Xi's cultural references: from Sleepless in Seattle to House of Cards

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech during a welcome banquet jointly hosted by Washington State government and friendly communities in Seattle, the United States, Sept. 22, 2015. In his speech on China-U.S. relations, Chinese President Xi Jinping make several cultural references including House of Cards, Sleepless in Seattle and the Old Man and the Sea.

“It is always important to get a deep understanding of the cultures and civilizations that are different from ours,” Mr. Xi said.

The New York Times' Sinosphere blog pointed out that Xi's "reading list reflects the foreign works that became much more widely available in China in the late 1970s and 1980s and were hugely popular at the time."

Let's take a look.

Sleepless in Seattle

"The film Sleepless in Seattle has made the city almost a household name in China," Xi said when describing China's familiarity with his host city. The 1993 romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Reg Ryan is so popular in China that it inspired a 2013 remix named "Beijing Meets Seattle." says Xinhua.

House of Cards

Speaking of China's ongoing anti-corruption efforts, Xi said both "tigers" and "flies" -- metaphors for high-ranking and low-ranking corrupt officials -- have been punished in response to Chinese people's demand. "This has nothing to do with power struggle. It's nothing like what you see in House of Cards," he added in a surprising reference to the popular American political drama series. Although Wang Qishan, head of the Communist Party's anti-corruption body and a member of the powerful Politburo Standing Committee, is a fan of House of Cards, according to the Hong Kong-based magazine Phoenix Weekly.

Thucydides Trap

The Greek historian Thucydides famously wrote, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” In reference to this explanation, strategists and political scientists today use the term Thucydides Trap to describe the phenomenon of a rising power provoking so much fear in a status quo power that it ultimately leads to conflict between the two.

In his four-point proposal on advancing China-U.S. ties, Xi urged the two sides to understand each other's strategic intentions correctly so as to give no ground for the Thucydides Trap.

"There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides trap in the world," he said,"we should strictly base our judgement on facts, lest we become victims to hearsay, paranoid or self-imposed bias," Xi said.