When Wuhan first discovered corona-virus, first speculation linking it to bats (SARS example), was understandable. That the government was cautious not to cause panic was also understandable. (Allegedly, the local government enforced early censorship to suppress information about the corona-virus, and the dangers it poses to public health.) The West media’s critic and condemnation on the Chinese government out of habit was also understandable. But it was absolutely wrong from facts and hindsight: The Chinese government did so correctly in containing the disease and buying time for the rest of the world. In contrast, the West media had influenced their governments in reacting too slowly to the pandemic. The government leaders and their officials ought to make the right and fast decisions to protect their citizens no matter what the media said. Here, we assume that the governments did not coerce or feed the media what the governments want the media to say. If they did, it would be not only wrong but also a sin!
 
Everyone is now affected by the COVID-19 corona-virus and many people have followed the news on a daily basis. However, not everyone has noticed that some media and their governments (certain politicians) have politicized the COVID-19. That is absolutely wrong! COVID-19 caused a pandemic disease against the human race. Every human must unite to work together to fight the spreading virus, not blaming each other. In human history, we have endured many pandemic diseases, such as plague, smallpox, HIV/AIDS, SARS, etc. When a child or family member contracted an infectious disease and brought it home, would the family blame the child or should they immediately seek the cure? I would think the family would immediately focus on finding a cure! So, it is obviously wrong for any politician to politicize the current pandemic virus, isn’t it?!
 
When the COVID-19 virus was first discovered in Wuhan city in China, the Chinese government was caught off guard. The local government may have delayed a swift action because of 'lack of precise information', 'concern for causing citizens to panic' or 'incapable of determining a correct action', however, the delay was only a few days. The central government made swift decision to close down the entire Wuhan City, a city of 14 million people as a center of commerce, transportation and manufacturing. We can be certain that the decision was hard to make, judging on the very different reactions expressed and opposite decisions made today by government leaders in many other countries regarding the COVID-19 attack. In the United States, there are governors who want to quarantine their cities and some reject such an idea.
 
What was horrible was that some U.S. media had kept harsh criticism on China when she was struggling in dealing with the COVID-19. The flag of Human Rights was immediately raised: “Closing down Wuhan city is violating human rights!”- When China was rushed to construct thousand-bed hospitals to anticipate the rapid increase of corona-virus patients. We also heard: “this is forced labor, putting workers' lives in danger.” “The new hospitals look like concentration camp.” “Are they really volunteer medical professionals coming to aid Wuhan?” China had no time nor energy to worry about these smears based on human rights accusations, she quickly built a few large hospitals within ten days. China organized thousands of medical doctors and nurses to support Wuhan, not only working there but working 7/24 having only one break a day to get out of their protective garment suit equipped with diapers. How could the external media without eye-witnessing reporters there write such horrible smearing remarks?!
 
Wall Street Journal published an article, headlined, “China is Asian sick man”. Secretary of State, Pompeo, defended it as freedom of speech. Do we Americans cherish such discriminatory speech?! Calling COVID-19 Chinese virus is so obvious an intent to politicize the corona-virus pandemic. (At least eight strains of the corona-virus are creating a trail of death and disease around the world that scientists are diligently tracking their genetic identifiers.) President Trump had later made effort to clarify his statements, but the damage was done. The anti-Asian crime and discriminatory acts skyrocketed. Congress began to speak out against discrimination towards Asian Americans. When China was struggling with COVID-19 in January and warned the world, what did our government do? Congress was focused on impeachment, the entire Senate was locked up weeks not for potential pandemic prevention but on impeachment resolution. The Administration would let the precious month or many weeks passing by doing nothing to prepare ‘testing’ (essential for accounting and control of number of patients) and ‘strengthening hospital facilities’ (essential to deal with pandemic explosion).
 
On ‘Human Rights’, despite of the improvements that are observable over the past seven decades, the West has always been targeting against China. China claims that the most important human right is to live above poverty with dignity. She has been focused on lifting her hundreds of millions of citizens above poverty. Tibetans, Xinjiang Uyghurs and millions of western Chinese now live better lives than ever before. Do they worry about infiltration of extreme Islamism and illegal immigrants crossing their borders? Sure they do, just think about the wall we built along the Mexican border! China offers job and skill training centers in Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Qinghai provinces, our media call them concentration camps in the name of Human Rights. What are our real purposes?
 
COVID-19 is a human disaster but together we will overcome it. China was lucky with her swift and decisive actions to have contained the pandemic disease. The whole world should be humble to learn from China’s experience, to collaborate to develop the vaccine and to share information to prevent future pandemics. COVID-19 has given us a learning lesson on Human Rights. We need to recognize human rights as a first person subject not a third person topic. Chinese medical professionals from all over the country went to Wuhan to fight the COVID-19   was their right to do so and their right to complain about human rights violation if any, not for our media to judge without evidence. Evidence is not from political defectors invited by ambitious American politicians to testify. Evidence is from investigative reporters who live there among the Chinese.
 
At present, COVID-19 is still spreading. When Rhode Island police hunts New Yorkers who rush into Rhode Island (the National Guard will help them conduct house-to-house searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of self-quarantine.), who is violating who’s human rights or constitutional rights? When liberal Democrats (Jerry Nadler, D-NY and Karen Bass, D-CA) demand Department of Justice to release as many as possible prisoners (because of COVID-19’s threat), whose human rights they are trying to protect and whose human rights they are trying to destroy? Closing all restaurants not permitting sit-down diners, aren’t we violating human rights as well as protecting human rights?
Now schools, sports events and many big events are closed or turning to online activities, why aren’t stock markets not closed? The wild crushing of stock markets are causing more panic perhaps than the virus itself, why didn’t government shut it down? Whose rights are we protecting?
 
COVID-19 gave humans an opportunity to learn and to reflect, human rights are not absolute rights. As first person, we can not just think for our own rights, there must be compromises (such as Rhode-Islanders versus New-Yorkers). As third person, we can not so liberally judging others for violating human rights or not (prisoners’ human rights versus citizens’ human rights). One noticed that the Amnesty International recently made a statement (third party comment): “Human Rights Violations hinder responses to health emergency and undercut their efficiency.” I would rather say: “Sacrificing human rights helps health emergency situation and improves efficiency in combating pandemic disease.” This is what COVID-19 has taught us on Human Rights!



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May 4th Revolution or ‘54 Movement’ is being celebrated in China for its 100th anniversary. There is no doubt that after China had toppled the corrupt and ultra conservative Qing Dynasty (Sun Yat Sen’s revolution in 1911), the first largest student uproar in Beijing on May 4th, 1919 marked the peak of Chinese ‘mind revolution’ protesting not just the unstable and weak government but also the Chinese system, its culture, language, literature and most critically its thinking process. Thus the ‘mind revolution’ is a very appropriate term to describe it. The WW I ended in 1919, a peace conference was convened in Paris, China as a victory nation hoped to get the Western powers to remove all the unequal treaties China was forced to sign under the weak Qing Dynasty (through 1842 to 1910), the Western powers flatly refused to do that instead awarded the Chinese territories occupied by Germany (defeated in WW I) to Japan (won the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) and looted the Taiwan Island, receiving war reparation equivalent to six years of Japan’s annual budget). Thousands of students from more than ten colleges and schools protested at the Embassy District in Beijing and later burned the house of Tsao Ru Ling, the official who negotiated the unequal treaty with Japan. To the West and Japan, this student uproar did not meant much other than China eventually refused to sign the Paris peace treaty, but to the Chinese, it had cumulated the awakening process started prior to the Chinese Revolution (1911) to a new peak. Some intellects believed that Chinese had to begin a mind revolution to get rid of their ‘old baggage’ and embrace new thinking through education, language, science, democracy and even religion.
 
Today, China is a very different country. She has developed herself into the second if not the largest economy. She has lifted hundreds of millions of people above poverty having the highest number of citizens going abroad as tourists annually. Most Western countries including Russia and Japan, China’s neighbors, are bewildered and caught by surprise: how could China accomplish this in a few decades from the poorest nation in the world suffering from foreign invasion and brutal wars to the second strongest country in the world? Many scholars and historians are wrestling with the above question. This author was puzzled as well until restudied the events happened before and after the ’54 Movement’ carefully. I am happy to report that there is really little mystery; actually one can use a simple logic to explain why China was down so low before and is up now. No, it is not, “Stupid! It’s the Economy!”, the famous quote in politics. Rather, it is, “Stupid! It’s the Education!”. Education has transformed China and the May 4th “Mind Revolution” was the agent that changed China’s education system and availability making her successful today. In the following, I will present arguments to prove this point.
 
First, let’s rewind the time back to Qing Dynasty. The Manchurians who invaded and conquered China had decided to inherit the Chinese systems, the language, the culture, laws and governance. However, out of insecurity, the Qing Emperors did not want a sound education system; in fact, they somewhat deliberately discouraged Chinese citizens, largely peasants, to study or get educated. It was fine until the turn of 19th century when the world has gone through an industrial revolution (1764-1840). Later, Japan changed to learn and copy everything from the West (Meiji Reform 1868-1912), but Qing, once the largest economy in the world, still naively maintained its national education system producing few scholars conditioned by an outdated government exam system, keeping 90% or more of her citizens being illiterate. Back in seventeen century, Taiwan was captured by Dutch sailors who had big canons, a Ming General, Zheng Cheng Gong who was defeated by Qing and retreated to Xiamen across from the Taiwan Strait. He took the suggestion from Taiwan’s resistance force to fight the Dutch. He eventually won the fight not by his smaller gun boats but simply by cutting off food supplies to the Dutch. He then captured the big Dutch gun boats, but he soon died and his son lost the war to Qing. So Qing had captured all the Dutch gun boats. However, Qing Dynasty was not interested in how powerful the bigger gun boats could be and why they could be fired more accurately than Qing’s little boats. This story simply explained Qing’s stupidity.
 
We all knew that the West (Marco Polo 14th Century) had come to China and brought back knowledge and things to Europe, but Qing never was interested in getting her people to learn calculus and Newton’s theory (Issac Newton, 1643-1727) even later when Japan was rising up as an Imperial power through Meiji Reform. Qing had ignored the Industry Revolution entirely. Then Qing Dynasty was bullied with scores of unequal treaties from UK starting 1842, 1843, the U.S. and France, 1844, Sweden and Norway, 1847, Russia, 1858, Portugal, 1887, Japan, 1895, 1931, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungarian, Belgium, Spain and Netherlands, 1901 and extended to 1945 and beyond. Qing’s national illiteracy stood above 90%. When scholars such as Kang Yong Wei (1858-1927) and Liang Qi Chao (1873-1929) pushed for government reform, education reform was minimal. The first batch of Chinese foreign students was sent to the U.S. in 1872 and the program got cancelled. The 1911 ‘54 revolution’ generated a nationwide awareness of the necessity of reform. Some went to the extreme rejecting everything from ancient China; some would blame the culture, some would blame the language and some even blame the Chinese nature (in today’s terms, the genes). However, there were some still defending the old Chinese literature and theorems pointing out that ancient China had embraced science, technology and voting system. The key reform ought to be in education, not only changing the system but also letting people open their minds.
 
As we know that from 1919 to 1949 China was struggling to fend off invaders and colonial powers. The ending of WWII (1945) finally gave China a chance to establish a republic nation without foreign power stationed on her soil. The current division of China into Mainland and Taiwan, although resulted from an unfortunate internal squabble, in fact do land evidence to support my claim: The successful changes in both Mainland China and Taiwan are due to their education reform and Chinese culture valuing education. From 1949 onward, Taiwan government has emphasized education setting a goal to offer six years of compulsory education then extending to nine years. The government also focused on teacher university, land reform and industrialization policies, but it is the education system that propelled Taiwan to become a dragon in Asia economically. Likewise, starting from a very poor state, Mainland China also put emphasis on education. With its one child policy to get out of poverty, the single child received all the attention from not only the parents but also the grandparents in his or her upbringing. China produced 77.6 million college graduates in 2016 compared to 67.4 million in the U.S. Science, technology, engineer and mathematics (known as STEM) graduates have a strong correlation with a nation’s economic performance; 4.7 million STEM graduates were produced in China versus 2.6 m in India and 0.568 m in the U.S. Clearly, the China Rise is no accident but because of her successful education system along with good economic policies. Bringing a country with near 90% illiteracy to her current status of building one university a week to educate her citizens explains a lot about China’s success.
 
All the rhetoric we see or hear in the media about China threat, unfair competition and stealing jobs and technologies from the U.S. are all nonsense. I will repeat, “Stupid, it’s Education!” We must ask the following questions, why do we spend more dollars per student per year and get less graduation rate? Why our students shy away from STEMS while the Chinese students compete fiercely to get into STEMS? Recently, I was asked by a friend, how does one get a drone pilot license in the U.S. Honestly, I don’t know, it never has occurred to me to get a drone pilot license. My friend said he saw a peasant in China operating a drone to fertilize his farm. The farmer told him, there were at least 40,000 drone pilot licenses issued in China. I suspect, they are more used for productivity than pleasure. I used to think delivering baozi (a bun filled with meat or vegetable) by drone was a joke or propaganda, now I believe I could picture pizza or scallion pancake being delivered by drone in China!
 
On the 100th Anniversary of “54 Revolution”, I must say that the 3000 students who protested in Beijing 100 years ago are true Chinese heroes deserving to be honored! Today’s students should know how to tell the significance and impact of the 54 movement!.

 
The Schiller Institute held an international online conference, entitled "Mankind’s Existence Now Depends on the Establishment of a New Paradigm!", a topic highly provocative to the current political and economic establishment. If you were happy and satisfied with the world’s current system, you would probably not be interested in the content of this conference and Dr. Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas and his legacy. However, if you recognize any troubling world problem, be it the threat of a nuclear war, economic instability or collapse, impact of climate change and Earth pollution, political squabble among nations and saber rattling between great powers, world poverty and hunger, inadequacy of human healthcare, especially the world chaos brought by COVID-19 pandemic today, you should be very concerned and ought to be interested in the subjects discussed in the conference. Dr. LaRouche (born in Rochester, NH, 9-8-1922) was a brilliant man, a philosopher, an economist and a scientist, who unfortunately passed away on February 12, 2019. He foresaw the pandemic and he recognized many of the world political and economic problems caused by the faulty systems. He not only showed such wisdom but more importantly offered solutions and dedicated his life to save the Earth planet and the mankind. Schiller Institute (www.schillerinstitute.com),  a global organization, was established by Dr. LaRouche and his wife, Helga Zepp LaRouche,  an effort to create a torch, to be the lighthouse and to inspire the human intellects for making necessary changes to save humanity. This timely organized international conference was a tribute to Dr. LaRouche’s legacy, but more importantly, while the world is facing a pandemic, not only the intellectuals but the masses must be awaken to join in the LaRouche movement now carried on by Helga Zepp LaRouche and the Schiller Institute. For those who missed this important conference, the author would like to offer you a synopsis here and append a few conference presentations translated to Chinese for the Chinese readers of US-China Forum. The conference proceedings have been video recorded available on the Schiller Institute website.
 
While COVID-19 is rampaging up confirmed cases and death toll, holding a physical conference is impossible. Fortunately, the Zoom video conference system developed by Eric Yuan, a Chinese immigrant Silicon Valley entrepreneur, offered an easy to use online conference application with simultaneous real-time interpretation facility. Hence the above conference was conducted over two days (approximately 14 hours) in the following four panels: 1. The urgent need to replace geopolitics with a new paradigm in international relations. 2. For a better understanding of how our universe functions. 3. Creativity as a distinctive characteristic of human Culture: the need for a classical renaissance. 4. The Science of Physical Economy. The unique feature of this conferences is that many experts and scholars in political science, economy, physics, music, literature, international relations and global development are gathered together, though in virtual space, under LaRouche’s idealism to discuss our universe’s problems, future outlook and what and how we must act as responsible human beings by expanding our natural creativity to solve our problems, eliminate conflicts and plan for a safe and peaceful future. The panelists recognize the current geopolitics and arms race, sort of repeating the Cold War tactics heading towards a devastating world war (the author urges you to watch the Panel one video recording and John Pilger’s documentary: The Coming War on China). An amazing similarity between LaRouche’s philosophy and traditional Chinese philosophy transcended from Confucius is that music, poetry and art are highlighted as evidence of human creativity, which is unlimited for humans to deal with their physical world in physical principals and scientific theorems. Confucius, 2500 or more years ago, advocated the importance of education - cultivation of human being through poetry, books (reading and writing), behavior (civil mannerism), music and archery (physical development).
 
Panel two and three integrates science, physics, medicine, music and poetry, from Beethoven, Max Planck to contemporary, to diagnose how our universe, with humans as its most intelligent species, functions (in particular, facing the challenge of a pandemic disease), so we may plan our future from earthly matters (such as having sufficient masks and protective garment for hospitals) to space exploration (bringing benefits to human societies such as avoiding natural disasters rather than warfare). Panel four focuses on physical economy (in contrast to our dysfunctional monetary economy) which LaRouche proposed to save our world economy from ever-rising debt and eventual collapse. Africa being a continent bigger than the U.S., China, India and Japan combined is facing a bankruptcy situation desperately requiring a new economic model and other big nations' help. Therefore, this conference is appropriately named: Mankind’s Existence Now Depends on the Establishment of a New Paradigm. A new paradigm will defend the Earth from destruction not destroying the Earth. LaRouche’s writings including his thoughts on Strategic Defense Earth (SDE), concepts on physical economy, etc,, are being collected in a first print volume now available. This conference also articulated the importance of US-China relations; We must change from a hostile anti-China policy to a collaborative US-China relationship to lead the world. (All four panels are video recorded available on Schiller Institute website. Chinese interpreter versions are also recorded available on Chinese.LaRouchpub.com, however, there are some missing intervals. Thus, the author is appending a few translations for your reference.)
 
Of course, the Schiller Institute is not just offering conferences. It is an international organization of movement motivating global citizens to join the 'force' to act. The Institute is inviting representatives all over the world to join as members of the movement. On May 9th, 2020, it is sponsoring a youth conference,  for obvious reason, to energize our youth population to be aware of the issues and what we must do to enact a new paradigm. The U.S. and China are the two biggest economies in the world. The young people in these two countries are especially vulnerable in the present geopolitical conflict. In the present monetary economy, the media is controlled by the 'money'. Citizens must be aware of the media brainwash through their fake news and orchestrated mass information. Although this Schiller Institute Conference has only about 700 participants, but they are international coming from all continents. It is hopeful that they will multiply geographically and geometrically to reach a critical mass in every continent so that the people can initiate changes, to create a new paradigm not only for our own survival but also for a beautiful tomorrow.
 
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.