China has reason to celebrate. The country still basks in the glow of last year's successful Olympic Games. And, in a global economic slump, China remains one of the world's bright spots.
Chinese media expert Rebecca MacKinnon says the People's Republic of China has helped raise the country's global stature. (原文就是这么懒洋洋的)"If you look at the goals of the [Communist] revolution as 'China will stand up, China will be respected by the international community, China will become a powerful force in the world, it will throw off foreign domination' - eh... it succeeded in that."
China's Communist government follows what it calls "socialism with Chinese characteristics," which includes a market economy, with considerable state control.
Sidney Rittenberg is an American who began working with the Chinese Communists before they took power in 1949. He spent more than three decades in China. Although he was jailed for nearly half of that time, he still thinks China is moving in the right direction.)"Whatever we have now is 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.' It also means that it can't be copied from somewhere else, and that's very important. They can't copy the political democracy from anywhere else either," Rittenberg said.