China against China: Western Apologists Ignore Its Growing Decadence

A prospective “new cold war,” this time between America and China, has been war-gamed to death in the media ever since the original Cold War ended. But Western commentators of all ideologies get lost in the 5,000-year haze of Chinese history, unable to draw definitive conclusions about what competition with this nation might mean.

President Xi Jinping has restructured Chinese institutions, which seemed to be tentatively democratizing under his immediate predecessors. He shored up the change with a new state ideology (“socialism with Chinese characteristics”), a more aggressive stance in foreign affairs, and implementation of shock-and-awe tactics against his own populace. All this while explicating a “China dream” (a remixed pastiche of the American dream) and extolling Chinese goals (even as Western media struggle to comprehend what they are).

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About the Author

Nicholas Pompella

Nicholas Pompella is an editor of fiction and a writer and reporter at Purdue University.

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A prospective “new cold war,” this time between America and China, has been war-gamed to death in the media ever since the original Cold War ended. But Western commentators of all ideologies get lost in the 5,000-year haze of Chinese history, unable to draw definitive conclusions about what competition with this nation might mean.

President Xi Jinping has restructured Chinese institutions, which seemed to be tentatively democratizing under his immediate predecessors. He shored up the change with a new state ideology (“socialism with Chinese characteristics”), a more aggressive stance in foreign affairs, and implementation of shock-and-awe tactics against his own populace. All this while explicating a “China dream” (a remixed pastiche of the American dream) and extolling Chinese goals (even as Western media struggle to comprehend what they are).