The Hollow China

On July 23, 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in the presence of Mao Zedong and the Shanghai French Concession and the party has hugely grown ever since. Today amid this ravaging pandemic both the CCP and China seem entirely unaffected by the virus, with its economy growing again as if nothing had happened.

The CCP repeatedly states that China is on the brink of greatness, nearing the focal point of the world stage and taking the place of America as the superpower. Statistics however state that it can probably turn out to be true. China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) crossed $14.72 trillion in the year 2020 and is anticipated to cross the world leader (USA), which is $22.48 trillion by 2025. The Chinese military is expected to be world-class by 2035, and its ability to provide capital and technology to the entire world will be firmly established.

Present China resembles the America of the inter-war period that is from 1914 to 1945. While the old world Europe was engaged in the two World Wars, America's economy and world influence grew rapidly and spread throughout the globe. China's experience since 1991 has been synonymous with America's. China's economy was growing rapidly since 1991, whereas the USA was busy with the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and other cold wars. Today the pandemic seems to have accelerated China ahead of all the others, and the question that looms before us is "Is this the beginning of a Chinese Century?"

America's rise back then wasn't just due to its rising economy, several factors initiated its elevation at the global platform. One of them was its politics becoming less elitist and allowing common men like Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama to rise and bring forward new ideas. China's politics however seems very rigid, with a narrow band of ideas allowed to flourish and thrive. Since 2020, China's politics has turned even more conformist and elitist, that is only a single party is given the right of choosing and deciding what's good for the entire country consisting of a population of 1.4 billion people. The second was that the US has faced numerous racial issues since the 1950s, that were countered via passing new laws, such as the Civil Rights Act (1957, 1961, 1964) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that brought the African - Americans into the political mainstream. Thus with time, the US became stronger and politically inclusive. China is doing the exact opposite, it is killing the ethnic minorities via forced sinicization and ending all political identities. China allows no Martin Luther King to rise, thus causing the inequality to define the society as worthless. Third, America encouraged immigration to bring in talent from different countries and spread its ideas throughout the world causing the US brand to become very powerful. China is however protecting and censoring everything, and virtually walling out the external world. The CCP aspires to control the entire private sector too, as Jack Ma's (a Chinese businessman) fall indicates. Finally, the US always maintained cordial relationships with the countries of North America that allowed it to project power throughout. China is doing the reverse! Even the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was not based on the foundation of trust, but the brute power of capital. 

The CCP claims that the Chinese people love it for providing development (without a democracy), and so the Beijing model is the best. But then it is true, why does it suppress dissent at the slightest hint of it? That is not power, but cowardice. Chinese leaders are afraid of a civic revolution from within, but what kind of progress is this that causes you to be afraid of your people?

- Aindri Abhishek Singh