“It’s a golden period to be a leftist in China.” At least that was the assessment of Minzu University of China professor and well-known Maoist Zhang Hongliang in a recent New York Times article. The article went on to suggest that “leftist voices are back in vogue,” while other media outlets have reported widely on President Xi Jinping’s call for more Marxism in the universities. And the Politburo has been holding study sessions to brush up on their dialectical materialism.

But unfortunately, there are more than enough reasons to doubt this analysis.

To begin with, Xi Jinping’s originally ambiguous slogan, the “China Dream,” has come to be officially defined as the “great revival of the Chinese race.” The imperial yearning implicit in this phrase has ominous implications for its neighbors as well as ethnic minorities within China.