No political culture is more slogan-saturated than China’s. When Xi Jinping stood before the United Nations (U.N.) in 2015 and declared China’s commitment to building a “Community of Shared Future for Mankind,” many Western observers heard a vague soft diplomacy platitude rather than a strategic signal. The slogan, however, functioned as a rhetorical trap, reframing China’s authoritarian model as morally legitimate and future-oriented while portraying liberal democracies as selfish and out of touch with humanity’s collective destiny.