By drawing parallels to the French Revolution, this narrative illuminates China’s century-long quest for modernization as an unfinished great revolution. The 1911 Xinhai Revolution toppled imperial rule like Louis XVI’s execution, yet failed to forge a stable republic. Mao’s 1949 ascent mirrored the Jacobins’ radical terror, morphing Marxism into a secular faith that bred submissive subjects through coercion and fervor. Deng’s 1978 pragmatism echoed Napoleon’s order, prioritizing economic stability and market reforms over democratic ideals, yielding prosperity but entrenched crony capitalism and inequality.Xi’s 2012 rise signals a Napoleonic restoration: personal dictatorship, ideological revival, and digital surveillance reimpose autocracy, freezing the shift from subjects to citizens. True republican transformation—from autocracy to democracy—remains elusive, a protracted struggle measured in centuries, with cycles of idealism, reversal, and deferred promise.
