As I watched in fascination the Chinese follow the Olympic Games with unbridled pride and sense of accomplishment these past weeks, I realized I may have witnessed something way more important than a sporting gala here. What I have witnessed is a proud people, ignited by a hunger to succeed, savoring the fruits of their confidence - a bold declaration of a collective can-do that comes only to those who dare to dream and believe in it.
Barack Obama calls it the audacity of hope, and wishes it for the United States. These past weeks, I have seen it happen in China, I have seen 1.3 billion people say "Yes we can". This is the stuff dreams are made of. And, when I last checked, this dream was being mass produced in China, just the way it was in the US in the last century. With jobs, dreams also seem to have set sail for China. Is the Chinese Dream then the new American Dream?
The American Dream means different things to different people. But interpreted whichever way, it's not looking that great these days. If it's freedom and liberty, look at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If it's racial equality, look at Obama, trying to convince his people he is not a Muslim. If it's an immigrant's faith in the land of opportunities, look at the fence America is building to keep him out.
If the American Dream is a big house in the suburbs, look at the FORECLOSURE and BANK OWNED signs dotting the landscape in the aftermath of the subprime crisis. If it's upward mobility by dint of merit and hard work irrespective of social class, consider this: 75 percent of America's economic gains in the last eight years have gone to the top 1 percent of its population.
The foundation of the American Dream has been that each generation will do better than the one before. But a Pew research report titled Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? shows men in their 30s in the US today are earning less than their fathers did when they were in their 30s.
Hence America is in no mood to dream. Another Pew research - on global attitudes - finds 68 percent of Americans see their country going down the wrong path in all aspects and 62 percent hold the administration is a failure at everything it does.
Now contrast this with the Chinese mood, as seen from the same research. Of the 24 countries surveyed, China is the most upbeat. Eighty-six percent of the Chinese say they are content with the country's direction and 82 percent are satisfied with the economy. Andrew Nathan, co-editor of a forthcoming book on how Asians view democracy, told The Economist his team found public satisfaction with the administration to be highest in China.
Of course China has its own problems. Who hasn't? But despite a growing wealth gap and environmental concerns, China's social mobility is hard to beat, with poverty rate falling from 64 percent to 10 percent in just 25 years. This is indeed the new land of opportunities, of dreams.
For every Detroit decaying in the US, a Dalian is rising in China. While American house prices fall faster than during the Depression, China struggles to keep them down. China is possibly the only country where double-digit growth, trade surplus and ample liquidity are a problem. No wonder most Americans themselves now consider China, not the US, the leading economic power, as shown by Gallup's annual world affairs survey. Can you blame the Chinese for the swagger?
In a recent New York Times piece headlined Harmony and the Dream, columnist David Brooks writes China's rise isn't only an economic event, it's a cultural one too, and that the ideal of a harmonious collective may prove as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream. But what American Dream? It's one world, one dream, and it's China's century. Like everything else, the dream is Made in China as well.
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