I know Tom, I was emperor at the time.I lived in China for eight years, studied Chinese language and Chinese history even before moving there, studied this relationship for most of my adult life, and know this history inside out. My father was in China during WWII, I am married to a woman from mainland China, etc. etc.
The people of China worship Xi Jin Ping because of their huge rise to prosperity and world power. No matter who you think should get the credit, it's always goinig to be the country's leader that is in power. Imagine that some future president was to accomplish such miracles? You broke the bank with your American bullshit this time Tom!By the way, not all the problems of China in the “hundred years of humiliation” were caused by Westerners. The situation was far more complicated than that.
My concern is definitely for the Chinese, who are by no means “lost” to totalitarianism or fundamentally hostile to Americans or American culture. They are neither automatons nor blind to the regression happening under Xi’s present rule.
Of course if 1.4 billion Chinese long suffer under a single man’s cult of personality, and kneel to his corrupt single party bureaucracy, even if they are now economically more advanced and sophisticated than Russia, their society and culture will inevitably degenerate, become still more barron and corrupt, and bring nothing good to the world either.
All wrong again. It was not XiJinping that led what you call “the greatest success story in history” anymore than it was Mao or Stalin. If you talk about material gains you need to credit those like DengXiaoping who fought Mao’s madness, suffered, yet came back to introduce capitalism and capitalist incentives to make China what it is today. They led the industrious, hardworking and hard-studying Chinese people onto the road to economic success, opened China to massive trade with and investment from the West, and transformed, industrialized and urbanized their country. In the process scores of millions of Chinese were educated abroad and exposed to world culture in new and profound ways.
All that is being threatened now by XiJinping’s reactionary return to Mao & Stalin’s cult of personality.