ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a U.S. federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Homeland Security with a mission to protect America from the cross-border crimes (such as drug smuggling) and illegal immigration (such as human trafficking) that threaten national security and public safety. The current agency acting director is Michael Albence who manages two main components: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). ICE does not patrol American borders which are conducted by a sister agency, the U.S. Border Control, but ICE agents carry weapons and ICE maintains attachés at major U.S. diplomatic missions overseas, presumably for facilitating processing reentry and deporting immigrants and criminals. Nowadays, if a foreign student, especially a Chinese student, would hear the name ICE, chances were that the student might feel a chill in his or her spine. Why? Because the Chinese students are facing a threat being forced to leave the U.S. or having difficulty to come back to studies in the Fall.
 
You may think this can not happen. There are about 1.1 million foreign students in this country and Chinese students are more than 375,000. Many universities including the top schools depend on the enrollment of foreign students to maintain their curriculum programs and the full utilization of their faculty. However, the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. has forced universities and even K-12 to offer online learning instead of in-class learning. As the pandemic situation had not been managed under control in many states, the likelihood of returning to campus study is questionable. The U.S. federal administration seems to maintain a position that returning to normal (that includes re-opening schools) are important to our economy and our economy is more important than saving lives under pandemic. Thus, the ICE agency announced (July 6th, 2020) that if schools decide to offer online-only education, then any foreign student holding F-1 (academic study) and M-1 (vocational training) visas “may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.”
 
This is the bombshell falling on many campuses. The options for students are few, either one has to transfer to a school having a regular campus curriculum or at least a hybrid model in the Fall or one has to take the alternative returning to his or her home country. Since many schools are not certain what they will do in the Fall, the first option offers no comfort to either students nor schools. As the pandemic statistics are still threatening, the travel conditions are dire. For instance, China is restricting air flights to allow mainland China carriers to fly just one flight per week on one route to any country and foreign airlines to operate just one flight per week to China. This policy has been in place since March 29 and has been extended to the Fall into October. What this means is that the Chinese students can not easily book a flight home or coming back to the U.S. to resume studies. In addition, the flights are very expensive due to limited supply and heavy demand.
 
We could not help feel sympathy for the foreign students especially the Chinese students. 2020 being the presidential election year, both parties seem to follow the legacy national politics, that is focusing on a foreign target to divert voters attention away from our domestic problems. This year, our domestic problems are compounded by the COVID-19 world pandemic, not only from economic point of view (high unemployment especially) but also from the stand of national preparedness for emergencies. Our government’s attention (both administration and Congress) were first diverted away from the pandemic virus by bipartisan politics (impeachment and mutual sabotaging) and then competing in shifting blames from each other to China. Trade imbalance had been in existence through several Administrations. National preparedness for emergency such as corona virus was also a domestic issue transcending over several Administrations. Instead of reflecting on why we are not well prepared to handle the pandemic we focus on blaming China. Ironically, China is the only large country that has managed the pandemic well.
 
The Chinese students face one more stress from social media in addition to the above visa and travel issues. They have received very mixed feelings from the chat lines. Some people showed sympathy to their plight but more expressed that they were not welcome home simply because they might be bringing the corona virus back. The worsening US-China relations, the hostile policy towards Chinese students and the escalating pandemic cases inevitably caused dramatic drops in Chinese student enrollment at American universities. A few universities have reported their enrollment figures, for example, a 34% drop in new Chinese graduate students at Bentley University in Massachusetts, a 23% drop in Chinese student enrollment at the University of Vermont and a 20% drop in Chinese student enrollment at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The University of Illinois was smart enough to have taken an insurance Policy that it will be paid US$60 million if revenue from Chinese students dropping 20 per cent or more. Unfortunately, not many universities had such a foresight.
 
It is an indisputable fact that the U.S. has benefited from foreign students who decided to stay in the U.S. as immigrants. Some would even say that the U.S. owed her superpower status to the foreign immigrants’ contribution over the past century. Hence, this new visa policy is extremely short-sighted. There is no justification for issuing such a directive even China is targeted as a competitor. As an immigrant nation, the nation must be sensitive to discrimination, especially racial discrimination; any discrimination is a poison to patriotism. The ICE announcement does not only have a spine-chilling effect on foreign students but also is like pouring a bucket of ice water over patriotic naturalized immigrants. Fortunately, Harvard, MIT, California Public University system and others had sued the government on this issue and they won!

 
The development of COVID-19 pandemic in the world is still a severe situation, but we see obvious increase and focus of efforts in fighting it. China essentially contained the pandemic and offered her experience and support to other seriously infected countries. The U.S. has climbed up in toll of deaths caused by COVID-19 but signs are showing hopeful stabilization. My State, New York, is the worst hit State. We are essentially all self-quarantined in homes. Last weekend was my birthday and I received a surprise ‘virtual birthday party’ on Zoom, secretly organized by my wife with my six grown-up children, their spouses, my six grand sons and future daughter-in-law. I was totally surprised, thrilled and touched by their well wishes, stories they told, rare family photos showed and various performances they exhibited through Zoom. It was a great three-generation event, I was grateful for having it while observing social distancing. A birthday without fancy cake, but it was my best birthday.
 
Zoom (ZM, Zoom Video Communications) is a late comer in video conferencing business, founded by Eric Yuan, an immigrant from Shangdong Province, China, in 1995. Eric is not a super inventor, but he has qualities of focus, hard-working and strong will of making a product the best possible. He started as an engineer in 1997 with WebEx, a video conferencing company which went public in 2000 and was bought by Cisco in 2007. Eric was lucky in his first job and made his first pot of money with WebEx. He joined Cisco with WebEx and became a VP for engineering. Not able to convince Cisco to rebuild a better new system, he left in 2012 and pursued his Silicon Valley entrepreneuriAL adventure. His success today came with his personal ability, personality winning money man’s trust, and perseverance to accomplish his goal. Zoom had its IPO in April 2019 with stock price at $36, but it zoomed over $165 AS OF mAY 18, 2020 in little over than a year's time, making Eric a billionaire. Eric’s success story is no intriguing fairy tale, lots of Chinese, Indian and other immigrant technology workers have similar opportunities. It is the 'Silicon Valley' spirit and American free capital and enterprise systems that fostered  Eric's and many other American success stories.
 
Eric not only drew talents from Silicon Valley but he also tapped China. His success just one more example endorsing the ‘Silicon Valley Spirit’: respect talent, cultivate international collaboration and beat the competition. Video conferencing has a lot of giants as competitors, Cisco, Google, Microsoft just to name a few. Zoom came up with a user friendly and easy to install client interface, dealt with the challenge of multiple browsers and their updates with its own protective layer, improved quality of service (QOS), an issue dogged many Internet communication products such as early Internet telephony (for example, IPO2U). Many corporations invested in Zoom including Masayoshi, CEO of SoftBank, who made more than $100B on his investment in Alibaba.
 
Yuan’s Zoom product benefited me during 'my self-imposed quarantine', but more importantly the Zoom success made me think about what will make America great again. President Trump’s campaign slogan, 'America First and Make America Great Again', united half of the U.S. But we need to unite the whole America to understand one thing; it is the great American success story (Silicon Valley Spirit) that will make America great. We must abandon fake news, blame game, smearing diplomacy and dirty politics. For example, the impeachment wasted our precious time and energy away from paying attention to the seriousness of corona-virus. The blame game and fake news further divided our nation rather than united us to act. Blaming China for the U.S. problems and addicting to an illogical 'China threat' hypothesis produced incoherent, hypocritical and ineffective foreign policy, totally against the Silicon Valley Spirit which China is trying so hard to emulate. The current hostile 'China policy' will not make America great or weaken China. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the faults of “blame China” and “smear China”; it did not help the U.S. but only made China striving more for self-sufficiency and appearing more like a global leader, whereas the U.S. is perceived as one abandoning her principles and justice.
 
The money coming to Wall Street is not because of the current U.S. foreign policy, certainly not the China policy; it came because of Silicon Valley Spirit which has made Eric and many others successful. America lost some of their manufacturing base, but we cannot force them back by charging China stealing our manufacturing jobs. Our industrialists let them go and preferred financial and data industries. The U.S. is a part of the globe even though we have been the top leader for a century. We cannot arbitrarily abandon globalism and define an American isolationism. Wouldn't that be too much like “you can’t have the cake and eat it too”?
 
The Silicon Valley Spirit that fostered many American success stories has a number of winning ingredients: 1. Freedom of capital and capitalism - the U.S. is still the best fertile ground for capitals. Silicon Valley is still the paradise for capitalists who can exert their capital power under a free venture and entrepreneur system. 2. Respect for talent and immigrants - Yuan is just one example of “mmigrants made this country great”. Yet our current news is discriminating against immigrants (tightening immigration laws and restricting Chinese immigrantion to the U.S. Allegedly, Yuan came to this country after 9 applications of visa. Our government is suspecting all Chinese scientists and researchers as spies for China. The politicians' discriminatory remarks about corona-virus created a series of hate crimes against Asians.) 3. Leadership in technology innovation - competition is a source of energy and creativity for successes. (We cannot be afraid of competition. We must welcome fair and square competition. Under the Silicon Valley Spirit, we must cherish proud winners not sore losers.) 4. Success factors in success stories - there are a few key elements: a. Work ethic (drive, focus and perseverance), b. Open to talents, good ideas and ability to collaborate, c. Respect history (giants in the field) and humble to learn then excel, and d. Open to the world - In the global environment today, we must respect foreign history and culture, welcome immigrants, and engage collaboration. (As a great nation, we must promote international collaboration not isolationism.)
 
The U.S. - China relations are on the rocks today. The U.S. China policies are violating the above golden rules of American success story. We can label China as a competitor, but using trade sanctions, discriminating against Chinese Americans and immigrants, prohibiting Chinese technology companies to do business and invest in the U.S. are all wrong. The hostile China policy has not been effective; the corona-virus pandemic gave us a clear example. Self-reflecting is far more useful than blaming others. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that human is one race, we must work together to fight our common enemy not each other. While we are forced to be self-quarantined with time to reflect, let’s think honestly about great American success stories and how to make America great again with an open mind to engage competition. The U.S. had a fast growth period in the 60’s and 70’s, we should re-energize our successful programs such as NSF, NASA, ARPA, etc. We must invest in R&D to compete with foreign companies (like Huawei) and empower our citizens to entrepreneur and create new industries and jobs. It is shameful to use tactics like inducing Canada to arrest Huawei's executive Ms. Sarah Meng, sanctioning Huawei products in the U.S. and coercing our allies to restrict Huawei’s 5G products and systems. These tactics will only degrade the U.S. reputation and leadership. We must understand and exploit the Silicon Valley Spirit - recognizing  the existing giants and discovering our mustangs who can run faster and offer better innovations to beat the competition. We must bet on our mustangs to win, since smearing anyone does not make us the winner!



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It is clear from the above analyses, China is far more interested in her economic relations with foreign countries than in military alliance. The U.S. is clearly doing just the opposite. The above data and analyses also discredit the ‘China Threat’ proponents’ argument based on the point of view on U.S. national security. The concept of maintaining military superiority for dominating inter-national or world affairs never worked and is obsolete. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mighty U.S. military power not only did not succeed in settling thorny international or regional conflicts (such as in the Middle East), it only stimulated more arms race which had put a huge burden on the U.S. in military spending. With nuclear power already proliferated, any military conflict between two nuclear power may have a chance to ignite a nuclear war capable of destroying mankind. So obviously one must abandon the strategy of using military power to settle international issues; any military exercise involving nuclear bombers and  continental missiles launchers can create vulnerable risks.
 
IV. Education and Social Systems
 
As discussed in the demographic analysis, the 4:1 population ratio between China and the U.S. is probably the only significant variable in the comparison of their competitiveness. The most significant consequence of human resources or human power in peace time is productivity. We are not going to assess the human power in war time since we have already concluded that war is not a desirable option for resolving any international problem including the economic competition between the U.S. and China. Currently, the U.S. labor productivity is 12 times of China’s. However, China’s labor productivity has maintained a positive growth, except year 1990, as high as 13% per annum but generally and consistently above 6% for the past two decades, whereas the U.S. labor productivity suffered several times due to recessions (twice in the 1980’s and four times since 2007 to 2019 having negative growth rate) and rarely exceeding 3-4% per annum, more likely below 2%. So China’s higher (3-4 times of the U.S.) growth rate of productivity and 4X labor force (population) essentially mean that the total economic output of the U.S. and China is going to be comparable soon. Whether or not China can maintain her growth rate to eventually surpass the U.S. labor productivity depends very much on her education and social systems in comparison with that of the U.S.
 
Education system is critical in producing skilled productive work force and social system is important in managing migration and immigration of labor force geographically to match the needs of industry development and transformation. The U.S. education system has been recognized world-wide as being capable of producing high quality education from K-12 and even more so in higher education. However, this high quality of education, attractive to foreign students, does come with a high price tag. The American education system is far more expensive than elsewhere. ($20,000 - $60,000 per student year.) China, to a large extent, has been emulating some of the America education programs, particularly in higher education, but managing it with a lot less cost. So the real competition in national productivity is essentially in education reform - which country can turn out more right skilled and timely needed productive work force at a reasonable cost and in establishing appropriate social programs, including healthcare, immigration and retirement system, that can attract migrant and immigrant (from foreign talents) workers to join and sustain a competitive work force. The U.S. has been successful in attracting foreign talents but she will have to face competition with China.
 
V. Innovation and System Reform
 
Both the U.S. and China recognize that the real competitiveness of a nation lies in her ability in advancing technologies and producing innovation in all aspects of a country, especially important in her government system, industrial transformation and the above discussed education and social systems. Military system cannot be eliminated entirely, but it is no longer a strategic investment guaranteeing a ‘healthy return'. (Thucydides Trap theory might not hold for the two strongest competing nations simply because they would realize that neither side could survive a devastating war!) In terms of innovation, the U.S. has a fine track record in pioneering innovative systems such as social security system, immigration policies (green card, H visa, etc), local tax-payer funded public education system augmented with competitive private education institutions. However, the world has changed with rapidly advanced technologies, the human society has transformed into many new social norms challenging the existing systems. The present systems may or may not be a competitive one for the future. In fact, the late comers may have the advantage of taking on innovation without the old baggage or can adopt an old system with new technology support. (For example, some legacy issues existing in the current education, healthcare, retirement and the government system.) It is obvious that a nation must be first focusing on national issues, improving her current systems, and solving domestic problems before developing and realizing competitive strength for the nation.
 
Summarizing the above analyses, we can conclude that the competitive strength of a nation depends on how well the nation can solve her national and domestic problems (such as infrastructure), build effective systems (such as healthcare and education), then develop her citizens to take on productive career (such as job training for industry innovations thus raising competitive capability. The current COVID-19 pandemic disease provided a lesson for nation building. Such a valuable experience will support our conclusion. The pandemic is a stress test on every nation’s healthcare system, education system, commerce system and government system. It is clear that from the pain each country has suffered we can see that no one has a perfect system to respond to the COVID-19 attack. The sensible thing to do is to engage with each other and to cooperate fully in dealing with the problem.
 
The challenge brought by the pandemic can be compared with the challenge we face our global economy. We all have a common goal of maintaining a prosperous global economy. It only makes sense for us, of course, especially the two largest economies, the U.S. and China, to engage each other collaboratively to maintain a healthy world economy. Only under a healthy global economy, the U.S. and China can each have its healthy economy. Trade war makes no sense just like blaming each other for the pandemic to each other makes no sense. Therefore, we urge the U.S. and China to adopt an ‘engagement’ foreign policy, starting from dealing with COVID-19 and vaccine development to resolving trade imbalance instead of uttering rhetoric and rattling sabers.
 



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