Abstract

This paper reviews the US-China relations and points out that the real motivation factor for Chin's rapid rise comes from the harsh and untrue criticism on the CCP regime. These negative forces enhance the Chinese people's positive motivations coming from their culture, Confucius philosophy and family tradition, and motivates them to develop China faster out of fear and insecurity. China is succeeding.

 
The Real Motivation Factor for China’s Rapid Rise
 
Sure, China was motivated to build her nation up, who wouldn’t after years of humiliation by foreign powers? However, nation building is not an easy task, it depends on a number of matching factors in terms of timing, resources and peaceful period. The ending of WW II gave China the opportunity but she was deprived the resources and most damagingly she was not given a peaceful time to rebuild. The Korean War cost her million lives including Mao Ze Dong’s own son and a few years of precious time to rebuild. In contrast, Taiwan, separated from reunion with China, along with Japan were benefited from being an ally with the U.S. in supplying goods to the U.S. troops in Korean War. Twenty years of Vietnam War (11/1/1955-4/30/1975), although it was between the U.S. and North Vietnam, it had similar effect of the Korean War on China. It was not until the U.S. changed her strategy in confronting the Soviet Union, China really got a peaceful period of time for nation building. In 1979, the U.S. recognized China and began a new Cold War with the Soviet Union. China seized the opportunity to develop herself. She quickly settled a border issue with Vietnam by strategically staged a brief war （2/17/1979-3/16/1979）with the consent of the U.S. to check Vietnam’s ambition and war Monger attitude causing border issue not only with China but also with Laos and Cambodia. Since then China had no wars with anyone thus giving her a decade of peace time (1979-1989) for nation building.
 
In the new Cold War period, the U.S. engaged China to contain the Soviet Union. China indeed had made significant progress in economic development during that decade through hard work. However, the hardworking at a peaceful time was the requisite condition for economic development but they are not the real motivation factor for her rapid rise. In 1990, the Soviet Union collapsed and the U.S. became the only superpower in the world. However, the U.S. China policy had also revealed its true face. China was a part of the U.S. tool kit to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but China was not treated in any way close like Japan and South Korea. The U.S. categorized China as an adversary, which hindsight could be seen from many things such as the U.S. opposition to letting China join the WTO and the Space Station program. China chose to be humble and tolerant hoping to be accepted by the Western Power Club.
 
The intensification of China’s Motivation Factor
 
The real motivation factor for China’s rapid development came gradually with increasing intensity since the second term of Clinton Administration (1997-2001). The U.S. China policy was ‘engagement within containment’. The Bush Administration (2001-2009) was too occupied with terrorism and Middle East Wars thus giving China another period of peaceful development. The China policy in the Obama-Mrs. Clinton era (2009-2017) had switched further away from engagement towards containment. This made obvious by the Pivot-To-Asia policy. Treating China as an Adversary became intensified. This process continued into the Trump administration with further hostility. It was the past two dozen years placing China under watchful eyes that had given China the real motivation factor to develop rapidly including military and technology development since they had finally recognized the true face of the U.S. The U.S. shall not accept any strong competitor threatening her superpower status. Placing China under the most watchful eyes and instigating all measures to stop China’s rise became the real motivation factor for China’s rapid development and rise, out of not just desire to acquire a better living standard but out of fear and insecurity that the U.S. will eventually staging another eight-nation alliance to crush China like the U.K. had done in 1900, only 120 years ago.
 
In the past two decades or so, the U.S. had waved the anti-communist flag targeting China no matter how much reform China is doing in socialism and in embracing capitalism. It has become clear to the world, not only the ‘Five Eyes’ are physically watching China, but an increasingly rigorous effort is mounting to build an anti-China alliance, for example, by recruiting Vietnam, India, Japan, etc. The U.S.-China relation has become the worst in a century with trade wars spreading to technology wars and military provocations. China was able to mobilize her citizens to work hard and strife for better life, but the U.S. China policy turning the screw tighter using all measures (using The Secretary of State, Pompeo’s words and thoughts) against the CCP government employing media force (fabricating narratives and lies), sanction measures (choking China’s industries) and military exercises with allies (agitating Hong Kong and Taiwan) as if the 1900 battle of Peking could be replayed. Can it be replayed?
 
Chinese People Can Be Motivated by Negative Force
 
Chinese people are unique people who are more tolerant and peace loving. Long immersed under Confucius philosophy, Chinese people are generally motivated by positive thoughts, like honor, praise and encouragement. China may have done a good job in creating a positive motivation for her people to strive for a better life out of the Chinese culture, Confucius theory and family traditions, but the negative force coming from the U.S. China policy is creating an exceptional drive and motivation for the Chinese, to die for their country if necessary; just like they had done against the atrocious attack from the Imperial Japan in 1937-1945 and the Korea War in 1950-1953. The harsher lies generated by the West media, for example, on Uighur genocide charge, fake news on concentration camp, etc. would turn Uighurs and Hans to fight vigorously together against the Western liers to clear their honor.
 
Communism is built on equality of people and fair share and usage of natural and human resources. The Western nations’ media (like CNN), blasting accusations and charges, like depriving Tibetans’ religious rights, suppressing Hong Kong’s freedom of protests and putting 2 million Uighurs under surveillance or concentration camps, etc. actually helped the CCP to do the right thing faster. Tibetans’ lives improved tremendously under CCP governance and there were more beautiful Tibetan temples now than ever before. The Hong Kong riots are completely stopped after China published her national security law. As for Uighurs, 37 countries in the UN Human Rights Council and the Council of Foreign Ministers of Organization of Islamic Cooperation passed resolution in support of China disputing the fake news charges (concentration camps, etc.). It is ironic that the U.S., the promoter of democracy, would deny many of the UN resolutions passed in democratic manner and would insist on repeating the fake news.
 
For U.S.-China relations observers, one must wonder why does the U.S.keep giving China the motivation factor to develop and rise up fast if that is not what she desires.

 
China’s Amazing Rise from a Treacherous Past
 
China is the oldest continuous civilization existing today. She has over 3270 years of written history based on the oldest historical book, Shu Jing （Shang Dynasty）， although historians often cite five thousand years of Chinese history in terms of organized societies, or dynasties （Xia Dynasty, 2070BC to 1600BC before Shang and San Huang Wu Di before Xia). In such a long recorded history, there wAS rich information about evolution of human civilization, especially about philosophy, social structure, and scientific and economic development of the human society. Unfortunately, to a large part of the world, including China herself, China was only known for her recent two hundred years of history, including mostly her miserable years as a country suffered from foreign invasions and wars. Today, surprising to the world, China has risen again, not only as the second largest economy of the world, the top trading partner with 128 nations (2018), but also an advanced nation in numerous aspects from nation development point of view. Despite of China’s low key attitude and Western media’s selective focus on China’s faults real or not, undeniably China is now known for many of her achievements. China has succeeded in visiting the dark side of the moon with her latest moon shot to retrieve surface and interior soil from the moon. China independently developed her Beidou GPS system. She now has the most advanced transportation infrastructure in the world in terms of high-speed railroad grid, miles of highway including the number of cross-ocean bridges and superhighways. China is leading in telecommunication especially in mobile communication which enables her to have the largest number of smart phone users and leapfrogging from credit-card transactions to a phone based mobile pay system. China with her history of being a victim to foreign bully, has consciously built her defense capability not only in terms of deterring nuclear weapons but also with missiles capable of destroying invading carriers, submarines and hypersonic jets.
 
History Teaches and Chinese Learn
 
Chinese people suffered from a century of hardship through foreign invasions and extended wars including WW II which not only devastated the country but also left the nation divided with territories seized and occupied by foreign nations. Although the desire to recover the lost sovereignty was strong, the country was poor and fell far behind in industrialization. People had to work very hard just to keep alive never mind improving their livelihood. They needed a strong government to lead the people to get out of poverty.
In the fifties, the Chinese people all wear the same dark color clothing simply because they didn’t have the factories to make colorful fabrics, but the West interpreted that phenomenon as a suppressed society by a communist authoritarian government. It is certainly true that the Chinese Communist Party is a single party ruling the entire country but the usual authoritarian ruling like an Emperor or King or dictator does not apply to the CCP, simply because it has over ninety one million party members (91,914,000 as of 12/31/2019), out of which 49.6% has college degree or above, 27.2% female and 7.3% minorities organized with 4.68 million local groups. These 91 million CCP members are ruling the country with competitive and democratic system for performance evaluation and promotion. It is true that the party members serve all three branches of government, but the checks and balances are prescribed by Constitutions and laws in quite similar way like many other constitutions and laws.
 
The U.S. involvement in Asia
 
The U.S. was self-appointed as the post WW II world leader with an anti-Communism charter. The U.S. occupied Japan for seven years (1945-1952) and built a democratic constitution and government for Japan for the good of the world; even good for Japan as Japan was an imperialist spared generously from a punishment or war reparation. (In contrast, after the first Sino-Japanese war, 1884-1885, Japan demanded a war reparation from China equivalent to Seven times of Japan’s annual budget which funded Japan’s expansion and ambition to conquer China). Post WW II, the Korean Peninsula was separated into two Koreas, South and North similar to Germany divided into the East and West Germany. Under the anti-communism doctrine, the U.S. engaged in the Korean War when the North and South Korea developed a conflict at their division line. The Chinese did not want the Korean War but she hardly had a choice, either she had to let the Soviet Union to fight the U.S. on her front door very possibly on her soil or send troops to make sure the war is contained and kept outside out of China. On the one hand, the U.S. General McArthur was confident that he could run his troops all the way taking North Korea and crushing into China crossing the Yalu River. On the other hand, China was facing a not trustworthy ally, Stalin, who was ambitious to gain influence and territory in East Asia. China had experienced a huge land loss, when Japan and Russia engaged a war with ambition to colonize NE of China and the Korean Peninsula in 1904-1905. China under the leadership of Mao Ze Dong took the risk to send army to assist North Korea and fight the US-UN allied troops on Korean soil for only one purpose to avoid a repeat of history, i.e. China being bullied and penalized. McArthur underestimated the Chinese people’s resolve in defending Koreans, in reality defending themselves. The three year war (6/25/1950-7/27/1953) ended in Armistice keeping two Koreas separated till today. China tried very hard to get the U.S. to sign a peace treaty with two Koreas but the U.S. refused thus the Armistice still stands today.  (To be continued)
 
 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.
 

Since the the time of the French and the American revolutions, democracy has been successfully promoted as an ideology, owing to its attractive principles of supporting civil freedom, civil rights and civil governance. Likewise, socialism earned its place owing to its principles of supporting human equality and equal distribution and usage of natural and human resources. However, from ideology to practice, it requires a process of creation of a political system subjecting it to evolution by human and societal experimentation and examination and through a gradual peaceful reform process. Communism with its initial political system is an exemplary socialism which has gone through nearly a century long transformation in China and evolved into a unique socialistic system with unique ‘Chinese characteristics’ formed by absorbing cultural ingredients distilled from several thousand years social behavior and modern society norm.
 
Chinese Communist system although brought tremendous economic progress to China and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty through reform and transformation, it is still not sure to be applicable even acceptable to other countries and societies. On the other hand, the Western democratic system practiced over two and half centuries have also shown successful examples in economic development, however, despite of its vigorous promotion, it exhibits some pitfalls in its partisan (or bipartisan) politics which has been amplified recently as warning signs. Therefore, it is critical for us to discuss these pitfalls in comparison with the single party authoritarian communist system.
 
The U.S. is the champion of democracy with her 250 years of experience evolved into a principally two-party, two Congress chambers (Senate and House), and three independent branches (Executive, Legislation and Judiciary) system. The system advocates individual freedom, civil rights (citizens’ voting rights especially) and people elected government (all lower level governments except the Presidency being selected by an electoral college not exactly a popular vote system). Inevitably, political parties are formed and function in competition for Administrative, Legislative and Judicial authority to govern the nation. Although multiple parties are permitted, the ultimate result is a two major party system. Under democratic principle, the two parties compete and vie for votes, thus naturally develop into a bipartisan politics with people split in support of the two different parties.
 
This situation can produce three consequences: First, the government rotates frequently governed by alternating parties. This causes inefficiency in carrying out policies, especially long-term policy; often policies die due to party rotation. Second, people prefer one particular party and let it dominate the government. Unfortunately, for a party to dominate, the party will inevitably focus on suppress the opposition party, for example by administratively and/or legislatively altering electoral zones to keep the opposition party to stay as a minority party. In addition, flood the government (all three branches) with party appointed personnel or party promoted candidates. This tends to make a local government, city, county or state to be dominated (perpetually) by one party, a blue versus red phenomenon in the U.S. Third, the governments are roughly evenly controlled by two parties splitting the locales, government branches into two permanent color, blue versus red. This situation can be peaceful except when major issues occur requiring cooperation, the pitfalls and deficiency will surface. The electoral college vote for the Presidency is one example, the evenly split state will produce a small margin favoring one party and alienating the other party causing half the people unhappy, even violently protesting. This situation happened in 2020 Presidential election.
 
The partisan or bipartisan politics described above not only produces conflicts and problems in electing government officials, the worse is that it will produce bad political behavior including legal corruption or protected criminal act. These bad political acts tend to be motivated by selfish interest, sometimes, very harmful to others or even damaging on a national level. For example, State A needs oil and gas from energy rich State C, but A needs to have energy pipes passing through State B. But for environmental reason or land price concern or worse partisan consideration, State B passes resolution forbidding energy pipes to pass through. Of course, this is State B’s legal right, but it definitely hurts State C or State A even the nation. Another example, A city needs to overhaul its mass transit system, for budget reason, the project must be carried out in stages by city sections. The democratic City Council (especially bipartisan) is bickering on the implementation plan and does not agree on a budget and construction schedule hence delaying the project for years. In the mean time, the mass transit deteriorates, citizens suffer and budget gets overrun by inflation and inaction.
 
There are other legal corruptions highlighted the pitfalls of partisan democracy. A small town (surrounded by opposite color government) has a major highway passing through town, the town legislated traffic laws regulating highway speed, category of vehicles, curb stopping rules, light and sound levels etc. etc., any violation gets a hefty penalty requiring cash payment. The police and court system receive a healthy income from the fines to the point the annual budget of the police department is entirely covered by the fines with extra to be shared by the court and town. The town folks have the legal right to do this but it is bordering abuse of authority. Today, the budgets of most police departments in the U.S. depend on fines, citizens have no recourse for such fines simply because legal fees will do more damage. Is this a good governance? This mentality of abusing authority protected by a democratic system is propagating in the U.S. legal system, for example under the Foreign Corruption Practice Act (FCPA) and Iran and Libya Sanction Act (ILSA), the U.S. legal system fined Alstom $772m dollars even jailed executive Brigitte Baudresson in 2013 for Alstom bribing in Indonesia violating FCPA. Recently, the treasurer of Huawei, Ms Shirley Meng was arrested by Canada at the request of a U.S. court for an ex-subsidiary of Huawei violating ILSA. The U.S. legal system (lawyers and lobbyists) is the beneficiary with real harm to businesses legally operating in the U.S. Thus the U.S. judiciary earned the title, ‘Long Arm’ judiciary system.
 
Political Scientists often say that the practice of democracy requires three conditions in the citizens: adequate economic status, sufficient education level and political brain. This statement has its basis, but these conditions are high orders even American citizens can not match. Unfortunately, the democratic system propagates with its pitfalls. One example is Taiwan where one party is crucifying the other, dominating the three branches, staffing the government with party locals even by creating redundant presidential and executive yuan offices with no regard for budget deficit, so long as one party can suppress the other party and hold on to power. Therefore, we citizens must discuss and understand the partisan (bipartisan) politics pitfalls in democracy to make improvements.


​