Category Archives: China

East Asian Countries Believe In, OMG, Ability (IQ, Too), Not Equity

Affirmative Action, America, Asia, China, Education, Egalitarianism, Government, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence

While America is working at propelling the dumbest people to the top, in the name of equity, the latest buzzword for such an idiotic endeavor; while the US is cultivating a slumdog culture—the East Asian countries are sticking to more Confucian principles, like … merit.

Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China have “one feature in common.” Via The Economist:

… a belief in strong government institutions run by the best and the brightest. This emphasis on meritocracy also has deep roots in Confucian culture. The entry bar to the Chinese Communist Party is set very high: only the top graduating students are admitted. Equally importantly, the rising levels of competent governance are both fuelled by, and contribute to, rising levels of cultural confidence. All this is gradually eroding the deference to the West that used to be the norm in Asia.

Government is always coercive. America’s has the added “benefit” of being both dumb and coercive. See this week’s column: “Systemic, Institutional Rot: From Big Freeze In Texas To Fires In Cali.

MORE by KISHORE MAHBUBANI (Apr 20th 2020)

That’s Why We Elected Him: TRUMP Was OUR President, Not The World’s Tool

Bush, China, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Middle East

Coming from the liberal Economist, an accounting of Donald Trump’s foreign policy achievements carries more force. While to me, this is a list of Trump’s achievements, to the Economist, it is a list of the president’s failures. (Inquiring minds should always read the reasonable opposition, which means sources outside America.)

Before cussing him out, they write: “Donald Trump has given American foreign policy a bracing bolt.

The area where Mr Trump has shaken things up most is in relations with China, the single biggest issue in American foreign policy. Such a rattling may have been coming anyway because of China’s growing aggression. But Trumpists believe the president’s new realism marked a decisive break with the Democrats’ tendency to favour process over outcomes.

According to this narrative, Americans naively thought that opening up to China and letting it join the WTO in 2001 would in time encourage it to become more liberal and democratic. The opposite has happened. China exploited the West’s openness in order to steal its intellectual property. Under its increasingly authoritarian president, Xi Jinping, it has become a fiercer economic rival, as well as a more powerful one. It has continued to build up its armed forces and to bully its neighbours. It was left to Mr Trump to challenge the idea that this was unstoppable.

Toughness towards China has become a rare area of bipartisan consensus in America. The administration has started to shift attitudes elsewhere, too. It successfully urged Britain to shun Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, for its 5G telecoms network. More allies are expected to fall into line. Mr Pottinger says that Europe is “18-24 months behind us, but moving at the same speed and direction”. In Asia, America’s embrace of the phrase “a free and open Indo-Pacific”, expressing resistance to Chinese hegemony, has found favour from India to Indonesia, much to China’s annoyance. …

COVID-related:

Mr Trump’s response to covid-19 has shown this approach at its worst. In the midst of a global pandemic he chose to attack and abandon the World Health Organisation, the body responsible for tackling such crises. Where the world would normally expect America to take a lead, or at least to try to, it found an administration more interested in blaming others and shunning global efforts. Something similar goes for the greater crisis beyond covid, that of climate change: a repudiation of international efforts and wilful negligence at home. Every such American retreat from the international system is seen in Beijing as a chance to advance China’s claims.

It’s the platform Trump was elected on: look after neglected and impoverished Americans. America First.

The second area of damage is Mr Trump’s sidelining of his allies, who have frequently had no prior warning of major developments such as America’s abandoning of the Kurds in Syria or its reduction of forces in Germany. America’s alliances can act as a force-multiplier, turning its quarter or so of world GDP into a coalition accounting for some 60% of the world economy, far harder for China or Russia (neither of which has a network of permanent allies) to resist. Yet Mr Trump has taken allies for granted and belittled their leaders while flattering Presidents Putin and Xi. Foreign-policy get-togethers are awash with worries over “Westlessness”.

Amazing: Our allies seem to think that the role of an American government is to work for them, instead of for the American People.

My take on the Kurds, for whom I feel enormously, is a little unusual, articulated in “Bush Betrays The Kurds” and “Masada On Mount Sinjar“: Israel was missing in action on the Yazidi’s Masada odyssey and on matters Kurd. The Kurds are Israel’s responsibility. READ.
Similarly, the Palestinian refugees should have been a regional problem, in particular, the problem of the wealthy Arab countries.

 

UPDATED (10/23): NEW COLUMN: Actually, COVID Comes Courtesy Of The Chinese PEOPLE

China, Conservatism, Conspiracy, COVID-19, Culture, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism

NEW COLUMN IS “Actually, COVID Comes Courtesy Of The Chinese PEOPLE.” It appeared on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Quarterly Review, and NAEBC.

An excerpt:

China’s plague-delivery pedigree is solid.

Courtesy of China, the West got the H2N2 virus in 1957 and the H3N2 virus in 1968. Granted, the Chinese viral supply chain was broken with H1N1 flu; it came from Mexico. But, with the bird flu, SARS and SARS-Cov-2, China has fully reestablished its disease-delivery credentials.

Alas, going by the COVID culpability theories advanced by conservatives, the steady stream of “China plagues,” in Trump’s words, has had nothing to do with the noble Chinese people.

Blame the ignoble Chinese Communist Party for all these lethal, little RNA strands unleashed on the world. Some even have taken to calling SARS-CoV-2 “the CCP virus.”

As this Disneyfied neoconservative narrative goes, the Chinese were just hanging, being the freedom-loving, civilized sorts they are; going about the business of making the world a better place, when, lo-and-behold, their scheming, communistic government sprung the COVID on them—and the world.

Without fail, American pundits and pols, conservatives, in particular, apply to China the same theories of culpability that have undergirded America’s invasions of the illiberal people of the Middle East.

The bifurcation globalists love to effect is of the noble Chinese people up against the ignoble Chinese government.

It’s the Chinese government, not the people. Liberate the Chinese and they’ll show their Jeffersonian propensity for enlightened self-interest, not to mention a palate for cuisine less craven and cruel.

What I wrote in 2006 about Iraqis applies in spades to the Chinese and their responsibility for COVID. I’ve substituted Iraq with China here:

“The government of [China] doesn’t stand apart from the governed; it reflects them.” (November 6, 2006) …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN IS “COVID Comes Courtesy Of The Chinese PEOPLE.” It appeared on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Quarterly Review, and NAEBC.

  • Wet Markets, Courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur

Bat soup, courtesy NAEBC, where the column is now posted.

Courtesy NAEBC.

UPDATE I (10/23):

Sickest think, @rosenberger_ken, on LinkedIn, where we both hangout, is how animal rescues keep fetching (and filming) these half-starved dogs from dog-eating farms–yet animal activists say not a words about THAT cultural EVIL. About BLM, The same activists, on the same forum,  don’t shut up.

 

NEW COLUMN: Law And Order Unites Main Street America

Abortion, America, China, Criminal Injustice, Education, Ethics, Law, Private Property

NEW COLUMN is “Law And Order Unites Main Street America.” It is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

Excerpt:

… China might control thinking on its campuses, but can you imagine the Chinese Communist Party instructing its apparatchiks to promote material meant to make the next generation thieving, dumb and decadent? Unlikely, considering that the Chinese have a wicked work ethic, low-crime rates and that criminality is severely punished.

…  the book, In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action, has become the toast of the towns not yet burned down by the putrefying left. Its author, Ms. Osterweil, a welcomed guest on many “probing” programs, presumably to explain her “provocative” “thesis” of theft.

Indeed, we inhabit a culture in which high-brow polemics are banned and banished from the public square by grubby, low-brow, social engineers, from Facebook functionaries to the once-august “Publishers Weekly”: It dubbed Osterweil’s debut a “bracing rethink” of something or another.

A new kind of Kafka confronts any author whose thoughts veer from those of the mono-cultural mainstream. Books that enlighten never see the light of day or are digitally burned by the Amazon monopoly; pamphleteers that dim debate find publishers and “respectable” reviewers.

Happily, however, Amazon reviewers were having none of the looter lady, who, mind you, merely “identifies as a woman,” which is not the same as being a woman (in my non-expert opinion). They have not reconsidered their “bracing” views about Osterweil’s immoral enterprise. These book reviews are a riot of hashtags like #violence, #steal, #stupid, #vicky, #waste:

I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because, while it is empty headed garbage, it was a bargain since I shoplifted it.

Since Amazon doesn’t have a physical bookstore from which I can steal this book, will they please implement a virtual looting option? One star.

Sam says 1.0 out of 5 stars: “Garbage: terrible ideas and a terrible book.”

Understated, yet “Astounded” gives In Defense of Looting 1.0 out of 5 stars, writing, charitably, that it “seems rather shallow and malevolent.”

If you think these Amazon reviews are the work of Russian trolls acting for Trump, “Century Rider” provides a corrective cue: “Want another 4 years of Trump?”, writes the reviewer on August 29. “This is the kind of ‘reasoning’ that will get Trump re-elected.”

Clearly, the restoration of law and order and the reverence for private property rights are the most powerful principles with which to unite main-street America, left and right, in the ramp-up to the November election. This is what Republicans must remember, before they scamper down the judicial rabbit hole of abortion.

As to the book: Here’s the true disgrace of In Defense Of Looting: someone read the book, endorsed its publication, someone edited it, someone else set it in type, designed a cover, compiled an index, read the proofs. Now people are reviewing it.

READ THE REST. “Law And Order Unites Main Street America.” It is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

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