Why did Jake Sullivan visit China?

 

I have always contended that the person who is running the White House is not Joe Biden. He is too semi-demented to do that. I maintained that the person who is calling the shots is Jake Sullivan.

Antony Blinken is intellectually and conceptually too shallow to act effectively or prestigiously as the US’s Secretary of State. Janet Yellen and Gina Raimondo are laws unto themselves; as for Llyod Austin and Katherine Tai, the former is a “potato” and the latter, someone who still needs to prove she is more American than Americans. Austin and Tai probably take orders from Sullivan.

As for Kamala Harris, she was a wall flower in the White House. Nobody has placed any attention to her existence – until she was anointed by Biden to be the Democrats’ White House nominee.

Yes, CNN and all the media aligned to the Democratic Party are furiously promoting Harris, and Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance seem to be shooting their own feet these days, notwithstanding, I still see Donald taking the trophy in November – for a simple reason: Most Americans cannot tell what is right or wrong, or good from bad. However, I am not implying that the Harris team is better. None of the breed of American leaders is good for the Global South!

Biden is already a lame duck and why was Sullivan visiting China?

After helping Biden to kick China so very hard for the past three years, Sullivan has probably realised that all the Biden administration’s efforts to weaken China has proven not only futile but indeed counterproductive. Yes, China is suffering pains right now, but its resilience will persevere to greater heights. No doubt about this.

China may also appear weak in dealing with jokers like Marcos Jr. But Xi is an extraordinary leader. He will prevail without firing any shots! When to strike? Sun Tze’s answer: When your enemies are in a totally disarray situation, which the US is about to enter into.

Sullivan is smarter than Blinken. He suspects China might be about to strike, and any move in that direction by China will doom Harris’s chance of getting elected. (Apparently, none of American’s aircraft carrier group is in East Pacific now.) His main mission was to gauge China’s preparedness, hence his meeting with General Zhang Youxia, the vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. Meetings with Wang Yi were just the old fried rice stuff. And getting to call on President Xi was a chance in his lifetime.

Why are the Chinese still entertaining him?

Read Sun-Tze!

Prof Wang Gungwu – A Historian Without Equal – on China

 

Prof Wang’s scholarship is world renowned, but I have only been seriously following his writings, lectures, talks and interviews after I got involved in a thought leadership orgnisation in 2016. (I had the opportunity to be introduced to him earlier, but that was more on a social basis; he was a VVIP in a function and I, a minor guest.)

His philosophical depth in defining terms which we often use in the most casual manner has a deep impact on the way I think about things now. For example, we were quite happy to be called huá qiáo (华侨, overseas Chinese) when we should be identifying ourselves as huá yì (华裔, ethnic Chinese). Some may argue, “What’s the big deal?” I think there is, but maybe I should leave it to another day to explain the fundamental difference. I also watched another recent interview of him; apparently, he is now working to define wén mínɡ (文明, loosely, civilization) and wén huà (文化, loosely, culture) more definitively. Ditto on “Nation” and “Country”.

When someone alerted me that he would be giving an on-line lecture at HELP University on 10 August, I lost no time in signing up for a seat at the university’s Damansara auditorium. Several distinguished historians were there to hear from him on “China – From Middle Kingdom to World Power: WHAT OF THE FUTURE?” Some were Prof Wang’s students when he was with the University of Malaya. I was happy to see my friends Dr Stephen Leong Mun Yoon and Tan Sin Su there. Dr Leong is a historian in his own right and he and Prof Wang were teaching at the university in those early days.

Well before the US-China tensions, Prof Wang in a lecture he gave at the National University of Singapore in 2016 was already talking about the South China Sea’s vulnerability as the big powers’ pond. But no one could imagine how the relationship between these two countries has soured so much since then. In his 10 August lecture, he spoke for more than an hour, seemingly without notes, on the events leading to China’s rise as a world power in the modern time. (Prof Wang will be turning 94 in October; he is so incredibly robust and sharp!)

To him, the watershed year in the US-China relationship was 2008, when the world suffered a financial crisis. It was China that bailed out America. And this awoken the US. How can a protégé become stronger than the master? Everyone knew China was for decades in a pathetic mess before Nixon visited China. Prof Wang also touched on the term world power, a notion which had not existed until the West began to colonize the world. Even the US was not one until after the end of World War II. And now China is being seen as one.

It is now the US’s obsession to contain China, and because of its constant muscle-flexing in front of China’s doorsteps – in the name of upholding free navigation and protecting its vassals and allies in the region – it has also created an obsession on China’s part to build its naval might. (And militarily, China needs the depths of that sea to operate its submarine fleet.) The region is now gripped by two opposing obsessions!

However, Prof Wang was a little ambivalent on the legitimacy of China over its disputes with the other claimants in the region. He argues that maritime boundaries are almost impossible to determine. China’s claim is entirely borne out of historical records – from the Ming and the Qing – but the entire sea was virtually under the Japanese until after the conclusion of World War II upon which the sovereignty of the islands in the South China Sea was supposed to revert to China, which was under the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China then. In 1949, the Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan and the People Republic of China (PRC) now says it is the rightful owner of these islands. Prof Wang has been quite consistent on this stance over the years. I do understand his position; he understood international laws quite differently from the customary ones held by us Chinese. I suppose that might be the reason he has not been well acknowledged by China all these years, despite his scholarship and academic standing.

In fielding a question, Prof Wang said that the Nine-Dash Line, as appeared in maps published by the Kuomintang government and PRC, had historically never been objected, contested, or challenged by any party until more recently. He explained that this is probably because China was no threat to any power when the map was first drawn, and [in the 1950s and 1960s] PRC was not a member of UN, hence no one paid any attention or importance of this line at that time. Since no one contested, these maps formed the legal basis of China’s assertion on the legality of this line. However, he also said there are also historical records to support such assertions. (Sin Su helped me to recall this part.)

In a recent interview with SCMP, Dr Wu Shicun (吴士存), the founder of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in China said that the XiSha Islands (西沙群岛, Paracel Islands) had long been mapped out during the Ming dynasty and were Chinese possessions. However, in the wake of Imperial Japan’s seizure of northeast China, France in 1931 took control of nine islands and reefs, including ZhongYe Dao (中业岛, Thitu Island) in the South China Sea. All these are in the NanSha Islands cluster (南沙群島, Spratly Islands), though. When China was in the grip of the Cultural Revolution, the Philippines under the then Marcos Senior, sent his military to take over a number of islands in Nansha including FeiXin Dao (費信島, Flat Island) and ZhongYe Dao. This was in the 1970s. As both Beijing and Taipei did not respond militarily, the Philippines conducted five more military operations and took over eight more Chinese and reefs. RenAi Jiao (仁爱礁Second Thomas Shoal was not amongst them, though. However, I must say even though Dr Wu says these NanSha islands and reefs were originally China’s, he did not quite substantiate his assertion with more solid evidence. He did say that Beijing has never claimed that the whole of the South China Sea belongs to China, nonetheless, he contends that these islands and reefs should all be returned to the Chinese people.

In the absence of any legitimate record, I actually found it difficult to support positions taken by people like Dr Wu, even though it was obvious that the only country which had an intimate knowledge of the South China Sea was certainly China. However, I did find it difficult to support the Philippines’s claim either. The Filipino’s concept of nationhood did not arise until the late 1800s and seas beyond the main islands were rainbows to them. However, recently a friend forwarded me a CGTN article which carried an opinion of Anthony Carty (profile below) who had gone through British and French archives, spanning from the 1880s to the late 1970s, to look at the historical understanding of sovereignty of NanSha Islands. He discovered that “the archives demonstrate, taken as a whole, that it is the view of the British and French legal experts that as a matter of international law territory the XiSha Islands and the NanSha Islands are Chinese territory.”

On NanSha, he says “French legal advice was that France never completed an effective occupation of the Spratlys, and they abandoned them completely in 1956. In the 1930s, they recognised that these Spratlys had always been home to Chinese fishermen from Hainan and Guangdong. There had never been any Vietnamese or Philippine connection and French interference had only been in its own name and not that of Vietnam. It is the British who then drew a decisive conclusion, from all the French and British records available, that the Chinese were the owners of the Spratlys, a legal position certified as part of British Cabinet records in 1974.

Interestingly, he also discovered a record in the US National Archives, circa mid-1950s, in which the under-secretary of state says that the Filipinos have no claim to the Spratlys and it is the US interest to encourage them to make a claim anyway to keep Communist China out of the area.

Be that as it may, an arbitral tribunal in 2016 ruled in favour of the Philippines on most of its submissions. However, it clarified that while it would not "rule on any question of sovereignty ... and would not delimit any maritime boundary", China's historic rights claims over maritime areas (as opposed to land masses and territorial waters) within the "nine-dash line" have no lawful effect unless entitled to under UNCLOS. China, which did not participate, has rejected the ruling, as has Taiwan. The United Nations does not hold any position on the case or on the disputed claims. And I understand the ruling is not legally binding.

There may be too much water under the bridge already. And China might be fighting an uphill battle. The South China Sea is full of players now. The map below shows how it has been divided based on oil and gas interests, though there are overlapping claims in many parts. It is might that matters now. No matter how strong China’s legal position is in XiSha and NanSha, it will have to contend with the Vietnamese in the former and the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei or even Indonesia in the latter.

It is likely that Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia are likely to be able to come to terms with China on the pond’s resources, I do not see that this route will be possible with the Philippines, as long as Marcos Junior is helming the country.

But as far as China is concerned, its military and naval control (not ownership) over the pond is non-negotiable, for it means life or death for China. The possession of RenAi Jiao and HuangYan Dao (黄岩岛, the Scarborough Shoal) is absolutely important to China – as long as America and its hoodlums seek to use the Philippines to contain China. Maybe China should say this louder and clearer to the world. (Prof Wang was posed this question by a member of the audience: Isn’t this hard stance of China destroying the very image it wants to project to the world? I cannot quite recall Prof Wang’s reply, but I believe he took pain to talk about role of soft power in geopolitics.  

Anthony Carty (born 1947; PhD Cambridge), is a legal scholar at the Beijing Institute of Technology. Previously, he was a law professor at Tsinghua University and the University of Hong Kong (Sir YK Pao Chair of Public Law), after a career in Britain.

Postscript:

I also love to show off the following picture to friends. Two great historians – Prof Wang and Dr Leong – holding the two books which have been self-published by me. The contents of the two books must be of elementary stuff to them!

Time to Name and Shame Again…

Sports are not my strong suit. Nonetheless, I do cheer our Malaysian players when they enter finals in international badminton games. And like most ethnic Chinese, I also feel very upbeat when I see Chinese sports man or woman excel, simply out of kinship pride. In the recent Olympics in France, my wife and I spent hours switching from TV channel to channel, searching for performances by participants from China to cheer or celebrate in our own space.

Malaysia is strong in badminton, but our team could only bag 2 bronzes. We are still fledglings in the other sports.

On the other hand, China entered the final day of Paris 2024 with a 39-38 edge on the U.S. But the day saw the US took two more gold medals – women’s basketball and women’s omnium (which the country bumpkin in me had never heard of before this). China managed one more, in women’s +81kg weightlifting. The final scoreboard was the US 40, 44 and 42 (126), and China 40, 27 and 24 (91).

Japan came in third, which is the same position they held in Tokyo 2020. Russia and Belarus, unfortunately, have again been left out.

Some chauvinists like me thought that China’s gold tally should be 44, for it should include Hong Kong’s 2 and Taiwan’s 2. What a form of self-gratification, silly me!

But I was indeed trying to bring home a point. I was not suggesting China was better or had replaced the US as the world’s No 1 sports power. However, it is clear to me that the US is no longer the sole top dog in the Olympics. Many countries, even countries with small populations, are now able to crane their heads and win disproportionately high number of medals. The exception is India.

This trend was already evident in Tokyo 2020. In July 2021 when Tokyo was hosting a belated Olympics, I wrote this article “What does Tokyo Olympics 2020 say about America?” It attracted some 50,000 readers. Unfortunately, I have accidentally deleted the article from the blog, but please access the following link to read it if you are interested:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sribkF0P07-KMq5miqsuK04aWVbIWhCd/view?usp=sharing

I remember CNN first screamed with this headline then: This US fails to win medal on first day of Summer Olympics for the first time in nearly 50 Years. Then I woke up on the 26^th morning to read this: USA Basketball defeated in first Olympic loss since 2004. I knew the world had changed.

But much of West’s attitude towards China has hardly changed. Especially the Americans.

Americans are seeing Chinese ghosts everywhere, including sports.

In the final weeks of Trump’s presidency, he signed into law that gave the US vast powers to police doping at competitions like the Olympics. The law allows its Justice Department to CRIMINALLY prosecute coaches, trainers, doctors, and sports officials from AROUND the world if they engage in facilitating doping, even if the event is held outside the US. See how arrogant America can be!

(Apparently, the Justice Department is still investigating whether Chinese antidoping authorities and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have covered up the positive tests of nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers who went on to win medals at the last Tokyo Games even though a World Aquatics audit had concluded that there was no mismanagement or cover-up by WADA.

And this incident is still being used by South China Morning Post, a pro-West media in Hong Kong to help fan the suspicion. In its 5 August edition, Ira Gorawara wrote that the UK’s three-time Olympic gold medalist Adam Peaty wants “cheating” Chinese swimmers knocked out of the sport and urged WADA to “wake up and do your job”.

Peaty was angry that China had won the men’s 4x100 metres medley relay gold, ending US’s 40-year reign of that throne. Peaty was suggesting that there was more to the race than meet the eye. Gorawara again brought up the Tokyo incident but did not bother to say that the swimmers had been officially cleared. Journalists in SCMP, as I have said before, can be naughty. They are subtly anti-China, and guess who is the owner? Jack Ma!

Earlier, Australian swimming coach Brett Hawke also suggested that Pan Zhanle’s world-record 100 metres freestyle time was “not humanly possible”. He was simply implying that Pan must have the help of “booster” in achieving his “incredible” feat.

Pan said he had been given the cold shoulder by some of the other swimmers, had to undergo 21 doping tests from May to July. (Apparently, all in all, the Chinese swimming team had to undergo some 600 tests!)  

Chinese were seen as pariahs by many. Below are two snapshots of a video clip I received from a friend. On seeing the French swimmer Léon Marchand approaching, a Chinese swimming coach stretched out his hand to shake the former’s hand. Marchand deliberately ignored the latter and walked on. Was Marchand just showing his unfriendliness? I bet it is more than that. It must be his prejudice against Chinese that is the root cause.

Yes, sports men and women who want to cheat to win should not be allowed to compete. In the earlier eras, many did and got away scot-free. Testing was not so rigorous then.

It is a different reality now. No prohibited drug can escape detection. I dare say that many of those who tested positive are likely to be innocent. The first question any governing body in the sports world should establish is: Was there a deliberate attempt to cheat or take advantage of? Understanding of cultures is important. Chinese parents were forever fussing over their children to eat this and drink that before examinations. Much of TCM’s goodness is based on certain properties of living things, both animals and plants, and organic substances. These tonics can contain prohibited enhancers.

The parents want their children to do well. This is also a form of unfairness. Should children be subject to dope test? Ridiculous, isn’t it? Sports men and women are also vulnerable; the food they inadvertently consume outside may contain traces of banned chemicals. Can we penalise them wholesale? They would not have taken then if they knew these things contain prohibited or dangerous properties.

Weightlifters smell ammonia salt supposedly to help them stay focused, improve concentration and lessen dizziness and pain. Should this be allowed to continue? Also, there was the controversy over the true gender of two women boxers – one from Taiwan and one from Algeria – who went on to collect gold.  It is said that both had failed the eligibility tests administered by the International Boxing Association, yet they were allowed to compete in the Olympics. Isn’t this a very fundamental issue for the two world bodies to resolve? Maybe the XY chromosomes stuff is not so straightforward after all.

This witch-hunting and “guilty until proven innocent” attitude against Chinese athletes and swimmers should stop. I see that the Chinese side is also hitting back. CGTN has reported that one of US’s Olympic track and field team, a certain Erriyon Knighton, had actually tested positive for the banned steroid trenbolone in March and yet USADA did not see fit to impose any penalty on Knighton and he was allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics qualifiers. To the Americans, Knighton had eaten meat that was contaminated with this substance. Maybe it is true. The bottom line is there should not be any double standards. All should rise above all these discriminatory behaviours.

Maybe the world governing bodies should sit down and rewrite rules and apply them without favour, fear or prejudice. And the world community should force the US to repeal its extra-territorial laws. But again, as long as it is the hegemon of the world, it can do pretty much what it likes.

Fortunately, gone are the days when we could only count on Reuters or Associated Press or BBC or CNN to tell us news beyond our shores; today we have CGTN, YouTube and TikTok to help us see other perspectives.

CGTN also reported that WADA had questioned the integrity of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Purportedly, there are at least three cases where athletes who had committed serious anti-doping rule violations were allowed to continue to compete for years while they acted as undercover agents for USADA. In one case, an elite-level athlete, who competed at the Olympic qualifiers and international events in the United States, admitted to taking steroids and EPO, yet was permitted to continue competing all the way up to retirement. Apparently, the case was never published, results never disqualified, prize money never returned, and no suspension ever served. All very ironical and hypocritical. 

To many westerners in the past, Chineseness was epitomized by Christopher Lee’s portrayal of Dr Fu Manchu, a fictional character created by an English author in the early 20^th century. The image – someone who donned the typical costume of the Qing era, and with a flowing mustache that is now styled “Fu Manchu” and long, menacing fingernails – was supposed to project cruelty and evil to the extreme, or the Yellow Peril incarnate in one man. Fu Manchu was the typical Chinaman! Nothing good could come out of a Chinaman. It is the mission of every good white man to destroy him!

Indeed, during the era, many Chinese, because of abject poverty and widespread opium addiction, indeed looked like Fu Manchu, but in a more pathetic form – filthy and aways in rags. This prompted the Japanese who had a lofty vision of creating a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to treat Chinese as sub-humans.  

Then came China’s determination to catch up with the rest of the world. Its market for technology trade-off was painted as IP thefts by the affluent west.

This image of Chineseness has stayed with many in the west, even until today. I suppose Gina Raimondo and Ursula von der Leyen are amongst them.

And this prejudice has now spilled over to the Paris Olympics 2024!

Two Saturdays ago, I attended an online lecture given by one of the greatest living historians of our time, Prof Wang Gungwu, at HELP University on 10 August. The title: China – From Middle Kingdom to World Power: What of the Future?

You have to take your hat off to Prof Wang. He will be 94 soon, yet he is still as sharp as ever. I will talk about his lecture in a different time. But he thought the year 2008 was the watershed year. America was under George Bush’s presidency. The global financial crisis (GFC) and China emerged as the saviour. The obsession began to take shape. A beneficiary of the US’s goodwill had transformed to be the benefactor. No way! A new Fu Manchu must be created!

Sadly, many Yellow Bananas also share this belief!

I self-published this title two years ago: China’s Arduous Journey to Earn Its Place, From Mr Q to President Xi Jinping. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yVFu9KhFlP2XsqI5gQMIf2kcwD3TLEc3/view?usp=drive_link)  Besides the economic and military powers that China is building, it is also important for them to think more deeply how they should go about correcting the prejudices of the deeply indoctrinated lot in the western world. 

Shallow Scholars and Parroty Journalists

 A good friend in Melbourne suggested that I sign up to watch a Taiwan-Australia Dialogue organised by the University of Melbourne’s Asialink on 30 July. I promptly did.

It was moderated by Colin Haseltine. The panel from Taiwan comprised Paul Kuoboug Chang, former head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel-Aviv, Dr Fu-Kuo Liu, director of Taiwan Centre for Security Studies, Dr Mignonne Chan, deputy director of Taiwan Centre for Security Studies and Dr I Yuan, Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University.

One of the Australian speakers was Dr Sow Keat Tok. I would assume that his family name is Tok, judging from the Australians’ nomenclature on names.

In public, Chinese thinkers and scholars cannot usually articulate well in English, these speakers from Taiwan were no exception. But I must say their arguments and messages reflect the views of many in Taiwan who are genuinely concerned about the island’s future. They were quite unhappy with their President Lai Ching-te’s way of managing the cross-strait relationship. Mignonne Chan could not be more blunt when she said that China’s “One China, Different Systems” was simply the best win-win situation for both sides of the strait.

I was looking for a robust response from the Australian side. Prof Hugh White of the Australian National University was a little tentative, nonetheless, he was asking the right leading questions, which helped to generate some very insightful replies from the members of the Taiwan panel.

Alas, when Tok was invited to speak, I could tell from his English that he must have hailed from my “kampung” (i.e., a fellow Malaysian). I was totally dismayed by the shallowness of his knowledge and felt like leaving the webinar half-way through. Nonetheless, I stayed on until he finished. He was talking like a typical China-hating western journalist!

He was parroting what the western media wants us to believe about China’s economy. Earlier this year, they were celebrating that the Chinese economy was in serious trouble, thanks to high youth unemployment and the collapse of real estate there, blah, blah, blah. Tok is repeating these lines again! He also argued that Xi Jinping’s reform efforts were meant to prop up CCP’s legitimacy and personal pursuit of his fourth term in China. What a load of rubbish! He reminds me of a lecture given by a certain ANZ economist in the same university a couple of months ago, which I have written dismissively earlier in my blog. He contended that the trajectory of Chinese economic growth was no different from that of Japan; nothing exceptional.

Sure, China’s economy did look grim last year. But the context must be understood. Why did youth employment spike? Why did the real estate sector seem to go into a tailspin? Did these armchair analysts really understand the reasons. I am afraid not. The government is always on its toes; many of its short-term pains were results of its attempt to transform and the real estate ill was a case in point. And much of the exceptionalism we are seeing in China today is a consequence of the relentless efforts by the US and its allies to retard China. They help spur China’s homegrown champions like Huawei and universities to make breakthroughs that seem impossible in the western lenses. Thousands, hitherto naturalized to become citizens in the US and in Europe, have also returned to China because of the discrimination they are experiencing in these adopted countries.

Back to Tok. I do not mean to be insulting; his use of the acronym CCP clearly demonstrates that he does not quite know the proper name for the governing party in China, which is the Communist Party of China, or CPC. CCP is usually used by western or pro-west journalists to give the Chinese government a certain baggage – a subtle Stalinist association of suppression, totalitarianism and what-have-you, instead of a party that is legitimately and popularly governing China. (Which “democratic” government in the world has an approval rating that is higher than CPC’s?)

I also read an article written by a certain Tan Chee Meng of the University of Nottingham Malaysia published in the Asia Times on 3 August. The title of the article is: China needs to pick a side, and it just might pick the West (https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/china-needs-to-pick-a-side-and-it-just-might-pick-the-west/.) Just because Russia has signed a peace treaty with North Korea, the author talks as if Russia is deserting China. And Russia is losing the war in Ukraine and China needs to press Russia to sue for peace with Ukraine. And he also repeats the same western narrative that “China has been reeling from a real estate crisis, a volatile stock market, a massive 288% debt-to-GDP ratio, as well as high youth unemployment. He seems to observe that Chinese government bond prices soared from increasing demand, suggesting that investors are seeking safer investment alternatives as confidence in the Chinese economy remains low. He further argues that “a battered economy isn’t the only problem the Chinese government faces. It has traditionally employed economic performance to legitimize its rule. So given the poor economic climate, Beijing needs to jump-start its ailing economy to maintain power.”

Does it read like those you have been reading in the western and pro-West press during the last couple of months? I have taken the liberty to produce some of his readers’ comments in the Appendix below.

Why am I singling out people like Tok and Tan for criticism?

The colour of their skin gives non-Chinese readers or viewers that they know China well and can speak authoritatively on China. The truth is this: These are the very western educated Chinese who want to show that they are more western intellectually than their kinsmen. They stereo-type opinions and reinforce the west’s prejudice against China on geopolitical issues.

Singapore’s Channel News Asia (CNA) also often invites academics to comment on “China versus the world” matters. Several of them are teaching in the local universities, mostly mid-level scholars. I could see that that they were originally from China and perhaps because of their anxiousness to shed their China-born identity or image and show that they were impartial in their views, their comments tended to be somewhat negative with regards to China’s stances in the dispute or issue in question.

The former category should visit China more often and read materials that are produced by thinkers and scholars who do not harbour any prejudice against any party. Two names deserve my highest level of respect: Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs and a former senior minister in the Singapore government, George Yeo. Sachs is his in-depth knowledge of the history of issue and his fearlessness to call spade a spade. Yeo, like Sachs, has an encyclopedia knowledge about countries and their constituents. He knows many world leaders in person. But he is a diplomat extraordinaire. His warnings are always couched in words of wisdom; even the people his messages were intended for will have difficulty in disagreeing with what he has said. (Kishore Mahbubani is also a popular speaker. However, he is often viewed as a China apologist. Much he opined is not without foundation, but I tend to have this feeling when it comes to his speeches on China: You hear one, you hear all.)

There are in fact many objective analysts and commentators on China issues in many parts of the world. Some of them are American and they often podcast from China. Several are of South Asian ethnicity, and they are in think tanks and universities. Taiwan has literally created a podcast streaming industry out of some ten to twenty popular thinkers there – academics, ex-diplomat, financial experts, ex-senior military figures, etc. The host is usually a very smooth-talking young man or woman presenter who will outline issues of the day and invite his or her panel to comment. They, in my opinion, can rival any world-class scholar in terms of insights and knowledge about the issues of the day. But I suspect people like Tok are quite oblivious to their existence.

Now on the western and pro-West media:

Many journalists and reporters in our region tend to report or speak like western reporters. Many of them are ethnically Chinese. South China Morning Post’s reporting on China vis-à-vis its neighbours and the west largely reflect their negative opinions of China’s stances. (However, I must say that their knowledge of the developments in Chinese science and technology is pretty solid and objective.) I also observe a similar phenomenon with some reporters and journalists in Singapore.  

I can understand their TV channels’ news readers; they must read what they are given. And also their papers, where they have to reproduce articles from Reuters, Bloomberg, etc wholesale. However, for those reporters or journalists who are based in Beijing, they need to come up with facts they see on the ground, and not parrot what the west has been reporting or has written. I took exception of the way Olivia Xiong is presenting developments in China. Her tone often reflects her doubt over what she hears from the official spokesmen in China. I still remember when the US had already admitted that the Chinese balloon they shot down over their sky was indeed a weather balloon, she still used the term “Chinese spy balloon” to describe it. Another one who reports on business shows similar attitude when the matter or issue is about China. If they are less western-centric in their mindset, I believe their opinions will be more respected by readers.

Anyone one who bothers to put on his or her thinking cap when he or she reads or listens will know much of the stuff said by the west about China is designed to hobble China. Imagine, there is even double standard in the doping tests that is being practised on Chinese athletes in the Olympics today! Do these Chinese sportsmen and sportswomen want to cheat, knowing that their blood or urine sample cannot survive the rigorousness of the modern laboratories? Certainly not.

The reality is this: their coaches have long believed in traditional oriental medicine; unfortunately, many of these concoctions contain parts of both living things and inorganic substances that have traces of prohibited elements!

Thanks to the reporters from the west, particularly the US, these Chinese sportsmen and sportswomen are now made to be seen like suspected criminals.

Journalists in our region should remind themselves that they owe their society a duty to be more wholesome in their reporting.

The 100-metre free style is the bluest of blue-ribbon event in Olympics and in Paris, Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle has won the gold medal in the men’s 100m freestyle with a world record-breaking 46.40 seconds. An Australian coach went to the extent of saying that the feat was not humanly possible. You know the basis of his skepticism. I hope people like Tok and Tan and Xiong do not share this Australia’s coach’s insinuation.

 

* * * * *

Appendix

Some readers’ comments on Tan Chee Meng’s Asia Times article (as they appeared; unedited):

- Lots of nonsense. First of all, there’s no way that Russia loses the war. It has already gained all the territory it sought. Secondly, China is not going to ally with the US and EU, with both not only economic rivals, but emerging enemies.

- This article is the most ridiculous piece of wishful thinking and misinformation I have seen for years. I don’t know what CM Tan was smoking but to say China will join the West that have invaded and colonized and oppressed her for centuries is silly. BRICS and SCO and the Global South are the future, not the colonists of the past.

- smoking weeds article.

- wishful thinking post – china is economically, industrially, militarily [except for the no of nukes], diplomatically, financially etc etc the most powerful country in the world now and it doesnt have to pick a side – and if anything its the US that needs to pick a side between cooperating or not with china just to survive the self-inflicted, coming economic, social and financial carnage – moreover only fools believe russia has some nefarious design on europe but it would be fair that europe has been extremely threatening, aggressive and hostile towards russia …

- Are you kidding me? China is the world’s largest economy. Biden wants to destroy that. If Russia falls, China will be next.

- Why is Asia Times publishing this? If Russia loses that will be the end of everything. Putin has promised nuclear Armageddon if Russia is defeated. Ukraine must be defeated and Russia objectives attained; demilitarization, denazification and neutralization of Ukraine. China will never abandon Russia, BRICS+ and SCO, that is just Western willful ignorance and arrogance. China prioritizes its security concerns over its economy. No more humiliation.