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 watched the speech 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 interview with the Wall Street Journal,
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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