Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was an initiative on global trade and investment announced by President George W. Bush in February - 2008 and diligently promoted by President Barak Obama and finally reached an agreement on October 5, 2015, after 7 years of negotiation among the twelve partners. The historical origin of TPP started from a Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P-3) in 2002, by Chile, Singapore and New Zealand, later with Brunei joined in 2005 (P-4) with an agreement concluded in 2006. The proliferation of regional and bilateral trade-related agreements in Asia Pacific without the U.S., prompted her to make a smart move to join the deferred financial services and investment negotiation in P-4 and took charge of the negotiation by expanding its scope by inviting Australia, Peru and Vietnam in 2008, Malaysia in 2010, Canada and Mexico in 2012 and finally Japan this year. This was a long bumpy process finally concluded on 10/5/2015, but it illustrated the determination of the U.S. through her trade representatives, Ron Kirk (2009-2013) and Michael Froman (2013-present) with Demetrios Marantis and Miriam Sapiro acting in between.
 
The TPP negotiation was conducted in secrecy hence the American people hardly understood its significance. With no details, even political analysts cannot make crisp comments other than treating TPP as a part of the U.S. 'Pivot' or 'Rebalance' Asoa Pacific geopolitical strategy. However, from leaks to organic media, serious controversy surrounding the TPP negotiation issues evolved. Opponents in member partner countries were concerned with TPP's impact on their economic development. Oppositions surfaced in the U.S. among global health professionals, Internet freedom activists, environmentalists, labor organizations and some political figures questioning TPP’s long-range impact on American interests. However, Obama has offered a few reasons to call TPPA as a "21st Century Agreement".
 
From basic capitalism point of view, TPPA moves the world closer to a free market, free capital and free trade economy. The U.S. as the most advanced developed nation stands to gain benefits from such a playbook. TPPA is a big win for global corporations and money institutions from getting market access, protecting IP assets, safeguarding investments and minimizing the interference from national governments and maximizing the outreach of global enterprises and investors. However, from developing nations' point of view, TPPA may hinder member countries to protect their national interests, for example on protecting their farmers and their small farm industry or in building a national auto industry. These types of issues are the reason for TPP to take such a long time to conclude an agreement among 12 partners. (Each had numerous cases to resolve, such as importing rice and automobile to Japan, exporting dairy product from New Zealand to other countries, extending patent and copy right lives in partner countries, and settling investment disputes by arbitration bypassing member partner's court system). On 11/5/2015, a copy of the secret agreement is released for legal review and a final text is expected to be available next year. Then it would allow two years for the member partners to ratify the agreement. In the U.S., it is still a question whether the Congress will ratify TPPA smoothly without opposition.
 
The U.S. successfully concluded TPPA taking a leader's role. In this process, South Korea was invited but she declined to join with her own reasons and China was excluded. South Korea and China had concluded their own bilateral trade agreement recently; one can understand why S. Korea may want to excuse herself from TPP to protect her domestic economy and her trade with China. China together with South Korea represents a significant portion of the AP economy. Being the second largest economy in the world, China has been cultivating bilateral trade agreements with many countries. Would TPPA work effectively without these two large economies? This is a trillion dollar question deserving an analysis. In the following, we shall examine the real significance of TPPA in light of the fact that China is not a member of TPP:
 
A. Market Access - China is one of the largest markets in the world, excluding China in TPP makes no sense. China’s absence in TPP will weaken the effectiveness of TPPA in opening markets to the 12 trading partners. China holds the key to develop bilateral trade agreements with each of the 12 TPP members even including the U.S.

B. Tariff on Goods - TPP defines 'good of origin' limiting non-originating material to 10% to qualify application of TPP tariff rules. However, the value of good may include all values contributed to a good including processing, packaging, shipping, etc. Hence, the computation may be complex. Critic of TPP claims that China as a material supplier can still avoid tariff even including 60% of material cost into a TPP.

C. Intellectual Property Rights - TPP made strides beyond the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of WTO on copyright protection, removing obligation of Internet Service Provider (ISP) for monitoring content and protecting trade secrets from theft. A key impact is that member partners cannot exclude state-owned enterprise from IP rights enforcement under TPPA.

D. Investment Disputes - The TPP used a 'negative list basis' to deal with investment issues, a clever approach to let every partner member to provide an objection list for debate and consideration. Anything not in the list will be then covered by the investment rules. The big win in the chapter of investors is the adoption of an arbitration process for settling investment disputes through International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) bypassing member partner's court system.
 
The U.S. Government claims credit for the above main features of TPPA. However, this TPPA's triumph for capitalism does raise concern about the power of global enterprises outweighing that of national government. TPPA gives the US corporations advantages in doing businesses in Asia Pacific countries, but it also allows foreign entities to challenge the U.S. in areas of public health, environment, agriculture, labor practices, etc. The ICSID arbitration, not like court system, is a self-serving enterprise itself likely to favor a global investor in a dispute case. Is it a good thing when a foreign investor can challenge the government action of protecting labor, consumer, public health, global development and small businesses outside of a court system?
 
Many organizations have issued concerns against TPPA: 1. Bad for workers, forced to compete with foreign low-cost workers (CWA), 2. TPPA is a wish list for powerful special interest groups and international corporations; death to Free Speech and Open Internet. (Fight for the Future) 3. Dismantling public health safeguard and restricting access to price-lowering generic drugs. (Doctors without Border) 4. TPPA's environmental chapter is weaker than the agreement achieved by President Obama with China. (Environmental Workers). On intellectual properties, TPPA is regarded as favoring IP owners more than IP users; government may be prohibited to examine the source code even the issue could be affecting public safety.
 
The exclusion of other AP countries (populated India and fast rising China) is definitely a failure of TPP. As China is aggressively developing her own strategy in trade and investment through bilateral negotiations and proposing grand schemes of "One Road and One Route" (trade routes) with ideas of promoting more transparent and integrated digital and online trade platforms (processes and procedures) and physical infrastructure (facilities for transport and distribution) as well as creating new investment vehicles such as Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) supported by 57 founding members, the TPPA may be a little too limited (in members and scope), too selfish (capitalistic with little socialistic consideration) and too near-sighted (profit-minded with no vision) to be really called “the 21st Century Agreement”. 
 

Most Americans are immigrants or their descendents within a short period of time. The United States welcomes immigrants and molds them into Americans within a couple of generations through an Americanization Process (AP). In this process, children get Americanized when they grow up and get educated in American schools; effectively they influence their parents and each other into Americans. AP works with all Spanish, European, Asian and African immigrant families with a little difference, attributable to ‘inherent culture’ each immigrant group or national origin brought to the U.S. Racial 'discrimination' inherently exists in different races in the US society, however, the American anti-discrimination laws legislated over the years do help reduce discrimination hence help assimilating immigrants into the American society which now contains a variety of elements of inherited cultures.   

Immigrants come and AP works because the U.S. is a rich country of resources easily affording plenty of opportunities for immigrants to make a decent living. AP perhaps can be related to a notion or an inducing agent – ‘American Exceptionalism’(AE). AE binds Americans together and makes them feel exceptional, righteous and patriotic which unites Americans towards other nations. Americans feel exceptional and unite together when they believe that their government and their country are being exceptional. On the other hand, Americans become rebellious when they are deceived and confused by their government or the mass media in a way casting their exceptionalism away. This nation building process (Americanization) is unique and yet different for every immigrant group because AE may be felt differently (on social, economic, national and international issues) by different immigrants. However, one thing is certain that AP is motivated and enhanced by AE and it is also a process making the U.S. strong and Americans feeling exceptional. Hence, if the U.S. government is doing an exceptional job, for example, in handling the US-China relation, Americans especially Chinese Americans will feel exceptional and will support the government whole-heartedly. 

Chinese Americans have a stronger cultural inheritance bonded with a long Chinese history and the historical world status of China. Chinese Americans would pay more attention to what the media report and what the government is doing regarding the U.S.-China relation than other Americans. Chinese Americans understand (better) the Chinese people, Chinese history and intrinsic Chinese culture; they are understandably more sensitive and critical to the U.S. foreign policy towards China. Since Chinese Americans are a minority in the American population (~4 Million 5 years ago), the mass media pay less attention to their feelings, sensitivities and criticisms of the Chinese Americans towards the U.S.-China policy. This phenomenon may occur similarly with other minority groups such as Greek Americans, Hungarian Americans, etc., but not so with Jewish Americans (~6 Million 5 years ago). Perhaps due to the fact that the State of Israel and the Middle East are oil-rich, geopolitically important to the U.S., thus dictates more media attention. However, China’s rise is making Asia Pacific to be an important geopolitical region; hence the U.S. is initiating a Pivot to Asia Pacific policy. Consequently, the US-China relation is rising to be the most important US foreign relation deserving media’s full attention.    
 
While the mass media is devoting more pages to the news (more negatively spun news by the way) and the US official policy statements about China, however, there are little coverage of Chinese Americans’ opinions and emotions towards the China issue. This shouldn’t be the case for two good reasons. First, the above ‘AE - AP’ doctrine applies and works for all immigrant groups in the U.S., the Chinese Americans deserve and want to have a fair chance to engage in the dialogue shaping the US China policy. In fact, the government and the mass media should seek out the Chinese Americans’ opinions. Second, the four million Chinese Americans is a significant group not only having unique heritage background but also possessing highest education level. As of 2012[update], Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the U.S. Chinese Americans are more than 25% of the Asian Americans in the high end spectra of both education and household income. On US-China relation, it is necessary to engage an intellectual discourse with Chinese Americans. Any US China policy must be well explained to and accepted by the American public including not excluding the Chinese Americans. The internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during WW II was a mistake and shutting off the voice of 4 million Chinese Americans on China issue would be unthinkable. This column raises this issue simply because the topic of US-China relation seems to be orchestrated deliberately without Chinese Americans’ input or involvement.  

In my earlier writing, I have pointed out that there are two prevailing themes driving or defining the U.S.-China policy/relation in the U.S., neither one seem to be well grounded with facts and theories. Most troublesome, the mass media seem to ignore how the Chinese Americans feel and believe. The first theme is the "China Threat" which basically targets China as the principal enemy of the United States. A strategy calls to align everyone possible in the world, especially China's neighbors, most deviously and viciously Japan, as military allies to contain China's rise as a developing nation. Japan, with a heavy baggage of imperialism committed atrocious war crimes against China for decades, was knowingly encouraged by the U.S. to beat the drums of ‘China Threat’ and to rearm the Japanese defense force with liberty to attack, despite of Japanese citizens’ protest. The second theme is the "Dooms Day" which claims that a degenerate and mal-functioning Chinese government is doomed to collapse due to her housing-infrastructure bubble, failing economic policies and her internal racial issues. A phenomenon prescribes an inevitable disaster or dooms day for China in a decade or two. China’s reform and desire to find her own development model is ignored and scoffed to fail miserably. These two themes contradict each other in that if China's government were doing so badly how could she pose any threat to her neighbors never mind the U.S. thousands of miles away? If China were to collapse in a decade or so why should the U.S. go through such trouble to align half the world economy to contain China? No wonder that the schemes such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which the U.S. purposely trying to exclude China’s participation took years to negotiate. Why should the U.S. line up all countries in the region with the exception of China that happens to be the largest and most important trading partner to all these countries?


These illogical themes sure bother any right-minded US citizen, especially, Chinese Americans. The more serious and fundamental issue is that these illogical themes destroy the above discussed AE-AP doctrine which bonds American immigrants to be exceptional Americans.

China, an ally of the U.S. during WW II, walked out of the Soviet Union and its style of communism. China was forced into the Korean War with either accepting Russia placing troops at her border in North Korea or facing the U.S. establishing military bases in the entire Korea Peninsular choking China. China wanted a real independent Korea all along. China was instrumental in terminating the Vietnam War between the U.S. and Vietcong-Russia when the U.S. was warming up to China. After the U.S. recognized China, China played the ‘leverage’ role the U,S, so desired which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of Cold War.  The Soviet was the targeted enemy of the United States and still is, why must China be treated as a targeted enemy by the U.S. setting up a new Cold War (even warm or hot war)?  

In the past decade, there is no shortage of news, analysis, comments and opinions about China and U.S. China policy, but the above illogical themes prevail with no honest debate reviewing the historical facts (war crimes, territorial disputes and international relations) and no voices of Chinese Americans. Most older Chinese Americans lived through WW II, Korean War, Vietnam War and witnessed the struggle of China’s ‘yet to complete’ revolution to establish her own republic nation and her latest rapid economic development to raise her people’s standard of living. Where is the debate? Who is causing a threat? And who is driving an arms race? The U.S., Russia, Japan or China? Is it really a zero-sum game? One nation must be destroyed for another to be superior? Will the world be better off with the U.S., Russia, Japan or China to be no. 1?   Why can’t we have collaborative treaties instead of military alliances? What for? A nuclear war? Or real benefits for citizens and world economy?!    

Dreams are made by stimulated brain waves, more people thinking alike, more intense the brain waves are generated. Yesterday a breaking international news headline showed that the leaders of Mainland China, Xi Jinping, and Taiwan, Ma Ying-Jeou are going to meet on November 7, 2015, in Singapore. This will be the first time since 1949 that the leaders of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will meet. This news not only was reported in all Chinese news media but also in world news media in the United States, United Kingdom and other EU nations, Russia and Asian countries. One could imagine the amount of brain waves generated had to be tremendous. Indeed, it was and it affected me last night. I had a dream. While it was still fresh in my mind in the morning, I am jotting down the bits and pieces of my dream in this column. The bits and pieces were images and sceneries but they did suggest some concrete notions. By publishing in this column, I hope to get other people to respond, particularly if they were stimulated by the same brain waves created by this significant news - potentially one of the three most important news fro, China since 1900, first, the news of the toppling of Qing Dynasty by the Chinese people's revolution in 1911 and second, the news of the surrender of the Imperial Japan in 1945, ending the WW II.

In my dream, the first image was a flag, a flag with red, green, blue, yellow and white color. It was a national flag waved by crowds of Chinese people. The scene was exciting, but it was not clear whether it was a celebration or a demonstration. The chanting were not clear until later many other images appeared in my dream. This first image seemed to bring my brain gradually to live and I could begin to see signs and writings, eventually with such clarity that I could recall them.

The next image appeared in my dream was a line of writing in Chinese but my brain seemed to try to make a translation of it to English. The image was not steady but I could definitely make out the phrases as they flicker in and out of focus. The line appeared to be: （中華）（愛國）（親民）（民主）（聯合）（共和）國, with some of the words coming into and out of focus, but the last word 國 was clear all the time. My brain seems to tell me this line of words represents a nation's name and I was busy trying to translate it into English in words such as: Chinese, China, Patriotic, Nationalistic, United, Democratic, and Republic. Piecing them together seemed to show: 

(1) Patriotic and Democratic People's Republic of China or
(2) People's Democratic Republic of China or
(3) Chinese United Democratic Republic or
(4) United Democratic People's Republic of China

My dream seemed to change from Chinese words to people image. The first figure appeared was not a Chinese but American, Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger, sitting in a traditional Chinese chair with body leaning towards left and face smiling in a conversational mood with someone sitting at his left with a tea table in between. Then many Chinese figures seemed to rush in my head, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Ma Ying-jeou, James Soong, Shih Ming-teh, Lien Chan, Wang Jin-Pyng, Yok Mu-ming, ...; there were no speeches nor conversations until the image of Lee Kuan Yew appeared, accompanied by Lee Hsien Loong. Senior Lee seemed to be making a speech and others engaged in but trying as hard as I did, I could not recall their conversations. However, the facial expressions were clear, mostly in a serious mood.

With difficulty of following the conversations among the vivid images, my brain seemed to be tired. People's images seemed to fade and audio sounds became quiet. Then appeared in my head was documents, pages flipping all in Chinese. I was struggling to decipher the writings on the documents and all of a sudden, a clear page emerged. I was excited to capture this page and store it in my memory. This page was the last I could recall before I was awakened not by any alarm clock but naturally as if I was given the chance to record my dream, particularly the last documental page. The following is my recollection of the page with English translation added later.

The Chinese page was written in vertical lines, I captured the main lines and transposed them to horizontal lines to facilitate comparison with the English translation to follow:

中國國民親民民主均富共產黨 黨章
目的 - 統一中國，維護自立自強， 民主均富的自由中國
目標 - 聯合全國各黨各派，推行改革，建立民主法治制度，為全民謀福
以下共有九章 未能記住。
署名的為一個團體， 有數十人之多， 團體名稱是
中國國民親民民主均富共產黨
義務黨章起草榮譽主席團 （簽名者包括許多上述進入我腦海的政治人物）

Translation:
Principal By-Laws of Chinese United People's Democratic Communist Party
Goals: Unite China, Maintain Her Sovereignty and Independence and Provide All Chinese People with Opportunities and Freedom to Pursue Good Lives
Objectives: Work with All Parties and Groups to Make Progressive Reform to Establish Democratic and Proper Legal System to Enrich the Welfare of the Chinese People
Detailed nine Chapters not captured.
There are as many as several dozens of signees who contributed to this document under a group title, Honorable Presiding Leaders of the Voluntary By-Law Committee.

If a dream can be stimulated by brain waves received, then there are perhaps many people who are thinking about this Ma-Xi meeting. Although, neither side is making any comment leading to any expectation, but I must say, the Chinese people all over the world are probably thinking otherwise. Therefore, I am documenting the above dream as the result of one school of brain waves generated by the news of the up-coming Ma-Xi meet.