China’s officials play up ‘rise of the East, decline of the West’
- Ahead of Communist Party centenary in July, cadres have hailed ‘extraordinary accomplishments’ at meetings in Beijing
- With pandemic largely under control, President Xi Jinping says young Chinese can ‘stand tall and feel proud’ when they go abroad
“The East is rising while the West is declining” has become a common refrain for Chinese officials ahead of the Communist Party’s centenary this summer.
On Friday, the former party boss of the far western Xinjiang region said China had made “extraordinary accomplishments” last year, during talks with National People’s Congress deputies from Hubei. Zhang Chunxian described 2020 as a “watershed year” for China.
“Since no country could escape the major test of the pandemic last year, this trend that the East is rising while the West is declining has become very obvious,” he said, according to a briefing summary.
Zhang, who was transport minister from 1998 to 2005, also quoted a French media report that said Chinese would soon overtake Americans with a higher average life expectancy, concluding that China’s rise was unstoppable.
His remarks were echoed by Guo Shengkun, party secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, at a separate meeting on Friday.
“Chinese of all ethnic groups experienced the extraordinary accomplishments achieved by our party, the country and the public [last year],” Guo said. “This was especially seen in the striking contrast of the order in the East and chaos in the West, the rise of the East and decline of the West, and the ascendancy of China and fall of the US,” he said.
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“Now, when our young people go abroad, they can stand tall and feel proud – unlike us when we were young,” Xi told the meeting, according to the official People’s Daily newspaper.
While China has largely brought the Covid-19 pandemic under control, the authorities have been criticised for their initial handling of the outbreak and for a lack of transparency. More than 117 million people have been infected worldwide and over 2.6 million deaths reported since the virus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019. The US remains the worst-hit country, recording nearly 30 million cases and over 500,000 deaths.
Zheng Yongnian, who is an adviser to Chinese leaders, said China should “focus on its own development and continue to open to the outside world”.
He added that the US was “still developing but at a slower pace” to other countries.
Zheng, who heads the global and contemporary China studies programme at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, also noted that the US was far ahead of other nations in some areas. “In areas like the economy, military, science and technology – and innovation – no other country can match it.”
But he said many Americans shared a “sense of crisis” as the country grappled with the pandemic and political upheaval. He also said differences between the US and China were deeply rooted, and Beijing needed to “discard its unrealistic ideas and learn to live with the US”.
“Realistically, China has risen to the point where it is regarded as a real threat by the US,” Zheng said. “The fact is, the US cannot contain China’s rise – but China cannot replace the US.”
