Newsweek | Dec. 17, 2018
President Xi Jinping,
History is itself indebted to the invaluable contribution of a few great civilizations, like China’s. The Chinese civilization helped create the very framework of history, memory, and values that still inform our times. Some of those lessons inspire us—and others should serve as a wake-up call.
As you have demonstrated, modern China stands at a great crossroads of unprecedented opportunity.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, we have been encouraged as China seemed to be moving cautiously, but very deliberately, in the direction of economic and political openness and even of religious tolerance. We believe this period of change played a consequential role in the world’s acceptance and even embrace of China’s meteoric reclaiming of its historical role as a first-tier superpower. It seemed that the People’s Republic of China, under wise leadership, had absorbed a quintessential lesson from the preceding century – that tyranny limits prosperity.