As an empire, the decay of U.K. was inevitable since WW II. The war had defeated U.K. In many aspects even though as part of the Ally she won at the end. Two major consequences of the war basically prescribed the fate of British Empire in the coming century. One is that the colonialism was pronounced dead no matter how the colonial powers wanted to maintain it. Two is that the economy and the military power of U.K. was devastated to the point it was difficult to return to her pre-war status. The U.S. came out the strongest winner in manufacturing and military power benefiting from the war occurring outside of North America. Inevitably, the U.S. would lead the world to recovery with her Marshall Plan for Europe and a restoration plan for Japan. Strategically, the U.S. took the opportunity of constructing an anti-communism alliance countering the expansionism of the post-war Soviet Union with NATO (formed in 4-4-1949) established in Europe. In Asia, the U.S. was the occupier of Japan for seven years (1945-1952) restructuring Japan's political system and industrial base. The occupation ended in 1952 shortly after the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed by 49 countries on September 8, 1951. The U.S. and Japan entered into a security sharing relationship which was later negotiated into a Mutual Alliance Treaty signed on January 19, 1960 in Washington DC, finally approved by the Japanese Diet despite of violent protests by the Japanese leftists.   
 
The U.K. adopted the strategy to be the most intimate ally of the U.S. content with a follower position in the international arena as well as in the world economy. The U.S. was the world's strongest economy and military power and the U.K. was functioning under the superpower's wings to maintain her kingdom image and to sustain a struggling economy with world competition not only from European nations but also Asian countries. Due to population and resources disadvantage, the British aisles have difficulty keeping up with the world in hard goods manufacturing but to rely more on financial engineering and soft power. This situation does not provide an optimistic long term prospect for several reasons. One is that the U.S. (for different reasons from the U.K.) is gradually moving into the financial sphere becoming the dominant player often taking everyone's lunch. In addition, the developed nations in Europe and particularly late comers in Asia have all become strong competitors in the world economy. The rise of China was apparently gaining China enough influence on the world stage, hence, returning Hong Kong (HK) to China (1997) was inevitable no matter how unwilling the U.K. was to part with a money making HK. China's continued near double digit economic growth in GDP for next two decades have made China a strong competitor to all.  This competition is threatening the economic dominance of the U.S., therefore, eventually leading into a trade war between the U.S. and China.
 
Into the twenty first century, the decline of the U.S. economic power has become obvious, finally evidenced by the global financial crisis triggered by the U.S. housing loan bubble in 2008. The crisis was saved by China by her buying U.S. treasury debt. As China has become the world number two economy (number one in terms of buying power), many country including U.K. must adjust their trade and economic development strategy. Facing this challenge, the U.K. is forced into a reactionary position with no clear long term policy. This can be seen from her relationship with China, the U.S. and EU. First, the U.K. wasn't sure how to maneuver in the EU system to maximize her economic gain, hence there was the Brexit issue which took a while to decide and still not resolved with a clean break with EU. The U.K. left the EU on January 31, 2020 with a deal called Withdrawal Agreement which covered 1) agreeing a transition period and how it could work, 2) How to prevent border check at Irish border and 3) U.K.'s financial settlement with EU.  There is the 11 month transition period ending December 31, 2020 with a deadline of extending the transition already passed. The issues stuck at negotiation level include a trade deal, immigration rules, fishing access and security co-operation. If the transition period is passed without an accord, then tariffs and border checks will take place. What will happen remains to be seen, hence you may say that UK is in a yoyo state as far as exit from EU.
 
Towards China, the U.K. was perhaps even more uncertain. For a while, U.K. was extremely friendly towards China, very much eager to be her partner. She joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank initiated by China early to support China's One Belt One Road initiative. However, when the U.S. anteed up her anti-China policy with trade war, technology sanction and military intervention in the South China Sea with an ambitious NATO-like alliance in mind for the Indo-Pacific region targeting China, the U.K. yoyoed. First, the U.K. and the U.S. took the same stand supporting HK protests which were turning into violence. That was a clear case of double standard, comparing the rationale and government measure in HK riots with those happening in the U.S. and U.K. Now, China has passed a national security law to protect HK, the riots are stopped. However, the U.K. announced a policy permitting British National Overseas (BNO) to apply visa to settle in UK with opportunity to apply for citizenship later. Obviously, this policy displeases China. UK Home Office estimates around 3M people with BNO status and some 500,000 could arrive in the first year as an extreme scenario, more likely 123,000 to 153,000 people would arrive in the UK in the first year, and between 258,000 and 322,400 over five years. U.K. expects a lot of them to be educated workers with wealth potentially paying taxes boosting the UK economy by 2.4B pounds. Judging the economic prospect of U.K versus China, this is absolutely a fantasy, a wishful thinking the best. Only those people with money acquired in shady manners would escape to UK, not workers, since the job opportunity is far better in HK and China.
 
As the world is watching, the U.S. is pulling all stops to resist Huawei company to dominate the 5G business, despite of the fact that Huawei leads with patents (3000 applications and 1200 granted, collecting $1.2B and paying $6M in licensing fees) in 5G technology and standards and business relations with 170 countries. On this matter, the U.K. is yoyoing again. First, she denied Huawei had any backdoor security exposure in its telecommunication equipment when the U.S. accused Huawei, then she joined the U.S. to forbid Huawei to bring its 5G technology into their domestic markets, eventually removing any existing Huawei equipment. This pattern of yoyoing, to some degree, reflects the U.K. government's inability to act independently from the U.S. We don't need to dwell on the false logic of the U.S. in adopting a self-inflicting policy  to punish a civilian company, Huawei, but we must emphasize that the U.K. cannot afford to miss the 5G technology revolution (by yoyoing) which will bring electric car, AI-robotics and all sorts of Internet applications running at split second speed. Take financial application-transactions, China is already leading the world; adopting 5G a few years ahead of every one, one can imagine China's role in the financial world that the U.K. so depends on. A yoyoing UK will eventually be left bouncing on the side walk. As the editor in The Economist updated the article, A Ban on Huawei further worsen Britain's relations with China ( July, 11, 2020), to incorporate the announcement of Huawei's exclusion from 5G telecommunication network, many papers popped up: Banning Huawei, … likely worsen the deteriorating UK-China relation, London's Huawei decision 'turning point' for China-UK relation, Britain Fears Chinese Government Retaliation Over Huawei....  As British media are full of intelligent people, I expect someone will be honest enough to tell the UK politicians: a “yoyo' State or 'yoyo' China policy is not good for U.K. She must act as an independent nation for her own good.    




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A recent report, entitled ‘U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly’ was authored by Richard Wike, Janell Fetterolf and Mara Mordecai and published on Pew Research Center website (PRC 9-15-2020). The conclusion of the report (see title) does not surprise many people since the global media have ample negative comments about the U.S. leadership since President Donald Trump took office. However, the survey results covering 13 nations across two decades (2000-2020) arranged together does present some interesting data and interpretation worthy of further analysis and comments. Aside from the obvious conclusion, we can comment on the nuances associated with public opinion data and offer further thinking.
 
First, we should recognize the reputation of P.R.C. PRC is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world by conducting public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. PRC does not take policy positions and maintains independence, objectivity, accuracy, humility, and transparency in its mission - To generate a foundation of facts enriching public dialogue and enabling sound decision making. Its broad empirical research scope covers a wide range of topics helpful to the U.S. and international policymakers, civic leaders, educators and the public at large to understand and address some of the world’s most challenging problems.
 
An unbiased (nonprofit, nonpartisan and non-advocacy) public opinion survey revealing the voice of the people and coupling it with independent demographic, economic and political analyses can provide insight on how the world is changing. This is a very valuable public service. However, the public survey methodology is not totally free from defects. First, the sampling of survey target is a complicated issue. Taking the phone survey alone, you have the issue of picking a meaningful population ratio of landline versus cell-phone since the phone type (land vs. cell), phone number (clustered banks of consecutive numbers) and response rate (day, evening and no-responses) have an important influence on the survey population. In addition, the non-sequitur respondent (and/or bogus respondents) and influence by instant current events during the survey period do present challenges to public survey research.
 
Bearing the above in mind, we will examine the above mentioned survey report and its raw data. The report concluded that since Donald Trump took office as president, the image of the United States had suffered in and across many regions of the globe. As the new 13-nation PRC survey illustrated, America’s reputation has declined further over the past year among many key allies. In the six major countries, the share of favorable public view of the U.S. had all declined. Data tabulated over two decades from 2000 to 2020 show that the favorable ratings are dropping from 83 to 41 (UK), 62 to 31 (France), 78 to 26 (Germany), 77 to 41 (Japan), 72 to 35 (Canada) and 59 to 33 (Australia). The two decades consist of two terms of GW Bush, two terms of Barack Obama and one term of Donald Trump; there is an uptick at the beginning of the Obama Administration but overall showing a decline as indicated by the above numbers.
 
The report also claims that the decline over the past year is linked to how the U.S. had handled the Coronavirus pandemic, citing that “Across the 13 nations surveyed, a median of just 15% says the U.S. has done a good job of dealing with the outbreak. In contrast, most say the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Union have done a good job.” But in nearly all nations (except the U.S. and U.K.) people give their own country positive remarks for dealing with the crisis and relatively few think China has handled the pandemic well, although better than the U.S. with a mean rating of 37:15. People also think their own country have done a better job than WHO with a mean rating of 74: 64. Here we can see an obvious bias by comparing the pandemic impact results reported by these countries and WHO. China has the lowest death rate and also lowest number of active cases per fixed population. In fact, WHO has given China high approval for her management of the pandemic disease.
 
Ratings for U.S. President Donald Trump started at a similar low value at the endpoint of Bush’s declining rating over eight years. The declining trend continued this year. Over the thirteen nations (the above six plus Belgium, Denmark, Italy, South Korea (SK), Netherlands, Spain and Sweden), Belgium gave the lowest approval where only 9% had confidence in President Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. Japan gave the highest assessment but still only 25% showing confidence in Trump. Trump also got lower rating than the U.S. (34:16). Comparing with other world leaders (six included in the survey), the orders are (I) Germany-Merkel and France- Macron, (II) UK-Johnson, (III) Russia-Putin and China-Xi , and (IV) Trump, fared the lowest.
 
The report also pointed out that the European respondents who support right-wing populist political parties do have a better view of Trump. For example, 45% of Spaniards who support VOX party versus only 7% who don’t support VOX have confidence in Trump. This survey result certainly resonates with the sentiments in the U.S. where Trump has consistently having a strong hold on the conservative right, especially among the 60% whites in the population. This correlation with right-wing political ideology is also exhibited in the question of how well the U.S. handled the corona-virus pandemic. In other words, people’s 'attitude' matters significantly in their judgment and decision even facing a medical issue such as corona-virus disease. Hence, we probably could predict that a similar correlation would be found if the question of how climate change was handled by the world leaders in a survey. Trump and his conservative supporters’ attitude on both pandemic and climate change can explain the Trump policies.
 
The pandemic would certainly have a significant impact on global economy. The majorities of the 13 countries except Japan and SK named China as the world’s leading economic power in 2020. People in Japan and SK still see the U.S. as the world’s top economy. This survey was conducted among 13,273 respondents in 13 countries from June 10 to August 3, 2020. This data revealed the survey challenges discussed above, the non-sequitur issue. Japan and SK both are large exporters to both the U.S. and China. Since the U.S. initiated a trade war (although targeting China but also impacting other countries), Japan and SK would rather see the U.S. being the top economy to lessen the pain from the trade war. In terms of buying power, China is no doubt the largest economy . The pandemic may even enhance her position in a relative sense since her economic recovery seems to be faster than other countries’.
 
The Black Lives Matter triggered by the George Floyd’s death did spill beyond the U.S., thus it would influence survey results, likely projecting a lower image of the U.S. PRC correctly avoided the racial injustice question into its 2020 survey. However in its past studies, there were obvious dips in U.S. image, for example, in 2013-2014 due to Edward Snowden event and 2014-2015 due to Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri. PRC is an experienced research center on opinion survey. Its work is commendable but we need to take precaution in interpreting the survey results with additional input from other demographic and geopolitical studies. This paper by Richard Wike et. al. may have used an obvious conclusion as its title, but the raw data contained therein be useful for scholars as well as political leaders to ponder for the benefit of enriching public dialogue and making sound policy decisions.
 



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Abstract

This is a topic of importance. Many China experts have discussed the topic from a Western perspective. This article discusses China and her difference from the U.S. in three parts covering demographics, economic system, political system, legal system, misinterpretations, religion, and media with the conclusion that China is not a mysterious country, if one compares the two countries in the above dissections.  
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Whenever the topic of US-China Relation comes up in a conversation among Americans with varied background, inevitably the discussion moves to interpreting current events involving China and the U.S. The fact that more and more people are interested in China-US affairs is a good thing, but very often one only hear these interpretations in a third person voice, namely quoting the media or hearsay. If there were Chinese Americans present, they were expected to engage in the discussion but expecting a first person opinion or knowledge. Unfortunately not all Chinese Americans, especially the second or third generation Chinese Americans, who may have physical Chinese features but rarely can they express their opinions convincingly in a knowledgeable manner with a first person tone. Nothing wrong with this phenomenon except the discussion tend to end with puzzles and question marks to the issues in discussion. This is not a good thing. The end result is that China is hard to understand by the West.
 
Occasionally in a group conversation, you have Chinese people who possess reasonably good knowledge about China but then they have not been in the West long enough to understand why China is so difficult to understand by the West? Or they don't have a reasonably good knowledge about the West, especially the views of mainstream media which dominate the mass. Or they have a language handicap in English to deliver their opinions in a convincing sound bite manner. Therefore, these Chinese people, being American citizens or residents or recent immigrants, very much wanting to express their opinions, can not convince their friends to accept why China is not so difficult to understand?!
 
Of course, it is not any single person's fault if the title questions exist among Americans or Westerners and to some extent among many people in the entire world. China is a large country with more than 3.7 million square miles of land not counting her islands and seas. China has the biggest population, 1.4 billion people, in the world, evolved from many races (officially 56 today) over thousands of years. This population consists of a principal language, a fairly universal Chinese culture in terms of food preferences, habits and even mannerism and an uniquely blended Chinese philosophy; but it also contains multiple dialects, different local customs, rich variation of specialty of cuisines, all sorts of religions (despite of an atheist Constitution limiting promotion of religion in contrast to a religious American Constitution but being challenged constantly to remove its religious base by some people), long economic and political history with varied experiences and very different life styles expanding many centuries. This characterization of China alone is enough a challenge for Chinese to understand China completely and you sure can appreciate what is like to Americans.
 
In a digital world today with Wikipedia, Weibo, Twitter and abundance of search engines in the Internet cloud, such as Google and Baidu, there is no lack of raw data and information about China and the U.S. but what is missing is some honest interpretation of facts with no bias. Unfortunately, to the title questions, the five millennium of Chinese history (a huge literal challenge) and the recent centuries of anti-Communism ideology (a constant intellectual brain-rinse) have created obstacles or biases preventing turning the zillions of data and information (including the Chinese classic literature， (文言文) to fair and honest knowledge about China. Hence, the metaphors, such as a rising China, an awakening lion, a flying dragon and China threat,  have been created and interpreted to represent a mystical China and a future threat to the West,
 
Many people don't believe that, especially the Chinese Americans who have a good understanding of the Chinese history and culture. What can or shall the Chinese Americans do regarding the title questions then? I would like to take an optimist's view to say, it is simple, or at least not difficult, to do a logical analysis on the title questions and tell anyone who cares to listen to your answers. Here is my version of the analysis for the readers of my columns with the hope that it will draw many plausible versions to demystify 'China' and prove that China is not difficult to understand and not much a threat.
 
China Is Not A Mysterious Country
 
China is not more mysterious than Japan or India. Americans often say that on a personal level, Chinese is not difficult to get along or become close friends with. Generally, Chinese are hard working employees, devotees to children, considerate in personal relationship or being an understanding boss and especially generous when becoming close friends. Yes, they may have some English language handicap or they may appear to be more reserved or conservative but they are more than willing to receive an extending hand of friendship, nothing mysterious at all. China as a country is not mysterious either recognizing the facts mentioned above: big country, large population, multiple dialects, religion neutral, different inheritance and long history of prosperity but recent century of misery due to the invasion of the West including Japan. There is no real mystery if one logically analyzes China from the above aspects. Yes, China has too many philosophies, some with opposing assumptions, for example, one believes that humans are born 'good' with a kind and compassionate heart, but environment and upbringing will contaminate and lead them to be evil; another believes that humans are born 'evil' with all bad traits such as being barbaric, selfish, greedy, etc, only education and good upbringing will make them good people. Is there anything wrong with these philosophies? Is anything really mysterious? No, one simply has to understand that both may be true. The Chinese people brought up in Chinese families exposed to multiple philosophies do develop a central or a universal philosophy though, that is, be kind to oneself, others and the environment. Yes, love the environment is deeply ingrained in Chinese philosophy. On this point, It is nice to see that the U.S. and China signed a climate change agreement recently (unfortunately the U.S. is backing out). Let's continue the analysis by asking what about China's economic, political and legal system? Aren't they different from ours and do they threaten our systems. Here is my view below.

 
To be continued
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