Opinion | Why Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream is nothing like the American one

First we had the American dream. Then came the rival Chinese dream, which President Xi Jinping fleshed out at the 19th party congress. Which dream do you choose? I asked this at two separate dinners with friends, one in Hong Kong and the other on the mainland. Big mistake.

Except for a few Hongkongers, the rest uniformly derided the American dream as a fading one that has produced a declining nation populated with warmongers, mass shooters and racists. The Chinese military, they said, is now so powerful it would defeat the Americans hands down. And the US would never dare use force against North Korea for fear of a Chinese counter-attack.

When a Hongkonger mocked such jingoism by asking why there were tens of thousands of mainland students flooding into the US, and not wanting to return, the mainlanders retorted inaccurately that far fewer students now go. The mood turned dark when someone asked why mainlanders lambasted a Japanese beach vendor for charging bad-mannered Chinese tourists 10 times more but didn’t likewise criticise the central government’s ban on tour groups to South Korea.

A patriotic Hongkonger insisted China had an ancient right to most of the South China Sea and the US should stop sending warships to the area. I wanted to ask if, by the same ancient rights logic, China would support India reclaiming all of Pakistan, but thought better of it.