The 2020 American presidential election
is less than 100 days away. As Donald Trump continues to wreak his frustrations
and incompetence on China, I see the whole world attitude towards China has panned
into the following streams:
1. The
“Fear China’s Growth” World
These are the policy makers and opinion influencers in the
Five Eyes (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and to a lesser extent New
Zealand), Japan, India, and Vietnam.
In the case of the Five Eyes, the hard-line stance from the US
is obvious, but why the UK, Canada and Australia?
The UK’s handling of the pandemic has demonstrated abundantly
the shallowness of Boris Johnson’s leadership. His flip-flop on China in
general and Huawei in particularly speaks volumes of his vulnerability to the
influence of his Cabinet. It is no joking matter that many Indians are telling
the world now they are ruling the UK. And we know Indians all over the world
are generally not friendly to Chinese, even of those outside China. Their BBC and
The Economist, two of the standard bearers of British world-class pretensions,
have also thrown away journalistic principles and resort to badmouthing China. Canada’s
Trudeau is a lightweight in international politics. He has also demonstrated
his inability to stand up on issues against the wishes of the US government. As
for Australia, most of the politicians and journalists there are really a bunch
of American boot-lickers. They do have enlightened political leaders like Daniel Andrews, business leaders like Andrew Forrest, and many world-renowned academics who understand the true China.
Historically, India has always been a source of spiritual enlightenment
to Chinese. Both countries were friendly to each other during the Non-Aligned Movement
days – until they fought a border war! Now many Indians harbour a cultural and
intellectual complex and most have this at hear: Anything good about China or
Chinese is bad news for us. If both countries could work together, Asia will be
calling the shots in the world.
2. The
“Chinese but Devoid of Chinese-ness” World
These are mainly Taiwan-born Chinese and Hongkongers who will
do the Five Eyes’ bidding. They love to demonise China even without prompting
from the Five Eyes. They deserve my utmost contempt.
3.
3. The
“Happy to Live/Compete with China on Equal Terms” World
I would include leaders in the
developed world such as Germany and some other European Countries and Korea
4. The
“China-friendly” World
Here the obvious parties are Russia,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka, several member states of ASEAN and the countries in Central
and West Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But there also lies some anti-China
currents amongst their citizenries, especially in countries like Russia and
Iran.
5.
5. The
“Play Safe” World
Singapore is a case in point – by virtue of role in international trades and geographical position. It cannot afford to be seen to be too friendly to China, when its about 70% of its population is Chinese. Its decision to opt for Nokia-Ericsson
for its 5G roll-out clearly demonstrates this reality.
6.
6. The “China Ambivalent” World
China is too far from them; they are
only interested in trades with China. The countries in this category are
generally in Latin America and Africa.
I read Quora on a regular basis. The
questions and answers in Quora are very revealing about world opinions on China
and Chinese. I would say about 70% of the question posers are very ignorant
about China and Chinese. Many are actually from America, a country where knowledge
and information are so readily available and yet a large percentage of its
people hardly think or read things. To these people, China means the Communist
Party of China. To them, CCP is evil, running a polluted country, always trying
to steal intellectual properties from the West, bent on aggression towards its
neighbours and what-have-you. The outbreak of Covid-19 first from Wuhan has
also done a great deal of damage to the image of China. Even China is the only
country that has achieved impossible success in the fight against the pandemic,
no developed country is humble enough to say it out loud and clear.
I can see that about 80% of the answers
in Quora are provided by people who have actually visited China or are what quite
authoritative about what’s happening in China. They are usually objective and
enlightening and do a great deal to correct misconceptions. Notwithstanding, many
don’t seem to read, and the same lines of questions would come up again and
again. This is the reality that China and we ethnic Chinese have to contend
with.
Having read so much about Trump’s concepts
of things, or the lack of them, and his callousness in life, including those betrayals
dished out to his very own family as revealed by his niece in her recent book “Too
Much and Never Enough”, I have resigned to the fact that it is really
not worth our while to get angry with someone whose mindset is totally twisted
beyond any sense of human decency. I have stopped reading what he says or
writes and would switch channel each time he speaks on TV.
But Trump is not the politician I
dread most…
I dread most are the hyenas, charlatans
and crackpot experts who are adding fuel to Trump’s fire.
The No 1 hyena is Mike Pompeo. To me
he is a thug and a liar of the highest order. He has no qualms in spewing out
all sorts of venoms against China. (I read somewhere that his principal advisor
on China-bashing is none other than a professor who hails from China!) The
second American I am disgusted with is Peter Navarro, the charlatan who is
really a crackpot economist. There are a couple of others like Bill Barr and
Larry Kudlow. But these merely parrots.
My greatest contempt goes to Chinese
who have forgotten their heritage and civilizational history – the Taiwanese
who think they are Japanese and toe whatever America says and the Hongkoners
who still think they are British. Don’t they see what the colour of their skin
is?
Unless there is war between China and
the US in the next 100 days, I believe Trump will lose the presidency and the
US will return to pre-Trump rationality. The hostility from the Five Eyes will ease
and the world will see some semblance of order again. However, the crack between
China and the Five Eyes has already grown to such an extent China, because of
the uniqueness of its political, economic, and cultural/social systems, coupled
with its relentless pursuits in technological fronts, has to be on always on its
guard against future Trumps.
I love this open written by a Chinese
Canadian Philip Yeung, which I am taking the liberty to reproduce in its entirety…
A Misunderstood Country
Diplomacy is dead—between
China and the US. When US agents broke down the doors of the Chinese consulate
in Houston, all pretenses of diplomatic nicety vanished.
These days, when America
opens its mouth, it is to insult, vilify and lash out at China. In the good old
days, America used to adopt a “stick and carrot” approach to China. Now, it is
all stick.
What exactly has China
done to deserve this fire and fury?
Frankly, the world is
getting sanctions fatigue, trade war fatigue and China-bashing fatigue. In
fact, China-scapegoating is becoming a game of diminishing returns; it is just
red meat for Trump’s base While America is busy making trouble everywhere,
China has been busy making money, and the US suddenly gets spooked by the size
of the China Dream.
The US wants the world to
believe China’s dream is the world’s nightmare, that it is the free world
against communist China.
The depth of America’s
willful ignorance is frightening. Today’s China is not the China of the
Cultural Revolution or even of 1989. Yes, China has made its share of mistakes
(which country hasn’t?). But after 40 years of economic open-door policy, China
is an utterly transformed country. China is not Cuba or North Korea or even
socialist Venezuela. It is governed collectively and rationally like a giant
corporation where efficiency prevails. If you judge by the results, China is
better run than many Western democracies---just look at divided America and
directionless Britain. In fact, Trump has so thoroughly discredited democracy
with his boasts about grabbing women’s genitalia and clocking up lies at the
rate of over 20 per day in office, that we have the right to wonder: where are
the checks and balances promised in the system ?
America is making a fatal
miscalculation. If you want to take on your enemy, you should at least take his
measure. They are treating China and the Chinese government as one entity,
minus its people. But if you live in China, you will see that there are no
cracks in national unity. After all, 750 million of them have been lifted out
of poverty by their government. These days, the Chinese are shoppers, buyers of
Mercedes Benz, lovers of LV and globe-trotting, cash-splashing travelers. They
are no longer the gun-toting, book-burning revolutionaries of old. It shows you
how dangerously outdated America’s knowledge of the country is.
I often marvel at the
economic energies of the Chinese people. They are pure economic animals. They
want respect, not domination. They flaunt their economic clout, but seldom flex
their military muscle. China’s wars are wars of defense; her intentions in the
South China Sea are to protect its freedom of navigation in this region for its
vital commerce. Unlike America, China doesn’t do regime change.
There is one fact the
Americans cannot ignore: The Chinese have never had it so good. It is producing
billionaires faster than anywhere else in the world. Zhou Qin-fei is a female
entrepreneur from a dirt-poor family and left school at 15 to work at a factory
where she remained on the assembly line for 8 years, until she struck out to
start her own business. After 30 years of blood, sweat and tears, she is today
the founder and CEO of a tech company. Her net worth is estimated at $9.5
billion US. Behind every Chinese business success story is a flesh-and-blood
human being, not a faceless government establishment. And do you think they
will betray a government that has given them opportunities to succeed? By
contrast, there are no such rags-to-riches stories in Cuba or North Korea. When
it comes to the outside world, the Chinese people are at one with their
government. America is a divided country, China is not. If you demonize China,
you demonize its people.
With each eye-poking
provocation, the two world powers inch closer to war. There are three things
the US must know about its enemy. First, China is the birthplace of Sun Tzu,
the world’s most famous military strategist. China fought the US to a
standstill at the Korean War when it was dirt-poor. Today, it is prosperous and
nuclear-armed. Unlike Iraq, China does have weapons of mass destruction. If the
US intends to bomb China back to the Stone Age, China is likely to return the
favor. The US limped out of Vietnam not knowing its foe. It will do so again
when the fight with China is finished.
Second, China is a country
burdened by history, with the Hundred Years of Humiliation hovering over them.
Peaceful rise, yes, but it is determined never to be humiliated again, over
Taiwan or Hong Kong.
Third, if the war is
purely economic, remember that China is so large and populous that it will
thrive on domestic consumption alone. There are signs that China is now being
turned economically inwards. China has kept the cost of living low for America
and the rest of the world. Expect hyperinflation when Chinese manufactured
goods no longer reach Western markets. Besides, who’s going to buy America’s
pork, corn, or soya beans?
Trump’s all-out war
against China is doing it a big domestic favor, by uniting the people solidly
behind their government. What does America gain by taking on one-sixth of the
planet’s human population?
I am not saying that China
is a perfect country. No country is. China is accused of human rights
violations in Xinjiang. I don’t know enough about the situation there to
comment intelligently on it. But I do know two things: One, Chinese cities have
been spared terrorist attacks in recent years, unlike Boston, New York, Paris,
or London. And two, if you accuse China of genocide, then you must first
explain why this ethnic minority is exempted from China’s strict one-child
policy, to allow its population to reproduce quickly.
As for the US, why doesn’t
it close its Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp where suspects are detained
indefinitely and subjected to torture? Why detain children of illegal immigrants?
They are dying or sick and separated from their parents at the border. What’s
happened to their human rights? And what about America’s use of waterboarding
as a torture technique? Before you work up your righteous indignation, please
clean up your own act, in your own backyard.
If there is one issue that
unites the West against China, it is over its enactment of National Security
Law for Hong Kong. This partly speaks to Hong Kong’s popularity as a world
city. But this Hollywood nostalgia disguises a dark fact. The place has been
misgoverned for 23 years. City officials
are living in a bubble, protected by perks, privileges and the world’s most
generous pensions, with ridiculous education allowances that let them send
their kids to Britain or other overseas destinations for education at public
expense, with each family enjoying 5 air-tickets per year. Officials have
completely deserted the public-school system. They did nothing to prepare the
young for handover of sovereignty to China, teaching them no Chinese history,
such that China remains a total stranger to those born after 1997.
In short, Hong Kong has
never been successfully decolonized, unlike Macau which is enjoying peace and
prosperity without officials spoiled by ridiculous special privileges. City
officials are just marking time, while collecting their largess. It is
downright criminal.
There are some disturbing
statistics. Of the nearly 9000 arrested in the past year during the street
riots, over 30% are students, more than half of them high school students and
even primary school pupils. If you ask them what the so-called five demands
they are fighting for, they can’t tell you. Yet they have gone on the rampage,
terrorizing non-protestors, trashing universities, shops and even Beijing’s
office in the city. The burning and violence went on for nine months. Beijing
stood by and did nothing.
Would Washington or London
have shown the same restraint? Trump would have sent in the federal troops on
the first sign of trouble. The West has never willingly recognized China’s
sovereignty over Hong Kong. They embrace two systems, but they forget there is
one country. Beijing gave Hong Kong 23 years to enact its own national security
law, but unlike Macau, it never did. In the meantime, someone must explain why
the US consulate in Hong Kong has a staff of well over a thousand. What do they
do in the city? I think you know what the answer is.
Throughout, Hong Kong
people are free to take to the streets and call for the downfall of the
communist party. On average, there are 19 protests a day. It is a city in
chaos. A city of little hope for the young, despite its glittering skyscrapers.
There is no universal pension. No unemployment insurance, no inheritance tax
for the rich, no rent control for the poor. It has become the world’s most
unaffordable city, thanks to property prices artificially driven sky-high by
developer-favoring policies. It is a totally misgoverned city, but poor Beijing
is getting the blame. People outside know little other than what the biased
Western press has fed them.
There is a quick solution
to the Hong Kong mess: revoke all the special perks and privileges enjoyed by
officials whose family members all hold foreign passports. They lack commitment
and empathy. They are unfit to govern. This is the root of Hong Kong’s problem.
Beijing’s fault is in giving them too long a leash, religiously respecting the
two-systems concept and allowing incompetent and heartless locals to run the
place. As Sir David Aker-Jones, the former number two in the colonial
government said before he died: “I wish Beijing would simply send someone able
to run Hong Kong, just like Britain did before 1997.”
There is no doubt Beijing
is losing the propaganda war. Does it have a global image problem? I guess it
does. This is because its spokespersons are often tied to a script and have
never learned to speak the language of the West. Telling America or Britain to
stop meddling in China’s “internal affairs” over Hong Kong falls on deaf ears.
They should learn to use humor, irony, or other subtle forms of rebuttal. They
should learn from Chester Ronning, Canada’s China-born ambassador to China.
When his political opponent accused him of growing up on the milk of a Chinese
milk mother, implying that he had Chinese blood in his veins, Ronning retorted,
“but my opponent grew up on cow milk.” And when an Iraqi reporter threw two
shoes in succession at George W Bush, missing both times, the US President
deadpanned: “I think it’s a size 10.”
China needs professional
assistance of lobbyists to argue its case, instead of relying on its citizens
to do the job, leaving them open to the charge of espionage, as recently
happened in Australia.
China’s misfortune is that
the world will not let it forget its past. They have never outgrown their
preconceptions. Forty years after its economic opening up, China is still seen
as an old-fashioned communist country. China may have learned to trade with the
West or talk technology with it, but it has yet to learn to speak English
persuasively or authentically. A global power needs three things: hard military power, economic clout plus the
soft power of diplomacy and communication. In the information age, words may
matter just as much as guns and dollars.
China has failed to argue
its case over Hong Kong, and the West has chosen to see this misgoverned city
as an underdog bullied by Beijing. The truth is that America has brilliantly
leveraged the Hong Kong mess to help the Taiwan separatist president win re-election
and tarnish China’s global reputation. America has successfully parlayed the
twin story of a misunderstood country and a misgoverned city into a false
narrative that has found legs around the world.
