Killing the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs

I am mean when I talk about personalities for whom I hold in great contempt: people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Llyod Austin, Katherine Tai, Nicholas Burns and last but not least Gina Raimondo. The entire echelon of Biden’s team!

Harris, Raimondo, and Tai belong to the fairer sex but do they justify the connotation of the term 'fairer sex'? Certainly not to me! And do they have good brains? 

I should leave them to readers to judge since we have seen these two characters in action often. But we often hear that Harris is quite dumb and has long been sidelined to play an inconsequential role in the White House. As for the other two, Tai wants to show her peers that she is more anti-China than them. We have many such Chinese around.

And last but not least: Raimondo…

I love to hate Raimondo’s physiognomy; she looks so witchy! (How unkind of me! She had no say in the matter at all, right? But I always believe one's face will be slowly shaped by his or true true character. An evil person will carry a kind of sinister look; a con-man will also wear a certain fake note on his face. Cannot run, lah!)

I have written about Raimondo’s background before – born 1971 of Italian descent, earlier career as a lawyer venture capitalist, later governor of Rhode Island from 2015 to 2021, and became Biden’s commerce secretary when the latter become the US president. There is no doubt that she was academically a high achiever. She did her undergraduate Arts at Harvard College and qualified with a JD degree from Yale in 1998. She also won a Rhode scholarship to Oxford where she received her PhD in Sociology in 2002. Apparently, her father spent his entire his career at the Bulova watch factory and when the company decamped operations to China, he lost his job at 56. This might explain her hatred for China.

Great academic credentials do not mean she has got a good brain.

We all heard that several of the big American IT companies are making representations to the Commerce Department to remove the restrictions placed on the export of their wares to China. What shocks Jeffrey Sachs – in an interview on the subject I recently watched on video – is the department’s close-to-zero understanding of the ABC of business, i.e., to make money. The strength or competitiveness of these American firms lies basically in their ability to stay ahead in technology. To stay ahead, you need to spend money on R&D. And the money must come from profits. Where can you make great profits? China of course! No country can replace China in terms of appetite!

And Chinese are hell of an innovative people. With America’s wares, they make products that consumers all over the world want and can afford to pay. Remove this basic linkage, everybody cries!

Lesson 101 in International Economics, Period. Yet, according to Sachs, this ABC is something they do not seem to understand.

I do not believe these bureaucrats do not understand such basics. I contend that they have a boss who simply hates China, and she wants to outdo everyone in their zeal to make China pay. Of course, this Lesson 101 is too much of a fuss for Sleepy Joe to care.

Yet, she is waiting for her invitation to go to China. She thinks she can outsmart China. 

Let’s see.

 

 

China’s Philosophy on Matters of Friendship

 

 

  

 

Many cynical Westerners had this to say about the extraordinary reception received by Henry Kissinger during his recent visit to China: Why is China lavishing on a has-been? Remember, former Filipino president Duterte has also just visited China. He was also warmly received. To these people, China is playing the wrong tune, geopolitically speaking.

Chinese concept of friendship has always been anchored on 感情 (gǎn qíng) – a term that encompasses several heartfelt expressions (to good deed by someone in the past, a genuine concern or offer of help, or the trust and confidence placed by a friend) and the earnest desire to reciprocate or return the favour when one is able to do so. You often see Chinese sparing no effort and expenses when it comes to entertaining good friends or someone who has done them a favour. Chinese diplomacy is simply an extension of that philosophy.

When Kissinger first visited China, Xi Jinping was still a nobody. But Kissinger’s place in China’s collective heart and mind has long been etched. Every Chinese is grateful that he has helped paved the way for China to join the world, even though we all know Nixon at that time was no saint; he also had a motive in wanting China to open up. Whether China’s re-emergence to what it is today is an intended consequence of that decision is still being debated by many lesser thinkers in America today. And whether this centenarian was coming to China on his own, or supported by the Biden administration, or being sponsored by some more-thoughtful parties in the US or elsewhere is not important to Chinese. Regardless, Kissinger is one whom they will always lay out the reddest of red carpets. He was being received like a head-of-state by Xi, who hosted a luncheon the arrangement for which China was happy to share with the world. He could even get to see Defence Minister Li Sangfu, who has refused to meet the 大番薯 (dà fān shǔ, big sweet (more appropriately, ugly?) potato) Llyod Austin. Biden and Blinken must be grinding their teeth! (It is therefore unlikely that Kissinger’s visit was sanctioned by the US government.)

I suppose it is hard for the West to understand our Chinese psyche. The West’s diplomacy is premised more on a transactional or Machiavellian nature – tit for tat, might-talks, zero-sum, etc, and usually devoid of compassion or long-term considerations. American bureaucrats and military officers will always behave as if they are superior to their counterparts. (Remember Blinken’s stupid opening remark to Yang Jiachi and Wang Yi during their first meeting in Alaska? And remember how America has reneged on those undertakings and promises made to China after World War II?) But they love underdogs – the way the Japanese showed subserviency to the Americans after their World War II defeat. And they are suckers to know how to manipulate them – like Saint Modi. (They also know how to squeeze the balls of beholden leaders in Europe and one particular one in Asia called Marcos Jr and many White worshippers like Yoon and Kishida.

Paul Keating is one rare Australian politician who truly understand the geopolitics in Asia. But he gets belittled each time he opens his mouth. Most Westerners have short memories; all they love are things that give them immediate gratification!)

Maybe good for the rest of the world to understand why Chinese can sustain themselves as a continuous civilisation for millennia! A couple of hundred years is just a flash in the pan in history.

 

The 'Disappearance' of Qin Gang

For all my admiration of the CPC (to me, it reads the Confucian Party of China) and the Chinese government for their deliveries to the Chinese people, I still do not think highly of their international PR competency. The latest is the sudden disappearance of Qin Gang, the country’s Foreign Minister. When the world has begun to show empathy on China’s stances vis-à-vis those of the United States in most geopolitical issues, its complete silence on Qin Gang’s whereabouts reinforces China doubters of their conviction that the country lacks transparency. To them and many others, China is still very much a Stalinist state.  

Qin Gang’s rise has been most phenomenal. Born in 1966, he entered the country’s foreign service in 1992, made an ambassador in 2010 (to the United Kingdom), and became the ministry’s vice minister in 2018. In July 2021, he was named ambassador to the United States. He became the country’s youngest foreign affairs minister in December 2022 and appointed a state councilor in March 2023.

Qin Gang has all the looks and gravitas to go places. Even Western leaders have little on this extraordinary diplomat that they can find fault with. His demeanours are easy to like and advocations, logical and forceful.

He has not been seen since June 25 when he met officials from Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Russia – a

century in China’s political and diplomatic calendar!

There is literally nothing from China’s official PR apparatuses on his disappearance, save for a brief allusion to his health. COVID-19 was thought to be the cause; but it obviously cannot be, since he would have long recovered if he had indeed been infected with the disease.

Rumours are rife, especially from the Taiwan media. The most cited is the ‘fatal attraction’ that occurred in March last year, when Phoenix TV’s presenter Fu Xiaotian (傅晓田) flew to interview Qin Gang. The pretty Cambridge-educated presenter is one of the most prominent figures on Chinese television. She has recently appeared with an infant son. Who is the father, many have asked.

 

But affairs do not usually kill one’s career outright in China. In 2021, news surfaced that Zhang Gaoli (张高丽), a member of the central committee of the CPC’s Politburo, had also a fling with tennis player Peng Shuai (彭帅). Zhang has not been disgraced.

There is certainly more to it in Qin Gang’s case.

 

Taiwan commentators love conspiracy theories. A couple of other happenings in the recent weeks are to them ‘hot connections’. 

Feng Yanghe is renowned for designing China's first artificial intelligence "brain" to run military operations. The fatal accident happened at about 2:30am on 1 July in Beijing. He was only 38. Feng had made important breakthroughs in the use of AI to support military command and control operations. Was it just a traffic accident? Many have asked.

The second is the ‘mysterious’ death of Wu Guohua, the deputy commander of the PLA Rocket Force, on 6 June. And in late June, his senior and commander, Lieutenant General Li Yuchao, was found missing in a promotion ceremony of the Chinese military. The absence sparked speculation that Li might be under investigation. Apparently, America has come to possess all the details of PLA’s Rocket Force and even had an article on them published publicly.

Since all these happened around the same time, it is just natural for all of us to draw connections. A source even claimed that Wei Fenghe, China former defence minister, who also headed the Rocket Force before, is also being investigated for alleged corruption. Ditto the integrity of several key PLA officers Zhang Zhenzhong, Liu Guangbin and Shang Honga who have been associated with the Rocket Force is also being called into question.

Fu Xiaotian, who lives lavishly, is said to be under suspicion as a ‘double agent’. A source says she is aligned to forces that are still loyal to Jiang Zemin.  

The silence does not augur well for China’s image, when Taiwan will soon be holding its next presidential election. (Remember the Hong Kong riots that went on to help Tsai Ing-wen win the election?)

Some Inconvenient Truths

Many readers will certainly accuse me of being racist after reading this article of mine. If not because of Joe Biden, I would not have wanted to write it, as the saying goes, you need poison to fight poison. The West’s superiority complex towards China and Chinese are becoming too unbearable for me.

But what I am going to write are simply inconvenient truths, and they are surely politically incorrect to brag about under normal circumstances. Humility should always come first, no matter how endowed one is.  

The following two pictures have been making their rounds in WhatsApp forwards. The backdrop reads: European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad 2023, Slovenia. You can see from the faces of the winners. Regardless of the country they represent, everyone is ethnically Chinese! I have written about this phenomenon before. But I would like to speak my mind a bit more on this.  

There are 13 or 14 academic Olympiads each year and the most prestigious of which, I understand, is the International Mathematic Olympiad (IMO). I am not sure if this Slovenia event is one of them. But some 60 countries did take part and China emerged as No 1, followed by the US and Australia. The top European prize went to Ukraine.

China has won the IMO championships the greatest number of times, and many of the members of winning teams America and Australia were also ethnically Chinese!  

The cold truth is that each race has its own genetic constitution. Chinese are genetically very adept at Science and Mathematics. As a language, Chinese is most facilitating in counting. We generally use Intelligence Quotient (IQ) to measure braininess. But we also know IQ is also greatly influenced by factors like geography, climate, food, and other resource factors. Below is the map

which shows the average IQ scores of countries. 

 

Japan has been ranked No 1. Taiwan and Singapore followed close behind. I have taken the liberty to discuss them based on the following broad clusters:

1. The East Asians

Japan  106.48, Taiwan, 106.47, Singapore 105.89, Hong Kong, 105.37, China 104.1, South Korea 102.35

2. The Caucasians and the Levante People

Finland 101.2, Germany 100.74, Netherlands 100.74, Canada 99.52, Australia 99.24. Switzerland 99.24, United Kingdom 99.12, United States 97.43, Sweden 97, France 96.69, Russia 96.29, Italy 94.23, Spain 93.9, Cyprus 93.39, Israel 92.43, Malta 91.27, Greece 90.77

3. Southeast Asians

            Myanmar 91.18, Vietnam 89.53, Thailand 88.87, Malaysia 87.58, Philippines 81.64, Indonesia 78.49

4. Arabs

            Iraq 89.28. Bahrain 83.6, United Arab Emirates 82.05. Libya 80.92, Jordan 80.7, Saudi Arabia      76.36, Egypt 76.32

5, Central Asians

            Uzbekistan 89.01, Kazakhstan 88.89, Tajikistan 87.71. Turkey 86.8

6. Latin Americans

            Mexico 87.73, Uruguay 87.59, Cuba 83.9, Brazil 83.38, Venezuela 82.99

7. South Asians

            Sri Lanka 86.62, Pakistan 80, Iran 80.01, India 76.24, Bangladesh 74.33, Nepal 42.99

8. Pacific Islands

            Fiji 83.96, Solomon Islands 83.96, Samoa 83.96, Micronesia 83.96, Papua New Guinea 78.49, Timor-Leste 78.49

9. Africans

            Uganda 76.42, Kenya 75.2      55, Angola 75.1, Tanzania 74.95, Zimbabwe 74.01, Burkina Faso 73.8, South Africa 68.87, Zambia 68.43, Ethiopia 68.42, Nigeria 67.76, Ghana 58.16. 

Darwinian evolution is an on-going process. There are two aspects that govern IQ developments – one is genetic, which takes ages to improve; the other is environmental where the limiting force for its potential growth is largely self-inflicted by the people’s very own society. The first one is too politically impolite for me to cite examples, but I can offer many examples in the second situation. A case in point is Singapore. If it had only grown – economically and socially – like the rest of its Southeast Asian neighbours, then its average IQ today will probably register in the region of 90. It is 106! On the other hand, America and many countries in Europe are likely to see their average IQ regressing in the coming years, since there is so much in-migration from regions where average IQs are pretty low. Average IQs amongst East Asians are likely to plateau around the 105 level for many years to come; however, readings amongst the South and West Asians, particularly the Indians, will noticeably climb further north in due course. The figure for Israel is surprisingly low. I thought it should read 120!

Homo Sapiens reaching China 100,000 years ago…

The following information was extracted from a book called A Pocket History of Human Evolution book published by S. Condemi. Contrary to earlier belief that Homo sapiens left Africa some 60,000 years ago, Condemi argues that the latest research seems to show that the migration reached China more than 100,000 years ago. I thought this is the principal answer to the question I was posing in the first place?

We know the Out-of-Africa timeline has been revised many times. We must leave it to the experts to sort the facts out. Given the capability of modern science, this should not be a tall order. 

A Reluctant Tour of Canada

I had always been very ambivalent about Canada. It had never occurred to me as a tourist destination. even though my son Shen-Yang had spent a year and a half in Toronto doing his subspecialist training under the world-renowned Movement Disorders authority Prof Anthony Lang. A coach tour Hwa and I did across America in 2018 did swing us across the border for us to spend a night in Niagara Falls. Probably influenced by her sister’s account of a journey she took earlier, Hwa decided that we should do a similar tour as well and duly signed up with Travel Marvel. We were supposed to do it in May 2019. COVID-19 struck, and the trip was cancelled.

The West’s behaviour towards China and Chinese that ensued changed my entire attitude towards them. Canada’s Justin Trudeau became one leader I despised greatly. To me, he has done two unforgiveable things to we Chinese – (a) bending to the US wishes and placed Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou under house arrest and (b) acting as a key Biden hoodlum to contain China. I was happy to forgo the trip.

But Hwa was keen; she rebooked the tour, even though I told her it was not a good idea. As a good husband, I let her have the final say. Maybe this was also an opportunity for me to see for myself first-hand what was wrong with countries that are under people like Trudeau?

We began our one-month tour beginning May 31.

The first leg of our tour comprised the sights and sounds of the east coast of Canada – Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Quebec, and Montreal. We then flew to Victoria to visit the west coast. I heard about towns like Whistler, Jasper, and Banff for the first time! We then switched to a two-day train ride to admire the Rockies before going to Vancouver to board Volendam, a-60,000 tonne cruise ship, that sailed us to Alaska and back. It made several port calls along the way.

We finally reached home on June 30!

Of course, the landscape, especially the majestic Rockies and several other mountain ranges (the names of which I have not bothered to take note), the glaciers and the temperate rain forests on both sides of Inside Passage along the Alaskan coast, was spectacularly awesome. But the cruise part was quite a torture to me; it was quite difficult for someone like me to kill time. We have indulged ourselves with a room that has a balcony. But the weather is cold and windy. No sooner had you opened the door to the balcony than you wanted to close it immediately. How ridiculous!

I told my wife two things after this trip: (a) No more month-long tours, and (b) No cruises that last more than three or four days!

Few things I would like to share with friends:

One, we were with a group that was organised by an Australia agency. Naturally, most of our fellow travelers are Aussies. We had joined such tour compositions and had not felt awkward or uncomfortable. However, in the wake of the West’s generally anti-China stances, we naturally became a little conscious of our differences with them – even though we look – no joking, really – more “atas” than most of them. I told my wife that this would be the last trip I would travel with Whites. (Hitherto, she preferred tours organised by western tour companies; her contention, and rightly so, was their tour guides are knowledgeable, and visits are usually more leisurely.)

Second, contrary to what I first feared, Canadians are by and largely friendly. The tour guides often joked about American’s ignorance and arrogance.

Canada is a huge country but has only a small population. While cities like Quebec and Ottawa here the heritage is still predominantly British or French, cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver are becoming very cosmopolitan, and they are also being plagued by issues that come with such complexity. These cities are dirtier.

Three: We did not seem to see tourists from China. Those we saw in the cruise, I believe, are likely to be Hong Kong immigrants living in Canada. Yes, Chinatowns are still around, but Chinese presence is no longer that overwhelming now. (I did not know that the first Chinatown was established in Victoria!) I seemed to see more Koreans than Chinese there! 

First Chinatown in Canada

Instead, you see South Asians everywhere now. Soon, their politics will be dominated by them. (As it is, a very vocal politician in Canada is a Sikh.) A trend indicator: in the resort town of Banff, which is full of tourists, there are several Indian restaurants but only one Chinese restaurant that is decently enough to be called one.

India has surpassed China in terms of population numbers. Indians adapt to Western cultures and taste better than we Chinese. With their general ability to articulate well in English, political shots in the West will soon be called by Indians!

Four: The bulk of the service crew of Volendam is Indonesian. We exchanged pleasantries often; they speak good English.

Five: I would like to single out my disappointment with Vancouver. Homelessness is most glaring there. And drug addiction must be a big problem there. You see zombies on the streets and in the parks, and junkies in front of convenience stores looking at sympathetic shoppers to give them a dollar coin or two. They are not aggressive, though. (I thought Li Kah-shing had transformed Vancouver, but I did not get to see the results of any of his efforts! Shops look tired and many are closing down. The airport is quite third-world, really.)

Six: The tipping culture. Service providers expect 15% or more! Food is expensive. A simple meal, plus tips given, would cost more than 50 to 60 Canadian dollars!

Would I recommend friends to make a similar trip? No, unless you have run out of places to visit!