Text of the Manifesto

Manifesto on

Sino-US Relations and the Future of Humanity

China Strategic Analysis Center Inc

January 1, 2021, New York

The year 2021 marks the 110th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Over the past century, China has traveled an extremely uneven road, and its national mission to build a modern civilization remains unfulfilled.

The year 2021 also marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. involvement in East Asian affairs that led to the Washington Naval Conference and the Nine PowerTreaty, and the 50th anniversary of Dr. Kissinger's secret visit to China to create the conditions for a renewed handshake between China and the United States.

And now, with the end of the Cold War and the rise of China, the Sino-US relationship faces new challenges. The challenges are both ideological and nation-state related, and the two are intertwined, complex and cold. With the Covid epidemic raging, the U.S. / China relationship is in flux again. Many believe that unlike the "engagement," "marriage," and cooperation of the past, it will be confrontation that is the major trend in the future evolution of U.S. / China relations. Some war hawks in U.S. politics and radicals in the anti-communist Chinese democracy movement particularly welcome this confrontation, expecting it to deliver the "final blow" to the Chinese Communist Party.

The China Strategic Analysis Center does not share sucha position. Our think tank is based on constitutional liberalism and its mission is to promote China's democratization.However, we believe that the Sino-US confrontation is not only unfavorable to the development of the two countries, and not conducive to China's democratic transition, but it also conflicts with the future well-being of humanity. These beliefs are based on the changesto the respective national strengths of China and the United States, a re-examination based on the political and philosophical basis of state-to-state relationships, and on the many limitations imposed on mankind by the natural world and the common ecological dangers faced by mankind.Instead, we believe that principled cooperation is what the two countries should strive for in the future.

In order to fully explain the rationale, to remind politicians of both countries about understanding the real situation of China and the United States and the background to how this came about, and to clarify the basic principles and reasonable boundaries for handling relations between the two countries, the think tank issues the following manifesto:

One

China is a country which hashad thousands of years of civilization. From 1500, the old-fashioned nature of its civilization became more and more obvious, and then in the 19^th century, it was confronted with the great challenge posed by modern European civilizations. The Opium War marked the first clashbetween the two civilizations and provided an opportunity for the Chinese to bid farewell to the pre-modern era and step into modern society. Unfortunately, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty were caught up inthe outdated mentality of the "celestial dynasty" and narrow "tribal" self-interests that delayed the country’s convergence with the modern world. At this time, the new and old powers such as Russia, Japan, Britain and France took advantage of the opportunity to enter China, and the tributary system collapsed, leaving China almost completely at the mercy of those powers and in a state of extreme decline. As a result, the Chinese people were faced with two major historical tasks that had to be accomplished: first, to build an independent, unified and powerful modern nation-state in order to wash away the national shame and re-establish itself in the pantheon of the world's nations (please note: nation-state here does not mean a single Han nation-state, but a multi-ethnic nation-state with the coexistence of Han, Tibetan, Manchurian, Mongolian and Uighur people); second, to build a good constitutional democratic system to promote the construction of the nation-state, while completing the great transformation from the former modern imperial autocracy to a modern constitutional democracy. These two historical tasks were the consensus of several generations of sages from the late Qing Dynasty,through to the Republic of China, regardless of whether the modern system they envisioned was a constitutional monarchy or a democratic republic.

After the establishment of the Republic, China had two opportunities to modernize its politics within the framework of authoritarianism, once by Yuan Shikai, who could have revitalized the country by the peaceful withdrawal of the Qing court and the final reunification of the North and the South. This would have eliminated the accumulated ills and could have been an attempt to build a democratic political system. However, because of the wrong positioning of the Provisional Treaty Law, the assassination of Song Jiaoren, the re-division of Sun Wen's second revolution, and Yuan Shikai's own restoration as emperor, this attempt was doomed to failure.Thenthe second opportunity was for Jiang Jieshi. His Nanjing government promoted nation-state building and democratic politics within the framework of the Three People's Principles of "party rule" and "government by training", with the goal of "returning government to the people". The program was clear and reasonable but was ultimately lost due to the invasion of foreign enemies and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party.

The United States, on the other hand, is a completely different type of country.Since its independence and the founding of the Philadelphia Constitution, the young nation had a strong sense of a religious mission as God's chosen people, a beacon of human freedom; as well as a tradition of trade imperialism inherited from the British Empire, which expanded its national interests beyond the Americas. These constituted two benchmarks for the tense national positioning of the U.S.

In the mid-19th century, the U.S. opened the Japanese market by force, just as Britain had opened the Chinese market, forcing Japan to move from "repelling foreigners" to "founding a country". While Japan was rapidly emerging as the new star of East Asia, the United States used the Washington Conference, from November 1921 to February 1922, to curb Japan's expansionist momentum and favored China over the Shandong issue. From the end of World War I and President Wilson's 14-point peace initiative, idealism and realism in U.S. diplomacy had always been in harmony, representing the two dimensions of the nation's spiritual and secular interests, respectively.

In terms of Sino-US relations, the United States was friendly to China in the first half of the 20th century, sympathizing with China's sufferings and ensuring that justice was done towards China on many occasions in the international sphere. The United States was the first to advocate the return of Gengzi reparation money to support China's universities and hospitals, and this was how the Tsinghua Preparatory School was founded, which formed the predecessor of Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities, as well as the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, which was also a product of the Gengzi reparations money. The United States also looked to China to build a modern democratic system of government. Marshall's mediation with the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party after China's victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and his desire to bring about the establishment of a bipartisan coalition government are stark examples of this, while Marshall's failure proved that understanding China and Chinese culture was still a high mountain for Americans to climb.

Two

The success of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, which put an end to the Kuomintang's efforts to build a constitutional state, was a huge distortion in the evolution of modern Chinese history in terms of the larger logic of Chinese political modernization. The radical class struggle program of International Communismand the Chinese Communist Party led to the failure of the first Communist Party-Nationalist Party cooperation, and the equally radical economic and social policies pursued by Mao Zedong after the establishment of the government in 1949 created a large number of "class enemies", and China seemed even further away from freedom and democracy. However, the People's Republic of China has been in existence for more than 70 years, a long period of peace and freedom from war that is unparalleled in China’s history, and the ruling Communist Party of China has spared no effort to build a strong, modern nation-state.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward", which ignored common sense and economic science, led to a famine and the unfortunate death of tens of millions of people, the greatest human tragedy of the Communist Party in times of peace, but this fact does not deny Mao's ambition of “catching up” and creating a rich country with a strong army. The Cultural Revolution challenged human nature and denied the profit motive as the basic motive of human production, but also did not deny the goal of modernization itself, although it only promoted modernization in an anti-modern form. China's "two bombs and one star" were the symbols of the modernization achievements of the Mao era. Deng Xiaoping learned from the lessons of the Cultural Revolution, promoted reform and the opening up of the nation. He recognized the market economy, which led to the rapid development of China's nation-state building, however, Deng inherited Mao's unity, and not even the slightest challenge to the Communist Party’s leadership was allowed. Although there were many efforts to achieve freedom and democracy inside and outside the system in the 1980s, they were all stifled by the conservative Chinese Communist Party patriarchal forces. China's two major historical missions, the dynasties of Mao and Deng, have always been divided!

The relationship between China and the United States during this period has undergone a transformation from being enemies to shaking hands and making peace. The Sino-U.S. hostility was a product of the Cold War.The Korean War that broke out in 1950 brought Chinese and U.S. soldiers into direct confrontation on the Korean battlefields, and for the next 20 years, relations between the two countries were ice cold. It was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when China had a falling out with the Soviet Union and was anxious to get out of the dilemma of fighting on both sides that it had the need to make peace with the U.S. The U.S. also needed China's help because it was trapped in the Vietnam War and was interested in dividing the two communist countries, so it decided to beckon to Beijing. This led to Kissinger's secret visit to China in 1971 and President Nixon's "ice-breaking trip" in 1972. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping's official visit to the United States in 1979 established the pattern of "China's opening up mainly to the United States" and the relationship between the two countries entered a "honeymoon" period.

China needed U.S. technology and management to promote China's modernization, and the U.S. needed China to counterbalance the Soviet Union and hoped that China would make political progress through economic development. Even after such a shocking and horrific incident in China as Tiananmen Square in 1989, President Bush Sr. sent his special assistant to Beijing in secret to communicate. With the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union, the U.S. remained "engaged" with China, both for the White House's strategic considerations and from Wall Street's economic pressure. The United States not only renounced sanctions against China by decoupling MFN and human rights (1994), but also supported China's accession to the WTO (2001). The market economy awakened the desire of countless Chinese to become rich, and integration into globalization added wings to China's economic take-off. By 2010, China's GDP surpassed that of Japan, making it the second largest economy in the world after the United States.

Three

China today is a radically different country than it was 100 years ago. In the first of its two major historical tasks, China has made a proud achievement, it is no longer the "sick man of East Asia" - a decaying and decrepit country at the mercy of the great powers - but has leapt into the eyes of the Western public as a world power. It has 400 million people living a decent life at or above the middle-class level, and another billion who are experiencing varying degrees of improvement. Its high-speed rail and highway system runs from north to south, east to west, with the highest track mileage in the world. It is not only the "factory of the world", but also has the most complete manufacturing industry system in the world and the largest market in the world. It is building a powerful blue-water navy;since Zheng He's famous voyages to the West, it has been 600 years since the Chinese could dream of such a navy again. Its BeiDou satellite navigation system is so good that it rivals the long dominant U.S. GPS. It has also landed on the moon and is even looking more distantly to Mars. However, China remains an authoritarian regime under the one-party rule of the Communist Party. Under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, there were calls for democratization, and in 2008 the Charter 08 came out, but none of these were met with any goodwill by those in power. In the years since Xi Jinping came to power, the CCP has become even more severe in its crackdown on freedom of speech and religion. It has invented a tightly organized, and effectively enforced system of Internet control. It still employs the Cultural Revolution style of worshiping individual and singing the praises of Xi, the top leader. It controls university education, monopolizes the right to interpret history, and suppresses the development of civil society. It has turned all media into the "mouthpiece of the Party. It has created a system of national surveillance with the help of modern big data technology. It used this system to fight the new epidemic with extraordinary success, and immediately boasted that it reflected "the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The divisive coexistence between the outcomes of two major historical missions is the most paradoxical landscape in China today. Externally, Beijing is "entering the center of the world stage" in a more aggressive manner, and the achievements of Chinese nation-state building are becoming the basis and weapon of the Chinese Communist Party to export the "Chinese model" to the outside world. The "Red Empire" no longer expects to promote a Maoist-style world revolution but does seek to expand its global influence and extend its tentacles to the far-flung continent of Africa and even to Latin America. Its "community of human destiny" rhetoric, based on Confucian ethics, seeks to portray itself as an alternative to American-style hegemony, and it wants to use such "values diplomacy" to occupy the moral high ground in international relations.

What about the United States? With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the world's only superpower and most powerful democracy, and the future of humanity seemed bright. However, Russia and China are re-emerging on their respective tracks, but the United States is caught in the quagmire of counter-terrorism due to September 11 and has long been entangled in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or post-war reconstruction, which makes the United States very anxious. What’s more troubling was the election of Mr. Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016, the first president in U.S. history who had no values and didn’t care about anything, and a very rare president in history who was selfish, narcissistic and capricious. In less than four years, Trump quickly returned the country to a jungle-style world in the name of "America First" and overshadowed American democracy. The Trump administration's indifference and irresponsibility to global public affairs have been underscored by a series of "retreats" that have horrified its traditional allies. President Trump has waged a trade war against Beijing by raising tariffs based on absurd and bizarre Trumpian logic (a trade deficit means the U.S. is "losing"). Instead, his hawkishcolleagues - Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo - awakened to the threat from Beijing and renewed an ideological cold war. When the new epidemic broke out and the U.S. failed to respond, Trump and the Republicans launched a series of "blame dumping" operations to try to make China take the blame. Under these heavy blows, the relationship between China and the United States quickly hit the bottom, turningthem from friends to enemies again. Confrontation has become the main theme for the relationship between the two countries.

Four

However, how can we understand such a "confrontation"? Is "confrontation" really fruitful?

On the surface, whether it is the speeches of Pence and Pompeo or the bills passed by the U.S. Congress on the issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the U.S. fight against the Chinese Communist dictatorship seems to be full of moral righteousness. Pompeo even calls for a distinction between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people, as if the U.S. is continuing the cause of human freedom by raising the banner of freedom and democracy. However, the Trump administration's behavior is still too deeply branded with a jungle-style mindset where the strongest beast wins, and its crackdown on Chinese high-tech companies such as Huawei, ByteDance, and Tencent, in the name of "national security",reflectsthe behavior of a “Number 1" who cannot tolerate a "second" one standing shoulder to shoulder with it. The United States, which has been glorious for 100 years, often shows its arrogance, and is full of natural hostility to others who look to overtake it.

So, the behavior of the United States is complex. During the Trump presidency, the entanglement between traditional American positions on democratic values and the realistic policy considerations of "America First," the desire to rekindle the beacon of freedom (let's assume that Pence and others express such a desire in their speeches) and the geopolitical concern about the new rising power are so intertwined. One wonders whether that new U.S. policy was a continuation of the traditional "American spirit," or whether it was based on selfish nation-state interests, or even just the hysteria of an untrustworthy president. Of course, Mr. Biden has now been elected as the new President of the United States, thank goodness! We can now expect a major change in American politics.

The Chinese side is equally complicated. China is a bundle of a nation-state and a party-state and while Beijing's reaction to Washington's challenge is certainly first and foremost for the self-preservation of the Communist regime, since the CCP is the ruling power in the People's Republic of China, threats to the CCP regime from outside can in turn be interpreted as threats to the PRC as a nation-state. In fact, this is exactly how Zhongnanhai (State Administration for Governmental Affairs) has declared this threat to its 1.4 billion nationals, and, given the jungle attributes contained in American behavior, such an interpretation is not totally wrong. From a liberal constitutional standpoint, we oppose the CCP's packaging of the interests of the regime as the interests of the nation-state, even to the detriment of the interests of the nation-state for the sake of the regime, but we also recognize that in this new jungle-style world, the CCP, as the ruler of the People's Republic of China, does objectively bear the responsibility of defending the interests of the nation-state of China, and that when it fulfills this responsibility, it is rightly supported by the entire population. Historically, it has often been the case that when external challenges are encountered, the regime's identity as the guardian of national interests comes to the fore, and the nature of the regime itself tends to fade and take a back seat.

Whether the confrontation between the U.S. and China is ideological democracy versus authoritarianism, or "No. 1" versus "No. 2" in the Thucydides sense, or both, we must ask: Will such a confrontation be fruitful? China's GDP today is about two-thirds of that of the United States, and it is expected to surpass the United States as the world's number one in the next five years (or at most 10 years). While China's overall national power is still far inferior to that of the United States, the further narrowing of this gap will be the general trend in the future. Given this fact, a more accurate question would be: Does the United States still have the ability to achieve its goal of suppressing China / the Chinese Communist Party, containing China's development and the rise of the Red Empire? It can be said that given the size of China today and the relative strengths of the U.S. and China, even if the U.S. is fully determined to defend democracy and "save" China, its economic suppression, technological blockades, diplomatic sieges, and military intimidation are no longer sufficient to contain China and the CCP, and it probably means that it would “kill one thousand of the enemy at the cost of eight hundred" or even "kill eight hundred of the enemy at the expense of one thousand". The jungle-style element of U.S. behavior will greatly reduce or perhaps even completely offset the moralistic content of this former beacon of freedom. While China is still ruled by the Communist Party, jungle-style repression from the outside will in turn stimulate patriotic feelings among the Chinese people and give the rulers the perfect opportunity to mobilize nationalism. China's 100-years of national shame comes to the fore at this time, and the slogan of "national rejuvenation" will not only enhance the legitimacy of the rulers, but the resulting national strength will greatly improve China's overall resistance to being bullied as a nation-state. It is definite that a confrontation between China and the United States will not be fruitful and there can be no winner, only a lose-lose situation. Trade war escalation, economic decoupling, financial decoupling, arms race ......, the two countries can play it this way, but in the end, the United States cannot break the Chinese Communist Party, not to mention China. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party will also not be able to destroy the United States. However, how many resources will be used by the two countries to prevent and fight each other in this way? How much of the world's resources will be directly or indirectly involved in such a vicious fight between China and the United States? It will be an incalculable amount!

Five

The larger issue is that the ecological peril facing humanity no longer allows for such a confrontation between China and the United States.

Fifty years ago, the Club of Rome wrote the study "The Limits to Growth" to warn of coming global problems. Half a century of developments later and the scientists' pessimistic predictions are becoming reality. Mankind's uncontrolled production and consumption is causing enormous damage to the environment, which is already having increasingly serious consequences. The greenhouse effect is intensifying, the North and South Pole glaciers are melting, climate extremes are frequent, a large number of plants and animals are extinct or on the verge of extinction, and the survival of mankind itself is in the balance. The only ones who can save the earth and mankind, are mankind themselves. But the politicians of the big countries seem to be surprisingly slow to understand this. They are still calculating their own gains and losses, drunk on the selfish calculations of their respective nation-states in the struggles with each other. Politicians and state activists represent the interests of each country, but of course they are not as smart and sophisticated as scientists, and these politicians embody the animal nature of human beings, and if human beings cannot transcend this animal nature, then human beings will definitely not have a future.

As the world's largest economies, the United States and China naturally bear a great responsibility to defend the planet. In the face of the common ecological crisis facing humanity, all ideological rivalries and nation-state rivalries seem less important. If sea levels continue to rise, in less than 50 or 100 years, large areas of Shanghai and New York will be submerged, regardless of whether they are Chinese or American, and regardless of whether they are surnamed "socialist" or "capitalist". The United States is rich in its natural resources, with Wyoming and other landlocked states still having large areas of undeveloped virgin land, unlike China's large population and smaller availability of arable land, which is limited to 1.8 billion acres. However, the United States is not immune to the threat of global climate change, as evidenced by the frequent hurricanes off the southeast coast and the raging California fires. In such a context, the world's major powers, including the United States and China, are still spending huge sums of money to produce arms, in competition with each other in avicious circle; is there a more stupid suicide than this? Wouldn't the money be better spent on improving the environment, eradicating famine, and fighting common public health disasters, like this novel corona pandemic? Restraining the animal nature of human beings, transcending the narrow vision of a jungle style world, and dealing with the problems of human beings themselves are the prerequisites for human beings to live in harmony with nature.

Six

In short, China and the United States should cooperate, not confront each other. This is not only the need for China and the United States, but it is also the need of the world, the need of mankind. Of course, cooperation should be principled, and by "principled" I meannot avoiding the profound differences and even confrontations between the social systems and ideologies of the two countries, but fully respecting the legitimate national interests of each. In the area of global public affairs, which is a matter of human welfare, China and the United States should cooperate wholeheartedly and assume the responsibility of a great power.

Where does China - U.S. cooperation begin? Taiwan.

The Taiwan issue is a legacy of the Communist civil war 70 years ago and has become a focal point of Sino-US relations because of the Cold War. The cross-strait issue of course has strong ideological implications: an authoritarian mainland versus a democratic Taiwan, so the free world naturally sides with Taiwan. But the cross-strait issue is at the same time a subject that must be confronted in the construction of the Chinese nation-state: a rising power cannot tolerate the permanent separation and fragmentation of a part of itself, especially considering that this part was for a long time humiliatingly ceded to a foreign country.When China and the United States established diplomatic relations in 1979, the United States recognized that there was only one China and Taiwan was a part of China. However, the United States Congress reaffirmed its commitment to Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act. In recent years, the Taiwan issue has become increasingly complicated and even heterogeneous as the power of China and the United States has waxed and waned and geopolitical conflicts have intensified. For Washington, Taiwan is still a symbol of Chinese democracy that should be protected (at least in theory), but in the "Thucydides conflict" with China (where the "No. 1" is controlling the "No. 2"),the geostrategic value of Taiwan is also coming to the fore. For Beijing, the recovery of Taiwan is certainly conducive to the security of the party and state, and is an inevitable step toward the reunification of the Chinese nation and its rejuvenation, and precisely because of the intensification of the siege from the United States, the deployment must be accelerated in order to tear apart and break the U.S. strategic encirclement. The current military tensions in the Taiwan Strait are formed in this vicious interaction, and it is becoming a hot spot of conflict between China and the United States.

Based on hownation-states usually get along together, the close reconnaissance by U.S. naval and air forces across the Taiwan Strait from mainland China is excessive and would not be accepted by any major power. The U.S. military presence in Japan and South Korea, which began in the Cold War era as a response to the Soviet Union, has become a ready-made tool to contain China. The United States is also intensifying its efforts to build a "Quadruple Alliance" of the United States, Japan, Australia and India to "resist China's expansion" in the broader Indo-Pacific region. In response, Beijing will have to strengthen its alliance with Moscow, join forces with Iran, and consolidate the construction of islands in the South China Sea to secure offshore oil routes. Taiwan is a key area in this game for both sides. However, if this fight continues, not only will there be no solution (as mentioned above), but Taiwan will also become a victim of the fight between the two sides. The U.S. has not indicated that it would send troops to help Taiwan in a cross-straits military conflict but has deliberately maintained the so-called "strategic ambiguity", because the U.S. military is well aware that it has no certainty of victory in a war on China's doorstep. Yet the U.S. is selling a large number of advanced weapons to Taiwan, trying to turn Taiwan into an armed fortress against mainland China. This is extremely irresponsible. Even if it is for the sake of Taiwan's democracy, such a policy will only put Taiwan's 23 million people in danger.

The time has come to change this terrible reality. Taiwan would be safer if the United States ceased its close surveillance of mainland China, reduced or even stopped its arms sales to Taiwan, and changed its traditional policy of encircling China along the "first island chain”. The U.S. should realize that even according to the rules and traditions of the great power game, it is inevitable that "spheres of influence" will be redrawn between powers in close proximity to each other, not to mention the common ecological crisis facing mankind that makes such a balanced concept obsolete and outdated. By no longer arming Taiwan, or in a sense "abandoning" it, and by keeping U.S. military forces away from China's doorstep, the United States would demonstrate its respect for another great power and this could constitute the real beginning of cooperation between the two countries. Moreover, from the perspective of China's democratic transformation, the more insecure they are from the outside, the more internal controls are needed; when the outside is secure, internal changes are likely to occur instead.

As far as the Chinese are concerned, cross-strait reunification is what will happen. We advocate sincere dialogue between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait on the issue of reunification and finding institutional arrangements that are acceptable to both sides. From a constitutional liberal standpoint, we certainly hope for true democracy with the cross-strait reunification; if this is not possible at the moment, then the next best thing is for Taiwan to be incorporated into the motherland while retaining its system, which is the goal that should be preserved. The result of an "armed reunification" must be one country, one system, in substance rather than in form. More importantly, "armed reunification" will result in fratricide and destruction of life and soul, which must be avoided at all costs. As a complete Chinese nation, the success of nation-state building precedes the success of building a political democracy, which is why Taiwan has to face the paradox of today. However, this is the situation, so we can only take advantage of it. We hope that the Chinese Communist Party will show historical generosity in dealing with cross-strait reunification. We also believe that China's two major historical missions will eventually converge as time goes on, and on this issue, politicians and pursuers of the cause of democracy, on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, should have wide vision and look at the big picture.

Seven

Democracy is the unfinished business of mankind. Democracy is a work in progress, never a finished one. For China and the United States, they have different challenges to overcome now and for some time to come.

The goal of democratization in China remains the same: to end the irrational structure of public power monopolized by a single political group. On the basis of the historic achievements already made in building the Chinese nation-state, there is no reason to delay the building of Chinese democracy any longer. Admittedly, the conditions for China's democratization have changed profoundly. China's democratic transformation will take place in a context of growing affluence and an increasingly middle-class society as a whole, and will no longer be the product of economic crisis or collapse. As people's aspirations for a better life continue to be met, they will develop a greater sense of the right to be more dignified, more engaged citizens in political and public affairs. The Internet era also provides brand-new technical means for citizens to participate in politics. In fact, 40 years of reform and opening up have accumulated enormous potential for civil democratization, and many of the rule-of-law initiatives launched by governments at all levels are precisely the result of the long-standing appeals and relentless resistance from civil pressure or political opposition. In a mega-state like China, democratic transformation will not happen overnight, but neither can it be put on hold for a long time. We hope that the 100-year-old CCP will recognize the future, overcome its arrogance and vested interests, and realize that sooner or later it will have to take the step of giving up its monopoly of public power. The CPC has made great efforts and historical contributions in building the Chinese nation-state, which the people will not forget. But the Chinese Communist Party's long-standing hegemony over public power, under whatever name, is still the traditional logic of pre-modern rivalry and of sitting on top of a mountain and is inconsistent with the basic norms of modern political civilizations. China's two major historical missions will surely converge, and the distorted political modernization process will be corrected. What is needed is courage and time. We believe that there is no shortage of insightful people in the Communist Party, and that the efforts of the people to pursue freedom and democracy have been passed on from generation to generation. Difficulties and the conditions to overcome them, and the efforts to solve them, will always go hand in hand. For the sake of China's future, we are willing to work together with our colleagues inside and outside the system.

Xinjiang and Tibet play a pivotal role in China's nation-state building and national security, and this is the same in both today's China and in China after democratization. It is precisely for this reason that we reiterate our criticism of Beijing's suppression and imprisonment of our Uighur brothers and sisters in the name of counter-terrorism and "extremism", not in the interests of national security, but to the detriment of it, because the lack of respect for human rights inevitably leads to centrifugal tendencies among ethnic minorities, with unfortunate and far-reaching consequences. We believe that the central government must respect the right to regional autonomy and religious freedom granted to ethnic regions by the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which is the fundamental policy designed to ensure the long-term stability of ethnic regions. The central government should restart dialogue with the Dalai Lama, and Beijing should take seriously the moderate and rational demands of Tibetans in exile for a "middle way". Respect for the language, religion, and cultural heritage of ethnic areas is particularly important, as language is the root of a people, and the promotion of a common national language and the care and preservation of ethnic languages should go hand in hand. The history of the failed reform of Tibetan affairs centered on Sinicization by officials of the late Qing Dynasty is a lesson worth learning. Hong Kong is the pearl of China. It is equally important to protect Hong Kong's status as a free port for international trade and to maintain its long-term economic prosperity. The fundamental prerequisite for maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity is to stabilize the hearts and minds of the people of Hong Kong, implement the rule of law in Hong Kong, and fulfill the central government's promise of dual universal suffrage for Hong Kong people. Efforts to enhance national security should not create a climate of fear in Hong Kong, let alone become an excuse to stifle all critical voices. After the confrontation between China and the United States has lessened and the threat at our doorstep has diminished, a relatively relaxed internal and external environment should help enhance the security of those in power, facilitate cooperation within and outside the system, and help initiate political reform and democratic transformation. Whether sooner or later, that day will eventually come.

China's democratization is an important prerequisite for humanity to build a common home at a higher level, and in this sense, China's democratization is about China and about the world. The future Chinese democratic system will not be a simple imitation of any country but must be motivated by the needs of Chinese society itself, but we will carefully study the valuable experience of constitutions in other countries and learn from their lessons as well. The pursuers of China's democratic cause welcome insightful people from all over the world, governments and NGOs to support China's human rights cause and to give moral solidarity to the Chinese people's struggle for freedom of speech, association and religion, which transcends the borders of sovereignty and is a vivid expression of public reason at the level of humanity as a whole.

Eight

The United States is a nation with a great tradition of freedom. For most of the past 100 years, the United States has contributed greatly to the advancement of humanity. However, the backslidingthat has occurred in recent years in American democracy has been heartbreaking. In order for the beacon of freedom to shine again, the United States needs to start by examining the shortcomings of its own democratic institutions and reflecting on the existing problems in American society. The division in America today is not the fault of President Trump alone. Some observers say that the problem of the United States is not Trump butinstead is the "Trump fans". What createdthese "Trump fans"? This is to do with the widening of the gap between rich and poor in the United States over the past 40 years, the accentuation of social inequality, racial conflicts, immigration conflicts, the emergence of right-wing extremist groups, etc. In terms of political structure, Trump's election and four years in office have exposed some inherent flaws in the U.S. electoral system, the two-party system, and the system of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Within a short period of time, Trump, a "political illiterate", has transformed the Republican Party into the "Trump Party", while the polarized and vicious fighting between the Republican and Democratic parties based on partisan interests has caused the checks and balances of the legislature on the executive to nearly fail. The constitutional crisis highlighted by the U.S. election and the presidential transition has brought people to the most dangerous time in American democracy. Although the U.S. judiciary at all levels, including the Supreme Court, has resisted the "unfounded lawsuits" of the Trump team, the problem is far from being solved. Some even advocate the use of violence to overturn the U.S. election results. People around the world who love democracy expect the United States to break free from such a situation as soon as possible. It could be said that the greatest contribution to the cause of democracy in the world would be for the United States to solve its own problems and restore the vitality of the democratic system. We also believe that the American people will learn from the painful experience and cut out the poisonous tumor from the body of America as soon as possible. This is, after all, a country with a tradition of freedom and great creativity. America will be "great again”.

As for U.S.-China relations, we believe that the U.S. side should take the following position: in the area of values, adhere to the basic principles of freedom, democracy and human rights, continue to criticize and expose the authoritarian policies pursued by the Chinese Communist Party in China, and continue to warn and resist the Red Empire's export of its authoritarian model to the outside world. But in the area of national relations, the United States and China should stop confronting and attacking each other as nation-states, learn to think differently, respect each other, and do their best to cooperate in global public affairs. The taint of authoritarian toxins on humanity today is certainly not to be underestimated; the clash of values and social systems will continue for quite some time on this planet, not only between the United States and China, but also among the various civilizations and religious faiths that exist here. But the competition between values, between democratic and authoritarian systems, should be conducted in a peaceful manner, based on who is more culturally and technologically creative, who is more capable of satisfying the material needs of human beings and freedom in the spiritual sphere, who is more capable of promoting effective governance of human groups at different levels without losing the dignity of each individual, and through such competition to identify which ideology is more rational, which system of government is more representative of the development and future of human civilization. In these respects, we believe that the values of liberal democracy still occupy a higher rung on the human evolutionary ladder.

Nine

The future of the world depends not only on China and the United States, but also on the joint efforts of all countries. No matter how strong or weak a country is, no matter how big or small a nation is, they are all part of the human family. In the geopolitical sense, the global political blocks of the future will tend to have diversified patterns, and no longer will a single power dominate. Supranational associations such as the European Union, post-Brexit Britain, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Korea, Australia, Iran, South Africa, and other developed or rising countries will all assume roles in determining the future fate of the planet.

It is for this reason that this manifesto re-emphasizes that we must learn to live together.

While defending the boundaries and legitimate interests of our respective nation-states, we should clearly understand the limited nature of nation-states, curb each other's ambitions, suppress our selfish impulses, and learn mutual understanding and compromise as a prerequisite for a higher level of coexistence. The United Nations and other international institutions should play a greater role in this regard. The adjustment, reorganization or renewal of the international order should be aimed at enhancing the overall security of mankind. Put more resources, wisdom and money into saving our common home! There is not a lot of time left to save the Earth for mankind, we must not hesitate any longer!

China and the United States, as great nations, should do better and excel in all these areas. Let our two countries work together!

Based on the above historical, philosophical, and strategic analysis, the think tank will make a number of policy recommendations to those in power in China and the United States, respectively, as two annexes to this manifesto.

Annex I: "China Strategic Analysis Center’s Proposal to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Political Reform and Adjustment of Foreign Policy and International Strategy on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China".

Annex II: "China Strategic Analysis Center's Proposal to the New U.S. Administration on Restructuring U.S.-China Strategic Relations and Promoting International Peace and Development.

Written by: Zhang Boshu

Panelists: Li Weidong, Zhang Boshu, and Deng Yuwen

Acknowledgement of scholars who participated in the discussion: Liu Yawei, Chen Jun, Gu Weiqun, Rong Wei, Zhang Aimei, and others.