The phrase “Chinese dream,” boosted by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “grand external propaganda” and further amplified by China-friendly political parties in various countries, has gradually spread out and become accepted as a real thing among the international community.
The “Chinese dream” is a political platform and propaganda slogan of the CCP that has arisen in the footsteps of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the purpose of implementing his personal will and consolidating his political power.
It came into existence less than 10 years ago. It employs nationalistic tools such as calling on Chinese to “restore the golden years of the Han and Tang dynasties.”
However, in essence, this means that the hegemony of the Han Chinese ethnicity and the assimilation of ethnic minorities within China’s borders, such as the Uighurs, Mongols and Tibetans, is speeding up, and that their distinctive cultures are disappearing.
At the same time, Xi and the CCP wantonly exert their power and control over all government departments, so that the “Chinese dream” casts its shadow over every aspect of governance, including the judiciary, party discipline, new energy resources, state-run enterprises, national defense and population policies.
On the foreign policy front, the CCP has launched the Belt and Road Initiative, by which it plunders neighboring and developing countries economically and fiscally in the name of infrastructure development.
In comparison, the American dream has never become a concrete way of ruling the US. Rather, it is an international phenomenon of human culture that has been built up over more than 100 years. Starting from the mid-19th century, through the development of the American West and the California Gold Rush, the American dream became a byword for adventure and opening new frontiers.
By the time of the post-World War II era, the US had become a melting pot of ethnicities from all over the world, and the American dream was built through the accumulated dreams of countless immigrants.
In the 1960s and 1970s, following US human rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, the American dream came to further encompass the meanings of democracy, human rights and racial equality.
In the 1980s, Silicon Valley became the world’s leading engine of innovation, as countless inventors and entrepreneurs became rich through initial public offerings. Silicon Valley attracted talent from all corners of the world who demonstrated the existence of social mobility, while also making great achievements in film, music and other fields of popular culture.
Although the “Chinese dream” came into being as a supposed copy of the American dream, one word’s difference sets them a thousand miles apart. For all that, there might be many Chinese citizens who are dominated by the “Chinese dream,” but carry an unspoken “American dream” in their hearts.
Fan Shuo-ming is a senior administrative specialist at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
With the manipulations of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), it is no surprise that this year’s budget plan would make government operations difficult. The KMT and the TPP passing malicious legislation in the past year has caused public ire to accumulate, with the pressure about to erupt like a volcano. Civic groups have successively backed recall petition drives and public consensus has reached a fever-pitch, with no let up during the long Lunar New Year holiday. The ire has even breached the mindsets of former staunch KMT and TPP supporters. Most Taiwanese have vowed to use
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press