Republicans want to make America more like China

What the party seeks to stop, of course, is not the distortion of history but an accurate rendering of it. Xi’s speech made no mention of the terrible crimes committed during the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution or the Tiananmen Square massacre, much less of the ongoing human rights violations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. In the official account — the only kind that is allowed — the party’s history is one glorious triumph after another. The party, Xi repeatedly boasted, has achieved “the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”