The flaws that China’s chief ideologue found in America

In August 1988 an inquisitive young Chinese political scientist named Wang Huning came to America for a six-month visit. He admired the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri, and analysed the town government of Belmont, Massachusetts, watched a football game at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and toured a detergent factory in Iowa City, Iowa. He was shocked by the many people begging in the streets and amazed by the softness of the waterbeds in the furniture stores. One question preoccupied him: how had such a young country raced so far ahead of his homeland, with its history of more than 2,000 years? He found a lot to respect in the dynamism of America, but he also identified contradictions that could tear it apart.China-watchers debate the extent to which Mr Wang’s American sojourn influenced the course of China’s modernisation. What is known is that he left academia just a few years later, cutting off his torrent of published work, to help define the Communist Party’s message and maybe its policies for three successive presidents. Now Xi Jinping’s chief of ideology and propaganda, he is one of seven members of the Communist Party’s ruling body.