AN OPEN MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
In the infamous words of the cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” While many Americans are angrily looking about for an enemy, The People’s Republic of China has emerged as a significant challenge to the United States. But what is actually the greatest threat to American democracy? In this imaginary letter from the Chinese Communist Party to the American people, our country’s greatest threat gets explicitly spelled out. This may upset folks. I hope it does.
Of course, this is all just tongue in cheek. Or maybe not. . .
Dear America,
Hello neighbors! Your old friends at the Chinese Communist Party here. We understand that some of you are a little worried about the things we’ve been doing lately. So we decided to take a few moments away from our 100th year Anniversary celebration (Woo Hoo!) to assure you that we’re the last people on earth you need to be worrying about right now.
Yes, over the past several decades we’ve been transitioning dramatically. We switched our economic system from pure communism to a mixture of capitalism and state oversight. It was pretty obvious we needed to do that as soon as we saw communism collapse in the old Soviet Union. Oh, we still call ourselves communists. We’re still authoritarian. You might even call us a dictatorship. But as an economy? That’s different.
And the results speak for themselves, don’t they? Our economic growth is outpacing yours, pandemic or no pandemic. We have more people in our middle class than you have in your entire country. They’re all consumers, they’re all working, they’re all travelling, they’re all spending money. But most of all, they’re all growing our economy.
Your little trade war has really helped in this regard—thanks a lot for that. Sure, trade with your country has slowed. But because of all the uncertainty America has forced upon the rest of the world, more and more nations now see us as the trusted trade partner. While you were abandoning your allies and tearing up your treaties, we’ve been quietly sending a different message to the rest of the world: “See—you can’t trust America. New election? New President? It all disappears. America can’t be counted on the way it used to be.”
There was a time when your word was good. It didn’t matter who your president was, or what party was in power. The world always looked to America for leadership. They knew what you stood for. Democracy. Fairness. Justice. And a concern for the world as a whole.
That’s all out the window now, isn’t it? You may not know it, but every time you start blustering about “America First!” your allies realize they can’t depend on you. And if they’re vulnerable, they have to look out for themselves. And that means seeking other alliances wherever they can.
That’s where we come in. If the rest of the world can’t trust you, they still have to do business with us. Maybe not trust us. Maybe not even like us. But they know they have to strike deals with us to protect their own interests.
While you’ve been drawing inward and turning your back on the world, we’ve been expanding. Our Belt and Road Initiative will lock-in worldwide trade in a fashion you can’t even imagine. Right now, we have more economic development going on in Africa than you’ve ever dreamed of. And Europe? We’ve just signed one of the biggest trade deals in history with the European Union.
Your decision to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, of course, was a big plus for us, too. Can’t trust the U.S? Here we are!
The rest of the world sees this, even if you don’t. Every economic study shows our economy blowing past yours before 2030. How will you compete with us then with no allies? Where will your former allies turn if they can’t trust you, and you offer no leadership?
You know the answer. Us.
The idea of a single-party state doesn’t sound nearly as bad to the rest of the world now as it did when you were in your heyday. If the U.S. is really the great example of democracy, that “shining city on the hill,” then the rest of the world is getting pretty nervous about whatever it is that that’s supposed to mean.
You claim to be all about free elections, yet months after a clear decision, 40% of your own people think your last election was rigged. You keep counting ballots, over and over, for no other reason than to subvert the very democracy you claim to hold so dear. You already know the result. You just don’t care. Or maybe democracy just isn’t that important to you anymore.
The world watched in horror as you stormed your own capitol and tried to overthrow your own government. Well, most of the world watched in horror. We didn’t. We just sat back, laughed, and said thank you, America. Thank you very much.
The truth is, right now you are so utterly divided you couldn’t begin to deal with an advisory. No, we don’t mean militarily. We mean economically. Politically. You’ve nearly isolated yourselves completely, and you’re too self-absorbed to even see what’s happened. And you’re apparently too clueless to understand the long-term ramifications.
Q-Anon, Proud Boys, 3%er’s, Oath Keepers, Militias, you name it. The fact that so many of your people think these groups are making America great is music to our ears. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
We also really appreciate your disdain for anything that even sounds like science. Yes, we could be acting more quickly regarding climate change, but at least we recognize that it’s real. We don’t run around calling it an American hoax.
But it’s been the pandemic that’s really brought out the best in your science-denial lunacy. We fumbled the opening days of the pandemic, we admit that. But once we confronted the truth, we acted boldly and with purpose. We shut down Wuhan province. Our scientists sequenced the COVID viral genome in less than 36 hours. Our factories manufactured N-95 masks at a rate of 100 million per day. We had vaccines available by last July. And we’re now supplying them to over fifty countries around the world.
So much for that “Operation Warpspeed” of yours.
And yes, one party rule has its advantages. When we commit, we commit. No local governors whining about masks and lockdowns, or pushing quack-science. The result has been that we’ve come out of this pandemic faster and stronger than you.
Oh, yes, we know that about half of your country thinks either this virus is a hoax, or that it was intentionally caused by us (we suppose some people hold both opinions, which seems pretty dumb, but hey—you’re America). You’ll be happy to know that we have millions of people here who think the virus was smuggled into our country by your CIA. As your famous Senator Forrest Gump once said, “stupid is as stupid does.” It seems to work that way in all countries.
There was a time when your Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would have stepped in to lead the world out of this whole thing, but those days are long gone, aren’t they? But thanks for giving us a chance to replace you.
And what about science more fundamentally? While you’ve focused on cutting taxes, we’ve been plowing money into research facilities. We’ve landed a Rover on the dark side of the moon, something you haven’t come close to doing. We’ve transmitted messages with quantum encryption over 2,000 kilometers, and now we’re zeroing in on quantum supremacy. When that happens, your national data will be toast.
Also, a big shout out for your anti-immigration policies. This helps ensure that our scientists who might otherwise have relocated to Caltech, MIT, and Harvard will be staying right here at home and making their discoveries at our facilities.
Oh, we admit we haven’t always been the nicest guys. But you’ve given us plenty of cover. Sure, we’ve been brutal to the Uyghurs. But they’re Muslims. And half the rightwing nut jobs in your country think that all Muslims are terrorists. So why should we be any different? We’re just being careful, that’s all.
And maybe we were a little rough on those Hong Kong protestors. But you know all about that, don’t you? Those Black Lives Matter protestors, those Native Americans at Standing Rock? Sometimes you have to break a few bones to keep the peace, right? But regardless, at this point, no one else in the world thinks you have any moral authority to criticize us for what we do.
And your whole backing away from foreign aid (unless it involves selling fighter jets to Israel and Saudi Arabia) has really opened doors for us. We pitch in when you pull out. And it pays. Throughout the world, international media gives us great press while your coverage continues to slide. Don’t your schools teach anything about The Marshall Plan anymore? Remember, that’s how you once won the world, and set the stage for winning the cold war. But it’s sure not happening now, is it?
Speaking of school, what the hell is going on with your educational system, anyway? Most of your parents are more concerned about what their kids don’t learn in school, than what they actually do learn. Evolution, racial injustice, sexual identity, library books that seek to ask questions that parents don’t like—banning all of these things is way more important than whether a kid can actually read or write, much less know anything about calculus. Oh, that, and whether or not they get to start on Friday night for the local football team.
So you have lousy schools for the majority of your kids, and fancy private schools for the privileged few. And then the powerful use their influence to get their kids into your so-called “Ivy League” colleges, where they’ll be set for life. (Who was that guy that was your President’s son-in-law—you know, Kushner—who magically got accepted at Harvard shortly after his father had donated over a two million dollars to the School? And you guys call us corrupt😊).
And just for the record, Chinese students’ test scores, especially in Math and Science, continue to be some of the best in the world. Just one more example of how we’re blowing you away.
This stuff you keep yelling at each other baffles us, too. Cancel culture, wokeness, critical race theory (whatever that is). My God (that’s just an expression, we really don’t believe in God), you’d think you were arguing over really important stuff like mask mandates, vaccines, evolution, the big bang, viral exposure, or whether the earth is flat. Don’t get us started on powerful lights and injectable disinfectants to treat COVID. We have no idea what you’re thinking, but whatever it is, please, please keep thinking it. You just grow weaker every day, and we grow stronger.
Oh, and please keep demonizing immigrants, too. Keep calling women and children who are just trying to escape a land of death and destruction “rapist and murders.” Keep calling them caravans (a good way to dehumanize them, right?). Keep letting them die in the desert. The whole world remembers how you took in every Cuban who fled that country, but now slam the door in the face of people whose conditions are even more dire.
There’s a name for that. It’s called hypocrisy.
Most of all, keep physically attacking every Asian you can find. Videos of elderly Asian women being beaten on the streets of America make for great press around the world. Never mind that these people, whose ancestors happened to come from places like Japan, China, Korea, and Thailand, are just as “American” as you. Never mind that many have family members who fought and died in the American military. That doesn’t matter, does it? Just because their eyes are shaped differently, keep abusing them.
People look at these pictures in disbelief, then look at us. We just smile, shrug, and say, “well, I guess that’s democracy for you.”
Oh, we almost forgot. Your religion. Regardless of what “faith” you might claim, the whole world knows what you truly worship.
Your guns.
We admit, we shouldn’t find it amusing how you keep killing each other off in your country, then excuse it by saying, “that’s just the price we pay for our freedom.” But really? You’ve had your sacred second amendment for 200 years, but you were never anything like this.
But now, for whatever reason, you have this absolute fetish for guns. Maybe they make you feel safer. Maybe they make you feel powerful. But one thing is certain—you’re slowly killing yourselves off.
Vladimir Lenin supposedly said “when it comes time to get rid of the capitalists, they’ll sell us the rope to hang them with.” Who knows if he really said it or not, but one thing is certain. If he were alive today, he’d say something else: “When it comes time to get rid of the Americans, don’t worry about rope. Just make sure they have plenty of guns. They’ll do the job themselves.”
So keep believing that having a pile of guns “keeps you free” even though history doesn’t support it. The Soviet Union fell. Apartheid South Africa fell. What were the decisive battles of those wars, where people’s guns brought down the government?
You know the answer. There weren’t any.
But never mind. Please keep hoarding guns, and using them on one another. Keep passing laws that make it easier to carry them, display them, sell them, use them. Whatever. They won’t do a bit of good in a cyber-attack (and we hope it never comes to that), but it’ll sure make the job a lot easier for your attacker. Because there won’t be nearly as many of you around.
We sometimes watch old American television. Some of it’s actually pretty entertaining. One of our favorites was the old science fiction show called “The Twilight Zone.” One episode speaks loud and clear to America today. It’s called “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.” Fortunately, most Americans haven’t seen it. And most probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. So just forget we even mentioned it, OK?
We admit that we’re not quite sure what to think about your new guy, Biden. He’s pushing buy American and all of that stuff. Good luck with that. The way you people think, half of your country will buy even more of our goods just to spite him.
But we are worried that he’ll start to reengage with the rest of the world. The last thing we want to see is America rebuilding its international partnerships. But we’ll see. As we’ve said, we think America has decided that its own internal politics are the only thing that matters. So we predict you’ll continue to drift off, further and further, into your own little world, regardless of which of your political parties is in charge. And we’ll just grow stronger.
So that’s where we see things, America. We’re passing you up economically and commanding more and more of the spotlight on the world stage. Really, for us, Donald Trump could not have come along at a better time.
It’s much like that old folk tale about the tortoise and the hare. While you, the speedy hare, have been snoozing and basking in your past glory, we, the tortoise, have been gradually plodding along and catching up. But in our story, there’s a twist. Now the tortoise has sprouted wings and we are flying away from you faster and faster.
All things end, including empires. From the Moguls to the Khmer, from the Incas to the Aztecs, from the French to the British, there have always been nations who believed they were the strongest in the world. And maybe they were, for a while. But eventually even the British—the empire upon which the sun would never set—saw its light grow dim. It bowed to a new empire—America.
And now you are about to be eclipsed by us. Perhaps it was inevitable. But the 21st century will be remembered as the time that China became the dominant empire. How many centuries will we last? Who knows?
Or perhaps not. There might always be the chance, no matter how slim, that you will awaken and recognize that we’re not the ones you have to fear, rather it’s yourselves and your own ignorance and divisiveness. You might just reunite as a nation, reengage the rest of the world, promote your principles of democracy and justice, and once again become the dominant force in forming alliances throughout the globe.
Yes, perhaps you will. But we aren’t holding our breath.
You see America, it’s not us you need to be worried about. It’s you. The rest of the world sees this very clearly. It’s a shame you can’t.
But what a gift it is to us!
Love and Kisses,
The Communist Party Central Committee of The People’s Republic of China, Beijing