Chinese Dreams are Asian dreams, too


Yuba Nath Lamsal
Soon after Xi Jinping assumed the leadership of China, he, as all his predecessors did, looked something new and substantive to offer to the Chinese people and the world. XI came with a new vision of Chinese Dream in November 2012 seeking to transform China into a peaceful, strong and stable global power putting its people in the focal point of development. The Chinese Dream is the vision Xi Jinping has brought about purportedly to raise the standard of the people at a moderate level and giving further impetus to China’s peaceful rise.
History is witness that every Chinese leader that comes to the helm of affairs has left his distinct mark in China. Mao Zedong is by far the most revered leader who established the modern People’s Republic of China in 1949 through a protracted armed revolution under the banner of the communist party. Deng Xiaoping, who returned to limelight and rose to power in mid 1970s, changed the entire course of China through his widely acclaimed policy of reforms and opening up that has made him immortal in China’s modern history. His reforms and opening up initiated way back in 1978 together with greater commitment and willingness of his successors to pursue the reforms with more vigor and in a more pragmatic manner have revived China’s old glory of global power.
 Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were Deng’s true followers and gave continuity to the reforms with innovation. China achieved stunning economic growth during the two decades under Jiang and Hu that helped boost China’s clout in the international arena on the one hand and at the same time brought about visible changes in the life of the Chinese people. During this period, China has made tremendous progress in poverty eradication, which has been duly appreciated by the international community including the United Nations and the World Bank.
With Xi Jinping assuming the mantle of China’s leadership, he has  rolled out his own benchmark of vision and policy reforms called Chinese Dream, which has stirred both optimism and criticism within China and abroad. At home Chinese Dream has generated high hopes as it is being seen as grand vision that encompasses broader principle for China’s national rejuvenation.  While back home Chinese Dream is being taken as a overarching goal to stimulate China’s growth, development and national pride, it has, with the same vigor and speed, rekindled hopes  for greater international cooperation, partnership and collaboration for a peaceful, prosperous and co-existential world.
More importantly, China’s neighbors appear to be more optimistic as the fundamentals of Chinese Dream, apart from reinvigorating China’s national self-esteem, seeks to revitalize the oriental culture and history shared and treasured by many of the Asian countries and societies. Seen as it is, Chinese Dream is becoming not merely a Chinese proposition alone but an expression of Asian vision for social, cultural and economic development. The Chinese Dream can, therefore, be an important basis for creating a cozy but vibrant and cooperative Asian community.
China is a long-time soft power which has become a global fait accompli. Beijing exercising this soft power at its disposal is trying to build a new regional power structure, known as the East Asian Community, on the basis of vision it has expressed through Chinese Dream. The Chinese Dream is metaphor of Beijing’s desire and commitment to build a stage conducive for greater cooperation and partnership in the world and more particularly in its neighborhood—Asia.
As China's soft power has become a topic of worldwide debate more than anything else, the Chinese Dream, too, has drawn global attention. But the Chinese Dream is an broadly expression of the vision for building a more equitable, harmonious and just world order through greater on the basis of mutual equality and benefit. The Chinese Dream has stirred more debate in the world because it comes as a parallel to what is called the American Dream that is guided more by the notion of establishing and continuing supremacy of Anglo-American values—the individual rights and free enterprise. On the contrary, the Chinese Dream envisions promoting Asian values and culture which acknowledge community rights over individual liberty and are more human in nature and spirit and are pronounced and practiced in Asian societies and countries. It can also be called, in other words, as an emerging clash between the oriental and western civilizations as the Chinese Dream is purely an assertion of Asian values and a challenge to the American Dream of Anglo-American values. Thus, the Chinese Dream is not merely a Chinese vision alone but a vision for the revival of Asian pride against Anglo-American prejudice. In this way, Chinese Dream is Asian Dream.
In a seminar of senior Asian journalists called sixth 10+3 Media Cooperation Forum held recently in Kunming of China, the Asian sentiment was seen more visibly and  pronounced in a more assertive and authentic manner.  Founded way back in 2007 that includes ten ASEAN members and China, Korea and Japan, the forum brings journalists from these ten countries to discuss ways to create a vibrant East Asian community through shared visions, values and aspirations. Coming to the sixth version of this 10+3 media cooperation mechanism, the meeting of which was held in Kunming on December 5 and 6, South Asian countries had also been included in which representatives from Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh participated and expressed their common views on realizing the Asian Dreams that are identical with the Chinese Dreams to revitalize Asian civilizations and value systems and collectively counter the western propaganda against the Asian societies.
The reason to include South Asian countries in the forum is understandable. China is not only East Asian country but very much South Asian country too. A large part of its landmass is closely connected with South Asia. More than that, China shares land border with five of eight South Asian countries that are in the framework of South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation or the SAARC. None of the South Asian countries have land connection with any of the East Asian countries and China is the only country that connects South Asia with the East Asia. More than that China is in the central stage of Asian continent and connects with all the regions of Asian continent including East Asia, South East Asia, South Asia and central Asia. Thus, it bodes well for China to take initiative to create not only East Asian regional structure but also a broad Asian community.
The 21st century is Asian century, which has been acknowledged by all including the European and American powers. The international attention and power has already been shifted to Asia. In Asia, great powers and civilizations are already in existence. In the lead is China, which is already a second largest economy and poised to become the first one in near future. To sustain Asian century, Asia needs to build an atmosphere for greater cooperation among the countries in the region. The cooperation needs to be multi-dimensional and multi-sect oral not merely between t he governments but in all levels. Media is the appropriate forum to foster cooperation at popular level. China, as a global power, seems to have, though late, realized the value and strength of media and has come with this concept of media cooperation in Asia for which the 10+3 Media  Cooperation Forum is the appropriate forum. Apart from the wide-ranging discussion and exchange of opinion on building Asian community and fostering cooperation in the Kunming seminar of the 10+3 Media Cooperation Forum, Yunnan Daily Group of China reached agreement with several media outlets of Asia for mutual cooperation of various kinds, which is one of the important aspects of the forum. This has provided China to reach out to the media of Asia to propagate its vision and bring the entire Asia closer. It was necessary also to
In the Kunming discussion, the global media landscape figured prominently in which participants were almost unanimous that, despite the world being diverse, media landscape is monopolistic as the world capitalist baseness interest groups. Despite their tall and loud claim of diversity in media, freedom and fairness, it seems to be of more of propaganda mongering when it comes to the coverage of the rest of the world including the developing countries and eastern nations, people and cultures. Participants were of the view that the Western media only cover negative reports of the developing countries. The social and community values of our eastern and Asian societies get hardly any place on western media. The Western media, with their predominant power, disseminate only the western values and serve the interests of western countries but grossly ignore the values and interests of the global community and other parts of the world. The Western media are resourceful and can afford to flood the world with their own propaganda, which we, too, often tend to believe. This is how the Western countries and interest groups have shaped the global opinion through their own media.
Though late we Asians have come to understand the power of media and need for Asian solidarity. They have realized that we Asians must do something to counter the western media onslaught and tell the world and our own people truth about ourselves and values we cherish. Resource strapped as we are, it is not possible to counter the Western media propaganda with our limited resource. Thus, we require resource-pooling among ourselves in the developing countries. We need networking and collaboration so that we together would be able to stand firmly for the defence of our values and tell the people the real stories and happenings in and around the world. This will be the correct approach to make our or Asian views heard more in the international arena and together we can prosper. The 10+3 Media Cooperation Forum is a praiseworthy initiative but this mechanism needs to be enlarged to accommodate the entire Asia including South Asia.

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