Before, Chairman Mao took one of his landmark decisions to implement simplified and modern version of Chinese language, not often discussed or known outside China, Mandarin had distinctive characters for every expression. If it is true to believe, then the question is why thousands of years old civilization which even during the darkest of times did not abandon learning and innovation, preferred to keep two very distinct characters for one expression i.e. crisis. Since time immemorial, it is an individual’s choice to pick one, as per his or her nature and liking; one that reflects opportunity or danger. However, after success of revolution it seems as if the Chinese Nation has opted for opportunity and discarded danger from their dictionary all together.

Ironically, when Chinese Leadership was struggling to revolutionize their approach to create and exploit opportunities of alleviating poverty for bringing prosperity across the country. On the other side of the divide, western democracies during all these decades were promising people freedom of speech and equal rights but devoted more energies to protect the economic interests of the rich and the most powerful. Similarly, rather than letting their people know what is happening elsewhere in the world they resorted to discredit any other system or ideology, which showed slightest prospects of offering alternative to theirs. In this pursuit, they zoomed in on violation of human rights and freedom of speech and forgot what comes first, fight against poverty, people’s welfare or hollow moral slogans.

Even now when China has outperformed all western democracies including the only superpower, surprisingly they are prophesying its collapse. Western media conglomerates, which are the strongest forces of manufacturing consent at home and influencing peoples’ thinking and perception across the globe by fabricating stories and managing opinion poll statistics. Unfortunately, due to Chinese silence, the world has no choice but to believe what they hear and are offered to see. With no counter narrative one of the most powerful propaganda against Chinese society is that eventually people will rise against widespread injustice, deprivation and denial of basic human rights. I visited China a couple of times and had an opportunity to interact with people from all walks of life, age groups and different regions; highly developed and still considered backward from western standards. I tried to investigate western prophecies for satisfying my own curiosity as to how a nation whose graphs of all human development indexes have risen exponentially, will fall apart. How a nation at a time when it is seeing on the horizon, the signs of coming glory will revolt against a system, which has delivered more than what it promised. Here are some of the statistics:

During early 20th century how two major parties with no common grounds, fighting one of the bloodiest of wars of their history agreed to join hands against the Japanese invaders? Whereas, that was the time when everywhere in the world nations were divided against the occupation forces due to fear, manipulations and in some cases bribery. Then how come? Chinese took a different course and were able to put their differences on hold and defeated the enemy? It shows a unique trait of very different level of nationalism, which no other nation exhibited facing similar dilemmas. Probably, western occupation forces were wiser than the Japanese and kept their objectives limited to economic plundering but that led them to misunderstand the Chinese nationalism.

Soon after the success of revolution in 1949, the nation was suffering from absolute poverty, likes of which never seen earlier by once the most prosperous nation of the world. During those years,  powerful western nations under the new leadership of USA were backing Kuomintang, a tiny part of Chinese nation as compared to the population of the mainland. Instead of majority revolutionaries, a small minority exiled to Taiwan was accepted as representative of the Chinese Nation at the UN. Poverty alone was not enough agony when one after the other wars broke out in Korea and Vietnam against USA and its allies. However, world witnessed one of the most astonishing achievements of a nation against odds of unprecedented nature. The party was able to, not only defend national borders against the western alliance but, did not compromise on principles when frictions developed with the only ally Soviet Union, who could help them against all challenges confronted during their formative years. When two communist giants were locking horns and were on a collision course, USA rushed to China and agreed to whatever Mao demanded. During this phase despite their best efforts, Mao stood his principle ground and did not compromise on national interests.  

With daunting external threats, there were some moments like the Great Leap Forward and before its damage could fade came the devastating Cultural Revolution that lasted for ten years. At both these defining moments of Chinese nation west started forecasting collapse of communist regime but to their disappointment CPC managed to come out more determined as in all other internal or external crisis. However, the entire landscape of china was still smoldering when the biggest challenge struck the party, of not having a mechanism of transfer of power at the time Mao departed which tested their nationalism once again. However, Chinese nationalism prevailed and to the utter disappointment of the enemies, communist leadership could put aside their individual differences for a greater national cause. Similarly, when much celebrated opening up was just taking roots came Tiananmen, one of the most criticized incident in transformed China’s history. But rather than budging to western pressure to reform Chinese learnt lessons and never allowed a similar situation disrupt nation’s course again, despite hundreds of thousands of Chinese youth exposed to western liberalism.

The greater question is why the party came strong out of every crisis and despite challenges nation reposed trust and confidence in their leadership? The answer can be very easy. The case in point is, people usually talk about Chinese nation’s prosperity after Deng Xiaoping era but tend to forget some very important achievements well before economic opening up associated with him. The average life expectancy, which was about 45 years in 1949 but improved to over 60 while Chairman Mao was still alive. Literacy rate of 15 % of the same time was touching impressive figure of 75% during his life, which was 100 % in the youth. Poverty alleviation of more than 75% of Chinese population was well on course which if not more but may be equal to the entire western world. These figures continued scaling further heights and after the start of 21st century, much higher standards have been achieved in areas, which have remained dreams of the west. Such as, universal health coverage by Chinese to a quarter of world’s population, which still remains a far cry for even USA whose president boasts, having the best health services in the world.

And then, came CORONA which challenged the claims of the western democratic countries. When the first news came out of Wuhan about the virus, rather than taking precautions they started questioning and criticizing the quality of Chinese Health Care and their inability to handle the epidemic. Western Media’s conspiracy theories of hiding the real reasons, statistics about the disease and its causes tried to blind the world about Chinese battle to save its own people and the world from a deadly virus. Speculations sponsored by them were also abundant about collapse of Chinese economy resultantly social unrest in the face of growing challenges. But what happened was totally opposite to their projections; Chinese managed the situation, kept world informed after they were sure about the nature of disease, did not blame any country and even before total control at home offered help to many nations. Even now, when the western world is in total chaos and does not have any plans to handle the worst ever crisis of modern day, they are still finding reasons to criticize China.  

Not a right occasion for sarcasm but the question is when humanity is confronting worst forms of fears and uncertainties never experienced in modern times, which direction is west going? Even if their fears of China’s system of responding to the collective needs have become reality earlier than anticipated. What if campaign of discrediting China at home and abroad has inadvertently exposed to the world what they wanted to hide? What if the tide turned against them and CORONA crisis, which they thought had put China on the back foot, has become an opportunity for Chinese leadership to showcase enormous strength of their system. What, if the world is seeing the success of Chinese in managing a challenge, for which western democracies are still struggling to find any workable solution? Is not it time to put egos aside and learn lessons from Chinese System of responding to collectives needs of the peoples rather than feeding them with promises of utopian world?