Cuervo Jones

April 1^st, 2025 GATT special online-only issue

In a centenary homage to Mao Zedong’s landmark 1927 essay Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, Xi Jinping announced he will be publishing his own essay updating Mao’s political thought for 21^st-century China. Xi’s essay, titled Report on an Investigation of the Billionaire Movement in Shenzhen, is slated for publication in 2027. In an exclusive interview, Xi explained that while Mao identified the poor peasantry as the primary social force for revolutionary change in China, he thinks a concrete analysis of concrete conditions reveals billionaires to be the engine of social change in China today.

To write this essay, Xi spent considerable time talking with billionaires in Shenzhen and learning about their conditions of life in penthouses and mansions. We asked Xi if he had any difficulties gaining access to this exclusive social class, and he explained that “in fact, it was quite easy. Most of these billionaires are good friends of mine! They see me as one of them and appreciate my leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Xi’s essay promises to explain the rise of the contemporary billionaire class in China. Many of them started as princelings (children of Communist Party leaders), and some even shrewdly became Red Guards during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in order to knock down their opponents and boost their revolutionary credentials for careerist purposes. In 1976, they waged an epic rebellion to overthrow the oppressive rule of the proletariat and peasantry in China. After the success of their uprising, they implemented Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “to get rich is glorious.” They enriched themselves by acquiring privatized state assets and forming a united front with American billionaires to exploit Chinese labor, brutally suppressing resistance from workers and peasants in the process. Then, in the 2000s, the billionaire movement in Shenzhen reached a point of strength that allowed it to break its united front with American billionaires and begin to exploit labor and resources outside as well as inside of China on their own.

Asked by whether his celebration of the billionaire movement in Shenzhen contradicts his recent policies aimed at curtailing the unbridled power of Chinese billionaires, Xi Jinping explained that “as Mao taught us, sometimes to right a wrong the masses have to commit excesses. In its movement to overthrow the oppressive rule of the proletariat and peasants, the billionaire class had to go to certain excesses, whether in their opulent lifestyles or in financial speculation that threatened economic stability. Given that the billionaire movement in Shenzhen has now achieved total victory, it is time to curtail some of its excesses.”

Upon its 2027 release, autographed copies of Xi Jinping’s Report on an Investigation of the Billionaire Movement in Shenzhen will be exclusively available for sale in North America at the People’s Forum in New York City. Asked for comment on the upcoming publication of Xi Jinping’s epic work, Manolo De Los Santos, Executive Director of the People’s Forum, exclaimed that “it will be really good for my career!” while practicing facial expressions in the mirror for photo-ops at upcoming protests.