Chinese President Xi Jinping has expounded on his “China Dream” in the hope of perpetuating the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
In his inaugural speech on March 17 after assuming the presidency, he devoted much time to elaborating on the China Dream, a notion he first mooted last December shortly after becoming the party’s general secretary.
He defined the China Dream as the aspiration of the Chinese people for a great national revival. Although he did not spell out in specific terms what that revival meant, subsequent explanatory articles equated it to the second and third stages of growth in a three-stage strategy that the late patriarch Deng Xiaoping mapped out in the early 1980s.
Essentially, the first stage was to meet the basic food and clothing needs of the people by 2000.
The second was to reach a general state of affluence by 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP in 1921.
The last was to reach a state of preeminence in the world by 2050 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949.
Using the United States as reference, it means catching up with the U.S. in gross domestic product terms by 2020 and surpassing it by 2050 in almost every aspect.
This three-stage development target is not new, but Xi has repackaged it and dubbed it the China Dream of national revival.
It is clear from his remarks that he really wants to emphasize that to realize this dream, China needs to perpetuate the one-party rule of the CCP.
Even this theme is not new. What is new in his formulation is that this political system of one-party rule has long historical roots.
According to Xi, the current political system is rooted in China’s experience of reform and opening up in the last 30 years, and in its pursuit of modernization since the PRC’s founding in the last 60 years.
It is also deeply rooted in the historical experience of the past 170 years of foreign humiliation from the first Opium War in 1839.
Furthermore, it is also broadly based on China’s culture nurtured over the last 5,000 years, he said.
The current one-party rule of the CCP is the natural outcome of “cultural inheritance” from China’s distant past, and hence has “long historical origin and broad cultural basis,” he contended.
Never before has any CCP leader justified China’s one-party rule on the basis of its 5,000 years of history and culture.
According to Xi, thanks to this “long historical origin and broad cultural basis,” everyone should be confident of the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, of the road the country is now following, and of the current political system.
This amounts to a firm “no” to demands for political reform. Indeed, in his long inaugural speech, there was not a single reference to political reform.
Xi’s China Dream also has a military dimension, although he did not spell this out in his speech. But he had told the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) delegation to the National People’s Congress, the Chinese Parliament, at this year’s session this month that national revival meant the dream of a strong nation, which in turn meant the dream of a strong army. The PLA immediately issued a circular in support of the China Dream.
Three years ago, Colonel Liu Mingfu of the National Defence University published a book bearing the title China Dream, arguing that the U.S. was on a downward trajectory and saying that China should be able to assume the No. 1 position in the world, replacing the U.S., by the 2050s.
The publisher was forced to take the books off the shelves for fear of alarming China’s neighbors. Yet, soon after Xi proclaimed his China Dream, the publisher was told that the book could be put on sale again.
As Xi’s key message in his China Dream formulation is the perpetuation of the CCP rule, it elicited different responses from different quarters.
Endorsing him is the “Sons and Daughters of Yan’an,” a loose association of “princelings” whose parents were party elders from the legendary Yan’an period (1935 to 1948) when the CCP was based in Yan’an, the center of the communist revolution.
About 1,000 “princelings” gathered during the Spring Festival on Feb. 24 to show support for Xi’s China Dream. They noted that at a time when socialism faced an uncertain future, Xi was bold enough to reject demands to abandon socialism.
Last year, the same group argued that under the leadership of then President Hu Jintao, China lost the socialist ideal, resulting in incessant social crises.
Opposing Xi are the liberals who want an end to one-party rule.
The most representative is the Charter 08 Forum, a loose association of those who support the political reform manifesto Charter 08 co-written by Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.
To the man in the street, Xi’s China Dream sounds too remote.
“Cure the ‘China Ailment’ first before fulfilling the China Dream,” said Ma Yong, a fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He argues that ordinary people suffer badly from the China Ailment, a reference to a political and economic system that has persistently produced toxic food, water and air as well as fake items ranging from consumer goods to university degrees.
Before these practical problems are resolved, people will ask: Whose dream is the China Dream?
By Ching Cheong
Ching Cheong is a senior journalist with The Straits Times in Singapore. ― Ed.
(Asia News Network)