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Americans should wake up from the woke doctrine
Huang Yongfu
CFP

CFP

Editor's note: Huang Yongfu is an economic affairs commentator. After his PhD, he started his career at the University of Cambridge and then moved on to the UN system. He is the author of many papers and books in economics. His current interests lie in global development and Sino-U.S. links, especially trade, financial and technological issues. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Rush Doshi, a former Brookings Institution scholar, now a China director under the key architect of the Biden administration's China strategy Kurt Campbell on the National Security Council, has recently published a book entitled "Asia First, Then the World: The Long Game."

The book argues that the Asia of a "community of common destiny" that China has been actively shaping is, in fact, the one "where others are dependent on China economically and divorced from U.S. alliances militarily."

Written into a UN resolution in 2017, the concept of "building a community with a shared future for mankind" widely accepted by the global community has a vision of building an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.

Doshi blames "National Rejuvenation," towards which Chinese President Xi Jinping is currently leading the country, and arbitrarily asserts that "Beijing's ultimate objective is to displace the U.S. order globally in order to emerge as the world's dominant state by 2049" with a strategy of "blunting" American power. Doesn't China have a right to develop and to recover fully from the "century of humiliation" imposed by Western powers?

Biased and ridiculous claims are all over the place, such as that "China's pursuit of permanent Most Favored Nation status as well as World Trade Organization accession were meant to tie American hands with respect to economic leverage." As such, this book has little value for foreigners craving an objective understanding of China's geopolitical thought and development strategy.

Doshi is just one of today's American woke revolutionaries or progressive elites pursuing their ambitions to defend sole hegemony while rejecting a world with diversified culture, economies and race. The woke doctrine they hold doubts American achievements and tries to convince the public that China's power is eclipsing the U.S. and the civilization it has led. This is never made by an appeal to facts, reason or evidence.

In fact, the woke doctrine repudiates or ducks American historical values in terms of diversity, inclusion and equity which, if put all together, spell DIE. Does it mean the defeat of traditional values and death of what is best in American life?

Widespread woke ideas account for why the whole American society is haunted by an existential sense of peril and grievance and filled with so many angry people who sense that the greatness of the U.S. is dwindling.

The woke revolutionaries typically advocate antagonistic government policies against rivals, China more specifically, with no sense of justice, virtue and intellectual authority, and, for example, making heavily charged accusations and sanctions to publicly discredit rivals in a very inflammatory, heated and hysterical way. Doshi aggressively proposes "asymmetric blunting" via military, economic and political approaches to dull Chinese power at low cost.

Since the Trump administration, the attitude towards China among American foreign-policy elites has changed dramatically and is now very much hardened. Trump set America's national security policy to focus on challenging China, and among others arranged four officials to give a series of speeches last summer describing China as a threat to freedom and democracy globally. Biden toughened the policy, using the threat of China to further his agenda domestically, and assiduously building a new "axis of evil" for countering and checking China's rise globally.

At present, almost the entire establishment has lined up on one side, where the FBI, CIA, the Defense Department and Homeland Security treat China as the enemy, while members of Congress compete to see who can be the most belligerent China hawk. Officials talk of "strategic competition" with China, rather than cooperation.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Rally To Protect Our Elections conference in Phoenix, Arizona, July 24, 2021. /CFP

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Rally To Protect Our Elections conference in Phoenix, Arizona, July 24, 2021. /CFP

The woke society includes a long list of institutions, especially national important newspapers and universities, that are now devoted to the propaganda of woke ideas. Turning away from the ideals of authority and objectivity will inevitably cost them their previous prestige.

Under the current climate, anything associated with China, especially those having a presence or popularity within the United States, is smeared and accused of having malign purposes, being a "threat to national security" or a tool of espionage. Not surprisingly, there is a mounting hostility to any popular technology enterprises from China such as Huawei, TikTok as well as Chinese students and researchers. Given various benefits related to China, Americans are deeply divided over many China policies.

The woke doctrine is, in fact, pushing the country close to the abyss.

In the 1970s, against the background of the U.S. retreat from Vietnam, the tightening Soviet grip on Eastern Europe, and Marxist advances in Latin America, the nation was haunted by a woke doctrine that America was losing the great ideological struggle to the communist superpower with ultimate decline and fall. The decade culminated in the unique combination of racial strife, economic ruin due to stagflation, international humiliation associated with military misadventures in Vietnam and socially disintegrating, culturally self-loathing, economically stalling dystopia.

Today, the woke revolution in the U.S. is much more deeply embedded in the society and establishment than it ever was in the 1970s. The extent of the woke victory with extreme lurches in one direction has produced an existential sense of failure and a tumult of social unrest and national malaise.

The surge in homicides in the past year in the U.S. is a flashback to a time when systemic injustice and racist policing were a nightmare.

Although history doesn't repeat itself, there is a pattern in the ebb and flow of historical tides. In the national interests of the U.S., Americans should wake up from the woke doctrine and the tide of woke or progressive hegemony should be reversed.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)

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