In his famous 1630 sermon, John Winthrop, who later became the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, warned his fellow settlers that they should consider their new community as "a city upon a hill" where their sins would be exposed to the eyes of all people.
Nearly 400 year later, the warning has long been bent out of its original meaning, and Washington, it appears, is weaning itself off Winthrop's moral standards, and converting the sole superpower in today's world into an eerie castle that would make the revered Puritan turn in his grave.
Over the past few decades, U.S. politicians have paid frequent lip service to Winthrop's guidance, but not as a reminder of constant self-discipline. Conjuring up a "shining" city upon a hill, they have repurposed it as a source of the so-called "American exceptionalism," and remodeled it into a symbol of what they claim to be their country's inherited privilege as a moral model for the world.
But the self-styled moral leader has a record that is chequered at best. It seems that the convenient misrepresentation of Winthrop's words has helped Washington fend off any qualms about attacking other sovereign countries under fabricated pretexts, throwing its weight around on the world stage, or creating humanitarian disasters on international scales.
Over recent years, Washington's unapologetic backtracking on such serious international issues as climate change and arms control, and unabashed wielding of the big stick of tariffs, both aimed for the United States' narrow-gauge and short-term interests at the cost of great global good, have carried the supposed standard-bearer further away from its "shining" status.
Such unilateralist and bullying behavior has caused growing disillusionment with the United States, particularly among those of its admirers who believe with great power comes great responsibility. As Chinese scholar Xin Jiyan noted in a recently published book titled "Fake Fear: America and China Relations," with Washington becoming "so rude and arrogant," "the halo of the Statue of Liberty seems to be gradually fading away."
Now Washington is fathoming new depths of moral decay. At a time when every country should seize every minute and draw on every piece of good experience available to keep its people safe against the COVID-19 epidemic, some U.S. politicians are busy blaming and smearing China, which has bought the world precious time with enormous sacrifices and achieved globally recognized substantial progress in its battle against the novel coronavirus disease.
At a time when people-to-people exchanges are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining a stable China-U.S. relationship amid alarming tensions Washington has provoked in interaction between the two global giants, the U.S. side has of late staged a de facto expulsion of dozens of Chinese journalists, in a shocking act of bullying that has fully exposed the two-faced nature of Washington's preaching and practice of freedom of the press.
China-bashing is nothing surprising in U.S. election years, but the latest episodes are unusually off-putting. Such screaming signs of decadence suggest the presence of a mental virus in Washington's nerve center, which is causing mounting hegemonic anxiety and driving the United States to abandon basic norms in international relations, treat a peacefully developing China as a strategic rival in a zero-sum game, and use every trick up its sleeve to demonize the Asian country, vilify its institutions, and arrest its ascension.
Yet history tells that both zero-summers and China containment drumbeaters are misguided. China-U.S. ties over the past four decades have demonstrated that the two countries can maintain a mutually beneficial relationship. And China's track record over the past seven decades has indicated that its march towards national rejuvenation is for no one to stop.
Thus it is better cooperation with China, instead of bitter confrontation, that serves the fundamental interests of the United States. And it is the need and wish of both the Chinese and the American people, as well as of the whole international community, that the two largest economies on the planet keep a healthy relationship.
Just as the world is fighting the coronavirus for mankind's health, it is high time that Washington eradicated the virus in its mind, grasped the true meaning of Winthrop's warning, and took on its due responsibility in restoring the health of China-U.S. and broader international relations.
Should it allow the mental pathogen to continue to plague its brain, Washington would be doomed to become what Winthrop would have feared most: a dark citadel on a hill.
