(Minghui.org) George Orwell, a British writer who opposed totalitarianism, published Animal Farm in August 1945 as an allegorical tale about communism. Told in the form of a story about animals, he ridicules the Soviet Union’s communist regime.
About 80 years have passed since Orwell published his book, but its lessons live on in China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In the story, the animals defeated the irresponsible farmer and took over the farm, hoping for a better life. In the beginning, they followed the decree that “All animals are equal.” Napoleon, one of the pigs, gradually gained control. He not only distorted history through propaganda, but also started waves of purges to target those who had differing voices.
As time went on, the ruling pigs behaved like humans, carrying whips and drinking alcohol. They also changed the decree to “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Although their lives were now much worse, those who complained about Napoleon’s behavior were executed. In the end, the dream of the Animal Farm (which was renamed “Manor Farm”) collapsed, as the ruling pigs were found to be no different from human farmers.
Since its publication, Animal Farm has been banned in communist countries, including the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and North Korea. This is because it exposes the nature of communism–its inciting of class struggle, brutality, and lies.
In a letter to a friend, Orwell explained that Animal Farm was a satirical tale about Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party between 1922 and 1952. After the Soviet Union was established, people were told that everyone was equal. But class struggles followed, in which landlords, capitalists, and merchants were targeted. Later on, people were killed based on planned quotas simply to create terror. This happened during the Tambov Rebellion (1920-1922) as well as the Great Purge (1936-1938).
As a result of the purges, over a million children lost their parents and wandered the streets, which shocked visiting foreign politicians. To solve this problem, Joseph Stalin signed a decree in May 1930 to criminalize such children after they became 12 years old. Numerous children were executed and buried in mass graves. This happened in cities across the Soviet Union, including Kiev, Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Vinnitsa, Kharkov, and Butovo.
What happened in the Soviet Union was not accidental, and the brutality can be traced back to Karl Marx. In the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, he wrote, “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.”
Marx embraced class struggle despite its destructive nature. George Watson, a Cambridge University scholar, concluded that socialism promoted genocide and believed that Marx was responsible for coming up with the idea of genocide.
Throughout history, morality and traditional values were the cornerstones of society. But Marx and communism abandoned these values, and instead proposed to rule society with brutality and deception.
After the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989 and the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, the Western world believed that communism had passed its peak. Assisted by U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, communist China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and its economy grew dramatically.
By 2009, China became the world’s largest exporter of goods; one year later, it became the world’s second largest economic entity. Many Western leaders did not realize that trading with communist China meant engaging in bribery and corruption at the price of their own countries’ interests and values.
At the end of Animal Farm, men (farmers) and pigs are playing cards together, flattering and praising each other while cheating at the game. When one of the farmers, Mr. Pilkington, and Napoleon both play the ace of spades at the same time, they argue about who cheated first. The animals that were not invited to the dinner party, but who were able to watch the proceedings through the window, found that the pigs and men were indistinguishable from each other.
The CCP has gone even further. In 1999, two senior PLA officials published Unrestricted Warfare: Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization. In the book, they outlined how a nation such as China could defeat a technologically superior opponent (the U.S.) through means beyond direct military confrontation, such as political warfare, lawfare, economic leverage, and so on.
In other words, the CCP’s unrestricted warfare crosses normal ethical and moral boundaries—it aims to destroy its opponent at all costs. In contrast, although the Soviet Union was a communist entity, it still followed the conventions of war during the Cold War. The practice of exchanging spies between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was one example in which captured intelligence operatives were repatriated.
But the CCP is different. One example is Larry Wu-tai Chin, a CCP spy who worked for the U.S. Government for 37 years (between 1944 and 1981) in both the U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). After Chin was arrested in 1985, however, the CCP denied any espionage connection with Chin, so arranging an exchange was out of the question.
The book Unrestricted Warfare emphasizes having no conventions, no compromises, and no boundaries. Accordingly, the CCP has deployed this type of warfare in many areas, including the economy, intellectual property, military, agriculture, and many more.
1. Multiple sources, including the FBI, found that the U.S. economy loses between $200 billion and $600 billion a year due to China’s intellectual property theft. For example, individuals associated with Chinese state-owned enterprises collected genetically modified seeds from American farms and thus avoided spending billions of dollars on research and development.
2. With the wave of globalization, many goods previously manufactured in the U.S. began to be produced in China. According to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, between 2001 and 2018, the growing U.S. trade deficit with China led to the loss of 3.7 million American jobs. Of these, 2.8 million were manufacturing jobs.
In addition, China has a dominant position in global shipbuilding, producing over half of the world’s commercial ships and many shipping containers. In 2024, a single Chinese state-owned shipyard built more commercial ship tonnage than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry did in the 80 years following World War II, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
3. In June 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke at the American Compass’s New World Gala and said that China’s economic practice in the past 25 or 30 years was market monopolization, which posed a challenge to pure free enterprise. He also pointed out that, once China achieved monopolies, it would dictate prices globally.
4. The CCP built its economy as a wartime system rather than for normal life or trade. It can use natural resources, manpower, and government funding at will to produce artificially cheap goods and destroy the American manufacturing industry.
According to an article published by the Council on Foreign Relations in February 2025, “China’s Environmental Crisis,” the losses caused by environmental pollution in China are appropriately 3% to 10% of the country’s gross national income (GNI) each year.
According to an August 2024 International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper, “Trade Implications of China’s Subsidies,” an analysis between 2009 and 2022 showed subsides constituted 95% of all China’s trade-distorting policies. This indicates a significant reliance on subsidies as a tool to influence trade flows.
5. Chinese companies have built backdoors into technology products that can be used to attack infrastructure in other countries. On May 14, 2025, Reuters reported that unexplained communication equipment was found inside some Chinese-made power inverters, which are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electric grids.
U.S. officials found Huawei equipment with backdoors designed for use by law enforcement that could be exploited by the Chinese government for espionage, reported the Wall Street Journal. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prohibited local U.S. operators from using federal funds to purchase equipment or services from companies posing a national security risk, including Huawei and ZTE.
A Wall Street Journal report in March 2023 and subsequent investigations also raised concerns about the national security risks posed by Chinese-made cranes at U.S. ports, including military installations. These cranes are designed for remote operation and could potentially by controlled or programmed from remote locations.
6. Unrestricted biological warfare can be used to create food and public health crises. In 2020, residents in at least 30 states across the U.S. reported receiving unsolicited packages of seeds, many of them were labeled “China Post.” Preliminary analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) raised concerns that these seeds could introduce harmful diseases or invasive species, threatening American agriculture and natural resources.
In June 2025, two Chinese researchers at the University of Michigan were charged with smuggling a biological pathogen. An FBI report described the pathogen as “a potential agroterrorism weapon” that can cause disease in corn, rice, and barley and result in billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.
The CCP has deeply infiltrated Western society. Unlike the confrontational nature of the Cold War, the CCP approached Western leaders in the name of “cooperation,” “investment,” and “friendship.” In reality, it seeks to undermine the foundations of these countries.
The plot and tactics described in Animal Farm can be understood easily, but the CCP’s unrestricted warfare is complicated. Only by seeing through the CCP’s malevolent nature and taking appropriate action can we protect the free world’s values and systems of governance from the CCP’s influence.