Wang Long (王龙) writes in an official news site www.china.com, translated by Anton Lee Wishik II for Mei-Zhong Guanxi blog:
The successful holding of the Beijing Olympics is causing Westerners, in their wonderment, to begin to reflect. On August 27th, the New York Times published the article ‘Compared to China, the US is a Third World Country’ in which the author gasped with admiration that China “is unrivaled.” The basis for this was that “China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work….compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and…the crumbling infrastructure in Manhattan with…Shanghai’s sleek airport and…the magnetic levitation train.”(1) This makes it impossible for them not to ask themselves: In the end, “who is living in a third world country?”
This American’s reflection is almost like a blind person feeling around for something. It only touches on China’s flourishing side and could easily produce misconceptions among readers, like the article’s description that the “China presented through the Olympics was enormously powerful.” Of course, this illustrates China’s fast rise, but what cannot be avoided is that there are still some sentiments which Westerners can only sense and cannot explain in words. Since he states that “by driving a car for one hour you can see China’s other kind of scenery”, the so-called ‘unrivaledness’ is undoubtedly self-contradictory. From a theory standpoint, these kinds of fawning statements are no different from malicious ‘destruction through excessive praise.’
