Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao website published an article titled "Americans Begin to Lose Self-Confidence" on January 26, written by Han Dongping, a professor of political science at the Warren Wilson College in the United States. The full text is excerpted below:
Recently, the world's largest public relations consulting firm Edelman published the "2022 Global Trust Barometer" shows that Chinese trust in the government reached 91%, an increase of 9 percentage points year-on-year, accounting for the top of the list of 27 surveyed countries; Americans' trust in the government fell to 39%, down 5 percentage points year-on-year. The findings of this survey, produced by a well-known Public Relations firm in the United States, have attracted attention again.
In 2019, Harvard University released a 13-year survey of all sectors of China from 2003 to 2016, and found that Chinese support for the government reached 93.5%. Like Edelman's survey results this time, Harvard's survey results shocked Western academics.
In 1990, I went to the United States to study, first at the University of Vermont and then at Brandeis University. But as soon as I arrived in the United States, I was shocked by the polarization in the United States. In Vermont, I live in poor areas, and many of my poor neighbors are illiterate, have no jobs, and rely on social assistance to survive, and drugs, racial discrimination, high crime rates, etc., let me see another side of American society. Most U.S. students don't think it's a problem. In their view, there is a poor and bad side to any society.
In class, whenever professors and classmates discuss the so-called "superiority of American democracy," I point out the polarization of the United States, stubbornly believing that the United States can do better, such as providing a proper job for the poor, so that they can support themselves and enjoy the dignity of human beings. But I failed to get any professors and classmates to accept my point of view. I studied at an American university for eight years, and none of my teachers and classmates agreed with me.
In 1998, I graduated with a Ph.D. and began teaching political science at American Universities. When I criticized the inadequacy of "American-style democracy," some American students were very unaccustomed, and some students wrote to the principal, saying that I was anti-American and asking the principal to expel me.
In 2005, I wrote a short article in The New York Times questioning the newspaper's coverage of China. After the essay was published, many people wrote to our school, including some of the school's patrons, demanding that the school expel me.
But since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, Americans' image in the world has been increasingly criticized.
The war cost the United States a lot of money, and since 2000, the U.S. government has largely lived on debt. Today's United States has evolved from the largest creditor country after World War II to the largest indebted country in history.
Fiscal crisis and growing polarization, coupled with the inaction of the U.S. government during the pandemic, have exacerbated divisions and antagonisms within the United States.
I have lived in the United States for 32 years and have experienced this transformation of American society firsthand. It really responds to the old saying of Chinese, thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi. Americans have lost self-confidence in their own country, while Chinese are becoming more confident.
I believe that whether it is China, the United States, or any other country, if it can effectively contain and solve the problem of polarization, it will be the victor of this world.
Source: Reference News Network