World Dialogue on the Chinese Dream

Ever since CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping announced The Chinese Dream, shortly after his ascension to China’s highest political position in November 2012, The Chinese Dream has stirred hopes and high expectations on the one hand and has provoked questions and wonder on the other. What is clear is that The Chinese Dream has become a high-level organizing principle for President Xi’s leadership, and it is from this grand overarching vision that our conference, World Dialogue on the Chinese Dream, takes its significance.

Many at home and abroad have offered opinions on what The Chinese Dream is, or what it should be, or what it should not be. Chinese scholars and Western China critics may differ in their opinions—even among themselves—but they are allied in recognizing the importance of The Chinese Dream and therefore of analyzing it.

I will not here suggest which elements of The Chinese Dream are more relevant than others or how its diverse facets may interact. My objective, rather, is to suggest a theoretical framework for The Chinese Dream by arraying its content or applications and organizing them into categories and subcategories. I call the results a “taxonomy’, using as analogy the order or structure that scientists impose on the constituents of the biological world for the purpose of understanding it better.

As such, my objective is limited. I do not seek so much to explain The Chinese Dream as to provide categories of which it is composed. This may help others to offer descriptive or prescriptive analysis in a coherent and integrated manner. I would like to see the size and scope of the landscape that The Chinese Dream covers. I would like to answer the foreign critics charge that The Chinese Dream is vague and sloganeering.

I would like to ground The Chinese Dream in a way of thinking that is both theoretically sound and pragmatically applicable. A framework for The Chinese Dream may facilitate a way of thinking, a methodology, to determine what follows from these categories. Though I do not claim that there is anything special about the specific taxonomy I present, I do suggest that the process of developing a taxonomy, irrespective of its specific structure, can help elucidate The Chinese Dream.

In the taxonomy I propose, I have five high-level categories with which to describe and analyze The Chinese Dream: national, personal, historical, global, antithetical. For each I suggest subcategories. Then I show how the remarkable Third Plenary of the 18th CPC Central Committee reinforces The Chinese Dream.

1. National

The “National Chinese Dream” was defined famously by President Xi as “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese People”. It is the collective vision of the Chinese nation, described as achieving the "Two 100s": first, the material goal of China becoming a "moderately well-off [xiaogang] society" by about 2020, around the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (2021); second, the modernization goal of China becoming a fully developed nation by about 2050, the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China (2049).

"A moderately well-off society" is where all citizens, rural and urban, enjoy high standards of living. This includes doubling the 2010 per capita gross domestic product (approaching US$10,000) by about 2020 and completing urbanization (roughly 1 billion people, about 70 percent of China's population) by about 2030. "Modernization" means China regaining its position as a world leader in science and technology as well as in economics and business; the resurgence of Chinese civilization, culture and military strength; and China participating actively in all areas of human endeavor.

The National Chinese Dream can be seen from a viewpoint of seven interlocking perspectives:

1. Strong China -- economically, politically, scientifically, militarily;

2. Stable China -- freedom from chaos; social confidence;

3. Bountiful China – high standards of living for all citizens;

4. Harmonious China -- amity among social classes and ethnic groups;

5. Civilized China -- equity and fairness, rich culture, high morals;

6. Beautiful China -- healthy environment, low pollution, modern cities, scenic landscapes;

7. Creative China – scientific excellence; artistic elegance; innovative products.

2. Personal

The “Personal Chinese Dream” focuses on the well-being of individual Chinese citizens and thus modifies traditional notions of the primacy of the collective over the individual. The dream of the Personal is balanced with the dream of the National. In fact, the fulfillment of The Personal Chinese Dream constitutes a good part of what it means to fulfill the National Chinese Dream. In other words, to fulfill properly the National Chinese Dream is to fulfill properly the Personal Chinese Dream. Thus the Personal Chinese Dream refutes the foreign stereotype that China sacrifices individuals to serve the purposes of the collective.

The Personal Chinese Dream can be explicated by two subcategories: (i) material or physical well-being, and (ii) mental or psychological well-being.

Material Well-Being encompasses all the necessities of life and assures that all are being well taken care of; these include education, healthcare and retirement in addition to the obvious necessities of safe food, decent housing and public security. Beyond the necessities, material well-being also includes good jobs, rich family lives, access to entertainment, among other facets of life, and to proper protections of personal rights under the law.

Psychological Well-Being can best be explained in terms of “positive psychology”, the science of happiness developed under the leadership of the American psychologist Martin Seligman, who transformed the fuzzy notion of happiness into a scientific discipline, with reproducible results and professional standards.

Positive psychology uses science-based intervention to build thriving individuals, families, and communities. As such, positive psychology aligns with the Chinese Dream. Seligman explains that positive psychology stresses well-being, the content of people’s dreams, and the methods that can help them to realize their dreams. Seligman outlines five pillars of well-being (described with the acronym PERMA): positive emotion (stressing what’s good), engagement (being committed, having passion for tasks), relationships (positive human interactions), meaning (being part of something larger than oneself); and achievement (clear and definable accomplishments). He argues that PERMA (and all positive psychology) is expressed by what free people choose to pursue when not oppressed. Importantly, well-being is broader than happiness, though both ideas seem to correspond to the same Chinese word xingfu. A person with higher well-being has higher success, innovation, spirituality, and harmony. Positive psychology facilitates social stability and harmony. Well-being brings not only personal, emotional benefits, but also moral and social benefits. For example, people with higher well-being are more altruistic. A flourishing person is more likely to help others. Happier people have less racial discrimination, make fewer social comparisons, and are more ready to forgive. In short, higher well-being makes better citizens. A China higher in well-being would be a China higher in creativity. When you are frightened, stressed or depressed, your mind is filled with analytical, critical thinking. When your emotions are more positive, you are better with creative tasks. How to make China’s next generation more creative? Improve their well-being!

Well-being’s rewards are also economic. People with higher well-being have better work performance, less unemployment, and care more for others. They are also healthier and require less medical care. Positive psychology resonates well with traditional Chinese values like interpersonal relationships and morality.

President Xi stressed that “well-being has to be created by diligent work and labor”. This aligns with Seligman’s rationale to expand well-being from the popular yet narrow notion of positive emotion to include engagement and achievement.

The “Chinese dream” is for individual Chinese people to flourish. As the science of flourishing, positive psychology can increase well-being and thus make Chinese people more resilient and fulfilled and Chinese society more stable and prosperous.

3. Historical

The “Historical Chinese Dream” recognizes (i) China’s rich millennia-long civilization with its high culture and seminal achievements, aspiration and expectation, turmoil and trauma, challenge and triumph, and (ii) China’s more recent development of its political theory.

Even though for much of China’s dynastic history, Chinese civilization was a high point in human civilization, there were few periods without some kinds of hardships. A unified, stable, sovereign and peaceful China has long been the goal of the Chinese people and of Chinese leaders.

In modern times, the period from the Opium Wars in the middle 19th Century to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949—for more than a century—China was beset by invasion, occupation, exploitation, oppression and humiliation. Moreover, domestic oppression in the 20th century, from rapacious warlords to extreme leftism, has left the Chinese people with a great yearning for transformation and stability. The Historical Chinese Dream speaks to this yearning and offers a new vision of a new China, one that is independent and stable, strong in its own sovereignty, and free from oppression of all kinds.

In another sense, the Historical Chinese Dream is the culmination of the arc of political theory in its progressive development from Deng Xiaoping Theory, which re-oriented China from ideological class struggle to economic development; to former President Jiang Zemin’s ‘Three Represents’, which stressed advanced knowledge and culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people; to former President Hu Jintao’s ‘Scientific Perspective on Development’, which optimized competing goods such as sustainable development and social equality with continuing economic growth.

All these lead up to President Xi Jinping’s ‘The Chinese Dream’. As Deng commenced economic reform and opening up, Jiang modernized the CPC, and Hu expanded national objectives, Xi’s Chinese Dream is the natural culmination of each of these, integrating them together in delivering for the Chinese people a rejuvenated nation and better lives.

4. Global

The “Global Chinese Dream” can be described with two different kinds of sub-categories: (i) how the world benefits from The Chinese Dream, and (ii) why the world worries about The Chinese Dream.

That the entire world derives material advantages from The Chinese Dream is apparent in a globalized economy. The higher the standard of living of the Chinese people, the greater their domestic consumption, which means that more products are imported, creating jobs and prosperity in a multiplier effect worldwide.

Furthermore, as China advances in science and technology—for example, in the production of electronic and other equipment at low prices—the more the world can share in the benefits of China’s success by getting needed products at affordable prices. (This is especially true for the developing world where critical products, such as smartphones, are price sensitive.)

On the other hand, some foreigners worry that the more The Chinese Dream comes to fruition, the more aggressive, or expansionist, China will become. Notwithstanding the constant assertions by China’s leaders that “No matter how strong China becomes, China will never seek hegemony,” still some foreigners are concerned that at some future date reasons will develop to belie the promises.

Some foreign media deemed it “no coincidence” that when Xi first announced The Chinese Dream, he defined it as “the great revival of the Chinese nation” in a speech at the national museum in Tiananmen Square—where an exhibition called “Road to Revival” portrayed China’s oppression and humiliation at the hands of foreign powers and presented how it was the CPC that restored China’s sovereignty, integrity, dignity and pride.

Here is how some foreigners think about China’s resurgent development. In his speech “China’s Challenge to American Hegemony,” former US Ambassador Charles W. Freeman, Jr. (who was the chief interpreter during former U.S. President Nixon’s legendary first trip to China in 1972) seeks “to see China as it is, not as we wish or fear it to be” nor as China itself may today sincerely proclaim. He quotes the Chinas defense “white paper”: "China will never seek hegemony or engage in military expansion now or in the future, no matter how developed it becomes." In saying this, Freeman argues, “China is inadvertently echoing the American isolationists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The United States did not then seek to dominate or control the international state system, nor did it pursue military solutions to problems far from its shores. In time and in reaction to events, however, America came to do both.”

Freeman concludes that, “The more likely prospect is that China will take its place alongside the United States and others at the head of a multilateralized system of global governance. In such an oligarchic world order, China will have great prestige but no monopoly on power comparable to that which the United States has recently enjoyed.”

Li Junru, former vice president of the CPC's Central Party School, said that it is a misunderstanding to worry about China's expansion when the country is seeking rejuvenation. Rather, he said, "We put forward the concept of rejuvenation based on our historical experience that lagging behind leaves one vulnerable to attacks.”

"When we talk about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, some people ask me which period in history China wants to return to,” Li continued.” The Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) after Genghis Khan's expansion, or the heyday of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) before the 1840 Opium War?" Li said. "It is a pure misunderstanding if it is not asked in a malicious way."

China’s good will, no matter how genuine, is not sufficient for many suspicious foreigners, especially those who do not understand China. One never knows, they worry, when the ‘gentle giant’ will have a change of heart. One method for mitigating this problem is for China to show that it is in China’s national interest never to assert hegemony. This can be done by explaining that China’s primary concern is elevating the standard of living of its citizens and that international troubles detract from China’s capacity to achieve this goal.

5. Antithetical

The “Antithetical Chinese Dream” takes a different perspective, focusing on the tensions or contradictions among the various kinds of Chinese Dreams. These are the normal tradeoffs that all societies must consider continuously, the classical American expression being “Guns vs. Butter”—how to allocate national resources between military strength and social improvements. In China’s case, however, the primary tradeoff is not between military and civilian funding, but between economic development, which is required to build the country and alleviate severe social imbalances, and the problematic byproducts of rapid development, particularly pollution and the creation of social imbalances.

Following are several natural tensions implicit in The Chinese Dream. 1. Economic development vs. environmental damage.

2. Economic development vs. social imbalances: investment tradeoffs between urban and rural, coastal and inland (i.e., it is usually more efficient to invest in developed areas, but that would make social imbalances worse).

3. National vs. personal: investment tradeoffs between national projects such as basic science research, space program, defense needs, and the like, and immediate needs of the people, such as healthcare.

4. National vs. global: balancing China’s vital sovereignty over disputed borders or maritime territories with the concerns of neighbors; protecting the national without disturbing the global.

5. Long-term vs. short-term: investment tradeoffs between long-term projects such as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and the many short-term needs such as subsidies for poor or rural citizens.

These are not unusual tensions in themselves—in fact they are quite normal—but to be always aware of them and to address them directly will enable The Chinese Dream to move from a general vision, exemplary as it is, to a guiding principle that can drive practical implementation. The point here, remember, is not to address the specifics merits of the arguments, but rather to present diverse ways of thinking about The Chinese Dream.

The Third Plenum and The Chinese Dream

The Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee provides a transformative vision for China and as such paves the road to the Chinese Dream. In his explanatory address to the CPC Central Committee, President Xi Jinping said, “we must waste no time in deepening reform in important areas with even greater political courage and wisdom, firmly do away with all ideological concepts.” He stressed that “the development of practice is boundless, liberated thoughts are boundless, reform and opening up are boundless as well; there is no way out in pausing and withdrawing, reforming and opening up only has a progressive tense, not have a perfect tense.” These are the strongest words of reform in a generation, a public commitment that sets a high bar to benchmark policies.

The list is stunning—any one of which, by itself, would be significant: a “decisive role” for the market in allocating resources, private investment in new sectors, state-owned enterprise reform, facilitating small and mid-sized firms; market pricing of commodities (oil, gas, water, electricity, telecommunication services); financial liberalization of interest rates, capital account changes enabling international investments in both directions; China (Shanghai) Free Trade test area; fiscal structural reform (including reducing revenues from land sales), local government reform; integrated systems and mechanisms for urban and rural development, rural land reform (protecting farmers’ rights), improving migrant workers rights; enhancing consultative democracy, increasing mass evaluation and feedback mechanisms; judicial system reform (standardization, thus reducing local influence); strengthening anti-corruption mechanisms; increasing environmental protection; relaxing the one-child policy; eliminating the labor camps; etc. The list goes on. Though implementation is complex and will take years, for a major nation, this is remarkable.

Looking backwards, future historians will likely assess the Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee in 2013 as a visionary milestone in much the same way as they do the Third Plenum of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s reform and opening up. No one will ever underestimate the axial significance of Deng’s changing China’s focus from ideological struggle to economic development. Likewise, no one will ever underestimate the transformative complexity of Xi’s changing China across a broad spectrum of economic, social and governmental sectors.

The result is a blueprint for China’s future. It does not guarantee success but it defines what China’s leaders now describe as success. Simply put, the Resolution of the Third Plenum provides substance for The Chinese Dream.

In conclusion, it is good that scholars develop diverse taxonomies for The Chinese Dream. In this manner all can explore its theoretical foundations and augment its practical applications, a process that will at the same time counter cynics and refute critics, and thereby facilitate, in the words of President Xi, “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

By rejuvenating China, The Chinese Dream benefits the entire world.

Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author of How China’s Leaders Think and the biography of former President Jiang Zemin, has long-term relationships with China’s leaders and the Chinese government. He is an international corporate strategist and investment banker. He is a commentator on CCTV, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and other media, and a columnist in China Daily and the South China Morning Post.

(Source: china.org.cn)