Why China Will Inevitably Win against America

Murong Xuecun, a Chinese writer with 1.1 million Internet followers, led a small group of people in a venture to meet Chen Guangcheng. Chen is a human rights lawyer who remains under house arrest after being released from four years in prison. When Murong and his crew arrived in Chen’s village, several thugs guarding the entrance suspected they were thieves and threatened them. After a bit of a scuffle, the thugs stopped a passing bus and violently pushed Murong and his friends on board. Murong got off the bus about 10 kilometers down the road, headed back and tried to reenter the village. The thugs followed him in two plateless cars. More punches were thrown and Murong was forced onto another bus.

As I read “Dreaming of a Normal Life in China,”an op-ed by Murong published in the International Herald Tribune on Nov. 12, I felt both sympathy and a deep sense that this scene was all too familiar. Was this not Korea just 20 years ago?

In this year’s November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication read by America’s mainstream elite, George Packer of The New Yorker wrote that life in America now is at its worst since the Great Depression of the late 1920s. Although high-tech goods abound to make life appear to be more convenient and sophisticated, basic U.S. infrastructure is currently in worse condition than it was in the 1950s. However, Packer bemoaned that the real problem lay elsewhere. Except for the richest 1 percent, the majority of Americans are rife with complaints and have come to distrust one another. Such circumstances indicate that the U.S. has lost its vitality and future prospects and that it is pushing itself toward a certain death. Packer then argued that America’s downfall began in 1978.

In 1978, taxes on financial income were raised, while consumer protection measures and legislation protecting workers’ rights were being dropped. Also, Reagan Revolution cheerleader Newt Gingrich began appearing in Congress. The 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan brings to mind the 2007 Korean presidential race in that it, too, occurred in a tidal wave of conservatism. The neoconservative pursuit of U.S. supremacy nonetheless did not go far, ultimately razing both global and American confidence to the ground. The root of the problem can be traced to 1978, when policies favoring the affluent started to multiply. Packer’s diagnosis is that these policies intensified the polarization and inequality of American society, fanning enough mistrust and loathing to destroy both the middle class and democracy.

In 1978 Murong’s “abnormal” China also began to form. In December 1978, at the Third Plenum of the 11th National Party Congress Central Committee, the Chinese Communist Party proclaimed reforms to open the nation’s economy. China subsequently began its rise while America began to slump. Although problems abound in Murong’s China, there still seems to be hope. The U.S. is steeped in exhaustion and pessimism. Incidentally, one of the main themes of Foreign Affairs in 2011 was the very issue of America’s downfall and China’s sudden rise. While each has his own thoughts, even the members of the mainstream elite like Joseph Nye are not denying U.S. decline. The expectation is that the U.S. will gradually lose its claim to world supremacy over the next couple of decades. Even this, however, is criticized as an empty dream, implying that the rise of China and its usurpation of the U.S. will occur much faster.

Despite its status as the world’s second largest economy, China continues to be plagued by government corruption, extreme polarization and low average income. However, hope lies in the courage and morality of the Chinese intellectual class, their regard for the public interest and their aspirations of building a better society. Murong is resolved to take on the suffering of others if it is in his capacity to do so. He will readily give his all, even his life, for a better society. This mentality does not exist in the U.S., where individualism reigns strong and people are absorbed in the pursuit of personal gain. Even the Occupy Wall Street movement began when hope was all but lost.

Korea’s October Restoration came in 1979. Oppressive rule was abolished from this land a decade later. Now, amid the Free Trade Agreement controversy, I cannot say with certainty if Korea is trying to import the dark legacies of China or the U.S. I refer to the public rule from which neoliberalism and Korea were thought to have graduated 20 years ago.