Comparing the Chinese Dream with the American Dream

Abstract

Comparison of the Chinese Dream with the American Dream reveals that the Chinese Dream has four main themes: national rejuvenation, common prosperity, democracy, and the people's happiness; whereas, the American Dream emphasizes personal liberty, individual success, and upward social and economic mobility. Investigation of the historical origins and development of the two dreams, conjoined with an account of their aims and purposes, shows that full realization of the Chinese Dream is achieved by successfully building socialism with Chinese characteristics; the American Dream, by contrast, serves as an ideological prop for a particularly aggressive, predatory, and imperialistic form of capitalism. Furthermore, a comparison of each dream in actual practice shows that the Chinese Dream of fully developed socialism has been more successful at promoting common prosperity and peaceful, sustainable development, while the American Dream of unbridled capitalism encourages unsustainable development, growing poverty and inequality, and imperialist wars. Finally, an enumeration of the fundamental differences between the Chinese and American Dreams concludes that the Chinese Dream is fundamentally benign, whereas the American Dream is basically malignant. In order for the American Dream to shed its harmful characteristics, it must reject its capitalist underpinnings and adopt socialism as its ultimate goal.

Keywords:

• Chinese Dream
• American Dream
• socialism with Chinese characteristics
• capitalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

David S. Pena is an independent researcher specializing in Marxist-Leninist philosophy, Director of the Library Learning Resource Center at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA, and author of Economic Barbarism and Managerialism (2001). His work has been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Romanian. He is a member of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE), a WAPE Council member, and a frequent contributor to WAPE's annual forums. He is also a Vice-President of the World Economic Development Society. His recent articles include “21st Century Socialism and the Four Components of Sustainability” (World Review of Political Economy 2010), “Beyond Bourgeois Liberalization: A Pathway to the Future of Socialism” (World Review of Political Economy 2012), “Systemic Responsibility for the Climate Crisis” (Marxism-Leninism Today 2013), and “The Six Essential Components of Sustainable Socialism: From Building the Productive Forces to Combating Bourgeois Liberalization” (International Critical Thought 2014). His articles have also appeared in Political Affairs; Nature, Society, and Thought; People's World; The Guardian (CP of Australia); People's Voice, Philosophy (Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences); and Marxism-Leninism Today.

Notes

¹Piketty is not a Marxist economist, but perhaps one can call him an honest mainstream economist.

²Data from two indicators—“labor force” and “unemployment rate”—which were included in The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency 2014), under “world: economy” list.

³Calculated by the author from data cited in “Global Fossil-Fuel CO₂ Emissions: Trends” (CDIAC, n.d.), and “Ranking of the World's Countries by 2009 Total CO₂ Emissions” (Boden and Andres, n.d.).