The more I see and
read about Joe Biden, the more I am convinced that he is another
run-of-the-mill American politician. His latest antic being America’s decision
to diplomatically boycott the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. This is in the wake
of the seemingly chummy conversation (but the flip-flop days later) with Xi a
couple of weeks earlier. To me, this is also the straw that breaks the camel’s
back as far as his credibility goes. The use of human rights as an excuse is
most disingenuous to the core. That silly accusation has long been debunked,
but like a demented old man, he keeps parroting it regardless. And his minnows
and sycophants in Canada, Europe and Australia were quick to chorus him
notwithstanding. Despite its preeminence, the US is a world that is full of
deep-well frogs – people who are ignorant, or uninformed, or disinterested or
outright bigots. These people don’t quite exercise their brains. They either
believe wholesale everything from CNN or Fox News. As a result, charlatans and
half-bakes like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Nancy
Pelosi get voted in to assume high office. On the Olympics issue, Biden and his
coattails would certainly have sounded more credible if they had simply said
this: We don’t like Xi or China. Period.
In the first place, the Olympics is about sports, and not about
politics. Why didn’t the US boycott the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing? What
has changed during the last 14 years?
Of course, these
politicians do have a bigger agenda. It is certainly not their love for human
rights, but China’s phenomenal progress that is the issue! It is all about
their fear of a re-emerging dragon. Basically, it is their paranoia!
The ghosts they see in China
American politicians and their sycophants in the Five Eyes,
QUAD and AUKUS fraternity are helplessly staring at a China that will be No 1
in terms of GDP maybe in 2026. Militarily, China is likely to beat the US and
its allies if there is a war and it is fought in its front yard, with its
formidable strength in its missile arsenal, not to mention its hypersonic
capabilities. They also fear that if Taiwan returns to China, they will also be
deprived of the chips which are so essential to their survival. We shall have
more of all these later, but suffice it to say that these are the ghosts they
see in China and Xi. China has already made it abundantly clear that it has no
territorial design outside what is legitimately theirs. But instead of
committing to China to this undertaking and allow both spheres to prosper, they
want China to go back to subserviency. But the horse has already bolted; there
is no way they can make China yield.
Wrong start from the very outset…
Everything boils down to the weakness of the American system in
choosing leaders in a new global paradigm. I remember reading somewhere about
Barack Obama saying this about his Vice-President: Don’t underestimate
Joe’s capability to fxxk things up. In his book “A Promised Land”, he
hardly credited Biden for anything, which speaks volumes of the latter’s
relevance in his administration.
From his performance
since he took over the presidency, Biden has certainly lived up to Obama’s true
sentiment about his former deputy.
I, like many others,
was full of hope when Biden was finally declared the president of the United
States of America in January 2021 – after some nail-biting counts and recounts.
Donald Trump was a universal joke. He was a president who was totally devoid of
substance and is likely to go down in history as a president many future Americans
– if they ever get to climb out of the deep well – would be very ashamed of.
His incompetence and spurious pronouncements and claims, often ridiculed by the
western press themselves, knew no boundaries; it stretched to every issue you
can think of.
I was actually not
impressed by Biden’s credentials from the very outset. Had Trump been less
idiotic, Biden might not be the president today.
He had spent his
entire public life in the US Senate before he became Obama’s Vice-President. We
all know those Congressional roles were basically all talk but no action stuff.
I particularly remember during the run-up to the presidency, he had on one
occasion labelled Xi Jinping as a thug to a question from the audience. That
was totally uncalled for. Xi had played host to him before; surely he knew
nobody in his or her right mind would say Xi could be one! Nonetheless, I was
prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, since the choice, though not
mine to exercise, was between an “idiot” and someone who appeared decent. To
win the American election, he, as someone who had no better foresight or
strategy, had to be seen to be more tough than Trump on China.
A thug in Biden’s mind!
No wisdom, foresight, nor strategy
True enough, Biden doesn’t have what it takes to make a great
president. He doesn’t even know how to mobilize a great team to change America
for the better, when the present window is so opportune for him to do so.
At the beginning, he did look good on the domestic front,
especially in his exhortations to his fellow countrymen of the need to fight
the coronavirus more seriously. However, his attempts to steer the economy were
certainly less convincing. He didn’t see fit to stop the money printing press,
nor did he think through the trillions that he planned to spend to rejuvenate
America. But these are America’s problems, not ours.
I am particularly
irked by his foreign policies, which are not only a continuation of what Trump
has already failed to do, but executed more cluelessly, like the ones on Iran,
Ukraine and Syria, or more antagonistically, like those on China and Russia. As
for North Korea and Venezuela, they are largely non-existent to him. He fumbled
on America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which also sent a clear signal of
America’s ineptness to its allies. His hoodlum approach to contain China has
obviously disturbed America’s long-term allies in the Middle East, like Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,
who are now seeing China in a different light. Iraq has now asked China to
build some 1000 schools payable in oil, even though America has not totally
withdrawn from the country.
His slogan “America is
back” is a mission to kill off China as an equal – politically, economically,
technologically, and militarily. China’s Huawei and high-tech companies are the
obvious targets. Not surprisingly, the CIA couldn’t find a shred of evidence to
pin down Wuhan as the source of the coronavirus pandemic, otherwise, China
would never have been able to shrug off the mud that has been constantly hurled
at it. (Watch out China, America is still trying!)
Politically, he
managed to enlist Lithuania, some corrupt officials in the Solomon Islands, the
ultra-liberal Greenie newbies in EU politics (like the new German foreign
minister) to irritate China. And militarily, he has also persuaded India to
join QUAD.
But no matter how hard
he tries, he is simply unable to persuade the ASEAN leaders to jump onto his
anti-China bandwagon, even though Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia are
not entirely happy with the map that China has drawn for the South China Sea.
Ditto with the leaders in West Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South America,
they have already seen America’s true colours.
In management studies
jargon, Biden’s “America is back” is a mission statement, the objectives of
which are blurry, and the strategy incoherent and inconsistent with what he is
trying to achieve. It is utterly airy-fairy in the first place, or rhetorical
in essence.
All boils down to
leadership with little concept and with an inept team to steer a rudderless
boat.
I suspect Biden is
being nose-led by a couple of key advisors and the White House spokesperson Jen
Psaki. Apparently, no off-the-cuff questions are allowed during press
conferences. Much is stage-managed for him, as his nonsensical utterances,
despite the big teleprompter right before him, are a source of embarrassment to
these “key” staff. Biden might not be in complete control of the White House
today.
An inept team…
I was listening to Charles (Chas) Freeman’s speech made at Brown
University’s Watson Institute. He was talking about the tension between the US
and China over Taiwan. Freeman, an ex-diplomat, reminds me of Kissinger. There
is so much wisdom in this man. He spoke dismayingly of America’s total
ignorance in the history and the cultural realities of East Asia in general and
China in particular. He was very critical of Biden’s team in
handling basic diplomacy. Even though he did not mention names, who he had in
mind was obvious.
An effective leader
does not have to be very brainy. All he needs to do is to have a team of good
lieutenants to make his ideas work. Richard Nixon might have been disgraced,
but he is well remembered for some lasting diplomatic feats. He was prepared to
do things differently on China, and he shook the world. He made good use of
Kissinger. The rest is history. Indeed, America has many great thinkers –
people like Charles Freeman, Jeffrey Sachs and Graham Allison. But
Biden chooses nincompoops.
Left: Charles Freeman; Right: the two great Jeffreys – Cheah on the left and Sachs on the right.
The people whom Biden
are counting on to help him bring America back are really a bunch of novices,
despite their academic credentials. The most incompetent of them is none other
than State Secretary Antony Blinken. Fresh from that false sense of
triumphalism in the wake of Biden’s victory and too lazy to do any homework,
Blinken assumed Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi were easy cakes whom he could throw his
weight at when they called for that meeting in Alaska. He got walloped instead.
At least Jake Sullivan was clear-headed enough to act more appropriately,
diplomatically speaking. Blinken’s lack of finesse and his inability to
overcome his emotional weakness were again demonstrated during his meeting with
Wang Yi during the G20 Summit in Rome a couple of months later. Blinken didn’t
even see fit to reciprocate when Wang Yi extended his hand, even though he was
the one who sought to see Wang Yi in the first place. In our part of the world,
we have a term of it: Kurang Ajar – or lacking in
upbringing in the Indonesian/Malay language. Didn’t he know that Yang and Wang
are two of the most seasoned diplomats in China?
Blinken’s recent
attempt to persuade Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to distance themselves
from China was another diplomatic disaster. His embassies in these countries
had obviously fed him only things he loved to hear. And like an emperor who did
not know he had no clothes on, he went about criticizing China in these
countries, like what Kamala Harris had done in Singapore and Vietnam. He should
know the leaders of ASEAN countries are no simpletons. Having to govern in a
very contentious region, they have already acquired a great degree of wisdom.
They may not like China, but they certainly know they need to show good
neighbourliness with China, the way their cultures treat neighbours at home.
And forget about
Kamala Harris. Biden has obviously decided to confine her to his closet after
her visit to Singapore and Vietnam. Ditto Secretary of Defence Llyod
Austin, who has largely gone quiet. (His bungling of the Afghanistan pull-out,
making the US the laughing-stock of the world, and the failures of his 2021
South East Asian tours are recent conspicuous examples of his “substance”, or
the lack of it.)
I am afraid Nicholas
Burns, America’s ambassador-designate to China, will also turn out that way.
During the Senate confirmation hearing, he talked as if he was all ready to
slay an evil dragon. Obviously, he knows little about the eastern world. Let’s
wait and see.
There is a common
denominator in all these Biden stars. None has gone through the university of
hard knocks. Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan were largely armchair policy
wordsmiths before. Gina Raimondo has yet to prove herself as a worthy state
governor, and she is a Donald Trump when it comes to China. Llyod Austin's
elevation, I suspect, was largely a symbolic gesture because of the colour of
his skin.
As for Catherine Tai,
it is a classic case of using poison to fight poison.
And now take a look at the China team… I have extracted some
information about the two teams from Wikipedia (Appendix 1). Do form your own
conclusion.
How Biden (or his team?) is stirring the pot
to save his presidency…
Biden is obviously
nervous about the mid-term elections, let alone his 2nd term re-election
chances. His popularity is low, and the Republicans are like silkworms munching
their way into the mulberry leaf in him. Its looks like the Republicans will
take back control of the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2023. In
his perverse logic, he thinks by being tough on China and Russia, he can
reverse the trend. America did succeed in breaking up the Soviet Union, but
that was largely because the Soviet Union then had a drunkard by the name of
Boris Yeltsin who was happy to shoot himself in the foot just because he was
anxious to be the president of Russia. This strategy cannot work on China.
Biden should have known this better. You cannot fight China’s resolve to stay
as one nation. The CIA went all out to tear Hong Kong apart. After months of
riots, its lackeys finally caved in. With the national security law now in
place, Hong Kong is regaining its footing. And he certainly knew that there was
no genocide or forced labour in Xinjiang. Yes, the Chinese did smash the
terrorizing separatists there, but you don’t expect China to give these
terrorists flowers, do you? What China did was to try to rehabilitate them so
that they can return to society, hence those “jails” Australia’s ASPI was
talking about. Remember the first thing Bush Junior did to the terrorists was
to send them to Guantanamo Bay. Were the terrorists given any VIP treatment?
I believe the US is
always trying hard to find new causes to attack. Tibet the next one maybe, but
I suppose the Dalai Lama is too smart to get himself dirtied.
The Uyghurs and the
Tibetan on the street know life is so much better now than any time before.
They certainly do not need pseudo champions, whose intention in the first place
is to use them to destabilize China and not fight for them. By boycotting
Xinjiang’s products and produce, America hopes to deprive Uyghurs of
livelihoods and in the process turn against China.
Containment of China
and Russia is beyond Biden or America. The home issues will drown him in no time
– principally the economy, the persistency of the coronavirus, and the great
parochial divide between the Republican and the Democrats over everything,
especially spending. There is no way the infrastructure bills and
his brand of “silk road” which he wants to build with the EU in the Third World
can save him, for they will take decades to happen, if they ever can. His
hoodlum approach has brought Xi and Putin to a level of relationship that will
survive all sorts of instigations or sabotage, internal or external, or direct
or indirect.
After World War 2, the
US has fought many wars. It did win many battles, but America has
never won a war, despite its mighty industrial-military might! And you are
angling for a war with China?
Leaders come in all shapes.
Countries like India and Australia can be great in their own rights.
Unfortunately, instead of emulating China, Narendra Modi chooses to grow green
eyes. Indians have many great minds, unfortunately, they do not have the
leaders to help them make things happen. Even one of its industrial patriarchs
Ratan Tata was helpless when he tried to help build businesses and industries
in his own country. A case in point is Air India which has
degenerated into a casualty, not unlike Malaysia Airlines when politicians took
over. Scott Morrison sees Australia's biggest trading partner is a security
threat just because America says so. The federal government cancelled several
agreements with China, of which two were related to Victoria’s Belt-and-Road
Initiative with China. These agreements would have benefited Australia a great
deal by being able to weave its expertise and goods and services into the
network, since its quality is generally trusted all over the world. Foreign
Minister Marise Paine said the move was not intended to target China! Who can
believe that? And now Australia has signed up with Japan for a reciprocal
access defence pact. Has Australia forgotten that Japan was virtually right at
Darwin when World War 2 broke out? Has it forgotten that its solders had to
fight the Japanese in the then Malaya and Singapore theatres, only to be
shipped to Myanmar and North Borneo as PoWs?
Both Japan and South
Korea are shackled to America. American soldiers are “defending” them. Whereas
the latter knows its station, Japan is still harbouring ambitions on China and
wants America to help make China weak. Canada’s Justin Trudeau’s handling of
the Meng Wanzhou detention demonstrates abundantly clear that he is
politically, morally and ethically a midget. Yet, he has the cheek to point a
finger at China’s human rights record. Lithuania and many “green” MPs of the EU
Parliament are basically a bunch of hare-brained politicians. And Biden knows
the South China Sea is where he can drive a wedge between China and its neighbours
in the region – Vietnam. the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei all
have some claim to the sea there. Singapore says it will not take sides, for
its fortune is too tied to a friendly China and happy America. The US cannot
count on Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar to do any of its bidding. It can only
pay some parties to create animosity towards China, like what they have done to
one of the factions in the Solomon Islands.
I have mentioned
earlier that the US is already losing its grip in the Middle East. Maybe its
next target will be Mongolia, one of China’s immediate neighbours, on whom
China depends a great deal for its iron ore supply. But Mongolia needs China’s
money. It has few options.
A country that has
little history to anchor on
The US has only a short history to shout about. The Europeans
rushed to colonize the continent in the late 1500s. But it was the British who
became the sole masters. They went about systematically exterminating the
natives. To build the country, they brought in slaves. It declared Independence
from Great Britain on 4 July 1776. But it was not until 1865 that slavery was
outlawed. The Chinese who went there to mine gold and help build railways were
discriminated against and treated harshly.
The Americans think their
concept of Democracy is the ultimate system of governance. In the 1960s and
1970s, they went about destabilizing legitimate foreign governments and
installed corrupt military dictatorships in lieu, as long as any of the former
was not to their liking. The campaign started in Indonesia first, after Sukarno
championed non-Aligned movements. An author used the term Jakarta Method to
describe their misdeeds all over the world – in Korea, the Philippines,
Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, and many many countries in Africa and Latin America.
But the world has
changed. America is no longer the beacon of good democracy; what is being
practised is really chaotic democracy. The Anglo-Saxon’s sense of superiority
breeds and sustains racism – Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics are
lesser beings to them. Double standards appear to be the order of the day now.
(Some top-of-the-food-chain Chinese were indulged for window dressing or for
countering China purposes.)
Why the paranoia now?
In 2021, the US’s GDP in nominal terms stood at USD 22.68 tn and
China’s USD 16.64 tn. But China is catching up! It has already surpassed the US
in terms of PPP GDP in 2017. It is set to overtake the US in nominal terms in
2028 or even earlier. (See Appendix 2) A projection made by the IMF in 2021
shows the US is leading by USD 6.0 tn or 1.36 times on an exchange rate basis.
However, the economy of China is USD $4.0 tn or 1.18x of the US on a purchasing
power parity basis.
On a per capita basis,
China is still far behind. But Americans should not bet on this. Productivity
“potential” per capita in China is well ahead of that in America. China has
awakened (or has been awakened), and the per capital GDP gap will close in a
matter of time, certainly sooner than most Americans would imagine. China is
already well ahead of the US in Agriculture and Industry. Agriculture Output of
the US is only 17.58% of China and 77.58% for the Industry sector. The services
sector of the US is still more than double of China, though.
Source: WTO
The US national debt
stands at about USD 31.4 tn at the end of 2021. Japan is the largest US holder
of US debt (1.31 tn), followed by China (1.07 tn).
All this speaks
volumes of the economic health of the US. The US was happy to let things go
before, but the US Dollar is under unprecedented challenge now.
In 2020, China’s value
of export was USD 2.50 tn, or 13.3% of the world’s total, versus the US’s USD
1.65 tn or 8.8% of the world’s total. But look at the trade balance, in the
case of China, it was USD 429.6 bn, compared with a US deficit of USD 923.2 bn.
US’s position vis-à-vis China and the major trading countries of the world is
likely to continue to decline as the decade progresses. This, together with the
decision to digitalize currencies by many others, simply means one thing: the
accelerating of the dethroning of the US Dollar as the global monetary hegemon
in no time, which will not only save countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea,
Venezuela and be welcomed by America’s long-suffering friends like Japan.
Even then there is now
fear by association in American academia, especially if you are doing something
with China. National security is cited each time it decides to sanction a
Chinese high-tech company. (In Australia, the desire to shoo off the Chinese
from the Darwin port under the same pretext was, however, thwarted by their own
Defence Ministry’s assessment which concluded that no national security
issue was at stake!) Nonetheless, these embargo measures are many a time a
double-edged sword. The rollout of 5G in the western world is stalled or has to
be done at a much higher cost. Coercion and pressure on companies not to supply
technology to China kill off hundreds of billions of revenue from companies
like the Dutch’s ASML, Korea’s Samsung and Taiwan’s TSMC, not to mention the
suppliers in the US.
On the military front,
America is leading in most sectors (Appendix 3). (But if a war were to break
out, you can be quite sure that many of the naval vessels involved would end up
in the bottom of the East and South China Seas, thanks to China’s Dongfeng
missiles.)
No wonder the Chinese
ghost is lurking in every politician’s mind in America.
Is the Chinese ghost for real?
I have attached in Appendix 4 a brief write-up on the parts of
Chinese history which I think is relevant for my contention that the American
fear of China is largely unfounded. Despite its long history, China was not
quite unified until 221 BCE when Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇, 259-210 BCE) declared
himself the first emperor after he had conquered all of the other warring states. The Song (宋) dynasty (960 –
1279) was particularly prolific in inventions. But the dynasty was very weak
militarily and had to bear the brunt of many invasions from the neighbouring
tribes. It soon fell to the Mongol khans; Yuan’s (元)Kublai Khan extended
his conquest to as far as Hungary, but that had very little to do with the
Chinese way of life. Being a foreign occupation power, it could not last long,
given the nationalistic nature of Han Chinese. The Ming (明) emperors (1368 – 1644)
had the opportunity to make China the top dog of the world during their era.
However, its inward-looking policy soon prevailed and within a hundred years,
China lost its skill in making great ocean-going ships. And thanks to Admiral
Zheng He, who was a Muslim, China helped Islamize Southeast Asia, which
hitherto was very much Hindu/Buddhist in culture.
Qing (清) (1644 -1912) was
Chinese complacency at its worst. False belief in its superiority made China a
laughing-stock. Great humiliation followed even after the 1911 Revolution.
Until Mao Zedong came along to make China stand up.
What can we conclude
out of the last two millennia of China’s history? Answer: A people who have
shown that they have no territorial design against others, even though they had
the ability and opportunity to do so. Will they do it that under Xi?
The mandate of the
Chinese heaven
China had been a feudal society for much of its existence, until
Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Qing court. Legitimacy of an empire’s reign had
always been based on the concept of the “Mandate of Heaven”. The Chinese heaven
is not the abode of the all-powerful god that created and sustains the
universe; rather, it is a court up in the clouds that comprises a timeless
emperor and his entourage and detail, from both the literary and the military
ranks, who had risen to heaven because of their great deeds in life. If an
earthly emperor lost the trust of its subjects, then his mandate would
certainly face termination by this court up in the sky, and soon, someone would
be given a new mandate. Chiang Kai-shek “lost” his mandate and Mao rose to the
occasion. All this may sound archaic or superstitious, but it is no different
from how the legitimacy of the other forms of governments is thought of. If you
lose an election, you have to give way to someone who has given new hope to the
people. Xi has done a great deal for the people. He has the mandate, which the
US and others are really in no position to question. After all, his approval
rating, no matter how you want to discount it, is higher than any leader in the
world. I tuned into CCTV to watch Xi address the nation on the eve of the 2022
New Year. He had only one mission in mind: to make China better. On no occasion
did he attack any world leader.
Xi’s poverty
alleviation success in China is for real. And the rural villages are undergoing
makeovers on a massive scale. People are learning good etiquette in terms of
table manners, the use of public toilets and are refraining from jumping queues
and spitting indiscriminately, many of which are the sources of shame felt by
fellow Chinese outside China before the coming of Xi. China is leapfrogging in
STEM. It is already ahead on many technological fronts.
In a report by the
Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center entitled The Great Tech
Rivalry: China vs the US dated December 2021, the executive
summary states:
· In AI, China is now a
full-spectrum peer competitor;
· In 5G, “… America’s 5G
infrastructure rollout is years behind China’s…”;
· In quantum information
science, China has already surpassed the US in quantum communication and has
rapidly narrowed America’s lead in quantum computing;
· In the semiconductor industry,
China is now a serious competitor and may soon catch up in two key areas:
semiconductor fabrication and chip design;
· In life sciences,
China is competing fiercely across the full biotech R&D spectrum. Its
researchers have narrowed America’s lead in the CRISPR gene editing technique
and surpassed it in CAR T-cell therapy;
· In green energy, today
China is the world’s leading manufacturer, user, and exporter of these
technologies; America’s green push relies on deepening its dependence on China.
In short, the US is no
longer the global science and technology hegemon! But instead of seeing how it
can co-exist, it is looking from the angle of zero-sum competition,
meaning, I will kill or disintegrate you, for I am determined to be
the sole victor.
The way China is
managing the COVID-19 pandemic should have served as a good example how a
disaster of this nature should be handled. Instead, the West is consumed by
distorted logic spewed out by its mass media. Even if a success is obvious, it would
be tempered with grudges and “but…” undertones (CNA’s Beijing correspondent
Olivia Xiong’s trademark?). Even The Straits Times and Channel News Asia of
Singapore and The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong are also reporting
China in similar veins. It is a kind of bad breath from people whom you tend to
think should have a set of good teeth about Eastern culture!
What is driving the US-China tension?
You use tariff as a weapon basically to protect your own
industries. But the US is using it to stall China. It simply does not have the
industries that are producing the stuff Americans need day in and day out. They
still have to buy from China even though prices are now heading drastically
north. But instead of unwinding what Trump had done, Biden appointed China
antagonists Gina Raimondo and Catherine Tai to put up more hurdles and
blockades. Tai wants to prove that she is more American than Trump! The US is
also urging firms to leave China to either return or relocate in other
countries. But business is all about making money. It will take a long time
before Vietnam and Indonesia can reach China’s scale. And forget about India; I
just couldn’t help thinking how shallow many other western presses can be when
they evaluate capabilities. (Maybe they don’t have that capability in the first
place!)
a) The western and
pro-west presses…
Someone conned the term “prestitutes” to describe the present
breed of journalists in the western media. The root word of it, I suppose, is
“prostitute”. Biden has decided to hand out billions to wage a media war on
China. I suspect many are already enjoying the largesse of Biden’s generosity,
which is causing them to lose their souls, ethically and morally. You can
disagree with what you see, but you also need to lay out your arguments to
support your disagreements. You may not agree with what China was doing and had
done in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, but to parrot the distortions of ASPI
(Australian Strategic Policy Institute) or pseudo-scholars like Adrian Zenz,
Gordon Cheng and Peter Navarro is not only sheer laziness but an insult to
one’s intelligence or outright dishonesty, which many are doing in the west,
even with supposedly authoritative publications and channels like The
Economist, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Aljajeera, South China
Morning Post, The Straits Times and Channel News Asia. Many would have noticed
that many of these authors are actually ethnically Chinese – Nectar Gan, Helen
Gao, and Muyi Xiao, just to name a few. I suppose they have to justify their
existence by writing more provocatively on China. (I would particularly like to
single out Elizabeth Teoh who anchors CAN’s business section. China would have
collapsed many times if what she “feared” each time was a statement of fact!)
These mercenaries are the Qin Hui of modern China. (Qin Hui 秦桧, 1090–1155, a chancellor of the Song Dynasty, generally
regarded as a traitor for his part in the persecution and execution of Yue Fei
(岳飞), a
general who fought bravely for the Song against the Jin dynasty, during
the Jin-Song Wars of the 12th Century.)
b) The war on chips…
Caught in the great power struggle is TSMC. It is being forced
to lay bare all its secrets to the US government. Billions of dollars of
revenue from sales to Huawei have also been killed. On top of that, it is being
coerced into building plants in the US, knowing that it is the last place an
efficient plant should be located. A similar fate is also being experienced by
Samsung, AMSL and other semi-conductor niche giants. How would this pan out?
China’s advances would certainly be held back but the deprivation also makes
China more resolved to be self-sufficient on this front. The US should realise
that many of the people working in these embargoed companies are Chinese. The
companies will stagnate if their products cannot sell well. The reverse
migration has already started. Yes, it may take a couple of years for China to
catch up, but once they catch up, the trend is irreversible. America forgot
that their progress was a result of talent flows from all over the world,
especially from China.
c) The tool in Tsai Ing-wen
Taiwan was once one of the leading tigers in the world economy.
MIT stood for “Made in Taiwan” in those days. It is still a very prosperous
island today. But it is caught in an untenable situation following Tsai
Ing-wen’s hostility to China. She is happy to be used by the US to retard
China.
There is really no good reason for Tsai to antagonize China,
which has all along been prepared to live with a Taiwan under the
one-country-two-systems advocation – as long as Taiwan acknowledges it is a
part of a greater China. But Tsai wants a different destiny for Taiwan.
Tsai’s PhD controversy reflects her true character. You don’t
need to have a PhD to run for political office, but she was proud to wave it
high as part of her solid credentials. It is quite clear that she did not
complete her PhD at the London School of Economics. Notwithstanding, she had
the audacity to claim that the university had in fact considered to award her
one-and-a-half PhDs! (No one in the academic world would understand this
contention!) That was not only a blatant lie but a criminal act, since it was
based on this claim that she secured a tenure academic position with it at
National Chengchi University. This might explain her insistence to pursue a
course for Taiwan that is fake in the first place. (Before that, another
Democratic Progressive Party president Chen Shui Bian had also tried to
champion independence for Taiwan. They were all protégés of Lee Teng Hui. Chen
spent time behind bars for corruption. But none was as audacious or blatant as
Tsai.)
What Biden should be looking at
The conditions in many of America’s subways reflect what the
country is today – archaic, unsafe, grubby, and decaying. Walls are usually
full of graffiti, floors covered with rubbish everywhere, toilets broken,
trains tired looking and what-have-you. Between cities, it doesn’t have any
high-speed trains. (The one between Los Angeles and San Francisco has yet to be
completed.) Although its airports, roads and bridges are adequate, they are certainly
not the type you would like to see in First World, let alone the No 1 country
on Earth. If the Japanese management system can be hailed as a model for
adoption by top graduate American business schools, why can’t China’s advances
in infrastructural engineering be sourced to help transform America’s
landscape? (Its road and bridge building machines like Kunlun SJL900, or its
tunnel boring machines like CRCH 1 or its rail track laying machines lime
CKP500, just to mention a few.) No one can produce steel, aluminum, and other
engineering materials more cost-efficiently than the Chinese.
And look at how China
has rolled out its Road and Belt projects:
How China is changing the world…
Left: The road in Kenya; Right: The Padma bridge in
BangladeshAnd how it is helping
to vaccinate the world…
The vaccines to ArgentinaIf all these had been done instead…
The US keeps telling the world that it is the standard bearer of
democracy. But all you have to do is to listen to China’s Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Hua Chunying’s common-sense Coca Cola analogy: Democracy
is not like Coca Cola where it should taste the same everywhere!
Biden should think
more like a statesman than a parochial politician. He could have learned from
history’s many greats. Of course, he would not want to learn anything from the
East. But there are so many others he could take a leaf off – leaders like
Angela Merkel, or even South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. Mandela was released
after years in prison, he could have turned on the Whites, instead, he talked
about forgiveness and reconciliation. And despite the setbacks inflicted by his
successors, South Africa remains one of the few viable nations in the African
continent.
Upon Biden's winning
the presidency, he should have declared Trump’s policy on China quite
misplaced. He should have drawn upon the US’s relationship with China during
World War 2, and the Chinese contributions to the US when thousands were
enlisted to help build railroads in America. Planet Earth is certainly big
enough for the US and China to co-exist, especially when China has demonstrated
that it has no imperial design against any country. The US can continue to
provide leadership in basic Sciences, and China can help bring products out of
them. This is the theory of comparative advantage at its best.
Biden should have
declared all this after he won the election: Yes, we have dropped
the ball for too long; let’s pick it up and move forward. Yes, we have been
looking silly everywhere – Internally the pandemic, our aging infrastructure,
our gun violence and deaths (I just read the latest statistics: 20,000
gun deaths and some 20 million guns were retailed in America in 2021), our
racism, our rich-poor and class-divides, our homelessness, our declining
education, the QAnon stupidity, etc; and externally, our misplaced
holier-than-thou wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and our silly sanctions of
Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, which have made the people there poorer, the fake
news about genocide and forced labour in Xinjiang, and our double-speaks on
Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the silly trade war with China. Yes, we shouldn’t blame
anyone but ourselves. And surely, we can learn something from China and East
Asia! Yes, let’s use their affordable steel and aluminum to help rebuild our
infrastructure. Yes, let’s sell them more chips and have them them build cheap
phones and consumer products for us. Etc, etc, etc. All we must do is to make
sure they don’t become aggressive militarily. Yes, let’s each strengthen our
own sets of comparative advantages. Give me eight years and I will deliver a
great America back to you. World trade will soar, ditto our stock markets, and
even our industrial-military complex. And Americans will enjoy the highest
quality of life!
A new dawn will certainly emerge…
The US should send more delegations to visit China, to see for
themselves the workability of other systems and cultures. Surely there are many
lessons to be learned from the way China manages its Xinjiang and Tibet
regions. Ditto the Confucian values that America can adopt in many instances.
As it is, there are already many westerners living in China. Judging from the
people who are doing business, or working, or even learning martial arts in
China, we certainly can conclude that such a proposition is not unfeasible or
untenable. Cross-cultural exchanges will always result in creating an
equilibrium in terms of acceptances of things hitherto foreign to one.
Americans should take a good look at how the Muslims coexist with the Han
Chinese in regions like Xi-an, Ningxia, Lanzhou, and many places elsewhere.
(The Confucian institutes can help pave the way!)
China is still far
from being a perfect society. Its people’s individualism and boundless
entrepreneurship can be ugly. You often hear of internet scams from China; the
runaway greed of the real estate players like Evergrande, Kaisa, Shimao, etc;
the billions lost by ordinary people in P2P lending; a potential bomb in Jack
Ma’s Ant Group attempt; still some shoddy products and fake TCM medicines and
teas being churned out despite crackdowns; the nouveau riche mentality;
outlandish architecture and show offs; and provincial-, city- and county-level
corruptions. But Xi and his team are losing no time to transform the Chinese
society to usher in a new China.
Without American
intervention, Taiwan would melt into the greater China quite seamlessly. It can
continue to excel in semiconductors and sell its chips to any country. Once the
Taiwan irritant is removed, there is no reason for the two countries to fight
each other anymore. And Japan will certainly know its place in the Pacific. The
other minnows are irrelevant, nonetheless, they will also benefit from China’s
import of their resources and produces.
A reminder of how far
American politicians can go…
See the attachment on her left ankle!Appendix 1
The Global Olympics...
The
US Team
Antony John Blinken (born 1962). His father was once the US ambassador to
Hungary. He followed his mother to Paris and attended École Jeannine Manuel. He attended Harvard University from 1980 to 1984.
He entered Columbia Law School in 1985 and
earned his J.D. in 1988. He
previously served as deputy national security
advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to
2017 under President Barack Obama.
From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as deputy assistant to the
president and national security advisor
to the vice president. During his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S.
policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran.
Jake Sullivan (born 1976) attended Yale University, where he majored
in international studies and political science and won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford.
He graduated with a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2003.[5]
He was previously a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential election campaign and her deputy
chief of staff at the Department of State. He worked in
the Obama administration as deputy
assistant to the president and the vice president's national security advisor,
when Biden was U.S. Vice President.
Gina Marie Raimondo (born 1971) previously served as the first female Governor of Rhode Island from 2015 to
2021.
Of Italian descent, she graduated a Bachelor of Arts
degree in economics from Harvard College. She was also a
Rhodes scholar and later received her Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.
Katherine Chi Tai (1974) is the first Asian-American to serve in as
Trade Representative. Tai grew up in Washington, D.C. Her parents, who
were both born in mainland China, but grew up
in Taiwan and later
immigrated to the United States. In 1996, Tai graduated from Yale University in history. Tai
went on to study at Harvard Law School, where earned a Juris Doctor in 2001.
After her undergraduate education, she taught English at Sun Yat-sen University in
Guangzhou as a Yale-China Fellow for two years, from 1996 to 1998.
Nicholas Burns (Born 1956) is a professor of diplomacy and international
politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. During his
career in the State Department, he was Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs during the Bush administration.
Burns was in 2020 a Fulbright scholar at Queen Mary University of London. He earned a Bachelor
of Arts degree in history, with a concentration in European history, from Boston College. He also studied
abroad at the University of Paris. He received a
master's degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1980.
China’s Team
Xi Jinping (习近平; born 1953) has been President of China since 2013. His late
father was a Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun. He was exiled to
a rural county as a teenager following his father's purge during
the Cultural Revolution. He studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua as a
worker-peasant-soldier student and rose through the ranks and became Governor
of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming Governor and Party
Secretary of neighbouring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. In 2008,
he was designated as Hu Jintao’s successor.
In 1985, as part of a Chinese delegation to study U.S.
agriculture, he stayed in the home of an American family in Iowa. This trip,
and his two-week stay with a U.S. family, is said to have had a lasting
impression upon him and his views on the United States.
Former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew said he
felt Xi was "a thoughtful man who has gone through many trials and
tribulations". Lee also commented: "I would put him in
the Nelson Mandela class of persons. A person with enormous emotional
stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings affect his
judgment. In other words, he is impressive". Former U.S. Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson described Xi as "the kind of guy who
knows how to get things over the goal line". Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd said that Xi "has sufficient reformist,
party and military background to be very much his own man".
Li Keqiang (李克强; born 1955), China’s Prime Minister is an
economist by profession. Li rose through the ranks through his involvement
in the Communist Youth League. From 1998 to 2004, Li served as
the Governor and Party Secretary of Henan. From 2004 to 2007 he served as
the Party Secretary of Liaoning. From 2008 to 2013, Li served as the
senior Vice-Premier under then-Premier Wen Jiabao, overseeing a broad
portfolio which included economic development, price controls,
finance, climate change, and macroeconomic management. Li has also been a
major force behind the implementation of the "comprehensively deepening
reforms" announced in the fall of 2013. Made in China 2025 is a strategic
plan issued by Li and his cabinet in May 2015.
Li read law at Peking University and his PhD in economics in
1995.
Liu He (刘鹤; born 1952), the man who is always in Xi’s entourage, is a
current member of the Politburo and one of the Vice Premiers. He is
also the director of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission.
Liu graduated from Renmin University-Beijing Union
University in industrial economics. He later studied at Seton Hall
University and and received his Master’s in Public Administration
from Harvard University.
He has published widely on macroeconomics, Chinese industrial
and economic development policy, new economic theory and the information
industry.
Beginning in 2013, Liu began advising Xi on a series of economic
initiatives and is believed to be one of the primary architects of Chinese
economic policy at the time. In May 2018 Liu was also appointed top trade
negotiator with the US.
Yang Jiechi (杨洁篪; born 1950) spent much of his professional life in the US,
where he was China’s ambassador from 2001 to 2005. He served as Foreign
Minister between 2007 and 2013. Since 2013, he has been the director of
the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, the highest diplomatic position in
China. He is generally regarded as one of the foremost contemporary architects
of China's foreign policy.
Yang Jiechi was admitted to the Shanghai Foreign Language School
in 1963. Affected by the Cultural Revolution, he dropped out in 1968 and
entered an electric meter factory as a worker. During the four years in the
factory, he continued to learn English. Yang was selected in 1972 to attend
Shanghai Foreign Language School and later the University of Bath and the
London School of Economics. In 2006, He received his PhD from the Nanjing
University through distance learning while serving as the ambassador to the US.
Wang Yi (王毅; born 1953) has been China’s Foreign Minister since 2013
and a state councilor since 2018. He served formerly as China's Vice Foreign
Minister, Ambassador to Japan and Director of the Taiwan Affairs office.
Wang was born in Beijing. After graduating
from high school in September 1969, he was sent to Northeast China. He
subsequently served in the Northeast Construction Army Corps
in Heilongjiang Province for eight years.
In December 1977, Wang returned to Beijing, and in the same year
was enrolled in the department of Asian and African Languages of Beijing
International Studies University where he studied the Japanese language,
graduating in February 1982 with a bachelor's degree. He is known to speak
fluent English and Japanese.
Wang Huning (王沪宁; born 1955) is China’s leading political theorist. he has been
a member of the Politburo Standing Committee since 2017. He is also the
chairman of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual
Civilization and served as the director of the Central Policy Research from
2002 to 2020.
Widely regarded as the “Grey Cardinal”, Wang is believed to be
the chief ideologue of the Communist Party and principal architect behind the
official political ideologies of three paramount leaders since the
1990s: He has held significant influence over policy and decision making over
all three paramount leaders, a rare feat in Chinese politics. Wang was
regarded, along with Wang Qishan, as one of the two primary advisors and
decision makers for Xi.
A former academic, Wang was a professor and dean of the law
school at Fudan University. He entered Shanghai Normal University in 1974
to study the French language. He was enrolled in the Department of
International Politics at Fudan University in 1978 to pursue his
postgraduate degree while conducting research for the Shanghai Academy of
Social Science. He received a master's degree in law from Fudan University.
After graduation, Wang stayed at Fudan University as an
instructor, associate professor, and professor (1981–89). He was named
professor of law at age 30 in 1985, becoming the youngest law professor in the
history of the university.
Wang served as chairman of Fudan University's Department of
International Politics (1989–94), and as dean of the law school (1994–95).
In 1988, Wang was a visiting scholar in the US for six
months, spending the first three months at the University of Iowa, three
weeks at the University of California at Berkeley, and visiting many other
universities. During his time in the United States, Wang visited over 30 cities
and close to 20 universities. This experience led to his 1991 book America
Against America.
Source: Wikipedia
Appendix 2
China’s GDP in PPP terms (Source: IMF)
Appendix 3
Relative Military Strengths (Source: SCMP 12 July 2021)
Military expenditure in 2020
US
: US$778 billion
China : US252
billion
Total manpower
US
: 1.35 million active US military personnel and 800,000 in its reserve.
China : 2 million active personnel in
2019
Technology and Equipment are more important
than weight of numbers in modern warfare and both countries are reducing the
emphasis on manpower.
Ground force
China has been
adopting lighter and more powerful automated weapons for its ground forces,
shifting much of the operational burden from physical grunt work to digital
technology. The United States, with its 6,333 tanks, has the second-largest
armour holdings in the world, while China is third with 5,800 tanks, according
to Forbes.
Air power
America maintains its
edge with more than 13,000 military aircraft, 5,163 of which are operated by
the US Air Force. Its forces include the F-35 Lightning and F-22 Raptor, which
are among the most advanced combat jets in the world.
China’s aviation force
is the third-largest in the world with more than 2,500 aircraft, of which
around 2,000 are combat aircraft.
China’s most advanced stealth fighter jet is the J-20. It is producing its
own high-thrust turbofan engine which could speed up mass production of the
planes is ongoing.
The two countries are also working on new bombers, with China
developing its Xian H-20 strategic
bomber.
Meanwhile, the US Air Force released new images and details of its
next-generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber on Friday.
Naval power
China now has the
world’s largest navy, with about 360 ships compared with the US fleet of 297.
But China’s numerical advantage is down to smaller vessels, such
as coastal patrol ships. When it comes to larger warships the United States has
the advantage in numbers, technology and experience.
The US has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The carriers
are able to accommodate 60 or more aircraft each.
China has just two carriers – the Liaoning and Shandong. Each can carry 24 to
36 J-15 fighter jets.
However, China has plan to equal US naval strength in the
Pacific region, launching two dozen large warships – from corvettes and
destroyers to huge amphibious landing docks – in 2019 alone. It plans to launch
a third aircraft carrier equipped with the most advanced electromagnetic launch
catapults and start work on a fourth this year.
Nuclear warheads
The US has the
second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world after Russia.
China has not disclosed how many warheads it has; it is believed
it has 1,000 in 2021.
Missiles
While the US has far
more nuclear warheads, China has a virtual monopoly in one area: ground-based
ballistic missiles that can carry out both nuclear and conventional strikes.
Based on the latest
intelligence report, China’s hypersonic technology is years ahead of the US’s.
Appendix 4
China – A Threat to the West?
China was not a unified state until Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇, 259-210 BCE) declared himself the first
emperor, after he had conquered all of the other warring states. But the Chinese
have been proud of their common culture since time immemorial. They always
consider themselves the children of the Yellow Emperor, a legendary figure who
is said to have ushered in China’s civilisation some five thousand years
ago.
But much of China was, save for the silk that was coveted, not
known to the western world – until Marco Polo bragged about his visit and
influence on the court of Kublai Khan (1260 -1294). (I personally am not
convinced that he had been there, since there was no record of his stint in
Chinese history for that period.) Before the Sui-Tang (隋-唐) era, China was largely
an insular culture, even at the height of its great literary roll-out during
the Spring & Autumn period (Chun Chiu 春秋, 771 - 476 BCE). It
was very much a “middle” kingdom to its people, meaning, anything outside was
peripheral. Regardless, the philosophies that sprang out of the period has
influenced the way the Chinese conduct themselves as a culture since then. The
first sections of the Great Wall of China – for defending against the northern
and central Asian tribes – is said to be built at that time. Qin Shi Huang
joined them up.
During the Sui-Tang period (581 – 618 – 907), thanks to the
eagerness to learn more about Buddhism, China began to look out in earnest,
even though there were already monks like Fa-hsien (法顯) (trav. 319 - 413)
and Xuan-zang (玄奘) (trav. 629-645). Yi-jing (義淨) did it during
Tang-proper (trav. 671-695).
The Song (宋) dynasty (960 –
1279) was particularly prolific in inventions. One British scholar even
contended that the world’s First Industrial Revolution actually began there.
(The Eastern Origins of western Civilization (JM Hopson, Cambridge University,
2004). But the dynasty was very weak militarily and had to bear the brunt of
many invasions from the neighbouring tribes.
After that, Yuan’s (元)Kublai Khan extended
his conquest to as far as Hungary, but that had very little to do with the
Chinese way of life. China under Yuan (1271 to 1368) was largely a foreign
occupation of the country. It could not last long, given the nationalistic
nature of Han Chinese.
The Ming (明) emperors (1368 – 1644)
had the opportunity to make China the top dog of the world during their era.
Unfortunately, the opportunity was squandered and within a hundred years, China
had lost its skill in making great ocean-going ships. On top of that, thanks to
Admiral Cheng He, who was a Muslim, China helped Islamize Southeast Asia, which
hitherto was very much Hindu/Buddhist in culture.
Qing (清) (1644 -1912) was
Chinese complacency at its worst. While Japan understood the prowess of western
technology, Qing’s pseudo-scholar emperors blew their chances. False belief in
its superiority made China a laughing-stock. Great humiliation followed, until
Mao Zedong came along.
(China weakness prompted two vassal states – Korea and Vietnam –
which were largely contemptuous of China after it was weakened by the foreign
forces to do away with Chinese characters in their writing. While the Koreans
had developed their unique form, Vietnam chose to Romanize Chinese to suit
their local phonetic form of franca lingua.)
Mao Zedong might be the Zhu Yangzhang (朱元璋, or
Ming’s founding Hongwu Emperor) of China’s 20th Century, but if the trend
continues, Xi Jinping is likely to go down in history as China’s Zhougong (周公Duke of Zhou, circa 11th Century
BCE, the brother of the emperor who solidified the power of the Zhou dynasty
(1046-356 BCE) and who was esteemed by Kung-tze (Confucius) as the paragon of
great governance. If there is going to be a sage-ruler in China’s history, he
would certainly be the one.
What can we conclude from the last two millennia of China’s
history? A people who have no territorial design against others, even though
they have the ability and opportunity to do so.