Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Xi Jinping’s Message to America A ChinaFile Conversation

Taisu Zhang, Graham Webster, Orville Schell, David Shambaugh    

CHINA FILE - September 22, 2015

China’s President Xi Jinping addressed an audience of more than 700 American businesspeople in Seattle on Tuesday evening on the first stop on his first state visit to the United States. Regular ChinaFile Contributors who offer their reactions below. —The Editors

There were a number of substantial themes in Xi’s speech—the usual promises to stay the course on market reforms, the insistence on China’s status as a developing country, the plea for mutual “deep” cultural understanding (something that I sympathize with), the pledge to seek peaceful growth and not hegemony, the promise to welcome NGO and NPO operations in China, and the emphasis on economic integration with Central Asia and the Asian Pacific.
The thing that caught my immediate attention, however, was how Xi defined the “Chinese Dream” at the beginning of the speech. Since the term was first issued a few years ago, its definition has always been somewhat ambiguous, indeed purposefully so—and, when defined more concretely, has usually incorporated a wide array of issues, ranging from national pride to economic growth to traditional culture to geopolitical security and prominence. For example, in his recent , Xi vaguely described the “Chinese Dream” as a reaction against historical humiliation and suffering, and a general desire for national “rejuvenation.”

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