Wu Guangqiang jw368@163.com TO the majority of the Chinese people, it is incomprehensible why some countries, particularly the U.S.-led West camp, bear such intensive grudges against China while China has neither intention nor capability to undermine their interests, let alone committing any concrete acts. Over the past decades and for the following decades, the only thing China has focused and will focus on is to make itself better by peaceful and honest means. As known to all, China was the world’s most powerful economy around 1,500 years ago with its economic and cultural influence reaching much of the world. But unlike other Western powers that have expanded their sphere of influence through military conquest and colonization, China has never resorted to force, coercion or deception to seek or expand its overseas interests. Between 1405 and 1433, led by Zheng He, a eunuch admiral in the Ming Dynasty, a fleet consisting of over 200 enormous sailing ships with a crew of 27,000 embarked on seven epic voyages into the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean, calling at more than 30 countries to show Ming’s goodwill gesture and trade with local people. Interestingly, the fleet’s flagship and other large ships dwarfed European ones of that century; even Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the “Santa Maria,” was between 1/4 and 1/5 the size of Zheng He’s. Instead of turning its mighty shipbuilding and navigation capabilities into means of conquering other nations, China chose to use the strength as a peace envoy and trade vessel. To this day China has been sticking to peaceful development. Why, then, has a peaceful nation like China been under constant and increasingly intense demonization and attack from the America-led West? It’s even more perplexing for Chinese to understand how insane and hysteric America and its pawns have become when they shamelessly fabricate and spread such false stories as “genocide” and “forced labor” in Xinjiang and desperately get engaged in a “comprehensive strategic competition” with China. Through a brief review of the medical history and a close look at the symptoms of the patients, which would be the most appropriate term for them, we can come up with an accurate diagnosis: they have come down with an intractable disease: China-phobia. The common symptoms of the disease: an instinctive repulsion and negation of China’s progress and improvement, which outshine those of the West, a delusion induced by a profound fear of China’s overtaking in which they feel secure and strong by responding with bluffing and collusion. The main causes of the disease: a chronic complacency in their own seemingly perpetual dominance of the world and refusal to remedy their own illnesses and pathological jealousy of China’s institutional advantage. Their firm conviction that the world should be ruled by the West as it represents God and truth has resulted in their blindness and deafness to everything positive about China. They are nagging about the same old platitudes such as violation of human rights and suppression of democracy despite China’s historic achievements in poverty alleviation and the improvement in people’s livelihood and human rights. They know that they are lying and vilifying and that such dirty tricks won’t stop China from striding toward greatness, but they are too seriously ill to be sensible and reasonable. Before it is too late, they should face up to their own illnesses. An old video of Bernard Sanders, Democratic Rep., speaking in Congress in 1992 reminds the world that America has been sick for decades and nothing has changed ever since. “American people hold the president, this institution, Republican and Democratic Parties in contempt … for we are spending US$27 billion on the military a year without a major enemy … no more B2 bombers, no more Star Wars, let’s make something we need and invest in industry…,” an angry Sanders shouted. Obviously, it is America’ s institutional flaws and dysfunctions that caused its decline and decadence. A bold leader, as Sanders called for, should stop blaming China for their own problems. China-phobia will serve only to accelerate America’s failure. (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.) | 