China’s ancestry should remind us of what America stands for

Human freedom has many threats, as we are reminded every day today.

The struggle for freedom is never over. It is iterative and incremental. Where freedom is won, it can be lost again.

We think about it now not only in memory of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that targeted American democracy and individual determinism, but in the larger context of the current global human struggle for freedom.

On the morning of September 11, many of us rightly believed that the tide was with us and that Western democracy, with its protection of innate human rights, was on the rise. We hoped that the war of ideas was won and that the expansion of freedom and respect for human dignity were the price.

Today, when surveying the world around us, there is cause for concern. And among the first worries we are registering now is a declining China.

Twenty years ago, we had reason to believe that China would join the world of free nations by expanding human rights and democratic self-determination as economic freedom and personal prosperity began to flourish. China officially joined the World Trade Organization on December 11, 2001, after enduring the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, preceded by decades of struggle and despair under Maos’ despotic economic and social policies.

A series of reformist leaders took China forward with great strides, creating an economy that could not only feed but enrich its people. We expected these people to seek and gain political freedom commensurate with their new economic self-determination.

We were only half right. As the Chinese people have sought greater freedom, the Chinese Communist Party has cut off its devotion to oppression in the name of self-preservation.

In the person of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the CCP is grossly extending its authoritarian control over the lives of the Chinese people. And its expansionist vision on the foreign scene should be of great concern.

The list of repressions and human rights violations is too long to be detailed here. We note among the worst crimes the elimination of a free and democratic government and press in Hong Kong and the continued oppression and even the elimination of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Province. But as The Washington Post pointed out in a recent article, Xis’ policies diminish freedom in just about every area of ​​Chinese life.

The Chinese Communist Party cherishes a vision of controlling human life from cradle to grave, with the ancillary belief that this can happen in an economically prosperous society. Just follow the rules and no one will be hurt, he suggests. The view is as fundamentally flawed about human nature as the grotesque programs of Maos’ Great Leap Forward. But it may be more sustainable in the short term as a way of doing business. And, given China’s current economic power and influence in the developing world, it could be extended either by force or by coercion.

It is now common to suggest that America is a damaged commodity, that our role on the world stage is so diminished that we are no longer an effective defender of freedom. After the shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is, unfortunately, some truth. And for no one is nicer than Xi Jinping.

This is why it is crucial, every day today, for every American, and in particular for the American President, to remember that the central idea of ​​the Americas, its raison d’être is the elevation of the human freedom and the rights given by God which codify this freedom. . We need a clear foreign policy that recognizes China as it is, not for what we want it to be.

It’s important to us, and it’s important to the world.