Drones form patterns to mark the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China at Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. Photo: IC

As the centennial of the Communist Party of China (CPC) approaches, state opinion war machines of the US and some other Western countries have enhanced their attacks on the CPC, trying to distort the international community's acknowledgment of the CPC's achievements in leading China to advance. At the same time, they are trying to smear China's model of development and to damage the international public opinion environment for China.

They said the anniversary is "an anxious 100th birthday," striving to pin labels such as "unstable" and "loss of confidence" in the CPC's governance. Such rhetoric is ridiculous. It is more like a move to ease the West's own nerves and to embolden Western elites as their societies are becoming more and more diffident.

Currently, is it China or the US together with its allies that are in a state of deep anxiety? Be it in the White House or on Capitol Hill, China is the topic most frequently brought up. Given their focus on China, it seems that everything the US does is aimed at competing with China.

Washington is worried that China will become a power that is capable of counterbalancing the US. This is why the elites in Washington keep insisting that they will not allow China to "dominate the future of the world" or to "write the 21st-century rules." Thus, they want their country to compete with China in many fields. If they really think that socialist China is collapsing, they should just wait for the collapse to take place instead of being in such a hurry.

Many US elites and those from other Western countries are obsessed with attacking the CPC. They do so to deceive the people while engaging in egoism. However, China is moving forward steadily and rapidly. It has managed to solve domestic problems and contradictions well. Seeing that China is catching up step by step, these Western elites have become aware that there is something wrong with their old perception of China and that their competition with China in the future could be different. Thus, they become irrepressibly anxious, yet they are reluctant to cease being arrogant.

Such elites in the West must be told that they are increasingly decoupled from China's realities. They are lagging behind the times. Today, Chinese people's confidence is stronger than ever, and their support and admiration for the CPC is the result of the Party's achievements accumulated in the past 100 years.

Chinese people have become more resolute that the socialist path with Chinese characteristics is the real path leading to strength and prosperity. Their illusion about the West has been dispersed time and again by bare facts. The US' inability during the COVID-19 pandemic and Washington's vicious containment of China in the past years have given a lesson to Chinese people: Without the firm leadership of the CPC, the Chinese nation will have no future, and China will be suppressed and bullied by the US and its allies for a long time and even thus be dismembered. This is the understanding and belief of the vast majority of Chinese people today.

As long as the CPC leads this country, the US will not be able to rally its allies to bring China down and contain China's development. This is a conclusion the Chinese people have firmly reached through the struggles over the past few years. Chinese society today has not only adapted to the US strategic exclusion, but also grown more contemptuous of Washington's chaotic moves. It has become fairly common in Chinese public opinion to mock Washington's anti-China performances and the chaos of US domestic governance.

The Chinese have no illusions about Western institutions or American strategic goodwill toward China. We know that uniting firmly around the CPC to follow our own path is the only level road to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The political image of the US has collapsed in the minds of Chinese people, and it has begun to become a "negative example" in the eyes of the Chinese in many ways. It is not because of official propaganda - it results from a cumulative shift in their perception of the US.

Certainly, for Chinese people, the US as a "beacon" has gone out. Some American elites should completely abandon their mentality of preaching their beliefs to China: They have neither the moral resources to shape Chinese people's perception nor the power to politically change China as they wish. There is only one rational and feasible way for them to get along with China: accepting a China that is different from their country and cooperating with it.