Hi horse,
You should post this article here in SDF, it's a good read about Western misconception on China. Here is a part that is very interesting.
from cyber horse (China military forum)
Reform 3.0 (2012-today)
Xi Jinping, then vice president, was calmly watching the severe situation, and the world was waiting to see how Xi would cope with it.
There were only two ways to break the status quo, either by conducting drastic political reform under the rule of law or by exercising authoritarianism. Xi chose the latter.
Xi, who was elected as the Chinese Communist Party’s new chief at the 18th National Congress held in November 2012, launched a fierce anti-corruption campaign, with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection led by Wang Qishan working as the driving force, targeting officials in the party including both high-ranking officials (“tigers”) and low-level bureaucrats (“flies”).
In the five years after the congress, more than 50 senior officials — including Zhou Yongkang, a former security chief and member of the Politburo Standing Committee — as well as 57,000 party members of different levels were punished, contributing to the leadership winning public support.
The campaign was also a political reform in the sense that it came along with drastic restructuring to centralize power within the party. Xi conducted rectification of all of the party’s organizations nationwide, including the party’s Central Military Commission and Leading Groups.
In May 2015, when China was in the midst of the political reform, I met Wang along with Francis Fukuyama and Masahiko Aoki of Stanford University.
At that time, Wang described the severity of China’s ongoing political reform as the Communist Party performing a surgery on itself, offering as a likeness the case of a Russian surgeon who cut out his own appendix in Siberia (although in reality, it seems that it has happened in Antarctica). Wang must have been determined to carry out drastic reform.
Xi’s way to lead the country in “the new era” is based on nationalism and digital Leninism. He is aiming at realizing a highly controlled society that matches his “Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” using AI and digital technology under the Communist Party’s top-down leadership to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
While the targeted structure of the society is similar to China’s centralization of power and bureaucracy that lasted for 2,000 years after the Qin dynasty, it differs from past regimes in that it is backed by cutting-edge technology and economic power.
It is not easy, however, to implement such reform in today’s China, as people are now allowed to own assets and their way of thinking has largely changed.
As for its foreign policies, China is advocating common values, such as the Belt and Road initiative and Xi’s vision of building a “community with a shared future for humankind,” as well as multilateralism.
At the same time, China has increasingly been taking geoeconomic actions, offering aid to friendly nations while exerting economic pressure on countries it is dissatisfied with.
But such moves have not been working so well.
Following the COVID-19 outbreak, Western nations came to be strongly aware of their differences with China in terms of values and systems, and are rethinking their relationship with the country.
Geopolitical and geoeconomic threats posed by U.S.-China relations are leading to prolonged instability, and focus in international politics is shifting from international cooperation or value-oriented diplomacy to the balance of power.
It is not easy to precisely forecast the future of China. But it does not mean reforms under the rule of law, advocated by reformists, have died down.
Reforms in the past were made possible when the nation needed change and there was a leader who acted with a strong determination to change. Such cases occurred many times in the past and will definitely happen in the future.
Pillsbury says China will do anything for its clear ambition of realizing the “China dream.” His view is that although there are both hawks and doves in the country, they are just changing their stance externally and are essentially the same.
People in China have different dreams and different views on ways and principles to achieve them.
All the past reforms — reform 1.0 that emerged from the devastating Cultural Revolution, reform 2.0 built on the bloody legacy of Tiananmen Square and reform 3.0 of the new era, born from a country that has become gigantic — have experienced many twists and turns, and none of them went smoothly on a straight path.
Chinese writer Lu Xun said, “There was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.” Usually, conditions and factors that make up an era have existed before the era started, but they were chosen by the people.
The path, or the direction, of an era was created as the 1.4 billion people and the leadership made choices through conflicts in beliefs, stances and interests, and as they continued to walk on that path.
We have to keep in mind that we are facing such a superpower. If we start from assumptions, our actions will definitely backfire. In such cases, we should be the ones to blame, not China.
