Reflections: dream machine
Wee Kek Koon
At the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing, President Xi Jinping called on members to pursue the “Asia-Pacific dream”, an aspiration that recalls his own China dream.
The idea of modern China projecting its political and ideological models abroad is an unpalatable prospect for most nations in East and Southeast Asia, for various reasons. Yet, there was a time when China was the political, economic and cultural leader in the region, a status that the present generation of Chinese, urged on by their president, dream of reclaiming.
Culturally, the Chinese state ideology of Confucianism took root among the Koreans and Vietnamese while aspects of Japanese culture, for instance, sumo wrestling, originated in China. Words of Chinese origin dominate modern Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese vocabularies, accounting for some 60 per cent of each language.
It’s still too early to tell whether Xi’s China dream will become reality or remain of the pipe variety. But as long as it doesn’t become a nightmare for the rest of us, I don’t care what the Chinese do in their sleep.
