Highlights
There are Chinese experts from U.S. looking at China in their own views, and there are American experts in China looking at U.S. in their own views. Many times, they are completely opposite according to what their bosses or readers want to hear. I hope I can present the conflicts between China and U.S. in an unbiased way.
Our government is convincing us and our allies that we should have a war with China. It has been a pattern similar to the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq. Does Vietnam threaten us today? Have we found the mass-destruction weapons in Iraq? With nuclear weapons, the war with China if materialized would lead to the end of the world. We have plenty of problems to fix at home. Why do we spend our money and efforts in wars that could hurt us? When we do not learn from history, most likely we will repeat history.
Are our media trustworthy?
Sometimes the news reported by the media needs to be further evaluated. The recent example is Bolivia’s uprising. It has to be aided by our government to limit China’s access to lithium, the important ore for batteries. The media did not tell us the truth. This is one of the many examples.
When you report ALL the problems in China, are you speaking the truth, or just following the order of your boss? What is your initial objective of being a reporter? Reporting news or spreading lies? You can cheat folks once a while, but not all the time. The entire profession has lost credential!
In the last 40 years, China has lifted millions from starving to death, and Chinese have been enjoying the highest living standard since Opium Wars, when the Brits pushed opium as a nation. The government has successfully alleviated poverty even it has a long way to go. China pretty much fixes their pandemic in less than 4 months. Nine-year compulsory education is free to all citizens. About 95 percent of the population has health care coverage.
Wuhan is dirty according to our leader and the media. Check out this video on Wuhan filmed on Oct. 2020 (no language barrier even it is in Cantonese) by a common Hong Kong citizen. It is quite a big contrast to most of our big cities. Notice that many U.S. companies are making money in China and how clean the street is. How many fat folks and homeless folks you can find from this video? If you argue it is fake and staged, you are insulting our intelligence including yours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W34KvZyA_hQ&list=WL&index=96
China had no one-child policy to minorities. The minorities have extra score to apply to universities. Where are the human rights violations and genocides? There have been no riots / killings for over 3 years since the last one by separatists and extremists. China spends more money in Xinjiang and Tibet far more than the central government gets back. Living standards in these regions have been substantially improved in the last 40 years. At that time, only monks in Tibet could get an education. For proofs, look at the following videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0IRZW3V9oM&t=372s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIbmL17P3nc&list=WL&index=54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhXZZ0iUqP8
Our two political parties are demonizing China every day. Obviously it is for votes as they cannot fix our problems. If China is so bad, why the Chinese tourists are the largest to most countries, and they spent double the average tourist?
Why we and our allies criticize Hong Kong’s laws on national security, while US and most developed countries have similar laws to enforce national security and suppress independence. Why we accuse of other countries on human rights while we still have Guantanamo Bay prison? Why we took no action on Saudi Arabia on human rights including the reporter disappeared in their consulate. Judge these incidents for yourself.
The U.S. and China
Let me tell you a story how U.S. has inspired many in the world. In Hong Kong, a very smart and hard-working girl living next door to my apartment was inspired to study in U.S., and her dream job was working for NASA. Most outside U.S. were inspired by the U.S.’s freedom and high living standard via Hollywood. From the recent speeches by Trump and Xi in U.N., the two countries seem switching roles in world leadership. Xi stressed again that China did not want to be the leader but would co-operate with foreign countries for mutual benefits.
Undoubtedly, U.S. is still leading the world especially in military. However, China is reducing the gap. Our military is more powerful than the next 5 military powers combined. However, China has enough power to defend her country with ‘carrier killer’ missiles and other advanced weapons.
Our government does not want to face reality and blame everything on China using national security as a reason. The fact is that China will pass us eventually if we do not change the current policy. We together with our allies can give China a hard time by banning exporting chip makers. China will eventually fix this major obstacle, and at that time they will do the same to us, and our allies would turn to be their allies.
Furthermore we limit foreign scientists and IT folks to work here. It is a major mistake as we depend on them. It has a valid point to limit some folks from China. If India catches up with China, these folks from India would return home too with the technology learned from us. We need to encourage more STEM students and enforce national security. If China can copy or steal our top-of-the-line weapons, should we blame ourselves first? All rising countries including U.S. had copied or stolen technologies from developed countries. There is NO exception.
The number of Chinese scientific papers is about half of ours in 2019. With the growth rates based on the last five years, China would pass us in 10 years or even less. It is partly due to our cutting of research funding. If you visit our high tech companies and top colleges, you will find many Chinese and Indians. Many Chinese scholars are returning home for better opportunities. Do you blame them? Many Indians are being banned to study and work here. Most U.S. citizens do not want to spend long years to scientific researches for risky monetary returns.
It is similar to limit workers from Mexico to work on the jobs our able welfare recipients do not want.
We have fewer problems than China. One proof of our freedom is that this book cannot be possibly published in China, and China is not ready to accept this kind of freedom.
The U.S. wants to be the sole winner, while China does not want to lead the world. The “One Belt, One Road” Initiative, the rise of China’s technologies such as 5G, mobile payment, drones and high-speed rail and her alliance with Russia and Iran challenge our global leadership and our USD as the reserve currency. We want China to follow our standards and orders, not the other way round.
Profits from many U.S. companies depend on China. Without them, many U.S. auto companies may have bankrupted and Apple would lose more than 25% of the stock value.
Trade war and the pandemic
Both countries is suffering in the trade war, the pandemic and natural disasters (flooding in China and fires in U.S.). Will the pandemic and the trade war lead to a military war? Historically the number 1 country would war with the upcoming country. In recent history, we ended the conflict peacefully with Japan and less peacefully with Russia. Japan was forced to lose economically and Russia was dismantled. China learns the lessons from them.
We have about 7 sources of vaccine to this pandemic. None is from China and China’s vaccine is one of the most promising ones. China has set up a standard of preventing the spread of this virus. Judging from the results, sadly I admit we have lost it to China even we have the best public health system.
China strikes back
As of November, 2020, China has not reacted a lot to our trade war and restrictions. China would likely risk a war with us if Taiwan declares independence and/or we establish a military base there. It is reasonable for China to ban exporting rare earths to our companies that sell weapons to Taiwan. We have a lot of rare earth ores, but we depend always 100% on China’s processing of these ores due to environment concerns and technology.
In addition, we depend on antibiotics imported by China (about 97%). India is the largest generic drug manufacturer, but 80% of India’s active ingredients are imported from China.
China has not bought a lot of our U.S. debts recently. In 2008, China had pretty much saved our economy by buying a lot of our U.S. debts. China could easily sell 20% of the holding or 100% even if there is a military war. It would trigger Japan and EU to dump the U.S. debts. Due to the recent depreciation of the U.S. currency, most of the foreign holdings have been suffering losses.. When it happens in this large scale, all our assets that are based on U.S. currency would collapse.
Hopefully the relationship of the
two countries would improve after the coming election (not too far away as of this writing).
Racial discrimination
I feel bad about the recent discrimination against the black by police brutality. First I have to thank the police and our military force to fight for us. However, there are many bad apples in the police force as in many other sectors of the society. Some shootings and killing are obviously caused by racial discrimination. However, some reactions are over-reacted to me. Looting cannot be forgiven.
Native Indians and the black are still being discriminated even today. We are ALL immigrants besides the native Indians, so do not ask any 'foreigner' to go home. The native Indians had been reduced in alarming number in our first census. It has to trace back to the 15th century when the Spaniards colonized the ‘discovered’ land, stole their resources, enslaved and raped the natives. They claimed to be “good for the natives to make them civilized”.
A long while ago, a professor from the top college in California had the
same argument and used Hong Kong as an example. It was the wrong argument as
Hong Kong’s wealth was based on her proximity to China. When the top professor from the top university does not understand the truth, how can the average citizen?
Our politicians have the theme of arguing China on their minorities. It is more a joke to me by comparison. The U.S. constitution clearly stated that all men are equal. It means “white” men. We still had slaves for a long, long time since the constitution.
My biases
I was born in Hong Kong and U.S. is my adopted country, so technically I was a second-class citizen of U.K. My yellow face ‘betrayed’ me, but I am proud to be a Chinese American. The trade war of U.S. and China bothers me a lot like my parents are fighting each other and asking for divorce (decoupling for countries).
First I have to thank U.S. for giving me the opportunity to study after high school when Hong Kong’s higher education system was not ready. I admired U.S. for the freedom, scientific advancements and global leadership. It gave me an easy life. I contributed to the economy by paying more than my share of taxes and have not taken any social welfare.
I am naturally biased. Hence, do not be offended if I go too far to defend China. However, if I have to choose which country I should migrate to today, I still choose U.S. If there is an atomic bomb dropped, I do not wish it would drop in the U.S. as I and my family would be killed. It is possible to love your country and your race at the same time such as the Jews in U.S.
You may not agree with most of my opinions. Do challenge them. We need more thinkers than followers. Human nature is agreeing with the ideas to support our original thinking, and that’s why we do not want to listen to the other side of the story.
There are pro-Chinese views and also views by Chinese bashers. I hope my book is in the middle. With the daily bombarding by our pro-U.S. media, China has been demonized. I hope to present a balance view in this book. I hope you use an open mind with skeptic and contrarian to seek the truths and separate all the biases / fake news.
This book
So far, I have donated all my book profits to charities. My personal welfare is tied with U.S. I have no affiliation with Chinese government, and I have not received any compensation from China. This book is dedicated to all the essential workers in this pandemic especially to the fallen angels.
Many opinions in this book are from many sources. Most sources from the established U.S. and EU media such as BBC, DW and Economist are less biased. I find CGTN, an English-speaking, Chinese TV network is informative and not too propaganda. So is RT network from YouTube. It seems CGTN stays away more from the U.S. politics than RT. Both are financed (at least partially) by the Chinese government and the Russian government respectively. I also selected and translated from Cantonese from many YouTube videos. They do represent a lot of knowledge from Hong Kong that may not be available to the Western audience.
There are so many gray
areas today that no one can claim s/he is always right. I have nothing against
U.S. From the research of this book, I did find out several incidents that harm
our image, reputation and our future. I am neutral in politics. I comment
against current government as I want them to serve us better.
China has her problems. This book is addressing OUR problems, and hopefully we will fix most of them.
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Click here for more info on this book "China: Trade War and Pandemic".
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