CLOSURE IS COWARDICE:

Said top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi: "Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States." His message was clear: Don't criticize us about Uyghur genocide or mass arrests in Hong Kong. 

For a weak secretary of state, this would have been humiliation. An overconfident one would have pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of a senior Chinese official giving a lecture about democracy.

Antony Blinken showed he is neither. The U.S. will approach China with confidence, Blinken said, "even as we have the humility to know that we are a country eternally striving to become a more perfect union." He added that the U.S. had a long history of confronting its demons, "not trying to ignore them, not trying to pretend they don't exist, trying to sweep them under the rug."

In these impromptu remarks, Blinken captured the essence of American exceptionalism. Its greatness is defined not by strength alone, but by humility -- and the determination to confront past sins and strive to be more perfect. 

There is no such impulse within the Chinese Communist Party. To this day, journalists and activists who seek to keep the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre alive are disappeared. Social media is monitored and censored by the state, forcing citizens to project public obedience to the party. If they want to complain, their complaints must be confined to what little private life Chinese citizens have.

This failure to reckon with its past has prevented China from evolving into a more open and transparent political society despite its near miraculous economic progress over the last 40 years. China has generated great wealth in this period, yet most Chinese citizens still live in fear.

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