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6/5/15

The Chinese Dream to Overtake America - by Liu Mingfu

“It has been China’s dream for a century to become the world’s leading nation,” wrote Liu Mingfu, then a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, in his 2010 book The China Dream.


After taking over as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi Jinping echoed the book’s language and one of its key themes—“the dream of a strong military”—repeatedly in speeches. This dream, he said, would be realized by 2049, a century after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The English translation of The China Dream was published in the United States in May, the same month that the Chinese government published a defense-policy white paper laying out an expanded role for the navy in the context of U.S.-China tensions over China’s construction of islands in disputed waters in the South China Sea.

The U.S. government estimates that Beijing has created 2,000 acres of artificial land in the Spratly Islands, parts of which are also claimed by other nearby countries. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned over the weekend that China’s activity heightened the risk of conflict in the region; a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman responded that the construction was “legal, reasonable … and neither impacts nor targets any country.”

The Chinese Dream to Overtake America - The Atlantic

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