas determine China’s policies in many areas – this is domestic policy, and foreign policy, and economic policy, and even the policy of culture, science, etc.,” said ICSA-RAS director Kirill Babaev, demonstrating a reasonable grasp of the meaning of the term “dictator.”
“We also understand that this is a policy that will last not one year or two, but much longer. Accordingly, it will determine the activities of China over a long period of time,” Babaev said, putting his finger on the “for life” part.
“We need to know and analyze the ideas of Xi Jinping very well, because China today is our main strategic partner, the main economic partner. Therefore, in order to build relationships most effectively, our government needs to understand well the ideological basis for the development of today’s China,” he said.
China’s President Xi Jinping walks past honor guards during a welcoming ceremony at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on March 20, 2023. (Photo by ANATOLIY ZHDANOV/Kommersant Photo/AFP via Getty Images)
ICSA-RAS said its Xi Jinping Thought Research Laboratory would be staffed with the top Chinese studies specialists from a panoply of Russian research centers, and would develop connections with Chinese centers as well.
The laboratory aims to publish a lengthy monograph in 2025 that will cover all of Xi’s ideas and examine their impact on the development of modern China and its relationship with Russia, its closest geopolitical ally.
Xi Jinping Thought has been made into holy writ in China during Xi’s reign, displacing Marxism, Leninism, and even Maoism, the philosophy of Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong. Xi’s cult of personality positions him as the most consequential Chinese leader since Mao, eclipsing even the architect of China’s economic revolution in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping.
In 2018, Xi Jinping Thought was written into the Chinese Communist Party Constitution. The party claimed the entire country was burning with a “fervor” to study the dictator’s philosophy.
Xi’s ideas are mandatory reading in Chinese schools, all the way through college. Universities offer entire courses on Xi’s ideas of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Students are not allowed to question or challenge Xi’s writings.
Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, Han Zheng, and Hu Jintao attend the opening session of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China CPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 16, 2022. (Photo by Li Xueren/Xinhua via Getty Images)
The Chinese government even created a smartphone app that bombards users with nuggets of Xi’s wisdom. Users obediently downloaded the program enough to make it the most popular app in China, then discovered the app was actually studying them, since it was loaded with spyware and gave Communist apparatchiks super-user-level access to phone data.
The Chinese institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences spends a good deal of its time flattering Xi by praising the brilliance of his writings and claiming everyone in Russia avidly studies them.
In May, ICSA-RAS scholars claimed Xi’s “scientific, practical, and open” thoughts are shaping the development of the entire world by applying “Chinese wisdom” to “global development problems. The fact that China’s economy is actually sputtering was studiously ignored.