By Nirmal P. Acharya
When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, America became an article of faith, a political correctness, even a myth.
With the soft power of the American myth, the US has spiritually conquered the world, including China.
A large number of Chinese intellectual elites lost all their glory after the Korean War and converted to American mythology. Anyone who says there is something wrong with the US will be unhappy and even angry.
After World War II, the US military did not have any decent achievements, but by fabricating the American myth and exporting ideology, it dismantled the superpower Soviet Union without firing a shot.
It can be said that the American myth is the real trump card of America.
But the American myth, America’s trump card, has failed in China. Chinese society, especially its young people, is questioning the American myth in all its aspects, including its historical myth, political myth, and economic myth.
As this scepticism deepens, the image of the US is reverting to the traditional Chinese perception of America as a paper tiger.
Although there is a group of intellectual elites in China who are called “spiritual Americans” by the Chinese public, such as Zhang Weiying, an economics professor at Peking University, who desperately defends the American myth, their defense is increasingly pale, comical, and even ridiculous.
The harder these “spiritual Americans” push, the closer the American myth gets to bankruptcy. This is the future of the American myth in China.
But the American myth may have a bright future in Nepal. The MCC proves that mainstream Nepali society is a believer in the American myth.
It should be remembered that in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the American myth rose to the top, Nepal bucked the trend and set off a wave of socialism. Today, the American myth is becoming a joke, but Nepal is expressing its memory of the American myth by accepting the MCC. We might call this phenomenon the Nepalese myth.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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