Reading with Xi Jinping | The Communist Manifesto

"A Spectre is haunting Europe - the Spectre of Communism." This is how Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels started off The Communist Manifesto.

The Communist Manifesto was published in German in London, UK, in 1848. It was the first declaration for the world's first proletarian party – the Communist League – and also the first guiding document for the worldwide Communist movement. Chinese President Xi Jinping has referred to it on many occasions.

During an exhibition visit in 2012, while looking at the Chinese version of The Communist Manifesto, he shared a story about Chen Wangdao, who translated the first Chinese version of the text. Chen was so focused on translating The Communist Manifesto that he mistook ink for brown sugar water, nonetheless telling his mother that "it is very sweet." Xi quoted the words Chen uttered in that moment: "The taste of truth is so sweet."

At the fifth group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee in April 2018, President Xi Jinping called The Communist Manifesto a monumental work that has a scientific perspective on the development of human society, and is brimming with a spirit of struggle, reflection and revolution, a classic written to benefit the people and seek liberation for humanity.

In his speech delivered at a conference commemorating the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, Xi noted that "there is no other theory that has such far-reaching and deep influence over humankind."

Let's have a deeper look into Marx's The Communist Manifesto:

"It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself."

"The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

"Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"