摘要：When asked in the early 1970s about the impact of the French Revolution, then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai reportedly answered, "It'

By Josef Gregory Mahoney

Lead: As China and Russia commemorate fascism's defeat, their strong relationship reflects Zhou Enlai's wisdom that history's true impact unfolds across generations.

When asked in the early 1970s about the impact of the French Revolution, then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai reportedly answered, "It's too early to tell."

We might apply Zhou's perspective to Vladimir Lenin's revolution and the fate of the Soviet Union. This seemed particularly relevant as Chinese President Xi Jinping stood with President Vladimir Putin at Moscow's Red Square a few days ago, commemorating the 80th anniversary of fascism's defeat.

We must never forget the past, but it's also the case that this inevitably requires connecting the past with the present. So, let's be honest about the context: Moscow has survived a U.S. "proxy war" and Washington-led sanctions that promised to destroy Russia economically and militarily, while China has repeatedly outflanked American containment tactics, be they technology blockades, threats to sovereignty or trade wars, with the latest U.S. retreat signaled in Geneva, it seems. China's presence today as a major country negates the U.S. as a unipolar hegemon, as does Russia's strong stand against Cold War relics like NATO expansionism.

This week in the Western Marxism seminar I teach at East China Normal University, my Chinese students asked about German philosopher Walter Benjamin's concept of "messianic time" — his idea that the present can rescue forgotten struggles from the past and open up new possibilities for the future.

I first suggested we could understand this through President Xi's "two combinations" framework. Chinese Marxism initially combined China's realities with Marxist theory (the "first combination"), and later enriched itself by returning to China's fine traditional culture and philosophical wisdom, such as Daoism's principle of harmony between humanity and nature (the "second combination").

Similarly, Benjamin incorporated Jewish religious thought into his Marxist analysis, not repudiating Marxism's secular foundations, but recognizing that Marx himself was influenced by Jewish traditions. Both approaches demonstrate that Marxism can be enriched by incorporating wisdom from various cultural and philosophical sources.

In short, Benjamin's "messianic-time" has an interesting corollary in Chinese Marxist thought, and direct relevance for understanding China-Russia relations, past and present. Benjamin's point was that a moment in history is not only a product of the factors that preceded it. Instead, it's also shaped by our dreams for a better future, and perpetually reassessed in part by whether it helped us take steps toward realizing those dreams, like the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation, or the dreams that came to us later, like building a global community of shared future.

Aircraft fly in formation during a grand parade marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2025. [Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr/Xinhua]

When we see Xi and Putin commemorating the 80th anniversary of the shared victory over fascism, we are witnessing what Benjamin would call a dialectical image and a moment of "messianic interruption."

For example, we might recall Mao Zedong reflecting poetically on the People's Liberation Army entering Nanjing as the Chinese Civil War reached its apotheosis in April 1949. Mao refers to the tottering Kuomintang (KMT) capital metaphorically as "Mount Zhongshan," facing a "rising wind and gray rain," where "the mood shifts from yellow to green" and "the world turns upside down" as "our troops, a million strong, cross the Yangtze River." This moment creates what Benjamin might call an interruption in normal time — a chance for redemption and a better future.

But such a future is by no means guaranteed, and the path is never as direct as one might hope. Mao understood this and concluded the poem with another revolutionary metaphor, this time acknowledging the perpetual vicissitudes of time, writing "the sea becomes mulberry fields." This references a Chinese legend where one immortal tells another that since they last met, the East China Sea had turned into mulberry fields three times — a way of saying that even dramatic revolutions are simply part of endless historical cycles.

The possibility of a better future and redemption is at hand, as is the potential of advancing a shared future for humanity. This is how we should understand the celebrations in Moscow. It might still be too soon to assess the success of the French or Russian revolutions, but victories against fascism — both past and present — are always the right path for humanity, as was the victory of the Communist Party of China in the Civil War. These victories align with what Chinese philosophy calls the normal laws of social development, and it's clear from the perspective of “messianic-time” that the Soviet Union played an important role in the development of New China, one that today has opened the door to a new era when humanity with China's support and Chinese wisdom might finally break free from a dark chapter of history associated with dominance and destruction.

But this is by no means guaranteed. The U.S. has steadily expanded its military footprint in Asia, including proliferation of nuclear submarines to Australia and building nuclear bomber airfields there, placing advanced missile systems in South Korea and the Philippines, and advancing the development of new nuclear weapons.

Soldiers march during a grand parade marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2025. [Photo by Ding Lin/Xinhua]

Contrary to such warmongering and madness, China today takes a distinctive approach to international relations. It avoids military alliances. Instead, it builds relationships based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the traditional Chinese wisdom of "reserving differences while emphasizing common ground." And yet, when Chinese and Russian troops marched together days ago in Red Square, Western mainstream media saw a conspiracy of belligerence. Once again, they mischaracterized China's strategic partnership with Russia as some type of military alliance. It's nothing of the sort.

The critics lazily invoke tired, totalitarian tropes about Putin and Xi, but these convey a demonizing double standard. China is criticized for having a strategic partnership with Russia and blamed for the Ukraine crisis. Yet China maintains similar strategic partnerships with over 100 countries worldwide, including the U.K., Canada, Australia, and 14 EU nations. All these partnerships aim at peaceful relations, not military alliances. Conversely, the U.S. has military alliances with 51 nations and has been in a state of near-perpetual war since the defeat of fascism that China and Russia were celebrating.

But the lesson is clear. China has taken its own unique path to modernization. Now it's leading efforts with partners to build a global community of shared future and secure a multipolar world where peace and development work together. This approach aims to realize human potential by celebrating our different civilizations and their contributions, while also tackling shared challenges like climate change, new technologies, and pandemics. This is the only way forward, a way we can see clearly in the dialectical images of history, including both the defeat of fascism 80 years ago and today's commemorations of that victory.

Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University in Shanghai and a concurrent professor of Marxism at Southeast University in Nanjing.

来源：中国网一点号