World dialogue on the Chinese Dream

3. Historical

The “Historical Chinese Dream” recognizes (i) China’s rich millennia-long civilization with its high culture and seminal achievements, aspiration and expectation, turmoil and trauma, challenge and triumph, and (ii) China’s more recent development of its political theory.

Even though for much of China’s dynastic history, Chinese civilization was a high point in human civilization, there were few periods without some kinds of hardships. A unified, stable, sovereign and peaceful China has long been the goal of the Chinese people and of Chinese leaders.

In modern times, the period from the Opium Wars in the middle 19th Century to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949—for more than a century—China was beset by invasion, occupation, exploitation, oppression and humiliation. Moreover, domestic oppression in the 20th century, from rapacious warlords to extreme leftism, has left the Chinese people with a great yearning for transformation and stability. The Historical Chinese Dream speaks to this yearning and offers a new vision of a new China, one that is independent and stable, strong in its own sovereignty, and free from oppression of all kinds.

In another sense, the Historical Chinese Dream is the culmination of the arc of political theory in its progressive development from Deng Xiaoping Theory, which re-oriented China from ideological class struggle to economic development; to former President Jiang Zemin’s ‘Three Represents,’ which stressed advanced knowledge and culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people; to former President Hu Jintao’s ‘Scientific Perspective on Development,’ which optimized competing goods such as sustainable development and social equality with continuing economic growth.

All these lead up to President Xi Jinping’s ‘The Chinese Dream.’ As Deng commenced economic reform and opening up, Jiang modernized the CPC, and Hu expanded national objectives, Xi’s Chinese Dream is the natural culmination of each of these, integrating them together in delivering for the Chinese people a rejuvenated nation and better lives.