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The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the overwhelming victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan caused a carnival in the field of public opinion in China.
In a sense, this is justified.
I still vividly remember that twenty years ago, when the United States began bombing Afghanistan with its overwhelming superiority in air power, President George W. Bush announced to the television camera with his face that he "wants to see people alive and see corpses when he dies" [to bin Laden], the whole world was silent, and no country dared to oppose it.
That depressing feeling, suffocating.
Twenty years later, the United States has failed, and failed so badly, in stark contrast to the arrogance and invincibility of twenty years ago that many cannot help but think of the famous lyric, "Imperialism has fled with its tail between its legs."
The significance of the defeat of the United States is multifaceted -- it means that the "unipolar world" dominated by the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union officially disintegrates; it means that the myth of the omnipotence and invincibility of the United States is once again bankrupt; it means that the United States is ultimately unable to rely on the iceberg... and so on.
However, it is inappropriate for some people to associate the victory of the Afghan Taliban with the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949, or even to the glorious name of Mao Zedong, in addition to the carnival, which may lead to misunderstanding of history and misreading of reality.
In my opinion, the victory of the Afghan Taliban and the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 are only superficially similar (such as the speed of the occupation of large cities in the final stages), but there are fundamental differences.
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In 1949, when the Chinese revolution was victorious, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese People's Liberation Army under the leadership of Chairman Mao were the most progressive political-military forces in the whole of China and even in the world.
To put it bluntly, the Chinese revolution is not only not anti-modernity, but on the contrary, it is a modernity that overcomes the shortcomings of modernity, a modernity that opposes the enslavement of the majority of the people, and is the only way for China to achieve modernization.
The victory of the Chinese revolution is like a broken military situation, which is only its "surface", and the "essence" is land reform, and land reform is the basic premise for China to modernize.
The land reform broke the feudal land system that had lasted for thousands of years in China, so that more than 300 million peasants who had no land and little land had obtained about 700 million mu of land and a large amount of means of production, and the harsh rent of about 70 billion catties of grain that had to be paid to the landlords every year was exempted, and the peasants were liberated.
Land reform had three consequences:
First, the state finally has the funds to start the industrialization process that has been repeatedly delayed in modern times;
Secondly, the improvement of peasants' living standards and the demand for industrial products made the national industry have a huge domestic market for the first time;
Third, the surplus of agriculture can finally be used for agriculture itself, under the organizational form of the collective economy for more than twenty years of high-intensity farmland capital construction and water conservancy construction, greatly improving grain production and reducing the loss of drought and flood disasters, by around 1980, China finally initially solved the problem of "the total grain output is not enough for the whole population to eat" that existed for nearly three hundred years, at the same time, China's total population has soared from about 450 million at the beginning of the founding of New China to 800 million!
Does the Taliban's "revolution" include an agrarian revolution? At least so far, I haven't seen any relevant reports or materials.
In March 1927, Chairman Mao pointed out in the "Report on the Inspection of the Peasant Movement in Hunan":
"Political power, clan power, divine power, and husband power represent the ideas and systems of all feudal patriarchy, and are the four great ropes that bind the Chinese peasantry."
The victory of the Chinese revolution cut off all four major ropes: the kuomintang reactionary regime representing the three mountains was overthrown, and with the agrarian revolution, the change of customs and customs and the women's liberation movement, the clan power, theocratic power, the husband's power, etc. were either disintegrated or greatly weakened.
On April 30, 1950, the first law adopted by New China, the Marriage Law, clearly stipulated:
"Resolutely abolish the feudal marriage and family system of arranged coercion, the inferiority of men over women, and disregard for the interests of children, the implementation of the new democratic marriage and family system of freedom of marriage between men and women, monogamy, equal rights between men and women, and protection of the legitimate interests of women and children, and prohibit bigamy and concubinage; prohibition of child brides-in-law; prohibition of interference in widows' freedom of marriage; and prohibition of anyone using marriage relations to solicit property or property."
This Marriage Law was the most progressive and free marriage law in the world at that time.
Engels wrote in his famous book "Anti-Dühring":
"In any society, the degree of women's emancipation is the natural measure of universal emancipation."
By this criterion, the degree of "universal emancipation" achieved by the Chinese revolution is also unparalleled.
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Going back to the Taliban.
A profound revolution usually includes three dimensions: political, social, and cultural.
To date, the Taliban have been known primarily for their "political revolution," the successful seizure of power.
At the level of social revolution, will the Taliban reform afghanistan's current land ownership system? Will it eradicate the feudal and tribal forces that have lasted in Afghanistan for thousands of years? Will it help the Afghan people to be liberated from theocracy?
The answer is that it is basically impossible. The Taliban themselves were an integral part of the feudal and tribal forces of Afghanistan and ruled by theocracy.
That is to say, we cannot expect any really meaningful social revolution in Afghanistan, and the seizure of power by the Taliban is nothing more than an Afghan version of the "Banner of the Great King of Change" in the city.
So, what about at the level of the Cultural Revolution?
If we follow Engels's standards, we will not only not see progress, but also great regression.
For example, despite the Taliban's respect for women, people still worry about the fate of Afghan women.
Some data show that in the previous Taliban-controlled areas, although the policy of absolutely prohibiting women from education was abandoned, there was still a very discriminatory attitude towards women, and girls could only attend primary school and could never receive education after entering puberty. It is estimated that only a quarter of girls are girls in primary schools in Taliban-controlled areas, and there are no girls above secondary school level.
Here, this article is not intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Taliban's domestic and foreign policies and their prospects, but to emphasize one point:
The goal pursued by the Chinese revolution is the liberation of the Chinese people and even all mankind, which is itself a peak of modern civilization, while the Taliban (from the information currently available) is an anti-modern civilization political movement, and the future Taliban ruled Afghanistan may become a country fully guided by the most conservative and far-away from modern ideology of human civilization, the Sharia Law.
It is therefore completely inappropriate to equate the two.
Of course, everything is constantly evolving, and the Taliban's return to Kabul this time seems to be more politically mature than when it first ruled Afghanistan twenty years ago, and how the Taliban will evolve in the future needs to be continued to be observed, but one thing is certain, no matter how it evolves, it will not be in line with the Chinese revolution.