No doubt, the Corona-virus has been the major challenge to mankind in the past two years. We hope that the scientific and healthcare communities will develop an effective vaccine soon to terminate the pandemic. However, during the past two years, one other disturbing fact that is entirely human controllable is the fake news and dishonest journalism phenomenon. This phenomenon grew rampant on reporting international events, domestic political and economic issues and even happened to the Corona-virus and pandemic reporting. This phenomenon is purely man-made and it is a shame that it happens in a highly developed human society where technology advances were so impressive. For example, one can use a smart phone to read papers, watch TV, find and buy goods and pay for purchases, in addition, of course, to communication such as phone calls and messaging. Yet, in this environment, we are facing a corrupt media making our lives miserable unnecessarily. We citizens must do something to stop this “news virus” pandemic to save our society and our lives. In this column, we shall briefly review the transformation of West media and what caused the media to corrupt and call our citizens' attention to the problem. In a future article, we shall explore a methodology to correct dishonest journalism.
 
Media industry is closely related to technology, especially printing, communication and telecommunication, then through evolution into advanced media technology. Applications came along with technology (movie, TV, PC, network supported cable and internet), we saw the arrival of Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook, all accessible with a rich class of media devices, smart tablets, phones and watches, etc. These technology advances empowered media and media industry also enriched technologies. The West led in media development, from industrial revolution, during which printing technology was the driving engine, until non-paper media were invented. Books advanced civilization in the East due to printing. Later in the West the printing technology was mechanized and electronically automated. Therefore, science, literature and philosophy all were first advanced along with books then with other media, such as film, video and multimedia. This man-made progress made the West strong and dominating in the world for the past two to three centuries.
 
China is the oldest country with a continuous history, culture and civilization. From the origin of her written language and literature based on bamboo to paper and brush to ink printing, we witnessed advances in Chinese civilization for many centuries till industry revolution when printing press and other technologies, Telegraph, telephone, television … and computers followed took over the pace of development. Chinese literature was leading and impacting the world for thousands of years with long lasting effect, but the West literature (and media) with advanced media technology shortened the time required to make its impact. Speed of production and distribution in digital document, movie, TV, and web media can make instant impact to masses than ever before. Beginning in 19th century (or more so since WW II), the West media led by the U.S. was rich and admired by the world. Confidence in journalism and efficiency in media production supported the fast growth of the media industry in the West. Liberal philosophy became the model of journalism and the world (excluding countries controlled their media) followed the West in media creation and reporting. Indeed, the U.S. media used to be confident in reporting the truth, good or bad, more daring to expose the bad and inferior side of the world including the U.S. herself. That was the time the world was envying the U.S.; we witnessed the power of Hollywood, VOA, CNN, NY Times, etc.
 
Naturally, media war started when nations compete (over ideology, economy, and all other domains), using all advanced technologies from printing to multimedia. Media production needs capital, hence rich nations can dominate the media battle and gain media power to control propaganda and/or launch/win media war. Media also became a lucrative business to generate revenue from advertising, marketing merchandise and selling media products and events. The U.S. is in the forefront leading the media industry. Under the liberal capitalism, media industry became conglomerated into a few controlling corporations which unfortunately would have too much clout over the media workers, especially journalists and media creators. China was weak and a victim of invaders in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, thus had no media power for nearly two centuries. The U.S. through two world war became the superpower not only with super military power and a strong economy but also a powerful media industry dominating nearly all media, print, movie and TV, as well as Journalism and media colleges. The U.S. is still dominating the world media; all media professionals look up to the U.S. media industry for job opportunities and role models. There is no doubt in people’s mind that media power is important.
 
Things have changed a little when China is rising rapidly, first in economy, then technology which not only elevated her manufacturing levels to high end products, better military equipment and most critically her media focus. Even though China’s media industry came up late comparing to that of the U.S., but its development and growth is impressive mainly due to the fact that the Chinese government has fully understood and appreciated the mega media power that can do on the world stage. The rapid rise of China changed the U.S. in many ways, foreign policy, military strategy, trade practice and technology control, but the most apparent impact on the U.S. from China’s rise seems to be her self-confidence which is so obviously reflected in her media industry. The U.S. government is adopting a political anti-China policy which unfortunately has accelerated the transformation of the media industry from a confident and fair reporting practice to fake news-generating journalism. This deteriorating process was observable in media coverage of domestic issues as well, especially on elections. But the failing became worse when reporting about (or more accurately, against) China on various issues. Fake news may have been infested in media industry initially driven by election culture, but it has become worse when comes to US-China relation reporting. The fair journalism seems to be completely dead in dealing with China. Whether it was influenced by government or money, it was now obvious that the U.S. and West media had a strong bias against China, one not validated at all.
 
There were plenty of examples backing up the above statement, Hong Kong and Xinjiang reporting were the most notorious where fake news was reported to the ridiculous level. Hong Kong protest-riot-violence sequential development was twisted by West media and motivated by ‘colonial separatist ideology’ so obviously. The storming of U.S. Capital on Jan. 6, 2021 incidence was a God-sent event to quench the West dishonest journalism on the Hong Kong violence. On the Xinjiang reporting, the three fabricated stories, concentration camp, genocide and forced labor were shamefully propagated without making firsthand verification. The Ughurs have an envious standard of living and job opportunity to the rest of Muslim world but the U.S. media chose to ignore it. Media play a critical role in a democratic world. Media professionals must be humble and honest in practicing journalism. When nations compete, there is no shame in losing, after all the Chinese had 5000 years of history with thousands of great print books before we had the Bible. Our media technology is still leading the world, let’s have a fair competition in the Olympic spirit. No bragging when won and no shame when lost. We need to get the Olympic spirit into our media, making a positive transformation in the media industry. Citizens are tired of fake news. We must think of ways to stop dishonest journalism (presstitutes as Paul Craig Roberts call them).
 

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The Olympic Games with roots in ancient time 776 B.C. The international Olympic Committee(IOC) was founded in 1894 with first Summer Olympics started in 1896. Figure skating was added in 1908 Summer Olympics and it and Ice Hockey were added in 1920. The first Winter Olympics was held in 1924 with Summer Olympics in the same year continued every four years till 1992. Starting 1994, the Winter Olympics became two years apart from Summer Olympic also held every four years. Paralympic Games were added in 1948 Summer Olympics with first Summer Paralympics in 2008. and winter Paralympics in 2010 Winter Olympics. From 2012 onward Paralympics were combined with Summer and Winter Olympics. Therefore, the 2022 Beijing Olympic is the Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
 
The world can recall that the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics was an extravaganza event. It created not only many sports records but also many advances in its operation from organization, technology, entertainment to culture, despite of the world was in financial crisis. Hence, this year while the coronavirus still rampant, the world is looking forward to another success of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Beijing is the only city with a record of holding both Summer and Winter Olympics with Paralympics. The world is under siege by the pandemic with quarantines, social distancing and travel bans for over two years, the Beijing Olympic is the only large world event of positive energy to lift the human spirit. (the world has seen a number of negative events including the storming of the American Capital Building of Congress) We are looking forward to seeing the positive energy from the Olympics.
 
China, with her track record of a successful 2008 Summer Olympics, is setting herself up to challenge the nation to bring the world a successful Winter Olympics in 2022. However, not like northern American and northern European, China is not known for Winter sports which are generally luxurious sports for middle and upper class citizens. From what the author observed so far, it appears that the Chinese government has designed to use the Olympic opportunity not only just a prestige lifting world event but also an economy uplifting event with long term planning, meticulous execution and far reaching post-Olympic impact to China and the world. First, China seems to destined to promote winter sports nationwide by investing many winter sports facilities throughout the nation (mountains resorts for winter sports) and educating the coming generations (winter sports academies throughout the country). The author can picture that China will become the principal winter sports equipment and faculty manufacturer making winter sports affordable to ordinary citizens. This will create a tremendous economic opportunity for China spilling over to tourism and service industry. This plan is obviously in line with China’s goal of lifting her citizens to middle class and increasing service oriented domestic economy.
 
There are a number of promotional videos about the Beijing 2022 Olympic. First, a 350km per hour high speed rail was built from Beijing to the mountains that can transport athletes within 46 minutes. The AI train used is equipped not only with advanced 5G communication technology but also with on-board studio and news broadcasting facilities beaming sceneries and athletes interviews to the world about the Olympic from Feb 4 - 20. The author anticipates that this technology not only will raise the quality of Olympic reporting to the world in nearly real time but with rich information and entertainment value. No doubt, this technology can easily propagate to China’s tens of thousands of miles high speed trains promoting traveling, tourism and commerce. For readers’s info, there is a 24 hour TV daily coverage about the Beijing Winter Olympics available on YouTube, named Together to the Future (一起向未來). You sure will enjoy that news coverage since the U.S. journalism is biased against China.
 
Speaking about journalistic bias, one can not help but notice that the U.S. has adopted an anti-China policy driven not by rational competitive analysis but by jealousy and desperation. Announcing diplomatic boycotting the Beijing 2022 Olympics is a shameful U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. is urging its Five Eye Alliance and other allies to practice diplomatic boycott against China, but the following was minimal and certainly not endorsing Pompeo’s Xinjiang genocide claim. So far, it appears that many world leaders including Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, … and UN officials are attending the Beijing 2022 Olympics. Despite of the pandemic scare, as of a week ago the 2022 Winter Olympics has 91 countries and 2861 athletes participating compared to 92 nations and 2922 athletes in 2018 Winter Olympic. This record speaks volume about the world’s trust in China’s efficacy in managing pandemic and her ability in organizing world events. The pandemic prevented the audience participation which is regrettable, thank goodness, China is putting quite a bit of investment in media communication, do watch the above YouTube links and China’s CGTN global tv.
 
“Together to the Future” is a very positive and timely slogan for the world. The Olympic spirit is much needed in our artificially competitive world. The U.S. certainly has the right to compete on the world stage and try to maintain her leadership, however, she must recognize Olympic Spirit both in Olympic Games and international relations. As a citizen, we must speak out openly when the government does something wrong. Politicizing Olympic Games is certainly a bad policy, it not only diminishes sportsmanship we used to teach our kids in school, but also hurts our athletes’ reputation in the international arena. Please do tell our politicians, Congressman and government officials the above message when we welcome our gold medal winning athletes back from Beijing.




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Nowadays, international diplomatic relations are inevitably revolving around the relations between China and the United States. The deterioration of US-China relations has caused a lot of diplomatic waves. First of all, Trump started a targeted trade war with China, which also impacted other countries, later the trade war was coupled with the suppression of China's tech companies doing business in the U.S. and launching technology sanctions against China. Biden, after  taking office, has intensified and pushed those measures onto the international stage, evolving into a game of supply chain blockade and  cut-off. Especially in semiconductor chip technology and products area, a phenomenon of creating  a bipolar world is looming. The United States has tempted to form an alliance to confront a self-reliance China. Biden wants to prove that the ideals and performance of the democratic system are better than the centralized (authoritarian) regime system in terms of universal values. Therefore, he strengthened his diplomacy against Russia and China by playing the cards of freedom, democracy, and human rights, for example, using Ukraine to pressure Russia, and Xinjiang and Taiwan to China. This article takes a fresh look at the development prospects of US-China relations based on several recent international events, in particular, the severance of diplomatic relations between Nicaragua and Taiwan and Nicaragua's resumption of diplomatic relations with China, all happening around the Demacracy Alliance Summit (December 9-10, 2021 EST). Whether it is a coincidence or not, these two events have far-reaching consequences. We shall discuss the significance of these two events from the perspective of a private independent think tank.
 
Interational diplomatic relations must be related to national interests. After World War II, China evolved into two parts separately governed by two competing governments. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unified the mainland and established the People's Republic of China (PRC), while the Kuomintang (KMT) controlled Taiwan and continued the title, the Republic of China (ROC). In 1971, the United Nations recognized PRC as the legal representative of China replacing ROC in the UN. As a result, most countries in the world recognized PRC, and only a few countries maintained diplomatic relations with ROC. During Chiang Ching-kuo’s administration of Taiwan (1978-1988), Taiwan’s economy developed very well, hence it maintained a small number of diplomatic relations. Lee Teng-hui, who took over (1988-1996) and obtained a citizen-elected term (1996-2000), began “money diplomacy” to provide economic assistance to small countries. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) once accused the KMT of practicing money diplomacy, however, after it took power in 2000, it not only followed the example of money diplomacy but made it more corruptive, occurring at home and abroad. Most of the diplomatic relations obtained were small or island countries. Nicaragua, a not-so-small country in Central America, breaking diplomatic relations with PRC and established diplomatic relations with ROC in 1991, was a major international event at that time. In today's international situation, ROC's diplomatic disadvantage can maintain only diplomatic relations with 13 member countries in the United Nations, while PRC has 178 plus several non-member countries of the United Nations. Last week, Nicaragua broke diplomatic relations with ROC and resumed diplomatic relations with PRC certainly delivered a fatal blow to the DPP's dream of independence.
 
The United States has always maintained a vague stance on the Taiwan issue in order to seek its best interests. That is, it does not want to see cross-strait reunification, but it also does not allow Taiwan to seek independence in fear of giving mainland China a legitimate excuse to reunify by force. Playing the Taiwan card to contain the Chinese mainland has been the U.S. strategy, supporting Taiwan, in the early days, of resisting Communism and Russia et al and even counterattacking the mainland China if possible. Later, when the U.S. realized that it was impossible to counterattack the mainland, she began to play the card of free and democratic economy. However, China has risen in economy over the last few decades, and, successfully lifted 800 million citizens above poverty in the last five years. Even the U.S. is economically pressured by China as she became the world's second largest economy. In the recent decade, the U.S. launched a comprehensive counter-China strategy in trade, technology, finance, and military domains. However, under the challenge of the global epidemic, the U.S. felt overwhelmed and powerless. This is why the U.S. wants to engage in a broad alliance strategy. In addition to military alliances, such as QUAD+ (the U.S., India, Japan and Australia), AUKUS (the U.S., Britain and Australia), US-Japan, and U.S.-South Korea, the Biden administration has also launched a democratic alliance strategy by inviting 110 countries and regions to participate in a democracy summit, a video conference. Observing the controversial invitee list and meeting topics with no clear declaration, we see no justice done to democracy, nevermind forming solidarity, largely because it is ineffective to perform off stage/screen work in a virtual conference. During this summit, the defection of Nicaragua, a country in the backyard of the U.S. is a slap in the face of the US democracy summit. Although the Western media handled it in a low-key manner, the impact of this event is far-reaching. The future direction of Central and South American countries' diplomacy will inevitably become more independent from the control of the U.S.
 
Lithuania is a small country that appeases to the U.S. in playing the Taiwan card and wants to establish relations with Taiwan. This is also a matter of recent diplomacy that everyone is concerned about. China has reacted to limit trade with Lithuania. Both the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Transport of Lithuania have submitted their resignations recently, which obviously has a negative impact on the current government’s behavior in embracing the U.S. China policy. In the recent news, Canada has raised tariffs on the U.S. and the United Kingdom has asked the U.S. to reduce tariffs on aluminum and steel. These are manifestations of dissatisfaction with the U.S.'s actions amid the raging epidemic damage and inflation threat. The resumption of diplomatic relations between Nicaragua and China is likely to have a domino effect. Will Taiwan be awaken? Money diplomacy is a channel of corruption in Taiwan. Although the result of money diplomacy is not good for Taiwan, the DPP may still use it. This can be seen from Tsai Ing-wen’s statement that Taiwan’s foreign minister is not obligated to resign over Nicaragua. The Tsai government clings to the thighs of the U.S. and wants to be a part of the US supply chain, but it is unpredictable whether there will be any crumbs for Taiwan. It seems that he U.S. can only write 'empty' checks, for example, a check for Ukraine to become a NATO member in ten years may not be cashed after all. The European Union and NATO countries, large and small, all have their own calculations. This is not the era when the U.S. can always have the final say. For Taiwan, the U.S. not even dare to write a check to defend the island; at most she can only pass some toothless bills in her Congress. At the U.S. Democracy Summit, Taiwan's speaker Tang Feng was blacked out by the U.S. State Department for her map-coloring trick (coloring Taiwan green and Mainland China red). Not only did it embarrass the U.S. and Taiwan itself, but it also sent a clear message that the U.S. does not wish and does not want to cross China's red line. The U.S. does not plan nor dare to engage any battle without sure win. The Democracy Summit cannot prove that the democratic system is a superior system with high efficiency and effectiveness. To raise democratic values, the summit members should unanimously reach an agreement and set a goal with explicit expectations, at least a meaningful unified declaration. But most of what everyone has seen so far are negative or lukewarm comments in the media. From the above discussion, it can be said that US-China relations have indeed reached the bottom, and there is only one way to go up for mutual benefits or facing mutual destruction.




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