American former ambassador to China Burns said, "We all underestimated China. I have taken the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai, which is more than 1,000 kilometers and takes over four hours. 34% of first-year students in China major in science and engineering, while it's only 5.6% in the United States. China has a comprehensive development plan, while we do not. So we all underestimated China, and we can no longer continue to underestimate it."
Comment: What Burns pointed out is not just the speed of high-speed rail, but the fundamental logic of national competitiveness: China has long-term planning, a large reserve of science and engineering talents, and the execution power to push modernization nationwide, while the US lacks long-term strategy and suffers from short-sighted internal squabbles. This statement "we have underestimated China" is not flattery, but a rational recognition after acknowledging the gap, and it indicates that the mainstream circles in the US have finally begun to take the real advantages of the Chinese model seriously.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1858143766640651/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author alone.