Chinese Dream
Based on Wikipedia: Chinese Dream
A Slogan That Moves Nations
In November 2012, a newly appointed leader walked through an exhibit at China's National Museum. The exhibit was called "Road to National Rejuvenation," and the leader was Xi Jinping, who had just become General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. What he said during that walk would become one of the most consequential political slogans of the twenty-first century.
"The Chinese Dream," Xi declared, "is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."
That single phrase now appears everywhere in Chinese public life—on billboards, in textbooks, in diplomatic speeches, on the hull of aircraft carriers. But what does it actually mean? The answer depends entirely on who you ask, and that vagueness may be precisely the point.
The Two Centenaries: A Timeline for National Destiny
Unlike most political slogans, the Chinese Dream comes with specific deadlines. Xi's government has anchored the dream to two milestone dates they call the "Two Centenaries."
The first centenary was 2021—the hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party's founding. By this date, the goal was to achieve what Chinese officials call a "moderately prosperous society." In concrete terms, this meant doubling the gross domestic product per person from 2010 levels and eliminating extreme poverty. This was the short-term dream: a baseline of material comfort for ordinary Chinese citizens.
The second centenary is 2049—the hundredth anniversary of the People's Republic of China itself. By this date, the vision becomes grander and hazier. China should become "a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, and harmonious." Notice how that list covers economics, military power, governance, culture, and social stability all at once.
This is strategic ambiguity at work. The 2021 goals were measurable. You can count income. You can count how many people live below the poverty line. But what does it mean for a country to be "civilized" or "harmonious"? Those terms can stretch to cover almost anything—or exclude almost anything from criticism.
Dreaming Through Chinese History
Here's something that might surprise you: the phrase "Chinese Dream" didn't originate with Xi Jinping. Not even close. The words have roots stretching back nearly three thousand years.
In the Classic of Poetry, one of the oldest collections of Chinese verse compiled around 1000 BCE, there's a poem called "Flowing Spring." In it, a poet describes waking up in despair after dreaming of the Western Zhou dynasty—a golden age that had collapsed into chaos. The dream was of restoration, of returning to former glory.
Fast forward about two thousand years to the Southern Song dynasty, a period when China was divided and the Song court had been pushed south by invaders. A poet named Zheng Sixiao wrote a line that would echo through centuries: "Heart full of the Chinese Dream, the ancient poem 'Flowing Spring.'" He was reaching back to that classical poem, invoking the same longing for lost greatness.
This is the emotional core of the Chinese Dream that Xi Jinping tapped into: not just a hope for the future, but a restoration of something that was lost. Chinese schoolchildren learn about the "century of humiliation"—the period from roughly 1839 to 1949 when foreign powers carved up Chinese territory, imposed unequal treaties, and reduced what had been one of the world's great civilizations to a weakened state. The Chinese Dream, in this framing, is about ending that humiliation and reclaiming China's rightful place in the world.
An American Journalist and a Chinese Environmentalist
The phrase's journey into modern political discourse has an unexpected twist. Before Xi Jinping adopted it, an American journalist named Thomas Friedman—the New York Times columnist known for books like "The World Is Flat"—wrote an article in October 2012 titled "China Needs Its Own Dream."
That article went viral in China. It was translated and republished across Chinese media. The timing was impeccable: it appeared just weeks before Xi became party chief, and it asked provocatively whether China's next leader would have a dream different from the American one.
But Friedman himself gives credit to someone else. "I only deserve part credit," he said. "The concept of 'China Dream' was promoted by my friend Peggy Liu, as the motto for her NGO about how to introduce Chinese to the concept of sustainability."
Peggy Liu founded JUCCCE—the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy—and had been using "China Dream" to frame environmental sustainability for Chinese audiences. She argued that China couldn't simply copy the American Dream of suburban homes, two cars, and endless consumption. The planet's resources wouldn't survive 1.4 billion people living like Americans. China needed its own dream, one that reconciled prosperity with sustainability.
This environmental thread still runs through official Chinese Dream rhetoric, though it often gets overshadowed by the economic and nationalist elements. Xi has incorporated what he calls "ecological civilization" into the dream—the idea that economic development and environmental protection must somehow coexist.
What the Dream Contains
One analyst, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, writing in the state-controlled China Daily, broke down the Chinese Dream into four components: "Strong China," "Civilized China," "Harmonious China," and "Beautiful China."
Each phrase points in a different direction.
"Strong China" is about military power and international influence. When China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was commissioned, it bore the words "Chinese Dream, Strong Military Dream" painted on its hull. Young Chinese, surveys suggest, are envious of American cultural influence and hope China might one day rival the United States as a cultural exporter.
"Civilized China" invokes cultural achievement and refinement—the China of poetry, philosophy, and invention that once led the world.
"Harmonious China" is perhaps the most politically loaded term. In Chinese government discourse, "harmony" often translates to stability, which in practice means the absence of dissent, protest, or challenge to the ruling party. When officials call for harmony, they're often calling for conformity.
"Beautiful China" connects to the environmental dimension—clean air, clean water, landscapes worth preserving.
The Reform Question
Here's where the Chinese Dream becomes genuinely contested ground.
Some Chinese intellectuals and officials have tried to interpret the dream as a call for political reform. In 2013, a liberal newspaper in Guangzhou called Southern Weekly attempted to publish an editorial titled "The Chinese Dream: A Dream of Constitutionalism." It advocated for separation of powers—the idea that executive, legislative, and judicial branches should check each other's authority rather than all being controlled by a single party.
The authorities censored it. That tells you something important about the boundaries of the dream.
Economic reform? That's acceptable terrain. Premier Li Keqiang has spoken openly about the need for painful changes. "However deep the water may be, we will wade into the water," he said. "This is because we have no alternative. Reform concerns the destiny of our country and the future of our nation." Urbanization, cutting bureaucracy, breaking up special interests—these are discussable topics.
Political reform—meaning any fundamental change to the Communist Party's monopoly on power—is not. The official line is that the Chinese Dream represents "the essence of Socialism with Chinese characteristics." Whatever socialism with Chinese characteristics means, it does not mean multiparty democracy or an independent judiciary.
The Iowa Connection
There's a personal footnote to Xi Jinping's relationship with the concept of national dreams. In 1985, years before he rose to power, a young Xi spent a couple of weeks staying with a rural family in Muscatine, Iowa. He was part of a Chinese agricultural delegation.
He saw the American Dream up close—the spacious homes, the abundance, the casual prosperity of middle America. When he became a "leader-in-waiting," he made a point of revisiting that same family during a trip to the United States.
What did he take from that experience? We can only speculate. But there's something poignant about the leader who would define the Chinese Dream having once slept in a spare bedroom in the American heartland, observing how a different society organized its aspirations.
A Dream for Export
The Chinese Dream isn't just domestic propaganda. It has become a foreign policy concept.
The Belt and Road Initiative—China's massive infrastructure investment program spanning dozens of countries—is explicitly connected to the dream. The idea is that Chinese prosperity can be shared, that building ports and railroads and power plants across Asia, Africa, and beyond represents China's contribution to global development.
Xi has also promoted what he calls a "Community of Shared Future for Mankind." This clunky phrase (it sounds better in Chinese) suggests that China's dream is somehow universal, that what's good for China is good for everyone.
During a 2015 visit to Latin America, Premier Li Keqiang spoke of sharing the Chinese Dream with the region, promoting "mutual learning in the fields of culture, education, and society." Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying told foreign audiences that "the Chinese Dream is also part of the dream of many in the developing world who now have a great opportunity to grow their economy."
Critics see this as soft-power expansion dressed up in idealistic language. Supporters see it as an alternative to Western-dominated development models. Either way, the dream has gone global.
What Dreams Reveal
National slogans are like inkblots. People project onto them what they want to see.
For some Chinese citizens, the Chinese Dream means homeownership, a good education for their children, clean food and clean air, maybe foreign travel and consumer goods. Material comfort and security.
For others, it means China commanding respect on the world stage, Chinese culture celebrated internationally, Chinese technology leading instead of following. National pride.
For party officials, it provides a legitimating framework—a story about why the Communist Party deserves to rule, what it has delivered, and what it promises to deliver.
For critics, the vagueness is suspicious. What does "rejuvenation" actually require? Whose vision of harmony prevails? When the dream excludes constitutionalism from the start, how free is the dreaming?
Xi Jinping himself offered one clarification in his expanded formulation:
The Chinese Dream, after all, is the dream of the people. We must realize it by closely depending on the people. We must incessantly bring benefits to the people.
That sounds democratic in a way—the dream belongs to the people, not just the party. But notice who defines what "benefits" means and who decides how to deliver them. The people dream; the party interprets.
Time and Momentum
Xi has said that China is in "the best development period since modern times" while the world is experiencing "profound change on a scale unseen in a century." He believes "time and momentum are on China's side."
This confidence rests on three observations: the accelerating rise of emerging economies relative to the West, the pace of technological change, and shifting patterns of global governance. From Beijing's perspective, the old American-led order is weakening, and China is positioned to fill the vacuum.
Whether this confidence is justified will be tested in the coming decades. The 2049 centenary is still far off. Between now and then, China faces demographic decline, environmental strain, geopolitical tensions, and the inherent challenges of sustaining growth in a middle-income country.
Dreams are easy. The waking work is hard.
The Treadmill and the Dream
There's a tension at the heart of the Chinese Dream that observers inside and outside China have noted. The dream promises both continued economic development and increased environmental protection. Both material abundance and sustainability. Both social harmony and national strength.
Academic Zhang Yiwu put it simply: "People need both cars and blue skies. How to achieve a balance between these two interests is a long-term challenge for the government."
And perhaps this is why the dream metaphor works so well for political purposes. Dreams don't have to be consistent. They can contain contradictions without collapsing. You can dream of being rich and simple, powerful and peaceful, traditional and modern—all at once.
The question is what happens when you wake up.