American superiority – economically, scientifically, and thus militarily – was founded largely on its open-arm welcome of usually well-educated and highly productive immigrants and students from all over the world – initially Europe and later East, South and West Asia. I am afraid this competitive advantage is being hastily thrown away, started by Donald Trump, and now pace accelerated under Joe Biden.
When my nephew was offered a place to do his Engineering in the US in the 1990s, I advised him, “Sam, America is a great place to live. Try to get your green card after you graduate.” What a bad advice from me!
Sam and his wife did get their green card. They have two children now. He works in a senior capacity for a substantial fertilizer company. But he is now seriously considering his employer’s offer to relocate to either Singapore or China. He does not feel safe in America!
I now see video clips of vulnerable Asians of being physically assaulted – for no apparent reasons – by strangers on streets and in public transports. The perpetrators are invariably Blacks. (Somehow the Blacks always want to vent their underclass anger on Asians!) I do not know if most Americans of Chinese descent are feeling that way now. But I am fairly sure most Chinese parents in East Asia are now quite hesitant to send their children for education in America. Chinese students usually go there to pursue STEM courses. Devoid of their enrolment, how competitive American universities will remain, especially they now must compete with some of the most “afraid-to-lose” institutions of higher learning in China?
The West loves to characterize Chinese as copy-cats. Few have bothered to read the history of China and know the prolific nature of that civilization in inventions and innovations. Indeed, China lost its bearings during the later part of the Manchu rule, when it was totally blind to the superiority of western gunboats and their global dominance designs. But China is simply a giant that was forced into temporary submission.
Mao Tze-tung made Chinese stood up. But the backwardness of China after his takeover was too immense for his Great Leap Forward clarion call. Fortunately, Deng was rehabilitated, but devoid of modern infrastructure in toolmaking, it simply could not advance much in the engineering and technology front, hence the need to copy and innovate. But the giant had indeed been awakened.
Within two decades, it became the “factory” of the world. No country could challenge its formidable supply chain infrastructure once this critical mass was reached. But the progress over the last five years or so even more mind-boggling; there is no need for me to repeat what it has achieved.
Much of this collective human capital, hitherto much of it would have gone to and stayed in America, is now locked in China. This, in my opinion, is marking the beginning of the decline of American hegemony in this world.
Joe Biden can say, we still have our traditional intellectual constituents – the Caucasians, and the Jews, and the influx of the Latinos, South and other Asians, etc – to count on. I am not sure about the strength of that argument. The racial divide has not improved much since Martin Luther King, Jr’s march on Washington in 1963. Few Blacks think hard about their future. The Caucasians and the Jews are cruising on a plateau; few need to go beyond their traditional turfs. And coming to South Asians, particularly Indians, you see many Fortune 500 companies and great universities are headed by them. They also have a fair share of Nobel prizes. Many are world-class managers and scientists, but few are entrepreneurs or product/service disruptors in their own right. And millions of economic refugees are trying to enter America. It will take at least a generation or two before these immigrants can really contribute to the brain capital of America.
Chinese have yet to leave great footprints on fundamental research. But once they get to know the ABC in a certain field, they will collectively push all frontiers not only to extend their prowess all the way to XYZ linearly, but also to stretch the alphabets along the way concentrically in three dimensions like an expanded balloon. Yes, just like the western world, China also has many high-tech billionaires, but unlike the West, they would be reined in if their actions were deemed compatible to the greater good policies seen in the Chinese society.
Instead of working with China to benefit the world, it seeks to contain China by demonizing it. The US can scream until its lung collapses about the Uighurs and forced labour in cotton fields in Xinjiang, the security laws in Hong Kong, and laboratory leak in Wuhan, and sooner, the plight of Tibetans. But are they the real champions? Anyone who is capable of distilling information will conclude it is all hypocrisy. This bad-mouthing strategy simply is no longer workable in this cyber world, when information and knowledge are all available with just a couple of clicks.
Indeed, Trump has let out the Genie, and Biden is making it to roam wild. Who is the loser at the end of the day?
Someone recently forwarded me a video about how America had created a formidable foe in Vladimir Putin. Isn’t this a worse nightmare?
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