“The Chinese economy is showing its strength and energy”, “Uncle Sam is tired”, “The plenary session (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) paves the way for even greater success”, “The beginning of a new era in China’s development” – these are just some of the headlines on the “China Daily” portal, in the company of which appeared the author’s text of the former President of Serbia Boris Tadić about the successes of modernization in China and its impact on the world. Even the title of his comment did not differ from the environment, it reads – “China creating its own way to thrive”.
Like the title, the content of Tadić’s article does not differ from the content offered by “China Daily”, a newspaper and web portal in English, edited by the propaganda bureau of the Communist Party of China. This review of the former president of Serbia was only a small propaganda contribution to the Chinese celebration on the occasion of the historic session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Tadić joined this celebration in a way that was supposed to look like a neutral view of the Chinese 21st century miracle, and in that he invested his name and his high state function, which he performed for eight years. He had high authorial ambitions, and even scientific ones, because he offered the world a new term for modernization in the Chinese way, and that is – “harmonization”.
The global scientific community is on the move, with a big job ahead of it to critically analyze Tadić’s innovation in studying China and the new concept he has launched into the academic public. Or, more likely, his scientific effort will be ignored by all but the professional apologists of the Beijing regime, who will mention him here and there, in official capacity.
The least controversial in Tadić’s analysis are the circumstances under which this text of his appeared. If the remarks of some of his critics that the text in China Daily is actually part of Tadić’s consulting, that is, paid engagement in a Chinese company, are correct, then there is no problem or reason to discuss the former Serbian president’s views on China. Many world statesmen, after leaving office, move into the waters of private business and live from lecturing, public advocacy, lobbying and giving advice to those who are willing to pay for it. If that is the case with Boris Tadić as well, then there is no problem.
The problem exists if there is no such engagement, if the views expressed by Tadić in China Daily are really his sincere thoughts, which he signed without any monetary compensation. In that case, an important question arises – what ideological profile of politician has ruled Serbia for a full eight years, controlling all its resources without restrictions. And in particular the question arises – which profile of politician again has the ambition to play an important role in the political life of Serbia, where he is fighting for power again?
Tadić’s text in China Daily is identical in content and tone to the final statement from the recently concluded plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The 12-page text, five and a half thousand words (which is four to five pages in a daily newspaper, with a larger photo of Xi Jinping) praises CP of China’s role in the country’s reform, and especially celebrates its indispensable role in the further development of China. Development based on “Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, as the official ideological stage in this phase of China’s development reads.
Boris Tadić strongly supports this direction, and from the very beginning, so as not to be in doubt, he refers to the conclusions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and interprets them as an introduction to the “revolution” that will give birth to a new modernization for the whole world, this time originating from China and not from the West, which has been the case so far. He has, just like in the statement of the Chinese party leadership, the mention of revolution and Marxism and inequality in the world, and care about man.
There are especially factual and value forgeries at the expense of the West, as well as the distasteful glorification of the Chinese economic and social model, which he writes about as a “model for the world”. This is what the long-term leader of Serbia wrote, the one who came to power and remained in power, presenting himself as the only guarantor of Serbia’s path to the European Union, a politician who made himself a symbol of pro-western Serbia of the modern age. No one from the West has criticized Tadić in the eight years he has led Serbia, nor has anyone thought of accusing him of turning Serbia towards China, or the East in general. Even when in 2009 he agreed with the then President Hu Jintao on concluding a strategic partnership between Serbia and China, from which all Chinese business initiatives aimed at Serbia later emerged.
If what he wrote in China Daily is what he really thinks about China and the West, then Boris Tadić cheated his own followers and partners in the West for eight years, maybe even to this day. Because how else to interpret Tadić’s words today that “the once winning ideology of the West has come to a dead end as capitalism has more victims than winners”, and that “in China’s path of modernization we can see the correction of the West’s mistakes”? Or that China “has shown us that we need a new innovative form of Marxism and modern social state”.
Boris Tadić defended his views expressed on China Daily on social networks, so there is no doubt that his authorship is authentic. So, it is the same Tadić who writes sweet (even by Chinese standards) hymns to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Chinese party media and the former Tadić who twice won the presidential mandate carrying the European Union flag in his hand. It is possible that in the meantime he changed his views of the world, realized that he lived in a delusion and that he deceived a few millions of his former followers with that delusion. Of course, many world leaders, whom he assured with great success that only him and his politics, are the heirs of Western values in Serbia. But in that case, it would be fair, humane and in line with his new beliefs about Chinese-style justice, to send one big apology to everyone. That, of course, will not happen, just as nothing he predicts in his Chinese commentary will come true. Tadić’s political career, just like his contribution to China Daily, was built on fiction, propaganda and without contact with the real world and life.