China’s political and social growth key to foil US attacks

By Hu Xijin Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/20 17:43:40

 

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The malicious intentions of some American political elites to initiate a new cold war against China have become much clearer. The US is now bound to show more hostile behaviors. Such external strategic pressure will surely touch Chinese society. I sincerely hope such pressure will be transformed to boost rather than block the sound development of China's economy and society. This requires Chinese people's collective mind, wisdom and rationality to transform the US pressure. There are two key aspects to this.

The first aspect is that the Chinese society's unity needs to be continuously strengthened in the face of external forces. Our political cohesion must be unbreakable. Chinese society has basically already achieved this, judging from the situation since the onset of the trade war, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The country's confidence and unity surrounding the ruling party are clearly on the rise.

The second aspect is that China should form enough economic and social resilience to start strategic maneuvers with the US. China needs to develop faster than the US in the long run, to break through the US technological containment against China, and to achieve economic and technological prosperity that is completely free from US' constraints. Besides, we must release creativity in culture and make ourselves another cultural center of the world. We must resolutely prevent cultural shrinkage and rigidity due to our struggle against the US. This is vital to the long-term China-US competition.

To maintain our initiative on the second aspect, the most important thing is to continuously create and release the vitality of the society, all on the basis of consolidating social order. This means, we will need to promote the emancipation of the mind, break all kinds of restrictions that hinder our development, and activate all people's wisdom and enthusiasm. Thus, our society can deal with the US' long-term challenge in a confident and relaxed atmosphere, instead of with tension or even excessive vigilance.

The final competition between China and the US revolves around which country is more united, and which country can maintain a stronger momentum for their own development in the long run. 

In other words, it is about which country can manage its domestic affairs well. China's political cohesion is beyond comparable to that of the US, even though US society performs better in technology innovation from scratch. The US is rich in its culture sphere, and this gives the country advantages in competition with China. From this perspective, we should know what our shortages are and what should be done to fix them. 

The loose management makes basic US communities creative and energetic, but it has also shown fatal weakness during the COVID-19 crisis. China should thoroughly analyze the strong and weak points of US social governance and continuously prop up the inner vitality of Chinese society, making this a process of maximizing force while minimizing shortcomings. Chinese local governments should shoulder this historical responsibility of providing basic and primary power to China's competition with the US.

Enhancing our political cohesion and invigorating our society are our strongest forms of political and social capital in the long-term game with the US. We must constantly expand China's market and set back US intentions to instigate ideological opposition to destroy relations between China and other Western countries. The US moves will force China to properly bridge differences with other Western countries and do its best to prevent these divergences from escalating into direct disputes or conflicts. Socialism actually has many values in common with what many Westerners have accepted, therefore we need to find more common ground with the West and make the two sides put aside disputes over values.

China is not the Soviet Union. The US will never manage to make China into the second Soviet Union so that it can contain China with a Cold War-style campaign. China is more open and has more potential than the Soviet Union ever did. As long as we do our job well and stay strong, open up further and become more prosperous, the US will never be able to break us. It will instead harm itself with its extreme policies. It will be the US that cannot hang on to the end. 

The author is editor-in-chief with the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn 



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