Author: 赵佐荣 Zhao Zuorong (Thomas CHIU)
October 5, 2024
“Let’s start with – An expat’s perspective on China’s Democracy”
On the afternoon of September 30, 2024, General Secretary Xi Jinping said at the reception to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China: “There is a couplet on Nanyue Hengshan Mountain that says it well: ‘Follow the path, but you must work harder halfway; the heart is not far away, and you must not refuse to work even harder to reach the top.'”
The Chinese people’s painstaking efforts. And the profound understanding of the subtle meaning of “God rewards hard work” prompted China to change the track and bravely move forward to climb the peak if it cannot overtake on the curve. These are the confidence of China in managing relationship with the US!
I personally believe that these national characteristics have made China today. In 75 years, China has been able to keep pace with the international community in most scientific and technological fields, or even surpass the international community. For example, China’s power transmission standards have now become international standards. Not to mention the future construction of new energy vehicles, batteries, and even space stations, which have set as guidelines for international standards.
I personally think that the above achievements are the basis for Xi Jinping’s inspiration. This encourages the Chinese people to work hard and eventually realize their dream of “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” expeditiously!
In fact, just look at China’s achievements today, and compare them with every five-year plan of China, and everything in those annual reports published by the government on its work year after year – what’s more amazing is that individual projects are all achieved within the expected date. The question is how many friends outside mainland China are willing to take the time to read it, so as to enabling them to understand China?
Many friends who are prejudiced against China told me that they think the CCP’s announcements are long and cumbersome, so they don’t read them! These are their personal preferences. Yes, there were such problems with the official texts of China in the early years. But it does not affect the readability of the content. Moreover, in the past decade, Chinese official documents have been accompanied by simple and clear illustrations. It is the basic information for understanding China!
It’s a pity that the Hong Kong black violence incident in 2019, and even now, five years later, there are still such and such voices in Hong Kong that take things out of context and misunderstand the central government’s policies. Hence, it is reasonably to believe that many Hong Kong compatriots and residents may not take the time to see how Beijing cares for Hong Kong, which has now entered the 2.0 stage of “one country, two systems”. Not to mention reading the central government’s annual plan carefully? This is one of the reasons why Hong Kong continues to lag behind other cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
What’s more ironic is that the people who really work hard to understand China are some expats who have lived in mainland China for many years. Jerry Gray is a typical example. He recently shot a three-part video with the theme of “An Expat’s View on China’s Style of Democracy” Explain why he believes that China’s National People’s Congress is an efficient and well-governed Chinese system. Interested friends may visit the following YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc_qst4saGE or type in “Baidu”: Practicing China’s Democracy, an Expat’s Look into People’s Congress). “Foreign Eyes on the National People’s Congress | My Views on Chinese-style Democracy”.
Of course, it is not difficult to foresee that some people will take prejudicial attitude against what Jerry Grey did as it was produced by Guangdong TV, a Chinese government media. Hence, they simply ignore it, don’t listen to it, and don’t watch it. However, their bias do not affect those evidentiary facts presented by Jerry Grey in this series. After all, understanding China is the key to take advantage in this Asian century.
On the other hand, Jerry Gray’s fans would know that he is originally from the UK, worked as a policeman, and was once stationed at Buckingham Palace before he migrated to Australia and worked as the general manager of a division of the second largest security management firm in the country. He has eventually settled in Zhongshan city, Guangdong province and part of Greater Bay Area of China (GBA) by chance and has lived there since 2004. As always, he uses facts to prove his views on his videos about China from the perspective of an expat. Each of his videos tis logical with evidentiary facts. When dealing with those who disagree with his views, he will remind them to provide evidence to rebuke his view before criticizing! https://zsrbapp.zsnews.cn/home/content/newsContent/3/642047.
Incidentally, Nathan Simington, the US Federal Communications Commissioner has his article: “China Is Winning. Now What?” published in the “American Affairs Journal” (AAJ) recently. Judging from the tone Simington used in his article, it would be appropriate to translate title of this article in Cantonese slang because most residents living in GBA using this dialect in their daily life.
Simington’s article details the hollowing out of American industry and the one-sided financial drawbacks that have led China to be far ahead of the United States. Although Simington is no longer self-deceiving like other American officials and politicians by realizing most of the reasons why the United States lags behind China, but he cannot escape the “Delusion of Being Bullied by China Syndrome” (DEBBCS), and distorts Chinese government’s intention of its five-year plans and annual reports. To elaborate, he interprets these regular publications by the Chinese government as an act to declare to the world openly so as to seize the United States’ global top position step-by-step! What Simington deliberately ignores can be summed up by using public announcements stated by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs repetitively as follows: “China is posed to improve and amend every policy regularly for the betterment of Chinese people and has no intention whatsoever of competing with the United States!” Simington’s shows that his DEBBCS is so common amongst US officials and politicians and that there is no cure!
For a detailed introduction to Simington’s ultimate intention for contributing such an article to AAJ, please refer to my analysis with MM, a professional information technology practitioner in HKABC video “MM Dialogue 215”, the link is as follows: https://youtu.be/WaNdTyhRWGg.