China vs US
As the 90-million-cadre-strong Communist Party of China (CPC) celebrates its centenary on July 1, among a million celebrations, the theme song "Our Dreams Shall Come True" of the documentary series Making a New China has become addictive among the Chinese masses.
Almost matching the fervor of Mao Zedong's setting up of a "New China" of 1949, this 2021 national carnival, being built around Xi Jinping's "China Dream," marks the country's final exit from its "century of humiliation" national narrative to herald "rejuvenation of the nation" as the new goal for its domestic and foreign policies.
Given China's unprecedented economic rise and President Xi's Belt and Road Initiative converting this economic leverage into political influence, his China Dream edict has come to be viewed as symbolizing Beijing's roadmap with critical implications for global geopolitics. This can already be seen in the way Xi has woven his "China Dream" around two centennial goals clearly defining where he wishes to see China on the 100th anniversary of the CPC in 2021 and where it will be in 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
Its resemblance to and comparisons with the "American Dream" make it all the more intriguing by portraying it as part of the Sino-American rivalry for global leadership. Immediately on being elected as secretary general of the CPC in November 2012, Xi was seen using this phrase. It was to become part of official parlance from his speech at the National Museum's Road to Revival exhibition when he defined the "China Dream" as the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," thereby triggering imaginations about Xi's "New Era" for China.
The context of his speech underlined its intent; the exhibition displayed China's sufferings under colonial powers during the 19th and 20th centuries and its restoration to greatness under the CPC. Again this phrase was used multiple times in his inaugural March 17, 2013, address to the nation as president of China. He said: "We must make persistent efforts, press ahead with indomitable will, continue to push forward the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and strive to achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."
This, if anything, also brought to light its contrast with the conceptions of the "American Dream" that espouses the state creating conditions for individuals' happy, healthy and productive lives, ensuring their liberties and supporting their pursuit of happiness.
The Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit Happiness.… That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it."
Conversely, Xi's China Dream encourages individuals to make efforts leading to China's collective rejuvenation, thereby also benefiting the rest of the world, implying a view of China's global writ, or Pax Sinica.
Also, unlike Xi being the singular source of the China Dream's conception, the American Dream has been anything but defined and uniform. It has had multiple and varying centers of gravity around folklores about individual achievers from George Washington to Henry Ford or Michael Jackson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. They changed not just American but global ways of life.
Xi's China Dream, which extols strengthening the Chinese state, could actually stifle rather than promote the goals of the American Dream.
Time magazine once called Xi's China Dream a "protean" concept that defines national rejuvenation in an ever growing number of targets for its citizens to ensure China's international centrality.
It also emphasized how Xi's China Dream reveals pursuits in mutually opposite directions. There is enormous emphasis on China's material modernization - for example making the People's Liberation Army a worldclass armed force by 2035 - while revering its ancient classical traditions.