Last week couldn’t have been more special for Chinese students in England. Half of my Chinese “comrades” in Oxford woke up early on the morning of Monday 19th October, skipped all their lectures for the day, and caught the early coach to London with fast-leaping hearts. They waited for hours, only to catch a glimpse of Xi Jinping, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and the President of the People’s Republic of China.
The visit of Xi Jinping is momentous because it is the first visit of the Chinese President to the UK in ten years. Since the last visit in 2005, China has undergone dramatic changes. One obvious change that I observe is the boom in private cars. Back in 2005, when I was only eight years old, there were not many private cars on the road, but mostly state-owned cars, trucks, and taxis. At that time, motorcycles were the main means of transportation in my city, Changsha, because few people were rich enough to afford private cars and high-quality petroleum. By 2010, however, traffic jams were at every corner of the city. This tremendous increase in personal assets is incredible, especially given that this As far as I am concerned, China is not a democracy under any kind of political classification. In increase occurred during a period of global recession.
It is not hard to see that the purpose of Xi’s visit lies mainly in economical cooperation. With President Xi comes investment in billions of pounds in nuclear industry, communication, automobiles, medicine, and even amusement parks. The total proposed investment exceeds £400 billion, which marks a new climax in Sino-British cooperation.
Nonetheless, what interests me most is the Chinese and British media’s different focuses with regard to President Xi’s visit. Most of the Chinese media boast the outstanding achievements in economic cooperation between China and Britain, while the British media keep questioning Great Britain’s decision in cooperating with a non-democratic nation. The British media casts doubt on the condition of human rights in China, but President Xi counters them by reaffirming “each country has its own criteria of human rights, and the sole competent judge of its condition of human rights is its own people,” which sounds like “none of your business.”
As far as I am concerned, China is not a democracy under any kind of political classification. In my eighteen years, I have never seen my parents or relatives vote in an election for the People’s Representatives in the People’s Committee, which is similar to the House of Commons. Indeed, the power of the government in China is a lot more concentrated than in any democratic state. All the disadvantages, however, may be turned into advantages in terms of efficiency. While the construction of a high-speed railroad to the airport in Taipei has been postponed for ten years, the construction of the high-speed railroad network in China is nearly completed. It is also this efficiency in decision-making that brings the economic boom. Thus, it is irrational to judge China’s achievement only in terms of democracy. It is necessary for us to look at the whole picture.
Needless to say, China has had great success with regard to the economy. Yet in terms of democratic reform, it still has a long way to go. In fact, no one can really predict what China will be in the future. Will China be more democratic, or will it turn into totalitarianism? We still know nothing until the future unwraps.
