China pays for Marx’s birthday bash
Karl Marx’s hometown is holding a party for the bicentenary of the author of The Communist Manifesto, and China is paying for the birthday gift.
Trier, in western Germany, is bracing for big crowds this weekend for the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth with political speeches, competing demonstrations and the unveiling of a statue designed and funded by China. The extent of the outside interest has surprised the sleepy city on the Moselle river.
People in Trier, which was part of capitalist West Germany after World War II, “have long been a bit ashamed about Marx,” said city spokesman Michael Schmitz, who has hosted Chinese state television and six reporters from the staterun Xinhua News Agency. “We are aware of the fact that this is part of a larger Marx revival in China,” Schmitz said.
With celebrations starting Friday in Beijing, China is making the bicentennial part of a drive to reinvigorate its communist heritage and underpin its growing global clout. Festivities include an official tribute at the Great Hall of the People and a documentary series by China’s state broadcaster titled Marx Is Right.
In Trier, visitors can marvel at an art installation of 500 Karl Marx gnome-like figurines — in two shades of red — at the city’s Roman gate, while sipping a Moselle wine named “Das Kapital” for the occasion.
Yet for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the anniversary is an opportunity to push a serious goal. Harking back to the German philosopher, who developed his theory of capitalism, labor and class conflict in 19th-century England, helps him fill a vacuum left by decades of market reforms, modernization and China’s growth to become the world’s second-biggest economy. China overtook the U.S. in terms of trade with Germany in 2016.
Xi is seeking to hold together a “huge, unruly country” and take it forward while maintaining broad respect for the Communist Party, said Sidney Rittenberg, an American journalist who joined Mao Zedong’s revolution and served for years as his translator.
“Xi is depending on restoring the theoretical soul of the Chinese people,” Rittenberg, in his late 90s, said in an interview from his home in Arizona. “They built a better life and made money, but they lost their soul, and I think he’s trying to restore that.”