AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies
IIPS

RIPSInstitute for International

The Japan Institute ofResearch Institute for

Policy Studies

International Affairs

Peace and Security

Editorial Advisory Board:

No. 180

Akio Watanabe (Chair)
Masashi Nishihara
Yoshiji Nogami
Taizo Yakushiji

13 August 2013

Editorial Committee:

XI JINPING’S “CHINESE DREAM” AND
THE UNITY OF THE CHINESE NATION

Taizo Yakushiji
Hisayoshi Ina
Tsutomu Kikuchi
Shujiro Urata andToshiro Iijima
Editor & Online Publisher:
Yoshji Nogami
President, JIIA

Yusuke Anami

The new president of China, Xi Jinping, referred tothe “Chinese Dream” several times in his speech tothe National People’s Congress last March. Eversince, there has been worldwide discussion about
what this new phrase indicates.
Actually, President Xi has been quite specificabout what this “Chinese Dream” means. In hisspeech in March, he told the nation that it had to“strive to achieve the Chinese dream of great
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. So it is quite
clear what the “Chinese Dream” is all about.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and should
not be attributed to The Association of Japanese Institutes ofStrategic Studies.

AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

The Chinese media are treating the term “Chinese Dream” as if it were anew and unique official guiding ideology of the top leadership. The substance ofthe dream, which is “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” however, is aconcept that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been stressing since theearly 1990s.
The Tian’anmen incident of 1989 revealed a grave divide between theCCP and the Chinese populace. Ever since the CCP decided to shake handswith the Western bloc in the midst of the Cold War and introduce a market
economy into socialist China, the question of why the CCP should maintain its
monopoly of political power has been repeatedly raised by the Chinese people.
The call for democratization expanded when it became evident that CCP
members along with their families were dominating not only political power but
also most of the wealth created by trade with developed countries. After theTian’anmen incident in which the call for democratization was crushed by bruteforce, the CCP invented a new propaganda strategy in order to mitigate theserious frustration over the nondemocratic and extremely unequal reality ofChina.
“The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” became the key concept of
the CCP’s new propaganda strategy in the post-Tian’anmen era. In this strategy,
the images of western developed states and Japan were relinked with
“imperialism,” and it was emphasized that these countries still maintained aconspiracy to dominate China. The Tian’anmen incident was labeled as anexample of such foreign intervention. In order to make the Chinese publicbelieve this fiction, the CCP launched the Patriotism Education Campaign andreproduced images of the invasion and humiliation by the “imperialist states” thatstarted from the Opium War in 1840.
At the same time, the Chinese public was told through the state-controlled
media that economic development and the buildup of national power wasessential to cope with this international conspiracy to manipulate and dominate
China. Domestic stability and unity within the Chinese nation under the CCP wasstressed as the vital element for achieving that goal.

http://www.jiia.or.jp/en/commentary2

AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

In this context, economic development, which used to be interpreted in
the early 1980s as a result of close and harmonious relations with the US, Japan,and western Europe, was reinterpreted as a result of the determination andendeavor of the Chinese nation to confront the plot shared by those “imperialiststates.” In other words, economic development was said to be part of a process
to “rejuvenate the Chinese nation”, which had suffered enormously from past
aggressions.
In short, the CCP tried to mitigate domestic frustration by stressing theexistence of potential foes outside China, and by interpreting economic
development as part of “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” in which
the goal was to gain enough power to confront such potential foes as “Americanhegemonism” or “Japanese militarism.” Thus, it could be said that “the greatrejuvenation of the Chinese nation” is a propaganda phrase linked with
anti-foreign nationalism, and this phrase basically represents the determinationof the CCP to hold on to its power at all costs.
Enhancing such nationalism by stressing “the great rejuvenation of theChinese nation,” however, soon created a serious dilemma for the CCP. On theone hand, narrow-minded nationalism spread rapidly within the population, andsocial frustrations seemed to be exploding against foreign countries as the CCP
had planned. On the other hand, since anti-foreign sentiment became dominant
within the Chinese media and within China’s cyberspace, any compromise madewith “imperialist states” was heavily criticized as an act of betrayal of the Chinese
nation. In other words, this strong paranoia, which was a result of the CCP’s
propaganda strategy, started to strangle China’s diplomacy by limiting its
options.
This dilemma became quite clear when the Chinese government failed toratify the diplomatic agreement with Japan in 2008 regarding the joint
development of the East China Sea, due to strong domestic opposition. As isseen in this case, it has become almost impossible for the Chinese government
to make any compromise with Japan. This situation has seriously underminedstable relations with Japan, which is a vital economic partner for China. Inaddition, as Jeffrey Bader, a former member of the National Security Council

http://www.jiia.or.jp/en/commentary3

AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

under the Obama administration, has discussed in detail in his recently
published book, China’s diplomacy with the US has also been leaning toward a
hardline stance for the past several years.
Meanwhile, the number of demonstrations and riots against theauthorities in China has been rising sharply. By 2003, the number of theseso-called “collective incidents” had increased to 60,000 per year. In 2006, it
reached 90,000. Since then, the Ministry of Internal Security stopped
announcing these statistics. However, according to information coming out ofHong Kong, the number of “collective incidents” reached 200,000 last year.
These figures show that nationalism cannot solve the social tension within China
caused mainly by the CCP’s monopoly of power and wealth.
According to official statistics announced by the State Statistics Bureau ofChina, China’s Gini index has almost reached the 0.5 line, a level indicating
serious social instability, and that is exactly what is happening in China today.
Without dramatically improving systems relevant to the redistribution of wealth, it
is unrealistic to imagine that domestic turmoil in China will ease in the near future.
Without certain basic political reforms, it is hard to expect that suchimprovements will be realized. Therefore, it could be said that China needs
political transformation, not anti-foreign nationalism, in order to solve the socialtensions that are tearing the Chinese nation apart.
Consequently, the main concern for many China specialists in Japan has
been whether the new Xi Jinping leadership would address the nation with aslogan that emphasizes “reform” or one that emphasizes “the greatrejuvenation.” If it is the former, China’s future might have some hope. If it is thelatter, the CCP will very likely keep enhancing nationalism with an anti-foreign
bent until it is too late.
So far, President Xi has been talking about the “Chinese Dream” mainly inthe context of “the great rejuvenation.” Therefore, it is quite natural to expect
even more domestic turmoil in China and increased tension in the international
environment surrounding China.
Although “reform” has not been omitted from the CCP’s agenda, the factthat former president Hu Jintao’s ten-year attempt at “reform” from 2003 could

http://www.jiia.or.jp/en/commentary4

AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

not prevent an increase in demonstrations and riots, along with the fact that
there are fewer “reformists” in the new Standing Committee of the Central
Politburo, is preventing many China specialists in Japan from having an
optimistic view of China’s future stability.
Japanese policy-makers seem to be hoping that, if they could somehowease the present tensions with China and shift the relationship to an
economically-oriented one, they would be able to stabilize Japan-China relations.
There seems to be a general lack of understanding that Japan’s economic
relationship with China, in which CCP-related organizations are the maincontacts for Japanese companies there, has to some extent contributed to theproblem of instability. As mentioned previously, this problem comes from thefacts that CCP members have monopolized most of the wealth and that the gap
between rich and poor has expanded to an unacceptable level. Unless thisfundamental problem of serious domestic inequality and social tensions issolved, it is unlikely that the CCP will stop relying on anachronistic anti-foreignsentiments that have become a cancer in Japan-China relations.
What the policy makers of Japan and other developed countries have tounderstand is that economic partnership with the CCP regime, which lacks aneffective system for redistributing wealth, is ripping Chinese society apart, andthat riots and demonstrations within China are indicating that the sustainability ofthis economic partnership is reaching its limits. How to cope with this crisis will
inevitably become a key issue for countries that have close economic ties withChina.

Yusuke Anami is an associate professor at Tohoku University.

http://www.jiia.or.jp/en/commentary5