Photo: VCG

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper targeted China again on Saturday as part of the US government's all-round attack on the Asian country. 

He said a rising China, by itself, would not concern the US leadership, but a rising China under the governance of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is a concern, according to the website of the US Department of Defense. He continued to say that China is a bigger problem than Russia as it has the population and economy to displace the US. Given Esper's remarks, the US is actually fearful of China itself rather than merely of the CPC.

The US government is paying unprecedented attention to China. Rumors say that a handful of Chinese scholars, who went to the US in the 1980s and stayed there ever since, proposed such subterfuge to separate the CPC and China. Some Chinese American scholars who work in the US State Department are regarded as the US' "state treasures" with encyclopedia-like knowledge of China and are deemed one of the most powerful weapons against "totalitarianism."

It is common knowledge in China that starting several years ago, viewpoints such as "I love my country rather than the CPC" - a remark trying to politically separate the CPC, the Chinese government, and the country - have been used as excuses by people who said or did something harmful to China's national interests. As China-US relations continuously deteriorated in the past few years, such remarks have been indignantly rebuked in China.

As for those who left China in the mid-1980s at around the age of 20 and never came back, how could they have any personal experience of China's development since the country's reform and opening-up? We doubt those people are actually misled by Chinese netizens who vent anger on the internet and thus take for granted that the misleading advice of these people could echo among the Chinese people. 

Those scholars are counterfeit, and they are no more than political speculators if they cannot tell that the CPC and Western ruling parties are fundamentally different in nature, that the CPC has integrated profoundly with the Chinese society and that attacks on the CPC are in reality attacks on China itself. 

Based on a serious misjudgment, the US' policy toward China is taking more steps in the wrong direction. 

Esper said China has the population and economic strength to displace the US. But the US wants to prevent China, with its 1.4 billion people, from becoming the largest economy worldwide. The US simply feels it must hinder China's development and deprive the Chinese people of the right to live a better life. Isn't the US making itself an enemy of all Chinese people?

The US seems to be not afraid of China's rise, as long as its rise is not led by the CPC - by playing such a trick, is the US government trying to make a fool of the Chinese people and the world? 

If it were not for China's development in the recent decades led by the CPC, today's China would still be poverty-stricken. If the leadership of the CPC should ever be overturned, the whole country would fall into a major collapse. China's outcome would be even more tragic than the Soviet Union's disintegration. Most Chinese people have such an understanding.

Due to extreme geopolitical thinking, some American people fear that China will replace the US. Globalization, based on technological advancement and the expansion of the market economy, is changing geopolitics. People's demands for development are irreversibly increasing. Development and a new cold war mentality are simply in opposition. Modern geopolitics must leave enough room for different countries' cooperation that goes beyond ideology. 

Because of China's large population, it will only be a matter of time before China's economy exceeds that of the US. However, the US' unique competitiveness in technology and culture may be maintained for a long time to come. This requires the US to sharpen its competitiveness in an open world, rather than protecting it with geopolitics. Opening-up has helped China get rid of its backwardness and move toward modernization. The US is trying to rebuild a wall and even make it a strategic approach. Time will make the US pay the price.