A unique but safe, warm Spring Festival
▶ ‘ Though we are apart from each other this year, our minds will be closer’
Editor's Note:
To the Chinese, the Spring Festival, tiv val, or the lunar Chinese New Year, always means many things. gs. . But the 2020 Spring Festival did not go as Wuhan people had ad d expected. On Chinese New Year’s eve last year, the city of 11 million people was locked down – unparalleled in any modern od dern society – that lasted sted 76 days. People in other places es s across China were e also kept indoors to avoid being g infected.
As China has basically put th the he coronavirus under control, many Chinese e expect the 2021 Spring Festival to be an o opportunity to make up for what they mi missed ssed last year – fun, leisure or time m me shared with family.
But the sporadic cases across China in previous months th hs may make the 2021 Spring Festival, es stival, which falls on Friday, different a as many people have chosen to stay where er re they work and live for the holiday instead d o of returning to their hometown.
How would Chinese people pl e spend this year’s s Spring Festival? For those who chose c to stay where they t work and live, what are stories behind b their decision? ? How does metropolis like Beijing, which wh hich used to be “empty” during Spring Festival with many leaving l eaving for their hometowns, prepare to embrace people for the th he holiday? The following stories may provide some answers. s. .
The smell of preserved pork k wafts through the lanes of Wuhan, and red lanterns s h hang on street lamps. The festive mood is brewing g in the capital city of Central China’s Hubei Province, vi ince, but local residents said it is “the quietest Spring ng g Festival” they have ever experienced.
After suffering from panic an nic and agony caused by the virus, emerging from a l lockdown and then moving on cautiously after life re returned eturned to normal, many Wuhan people reached by th the he Global Times said they will “stay put, and quietly celebrate ele ebrate the Spring Festival this year… We don’t want to o b bring trouble to others or to our country.”
With two Spring Festival val celebrations in a row overshadowed by the coronavi coronavirus, ir Wuhan people this year are voluntarily choosing t to avoid t gatherings and maintaining social distance. A As A survivors of the crisis, one Wuhan resident said p people in this city were aff affected the most, whic which ch is why they know better how to protect the themselves em and others. Four days befo before fo Chinese New Year, which falls on February 12 this year, Wuhan resid resident de Xiao Lin was shopping in th the city’s bustling Jiqing street in preparation for the festiv festival. “This year it will be just ju us my parents and me, n no other relatives, as we agr agreed e not to gather during Spring g Festival,” she said. For 25 25- 5year- old Xiao, this year is “the quiet quietest te Spring Festival” she has ever spent t in Wuhan, the city she grew up in. “We e will have video chats with our relatives o on Spring Festival eve an and nd show them our di dishes. is It’s actually nicer, because in the past, p pa although we were physically togethe together, people were still glue to their smartpho smartphones. But this year, even
tho though we will be apart, ou our minds will be closer, er,” Xiao said.
The Spring Festival is the Chinese people’s most m important festival, where w dining together with w family members is a tradition. However, one Wu Wuhan restaurant manager surnamed d W Wang t told ld th the G Global Times that only 40 percent of their tables have been booked. “Previously, 95 percent of our tables would have been booked by this time.”
To ensure a safe but happy Spring Festival, the Wuhan city government has also rolled out a series of measures, such as preparing festive shows and tours for residents, while delivery companies will continue to operate during the holidays. Supermarkets in Wuhan are still dotted with shoppers vying to purchase commodities for Spring Festival, while carefully obeying social distancing and wearing masks. “After all it’s Chinese New Year, the viral spread started here, we have reason to celebrate, but not to let all our previous efforts go up in smoke,” said Huang.
Wuhan has set its GDP growth target at 10 percent for 2021, the Xinhua News Agency reported in January. The capital city of Hubei Province managed to stage a strong economic recovery last year after its GDP shrank by 40.5 percent year on year in the first quarter due to a long lockdown to contain the epidemic.
The US dual aircraft carrier operations in the South China Sea on Tuesday have more symbolic and political meanings rather than military significance, as the US is fully aware of the power of China’s anti- ship ballistic missiles, Chinese military experts said.
The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group conducted dual carrier operations with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in the South China Sea on Tuesday, according to a statement released on the website of the US 7th Fleet on the same day.
In a move aimed at demonstrating the US Navy’s ability to operate in challenging environments, the strike groups conducted a multitude of exercises aimed at increasing interoperability between assets as well as command and control capabilities, the statement said.
In response to the exercises, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that China will continue to take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security, and also peace and stability in the South China Sea together with other countries in the region.
Xu Guangyu, a senior adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said that the US exercises are a move by some hardliners in the new US administration aimed at pressuring China and displaying strength to US allies in the region, demonstrating a stance that the US will not back down on China easily.
The US is fully aware that the PLA’s “aircraft carrier killer” missiles can cover the entire South China Sea, and in the event of a war, US carriers need to stay away from the region beyond the range of Chinese missiles, Xu said.
Nobody wants a war, and US carriers’ exercises this time are only demonstrating a stance, with more political than military meaning, Xu said.
Western democracy once boasted that it stood on the right side of history and was advanced enough to “end” history.
But since the start of the COVID- 19 fight, people have had increasingly profound reflections on the effectiveness of Western democratic governance.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 and many social medial platforms banned Trump as well as his supporters’ accounts. The dramatic developments of the domestic political situation in the US – the only superpower after the Cold War – have also made people rethink the political system of Western countries which tend to be mature, stable and rational in theory.
Except for those who wish to whitewash Western democracy to support their own personal political beliefs, most observers with objective and rational perspectives might think of US political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s book in 2014: Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.
Fukuyama is known for his “end of history” theory. As one of the main advocates of neoliberalism, he said in an interview with French media Le Point in April 2020 that we have seen the tail of the comet of neoliberalism.
Political decay is a political theory originally raised by Samuel P. Huntington, who also proposed the thesis of “The Clash of Civilizations.” Political decay refers to a kind of political turmoil that develops during a country’s political modernization. This is due to people’s enthusiasm m for participating in politics exceeding ng the degree of political institutionalization. ation.
Abiding by this analytical lytical framework, combined with US practices and Professor Fukuyama’s ma’s viewpoints, the current performance ce of the
US can be seen as the inevitable result of its deepening political decay.
Such political decay in developed countries is not related to the operation ation of specific institutions and political mechanisms in n the US at the micro level. vel. It has a profound root; that is the radicalization n of elite democracy and the decline of its endogenous ous self- adjustment ability.
Take the US. Professor sor Fukuyama wrote an article ticle entitled “American Political Decay or Renewal?” in June in 2016, arguing “social class is now back at the heart of American politics.” He analyzed why Trump’s campaign slogan attracted the working- class especially white men with a high school education or less and believe “American democracy is finally responding to the economic stagnation of most of the population.”
But after Trump won the election in 2016, this interpretative framework was completely abandoned by supporters of the elite establishment faction. They firmly believed that Russian interference, rather than the choices of the US people, had contributed to Trump’s election.
When the 2021 chaos broke out on Capitol Hill, the establishment faction was equally adamant that it was the result of Trump’s personal incitement. Similarly, the Biden administration insisted that the reasons were white supremacy and Trump’s incitement, rather than a need of profound structural reform within US political and economic systems.
The decline and decay of Western democratic mechanisms in US practice is more reflected in the COVID- 19 epidemic which is still ravaging across the country. Effective governance over the epidemic has been absent in the US.
As of press time, more than 463,000 Americans have died due to the virus, a number grea greater than US military casualtie casualties in World War II ( 407,316). Bu But the US government’s solut solution was to pump money into t the economy to “help the nation su survive financially.” As a resu result, the total net worth of the US’ 651 billionaires rose from $ 2.95 trillion on March 18, 2020 – the rough start of the pandemic shutdowns – to $ 4.01 tr trillion on December 7 7, 2020, a leap of 36 p percent, Americans fo for Tax Fairness and th the Institute for Policy S Studies reported on D December 8, 2020. Even if the US democratic p practice follows the developmen development of Western politics, it has long deviat deviated from philosopher Aristotle’s description of politics as the source of Western politics: that is, to make people live a good life.
The decay of the US democratic system, which is reflected in a dramatic way in 2021 – the year that marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cold War – is evidence that nothing can last forever.