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United States | Lexington


THE FLAWS THAT CHINA’S CHIEF IDEOLOGUE FOUND IN AMERICA


AS A YOUNG VISITOR DECADES AGO, WANG HUNING SAW “AN UNSTOPPABLE UNDERCURRENT OF
CRISIS”

image: KAL
Feb 22nd 2024
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In August 1988 an inquisitive young Chinese political scientist named Wang
Huning came to America for a six-month visit. He admired the Gateway Arch in St
Louis, Missouri, and analysed the town government of Belmont, Massachusetts,
watched a football game at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and toured
a detergent factory in Iowa City, Iowa. He was shocked by the many people
begging in the streets and amazed by the softness of the waterbeds in the
furniture stores. One question preoccupied him: how had such a young country
raced so far ahead of his homeland, with its history of more than 2,000 years?
He found a lot to respect in the dynamism of America, but he also identified
contradictions that could tear it apart.

China-watchers debate the extent to which Mr Wang’s American sojourn influenced
the course of China’s modernisation. What is known is that he left academia just
a few years later, cutting off his torrent of published work, to help define the
Communist Party’s message and maybe its policies for three successive
presidents. Now Xi Jinping’s chief of ideology and propaganda, he is one of
seven members of the Communist Party’s ruling body.

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