Thanks to my friend Ms. Sulia Chan who had reminded my interest in the title subject by sending me a whole collection of interesting books and articles recently. She is the one who has arranged a series of interviews for Ms. Charlotte Harris Rees (author of “Did Ancient Chinese Explore America”, “Secret Maps of the Ancient World”, and “The Asiatic Fathers of America - an abridged book of her father, Henry M. Harris’ 700 pages book” to appear on Dr. Wordman Show (Scrammble Game Show, both searchable on YouTube). In those interviews, we discussed Mr. Harris, a missionary, and Mrs. Rees’ work, presenting multiple categories of evidence on Chinese who had discovered America before Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo) through maps, ancient stone scriptures, artifacts found in America, giant sailboat anchors off California shore, American Sequoia tree leaf's image on old Chinese map, language, similarities of DNA of American Indians and Chinese in Henan province, etc. etc. The point is the East and West were never two separate worlds.
 
Currently, U.S.-China relations have been falling off a cliff not only their trade and economic relations were severely damaged but their cultural interactions also broke down. The U.S. has targeted China as a threat to its security and eagerly formulated a China Policy naming China as an enemy and polarizing the world into two hostile camps. As a citizen paying attention to international relations, this author has been arguing that the present China policy is false. It had wrong assumptions, no honest debates, and serious ignorance of the historical facts of the development of the East and the West and their mutual influence. The fear of threat from China is unfounded. When the East part of the world or Asia surpasses the West or America in economy or in technology, there is no need to fear. The East has a long history and has made strong influence on the development of the West. The author will discuss the past influence of the East on the West and argue that more influence in the future is inevitable and harmless based on historical evidence. As global citizens, we (West or East) must recognize and respect the historical facts, Human development is age-dependent, the age of an individual, the age of a society, the age of a race and the age of the developmental environment, but never the color of the skin.
 
Genetic Science has shown to us that the commonality of human genes is far greater than that of any differences. Historians have taught us that the human development process had far longer history in migration, physical evolution and cultural development than the modern civilization period of a few centuries including industrialization. Dr. Stephen L. Whittington of Wake Forest University, anthropologist, said, “The evidence acceptable to most archaeologists and physical anthropologists both from dental traits and mitochondrial DNA is that the origin of people in North, Central, and South America, from before the coming of Europeans in 1492, was North Asia.” Dr. Thomas Murphy, an anthropologist of Washington State University, also said: “The genetic data from every single one of those studies (dozens of researchers) is telling us the same thing - that is, the American Indians came from the north part of East Asia.“ Tests of 5500 scattered Indians in the continent of America showed 99.4% have mitochondrial DNA originating from Asia and 0.6% have either European or African mitochondrial DNA, lineage after Columbus, according to Australian molecular biologist, Dr. Simon Southerton. In immigrants-populated America, Asian immigrants came first shouldn’t be a surprise. Asian immigration to all parts of the world will be continuing and increasing in the 21st century and into the future. There is no need to fear; since it is a natural part of the human development process.
 
In the history of civilized human migration (humans formed societies and nations), the East (Asia) went West and attracted the West to the East. In a gross analysis, the westward movements were far more peaceful than the eastward movements that happened later. When humans developed sailing technology, again the East was far more advanced as exemplified by the famous Admiral Zheng He’s seven grand armadas (his thousands of large ships), sailing from the Middle Kingdom to Asia, Arab, Africa and beyond in the Ming Dynasty (1405 - 1433). The seven expeditions were peaceful and left their influence as cultural impact, clothing, food, language, etc. In contrast, in later times the West came to the East with colonialism which resulted in wars and division rather than harmony and unification. The colonialism lasted nearly four centuries and not only left a treacherous path of human development but also sowed the seed of human distrust. The West had developed a fear of the reprisal of the East doing what the West had done to the East. The fear of China came out of this logic: China was the victim of the West's aggression during the 19th and 20th centuries. Therefore, despite of China’s claim of its desire for a peaceful rise to bring its citizens to middle income living standards, the West/America insists that China’s rise is a threat to America and the world.
 
The East, especially China, has a galvanizing culture and accommodating philosophy advocating harmonious human development and peaceful unification. In the book, “The Eastern Origins of West Civilization“， the author, Dr. John M. Hobson, has shown that substantial contributions to modern European civilization were made by non-European (Asian/Chinese) people, best summed up as “the oriental contribution to the rise of the West”. Niall Ferguson (author of Empire) in his review of Hobson’s book stated that ”Hobson argues that western industrialization was based in large measure on the adoption of Arab and Chinese knowledge.“ “Many inventions which enabled Europe to dominate the world were actually diffused to Europe from Asia (usually from China) and that Asia/China remained as developed as Europe (and more) until 19th century” was a quote from Michael Mann, author of the book, Source of World Power, in his review of Hobson’s book. Today, in America, the contribution of Asian Americans especially Chinese Americans are so obviously significant in many domains, physical sciences, technologies, engineering, architecture, computer and biomolecular chemistry, it is absurd to have any anti-Chinese policy such as ‘China initiative’ and any anti-China foreign policy such as AUKUS or Quad. The fear of China is ill-grounded as illustrated by historical evidence discussed above, any sanction policy will not be fruitful as proven by China’s successful space exploration program.
 
The future of human development is hinged on cooperation among all humans. Any divisive activities will be harmful and counter-productive. The world leaders and all global citizens should understand this simple truth.
 
 

Dr. Wordman​

 
Setting up New Year Resolution is a good habit. At the year's end or the start of the New Year, people will set up their resolutions. The media is habitually doing a national survey on Americans' New Year resolutions. According to Statista, the top eight resolutions for this year are; exercise more (52%), eat healthier (50%), lose weight (40%), save more money (39%), more time with family/friends (37%), less time on social media (20%), reduce stress on job (19%), and reduce living expenses (19%). According to YouGov America, the top American resolutions are as follows: Improving physical health, Saving more money, eating healthier, exercising more, being happy, losing weight, paying down debt, learning something new, improving mental health, more time with family, relationship with friends, reading more, focusing on the spiritual matter, traveling, quitting a bad habit, spending time with friends, pursuing a new career goal, pursuing a new hobby, getting a new job, and moving. The latter list contains the first list which supports the validity of these surveys. However, these lists, compared with previous years’ surveys, also verify that Americans are concerned with health, exercise, and overeating year after year. This makes one wonder whether New Year Resolution is useful or just a lip service. Perhaps the surveyors should add a few pertinent questions: What resolutions selected are new this year and what resolutions have been repeated from previous New Year Resolutions and why? If a survey could help people more consciously fulfill their resolutions, the survey result would be more meaningful. Realizing a resolution requires willpower and discipline, surveyors should develop the survey with questions helpful to people to achieve their resolutions.
 
A financial goal is another domain often appearing in New Year Resolutions. Financially more successful people generally set their financial goals in their New Year Resolutions. This resolution serves as the motivation factor for a career goal, including an entrepreneur objective and business venture. However, this year’s Motley Fool Survey of New Year Resolutions seems to have found a negative focus - paying off debt and reducing expenses appeared prominently in the New Year Resolution list. One clear correlation with the economy revealed by the survey is the inflation fear which may have shifted people’s minds from positive and aggressive thoughts such as creating wealth to reducing expenses and paying off debt. Motley Fool, a financial and investment consulting firm, published a discussion paper on its ‘survey’, perhaps less broadly based than the above two surveys, but it might have touched on the nerve point of this year’s Americans’ New Year Resolutions. This author would like to comment on Motley Fool’s survey and the discussion paper written by Jack Caparol, an analyst with Motley Fool, with the hope that this article might help people understand the true reason behind pessimism and better realize their New Year Resolutions. The title of Jack Caparol’s article is “81% of Americans with Financial New Year Resolutions See Inflation as a Spoiler”. It highlighted the following key findings in addition to the alarming title: I. 66% of Americans plan on making a financial resolution for the new year, II. 81% think inflation will make it harder to meet their goals III. Only 20% are confident that they will keep their upcoming financial New Year's resolutions, IV. Top New Year's resolution: Paying off debt is the goal of 53% of Americans with financial resolutions, and V. Generational divide: Resolution goals differ by Generation, older generations are more concerned about paying off debt and saving for retirement whereas younger generations are more interested in saving for big purchases and investment.
 
Motley Fool’s key findings are not surprising, in fact, they can be expected. What is interesting in these stats is what we have alluded to above; Americans are pessimistic, and their New Year Resolutions on financial goals shifted to a negative focus. This finding deserves our attention. The U.S. being the superpower of the world offers positive American dreams to Americans and worldwide immigrants coming to America. Yet, this survey made across from baby boomers (born 1946 - 1964) to generation X (born 1965-1980), Y (born 1981-1994, also known as Millennials), and Z (born 1995-2009) showed a very pessimistic outlook not only for the new year, 2023, but also beyond since financial goals as resolution are long-term endeavors. Most Americans are in debt and the U.S. government is not only heavily in debt, but its operation must be sustained by Congress repeatedly raising the U.S. national debt ceiling every budget cycle. This debt burden is a stress for every American for those having a substantial personal debt (interest burden) and even for those without a personal debt (inflation fear). Only 20% of Americans are confident that they will keep their upcoming (financial) New Year's resolution, meaning four out of five will likely abandon their financial goal as New Year's Resolution. Some people like to say that the flood of undocumented immigrants at the U.S. - Mexico border as evidence of American Dream being alive and well, but the U.S. needs better educated and skilled knowledge workers to sustain its economy and to compete with rapidly rising countries. Instead of letting a sound economic policy lead the direction of foreign policies, the U.S. government is stubbornly adhering to its legacy political doctrine - squash competition to maintain its dominance. But time has changed, the world economy is no longer dominated by the U.S. economy. Developing nations can drive their economic growth through hard work and fair trade. China, India and Brazil are just the visible examples, many other nations are eager to emulate the successful Model.
 
Stick to its legacy political doctrine - no one else has a better political system than the U.S.; the U.S. places this political principle as the foundation of its foreign policy well above its domestic policies. Hence, the U.S. economy is dictated by its foreign political objectives. The Trump Administration and Biden Administrations more so have let ‘the targeting China’ policy dictate U.S. trade policy with China. The tariffs and sanctions obviously hurt China and the U.S. in trade and economy. The ever-expanding technology sanctions against China also damage U.S. firms by losing the China market and a vibrant global environment for mutual stimulation. The more sanctions applied to Huawei, the faster it reinvented itself. The more semiconductor sanctions are applied to China, the more independent its industries become. BYD is emerging as the world's number one electric car manufacturer. This U.S. anti-China economic measure is based on the hypothesis that exporting technology products to China will threaten U.S. security. Hence, it warrants sacrificing the U.S. economy. However, this belief in ‘China Threat’ is just like the belief in ‘China Collapse’, a blind faith with no evidential proof. For the past five decades, all predictions of China will collapse are proven false. The ‘China Threat’ theory could not be proven as well since China had never initiated any aggression other than defending its sovereignty and right to develop. Through international political observers' eyes, we see China making progress on its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a program for cooperative development. The international community has gradually leaned toward China resisting the U.S.-led anti-China strategy polarizing the world, hoping to collapse China. This author cannot help but make a connection between Americans’ pessimistic New Year's Resolution and the above political analysis, which is the fundamental cause for Americans’ pessimism.
 
Inflation is the spoiler for New Year Resolutions. Some New Year Resolutions are too expensive to keep and are easily observable. But the real reason for Americans to become pessimistic is that they are deprived of the opportunity to compete freely. The U.S. is rich in resources, oil and gas, huge fertile land for agriculture and an advanced technology base. Why must the U.S. rely on military industries to dominate its national development plan? With more pressure and military spending ($850B), the U.S. cannot stop Russia or China from developing their own defense. China’s progress in space technology should have awakened the U.S. national security planners, it’s time to return to the principle of fair competition, mutual restrain and win-win cooperation which have made the U.S. the superpower it is today. Let Americans compete freely, collaborate with China for mutual benefits and give Americans optimism not pessimism, after all the U.S. winning track record was built on optimism, confidence and the American dream. The current U.S.- China policy is suffocating Americans with pessimism and giving China adrenaline to accelerate its development. For 2023 the world is expecting China to have a GDP growth of 4.5% whereas only 0.5% for the U.S. Low growth breeds pessimism and pessimism leads to low growth. It does not take a genius to figure out what the future is waiting for if the U.S. insists on its current China policy!
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Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.