Joseph Sullivan writes for National Review Online about China’s brand of communism.

Last week, a financial earthquake erupted in Beijing. An apparent shift in policy from Chinese authorities erased trillions of dollars from global capital markets. The aftershocks may indicate a tectonic shift in the global economy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always deliberately cultivated two images of its economic vision: one for audiences at home, another for audiences abroad. Until recently, global investors appeared to believe the rosy-eyed image displayed for the foreigners. Now, however, global investors can no longer dismiss the image the CCP cultivates at home. This is an image of a recalcitrant but evolved Marxism, a new socialism adapted for the 21st century and ready to harness the power of the profit motive to serve the interests of the CCP.

To audiences within China, the CCP leadership has for years attributed Chinese economic growth to innovation within the Marxist system inherited from Mao Zedong, rather than an abandoment of that system. Chairman Xi Jinping himself is a case in point. Though famously “redder than red,” Xi has emphasized the party’s fostering of both public and private sectors to facilitate a “socialist market economy,” even embracing a role for corporate-tax reform, at least since his days as a provincial CCP official in 2004. The socialist market economy remains his priority. …

… For audiences abroad, however, Chinese officials flip the script. Historically, they have emphasized the refrain, now-familiar among Western audiences, of “reform and opening up.” This is the party line, or at least it was until whenever the party stopped trying to reassure foreign investors that their capital was safe in China. Abroad, talk of socialism and Marxism is verboten. …

… But Beijing’s crackdowns on the for-profit education sector may have finally convinced global investors that China’s true colors are red after all.