CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS WHEN THERE'S ONLY ONE:

China's national amnesia regarding the sources of its own material success means that those who came of age during or after the 1980s generally regard their elders as part of the "lost" Cultural Revolution generation and thus undervalue their contributions and sacrifices.

At the highest level, this means that nationwide rural reforms advanced by Deng and his supporters 40 years ago have received too much credit for China's rapid economic growth, while extensive investments made under his predecessors (e.g., Zhou Enlai and Hua Guofeng) have received too little. But there's a far bigger problem at the grass-roots level. In 2013, China had 50 million "left behind" elderly -- an aging rural population largely abandoned as their children left to work in cities.

A study by Liu Yanwu at Wuhan University examined this population in 40 villages in 11 provinces and found the suicide rate among the rural elderly had risen from 100 per 100,000 to 500 per 100,000 over the past two decades. The suicide rate for elderly rural residents is now 50 times higher than the general population -- a phenomenon Liu associates with a lack of social security.

There are consequences for China's foreign relations as well. Every day the country welcomes more foreign students eager to learn about China's development experience, and in September more than 50 African presidents were feted at the development-driven Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Dispelling the myths of China's development story means acknowledging that China's success was born out of painstaking investments in agricultural modernization, and a nationwide commitment to vocational education and basic health care.

An economy that can top $30 billion in a single day of online sales is not the product of a "China miracle," or a unique "Chinese model," as Zhang Weiying at Peking University expertly observed. Rather, China in 2018 is the result of a national development saga that began -- as it did in Britain, the United States and other developed countries -- with a green revolution in agriculture. 

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