Xi Van Fleet: America and Communist China Pursued Justice, Achieved Opposite Results

The comparison between two revolutionary movements separated by nearly two centuries reveals a fundamental truth about freedom and tyranny, according to Breitbart News. In the 18th century, American colonists declared independence and fought for liberty. In the 20th century, the Chinese Communist Party carried out its own revolution promising liberation. Both rejected the old order and spoke the language of justice. Both succeeded. Yet one produced a nation where individuals are free, while the other created a system where individuals are enslaved by the state.

The divergence lies in their ideological foundations—one rooted in biblical principles, the other in Marxism.

The American Revolution was more than a rebellion against British rule. It was built on the radical conviction that rights do not originate from rulers or government. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, he affirmed that government exists not as the source of rights but as their protector. Because these rights come from God, no person and no majority can legitimately strip them away. This belief shaped the entire American system that followed.

The Chinese Communist Revolution also invoked justice, but from a fundamentally different premise. Justice was defined as state-enforced sameness—an equality of outcome that promises everything to everyone but in practice leaves no one with anything.

While both revolutions envisioned a better world, their outcomes could not be more starkly different, as Breitbart News reports. In America, the American Dream is built on freedom—where anyone, regardless of circumstance, is free to try, to succeed, and to fail. In Communist China, the attempt to create utopia instead unleashed hell on earth—where the state holds unlimited power and the people have none. Under Mao, tens of millions perished. Intellectuals were purged. Families were torn apart. Faith was suppressed—all in the name of the people. As the state became the ultimate authority, the individual was reduced to a mere particle of the collective.

A Life Under Both Systems

Xi Van Fleet has lived in both worlds. She spent her first 26 years under Mao’s iron grip. Her formative years were stolen by the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution. Freedom was foreign to her—she was never allowed to make choices. The Party controlled every aspect of life: where she could live, how much was rationed for food and daily necessities, whether she could attend college, and what job would be assigned. She obeyed, like hundreds of millions of fellow Chinese. From a very young age, she understood exactly what would happen if she complained or resisted.

When Van Fleet came to America, she felt as though she had been given a second life. It was a completely different world—people saw her as an individual, not a label. Above all, no one dictated what she could say or how she should live. This was the freedom she first experienced in America. She loved her new country and was determined to assimilate and become a true American.

Forty years have passed since Van Fleet first set foot in America. Over that time, she has witnessed changes in her beloved country—changes that, little by little, began to remind her of the Communist system she escaped.

The Return of Familiar Patterns

It started with seemingly harmless political correctness, which she once embraced as kindness. But over time, Van Fleet noticed that only certain speech was permitted. If she did not comply, she risked being labeled a racist or a bigot—much like being branded counter-revolutionary in China.

She also saw identity become everything. Once treated as an individual, she was now reduced to a member of an identity group—just as she had been in China. The familiar terms of oppressor and oppressed that she grew up with had entered the American lexicon—now used to divide Americans. By 2020, she could no longer ignore the echoes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

It is clear that some in America seek to overturn the system born of the American Revolution, advancing instead a model that echoes Maoist revolution—where equality is redefined as enforced sameness, dissent is silenced, and government power expands without limit.

Van Fleet never imagined that in her lifetime she would witness such a transformation. As Americans mark 250 years of independence, many are tempted to focus on the nation’s flaws rather than the principles that made it exceptional.

With information from Breitbart News