Message to President Obama Who is More Dependent on Whom, China or America

8/14/2019 Message to President Obama Who is More Dependent on Whom, China or America

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MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: WHO IS MORE DEPENDENT ON THE

OTHER, AMERICA OR CHINA?

It does not matter whether the future prediction of Orville Schell (1) or Martin

Jacques (2) is on target about U.S. China relation. In fact the future prospect may

be some where in between. Our concern should be how to avoid another cold warthat is looming by our unnecessary confrontation of China in arm sales to Taiwan,

critical of China by siding with Google Internet dispute with China and your

coming meeting with Dalai Lama. American public needs to be in formed about

these anatomizing tactics through public debates.

Orville Schell is singing a familiar tune of China and U.S. will only get closer.

Martin Jacques is predicting a likely scenario that Chinese culture may dominate

the future world. Though nobody can be sure of the future, Jacques is closer to the

target on the following counts. Contrary to U.S. media reports,

1) Chinese Harmony cultural values have more universal values than ourproclaimed democracy values.

2) Chinese people and government is getting enough information through the

Internet to move towards modernity for now. Her current success in economics and

modernization are good indications.

3) China is a cultural state and not a political state (3). Her government will

continue to have the mandate to govern if her performances justify the government

has public confidence. Political reform must be accomplished according to her own

move towards modernity.

Grid lock or not, U.S. government must focus on the important issues to promote

harmony between the two great nations. The world cannot afford another

avoidable cold war. America by continuing the present path of confrontation, will

benefit neither country nor the world. We need a public debate, but our press must

better prepare our citizens. Your leadership is very essential to guide our nation in

the direction towards world harmony.

WHO IS MORE DEPENDENT ON THE OTHER, AMERICA OR CHINA?

The America media overwhelmingly agrees that China is more dependent on us

because of our large market. In reality, the American public needs to be better

informed. Our media 20th century mentality is not doing America any favor. Have

it occurred to us, ultimately Chinese market is capable to be four times bigger than

ours? The developing world is awakening; their combined market will be 10 times

ours. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we are ahead of

developing nations in technology and modern management not because of our

superior cultural values. All ancient cultures have laudable cultural values that is

why they developed. Larry Summers, your eminent economic adviser said, The

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most momentous 21st Century development will be the rise of the developing world

catching up with our technology and modern management

We are the greatest military power because we have invested consistently more than

the whole world combined in our military industrial complex. We are successful in

economics because our business corporations are competitive not because we havethe exclusive rights to technology and innovations. Deng Xiaoping said It does not

matter whether it is black or white cat as long as it catches mouse. Economic

success does not depend on political ideology, success is more a factor of appropriate

management. Now that modernization of the developing world is out of the bag, we

will face competition whether it is Brazilian, Russian Indian or Chinese cats.

In the transition to a multilateral world, China as a developing and consumer

product manufacturing country has more to offer to the developing world in the

consumer products that we all want. Our sales of superior armament have a limited

and smaller market. Barring instability in China which we are eager to agitate,

China has a long way to grow in her own and the friendly developing market.Japan and the four little tigers caught up with us in the last Century because they

focused on consumer products and not arms sales. With similar culture and in the

same way, China and South East Asia will also catch up with us in time. So soon we

will be more dependent on China and Asia in the 21stCentury.

1) Why China and the U.S. Will Only GetCloser

By Orville Schell | NEWSWEEKPublished Dec 30, 2009Issues 2010

It looks, at first, like a classic story of imperial rise and fall: the West's confidence in its institutions andeconomies has been badly shaken by the financial crisis, while China has increased its global role andbasked in the vindication of its more state-dominated development model. Having grown accustomed todominance, many Americans now find China's boom unsettling. After all, two states like this are historicallyexpected to clash.

Yet that clash is not guaranteed. What happens next will depend in large part on how Washington leads.China and the United States could easily become antagonistic. But things could unfold much more positivelyif leaders on both sides recognize how many interests they share.

That's not to say it will be easy. The two countries share a lot of historical baggage. For a century and a half,China smarted over its domination by the West, leaving it with a deep sense of humiliation. But for yearsnow, China's economic miracle has been easing its insecurity. As confidence has grown, China has begunabandoning its tendency to define itself as oppressed and exploited. Beijing has also begun working hard toreassure the planet that its debut on the world stage will be harmonious. As a result, China is now in theright frame of mind to begin fashioning a new sort of partnership with the West.

Creating such a relationship will still take enormous forbearance. For China, it will mean vaulting over itsrevolutionary ideology and resisting the temptations of hypernationalism. And for the United States, it willmean recognizing that, even though its supremacy is waning, China need not become an adversary.

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Americans must come to terms with the reality that their own vaunted democratic system has often failedthemby letting the economy run off a cliff, for exampleand that China's one-party system, which is ableto gather information, formulate policies, and then effect them quicklyclearly has its advantages.

China and America also have plenty to build on. The two countries have an unusually strong sentimentaland historical bond. Thanks to a century of U.S. missionary activity in China, many Chinese admireAmerica's generosity, entrepreneurialism, and fair--mindednesseven if they often resent U.S. power and

self-righteousness.

More important, the two countries now face, and must work together to solve, two critical questions: how toconstruct a new financial architecture and how to solve climate change. Take the economy: the U.S. relieson China to fund its debt, and China relies on the U.S. to buy its goods. While Americans have started tosave more and Chinese to consume more, this codependency is not about to end. So without Chinaparticipating in the rebuilding of a new post-crisis economic architecture, both countries could run intoserious trouble. And they know it.

Climate change is even more urgent. The U.S. and China together produce almost 50 percent of the world's-greenhouse-gas emissions. Unless they find a way to stop hiding behind each other and start dealing withthis problem, it will not matter what all the other well-intentioned states do. Everyone will suffer.

So the challenge is not whether the U.S. and China can draw closer, but how to get them to recognize thatthey already are intimately intertwined. Fate has bound them together, and they must find effective ways tocollaborate. Fortunately, this is the very definition of common interest. And there is nothing like commoninterestand a looming sense of common threatto form the basis of a strong, productive relationship.

Schell is Arthur Ross director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

2009

2) No Chance Against China

Google's defeat foretells the day when Beijing rules the world.

By Martin Jacques | NEWSWEEKPublished Jan 16, 2010From the magazine issue dated Jan 25, 2010Share:

The blunt truth is tthat most Western forecasters have been wrong about China for the past 30 years. Theyhave claimed that Chinese economic growth was exaggerated, that a big crisis was imminent, that statecontrols would fade away, and that exposure to global media, notably the Internet, would steadily underminethe Communist Party's authority. The reason why China forecasting has such a poor track record is thatWesterners constantly invoke the model and experience of the West to explain China, and it is a falseprophet. Until we start trying to understand China on its own terms, rather than as a Western-style nation in

the making, we will continue to get it wrong.

The Google affair tells us much about what China is and what it will be like. The Internet has been seen inthe West as the quintessential expression of the free exchange of ideas and information, untrammeled bygovernment interference and increasingly global in reach. But the Chinese government has shown that theInternet can be successfully filtered and controlled. Google's mission, "to organize the world's informationand make it universally accessible and useful," has clashed with the age-old presumption of Chinese rulersof the need and responsibility to control. In this battle, there will be only one winner: China. Google will beobliged either to accept Chinese regulations or exit the world's largest Internet market, with seriousconsequences for its long-term global ambitions. This is a metaphor for our times: America's most dynamic

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company cannot take on the Chinese governmenteven on an issue like free and open informationandwin.

Moreover, as China becomes increasingly important as a market and player, what happens to the Internet inChina will have profound consequences for the Internet globally. It is already clear that the Google model ofa free and open Internet, an exemplar of the American idea of the future, cannot and will not prevail. China'sInternet will continue to be policed and controlled, information filtered, sites prohibited, noncompliant search

engines excluded, and sensitive search words disallowed. And where China goes, others, also informed bydifferent values, are already and will follow. The Internet, far from being a great big unified global space, willbe fragmented and segmented. Another Western shibboleth about the future will thereby fall. It will not signalthe end of the free flow of informationnotwithstanding all the controls, the Internet has transformed thevolume and quality of information available to Chinese citizensbut it will take place more on Chinese thanWestern terms.

If we want to understand the future, we need to go back to the drawing board. Chinaas we can see withincreasing clarityis destined to become the world's largest economy and is likely in time to far outdistancethe U.S. This process will remorselessly shift the balance of power in China's favor. Just as once a largeshare of the American market was a precondition for a firm being a major global player, this mantle willincreasingly be assumed instead by the Chinese market, except to a far greater extent because itspopulation is four times the size. Furthermore, China's expanding economic clout means that its governmentis enjoying rapidly growing global authority. It can even take on Google and be sure of victory.

Facing up to the fact that China is very different from the West, that it simply does not work or think like us,is proving far more difficult. A classic illustration is the West's failure to understand the strength anddurability of the Chinese state, which defies all predictions of its demise, remains omnipresent in Chineselives, still owns most major firms, and proves remarkably adept at finding new ways to counter the influenceof the U.S. global media. Western observers typically explain the intrusiveness of the Chinese governmentin terms of paranoiaand in a huge and diverse country the rulers have always seen instability as an ever-present dangerbut there is a deeper reason why the state enjoys such a high-profile role in Chinesesociety.

It is seen by the Chinese not as an alien presence to be constantly pruned back, as in the West, especiallythe U.S., but as the embodiment and guardian of society. Rather than alien, it is seen as an intimate, in themanner of the head of the household. It might seem an extraordinary proposition, but the Chinese stateenjoys a remarkable legitimacy among its people, greater than in Western societies. And the reason lies

deep in China's history. China may call itself a nation-state (although only for the past century), but inessence it is a civilization-state dating back at least two millennia. Maintaining the unity of Chinesecivilization is regarded as the most important political priority and seen as the sacred task of the state, henceits unique role: there is no Western parallel.

Chinese modernity will not resemble Western modernity, and a world dominated by China will not resembleour own. One consequence is already apparent in the developing world: the state is back in fashion; theWashington Consensus has been eclipsed. In this new world, Chinese ways of thinkingfrom Confucianvalues and their notion of the state to the family and parentingwill become increasingly influential.Google's fate is a sign of the world to come, and the sooner we come to appreciate the nature of a world runby China, the better we will be able to deal with it.

Jacques is the author ofWhen China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a NewGlobal Order.

2010

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3) CHINA IS A CULTURAL STATE NOT A POLITICAL

STATE

China is an ancient country with 5000 years of continuous history and tradition bound.

This is unique among modern nation states. Notwithstanding the present Chinesegovernment has made changes on the political scene, the Chinese remain cultural bound

and strongly influenced by Confucius teaching. The idea of mandate from heaven, there

is always a central authority, only weakened by outside influence is still alive today.Most Chinese basically are not political activists as long as the government is doing a

good job in performance. Chinese people appear to be less politically active wherever

they are. This appears o be true in China as well as most Chinese overseas communities

including San Francisco, where the Chinese population is 40% or more.

However the mandate of heaven is not irrevocable. This is evident as we witness the rise

of peasant revolts to overthrow the Emperors in the changing of non performing

emperors in history. This right to overthrow the non performing authority was alsotaught by Mencius the most renowned Confucius disciple. In Chinese the word country

has the dual meaning of nation and family. So the connection of the concepts of familyand country is strong. An authority establishing social and family order is acceptable

based on performance. As a cultural state China can accept different religious and

political entities to exist in different parts of China.

That is why Deng Xiaopings proposal of one nation different systems for Hong Kongs

return went off without a hitch. This idea of multi religions and political systems can

work in a cultural state and not necessary in a centralized political state. China as anancient culture never created a national religion of her own, instead she accepted all

outside religions. Most notably China merged Buddhism from India with Confucius and

Daoism philosophy into various forms of coexisting Buddhism. In time China willdevelop her top down and bottom up converging democracy. It has to be in her way and

on her own priority. It is already happening according to John and Doris Niasbitt in their

bookMegatrends of China. Outside pressure will only unite the Chinese people behindher government. This is witnessed by the incident of U.S. bombing of the Chinese

Yugoslavia Embassy and the current dispute over U.S. arm sales to Taiwan. Millions of

net citizens are writing in to support the government.

As a cultural state, China will move towards modernity in a very unique fashion. It will

adopt western technology and modern management but she will retain her long traditional

culture. Like manner, in the future, large developing nations will modernize within thecontext of their own ancient culture. The rise of China after the 2008 financial crises

becomes that much more dramatic. We will find China reach out to the world with her

traditional friendship and harmony. Her way of harmony diplomacy will stand in starkcontrast to American aggressive Smart Diplomacy. The world watched our War on

Terror, Neo Conservatism and other foreign policies during the last decade as obvious

excessive use of military power. It is time to understand China as a cultural state and not

a political state and turn a softer side in reaching out to China. We are the most powerful

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nation in the world we can afford to show our magnanimity without appearing weak.

President Obama with his diverse background has a unique and final opportunity. Laotzu

has said The more powerful the more one should be humble. Let us hope U.S. andChina can reach harmony consensus through better understanding.

Francis C W Fung, Ph.D.Director General

World Harmony Organization

San [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]

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Message to President Obama Who is More Dependent on Whom, China or America