Commentary On Dec. 31, 2021, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping delivered a New Year speech through state-run media, boasting of 2021 as a “landmark” year of “exceptional significance” and “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The Chinese nation, however, has something different to say amid the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the CCP’s purging of private sectors, a higher unemployment rate, and a declining economy. In his speech, Xi stressed former CCP leader Mao Zedong’s conversation on democracy with Huang Yanpei in Mao’s cave dwellings in Yan’an in 1945, hinting at a potential return to Mao-style authoritarian rule. Huang was a member of the standing committee of the China Democratic League, which was founded in 1941. In the conversation, Mao told Huang, who was pro-CCP, that only with democracy could the CCP maintain its ruling of China. The conversation on democracy has since become a major testimony of the CCP’s …