By Gordon G. Chang, GATESTONE INSTITUTE • June 24, 2020
Can China innovate the technologies of tomorrow with an oppressive political system, a failing economy and loss of support from the international community? Despite everything, Xi’s China has managed to become a technology leader in critical fields, such as quantum communications and 5G wireless communications. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
- China’s window of vulnerability… is only a few years at most. So this is the time for the world to act.
- The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology talks about the country committing $1.4 trillion in the next five years.
- China also is working on plundering Google, which has various operations in the People’s Republic including its AI China Center in Beijing and partnerships with the country’s two leading universities, Peking and Tsinghua. Yet the company has larger plans.
- Google, which has refused to work with the Defense Department on artificial intelligence, is helping the Chinese military in that critical field. This situation is hideous. “The United States has to absolutely prohibit Google and other tech firms from doing business in China or with Chinese firms,” according to Brandon Weichert.
- China’s market is losing its attractiveness. The economy is in distress, suffering from both the coronavirus epidemic and systemic weaknesses, such as excessive indebtedness, smothering state controls, and xenophobic hostility to foreign investment…. Now is the time to shut down Beijing’s massive, state-directed, and government-funded effort to dominate the world’s technologies.
“China,” some say, “is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners.” The Chinese try but rarely make breakthroughs on their own. Moreover, ruler Xi Jinping, who demands that his regime dominate the technologies of the world, is fast eliminating the one essential ingredient of innovation: freedom. Totalitarianism promotes obedience, a quality not particularly helpful for developing the technologies of tomorrow.
Yet despite everything, Xi’s China has still managed to become a technology leader in critical fields, such as quantum communications and 5G wireless communications. The Chinese, because of their success, are now racing to own the technologies of this century.
China also has weaknesses. Its economy is failing, and the regime, through especially provocative actions, is losing the support of the international community. The country’s window of vulnerability, however, is only a few years at most. So this is the time for the world to act.
Michael S Said:
I’m reminded of this old joke. Know it?:
Man: “Oh, God, I know that you are infinite and eternal, that our lives go by in what, for you, would be the blink of an eye, and that you have a lot on your plate, but, please, please, I would be so grateful if you could help me.”
God: “Sure, just gimme a minute.”
Michael S Said:
Actually, in “Magnum Force,” (1973), Dirty Harry fights vigilante cops, though everybody knows what you mean.
@ Reader:
Though, I still have my reservations, especially with Kushner on board, and looking at the present stalling, I am, nonetheless, reminded by each of these accomplishments — which depart dramatically from the policies of all of his predecessors — of that ancient Chinese saying, “Dayenu.”
So, I’m glad you and I voted for him. I intend to vote for him again and I hope you will, as well.
As for Bernie, he has already taken over the Democratic party. All of his people are in charge of Biden’s Israel bashing team.
@ Reader:
He did withdraw from and defund the UN “Human Rights Committee” and before applying sanctions to the ICC, he warned that a lawfare attack on Israel would be regarded as one on the US, though has it happens they are trying to sanction the US, as well, and good luck with that, ha ha. Aside from its obvious bias, neither the US nor Israel are signatories to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, as you are doubtless aware.
@ Reader:
You did well. I wanted to vote for Huckabee in the primary because he said — back in August, he was the first one to throw his hat in the ring — that Israel had more claim to Judea and Samaria than the US did to Manhattan. It was a big headline in the Times of Israel. Google it. He dropped out. I was leery of Trump because of his waffling about the Two State Solution, but he was still one of the better ones. By the time, the primary rolled around to New York, there were only two left, Cruz and Trump. I voted for Cruz on the strength of Caroline Glick’s endorsement of him as Israel’s champion in the senate, even though I was leery of his strange vote to enable the Iran Deal to go through on a simple majority vote instead of the constitutionally required 2/3 Senate vote, and his waffling when he was queried about it in a town hall meeting I saw online. I’m still waiting for an explanation for that but he did, otherwise, vocally oppose the Iran Deal and Trump did adopt his program and include his people in the team that wrote it and Trump did take the committment to the TSS out his platform which was historic.
Trump did recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol and moved the embassy.
He did get out of the Iran Deal., reimpose ever-tightening sanctions on Iran, organize, with Bibi, an anti-Iran coalition of Israel, the US Saudi Arabia and the moderate gulf states against Iran and international terror.
He has supported Israel’s military strikes against Iran’s proxies in the region.
He assassinated Soleimani.
He assassinated Bagdadi and, unlike Obama, publicly humiliated his corpse by honoring the dog that found him.
He defeated the ISIS Caliphate.
He carried through on Obamas red line on Syria.
He did recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
He did sign the Taylor Force Act.
He did end funding to the PA and UNRWA.
He did kick the PA ambassador and embassy out of Washington.
He did put sanctions on the ICC
He did increase military aid and cooperation despite Obama’s restriction.
He did allow Israeli engineers to fix the bugs in the F35 plane and sell the fix back to the US for $2million dollars.
He has, obviously, pressured European states behind the scenes, to cut off pay for slay aid, and some have.
He has threatened to cut off aid to University Middle East Departments with an anti-Israel bias.
He did extend Title VI protections to Jewish students, who can now sue colleges and universities.
He did make the US energy independent and therefore immune to pressure from Arab states who must now make concessions to US!
His peace plan, though it admits the hypothetical possibility of a Palestinian State, and freezes Jewish, as well as Arab settlement for 4 years (though I know the latter is been badly enforced), puts the burden on the Palestinians to meet the conditions and, for the first time, explicitly recognizes the legitimacy of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria and rules out evicting Jews from their homes, towns, cities, factories and farms.
What did I leave out? I’m sure I left something out.
@ Sebastien Zorn
I didn’t mean to say that they ran in the same primaries.
I normally don’t vote because I don’t like any of them. This time was the first time I voted in I don’t know how many years and I chose to vote Republican and to vote for Trump.
For some strange reason I felt that voting Republican would do more to stop Bernie than voting for another Democrat (all those candidates looked so mediocre, anyway).
Voting for another Democrat would probably work better for my purpose but, fortunately, Bernie dropped out anyway.
(I don’t know why this comment is printed in bold.)
@ Reader:
Hi, Reader. you said,
“God is not a fool (I also pray to Him), and he gave humans free will to show them that there is justice.
Sometimes this justice takes awhile to materialize and often not in the way we would have wanted.”
That is all true. With God, it pays not to be in too much of a hurry. Some appropriate scriptures:
Isaiah 40:
[28] Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
[29] He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
[30] Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
[31] But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Also,
Isaiah 59:
[1] Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:
[2] But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
[3] For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
[4] None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
[5] They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
[6] Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.
[7] Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
[8] The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
The protestors and rioters are not for peace, nor for justice. They are for seizing power by force, from Shumer and Pelosi, down to the murdering thugs in the streets.
The Communist ideology that China is ruled by, has always been about the seizure and keeping of power by force, first and foremost. They offered concessions to greedy globalists, to attract dollars into their corrupt regime, and these globalists (including the Bushes, Clintons and Obama) talked up China’s virtues while ignoring the fact that they were stealing our jobs and eating our workers’ lunch. President Trump has put an abrupt end to their shenanigans.
@ Reader:Is this a typo? They ran in different primaries and Sanders didn’t run in the general. I don’t know how it is where you are, but I had to switch from independent a year in advance to vote in the Republican primary, in which I intended to vote for Huckabee but wound up voting for Cruz in the primary and Trump in the general, incidentally..
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Sebastien,
I don’t believe in Savior politicians, and I have a low opinion of Trump in spite of having voted for him in the primaries to spite Bernie.
The US is not an absolute monarchy, and even an absolute monarch needs his courtiers to help him make decisions or even to make decisions for him.
It will make absolutely no difference for the US policies who will win the elections (if they will actually happen this November).
See my response to Michael, if you’d like to see the rest of the argument.
@ Michael S:
Michael,
I don’t buy into the latest propaganda campaign.
China was treated as a friend when it suited the United States (or, rather, those people (VERY big business) who run the United States).
It no longer suits them, and China is now demonized and most Americans (scared by the “vicious Chinese virus” and the protests financed by multi billionaires) are eating it up.
For most Americans it is a distraction and a form of entertainment.
They also welcome a great opportunity to participate in the powers that be divide-and-conquer game that makes them feel self-righteous while cursing their “opponents”.
They are truly convinced that “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is perfectly entitled to be the judge, jury, and executioner of any country and to compete in the world the way the Rockefellers used to compete for their share of the market by burning down their competitors’ gas stations.
They also seem to think that this method will always work and they will be able to sit out any war safely and watch the world burn on their wide-screen TVs while sitting on a couch with a bowl of popcorn.
World politics is not a football game and God is not a fool (I also pray to Him), and he gave humans free will to show them that there is justice.
Sometimes this justice takes awhile to materialize and often not in the way we would have wanted.
In my opinion, it pays to think rather than blindly follow someone who presses your emotional buttons.
Trump understands the enormous economic power that the US can potentially wield to bring our adversaries to heel. At the same time, he is prepared for a military backlash. The US entered both World Wars as a result of such a backlash but our enemies thought they could pull it off because between wars the military was downsized before. He is possibly the cleverest strategist ever to sit in the White House, since Lincoln, anyway. If he loses in November, it won’t be through any fault of his own.
“When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it.” – Lin Yutang
@ Reader:
Hi, Reader.
I think you’re wrong about Laura. She makes Dirty Harry look like a snowflake sometimes, but she knows she’s doing it. What’s more, she has good motives most of the time, so far as I can see. She’s afraid for her family, afraid of China (I’ll get into that later). I only sassed her back, because she was attacking MY family; and attacking in a way that could really endanger them.
Concerning China, they are a threat to us in several ways, mainly because stupid people in our own government LET them be a threat. In fact, our past two Administrations bent over so far backwards to accommodate China, they were practically begging them to destroy us. China has a lot of people, and a large economy; and once the doors of opportunity were opened there, globalist investors by the planeload poured into the place to make their fortunes — entities like ZOOM, which kowtowed to the Chinese recently, to shut down online dissent by the citizens of Hong Kong. Along with them came corrupt politicians like the Bidens, making fortunes with influence peddling.
China does not have to be “nuked”, in order to keep them in line. In fact, they are far more afraid of the US than we are of them; and the ones President Xi, in particular, is really afraid of, is the Chinese people themselves. The Hong Kongers are not the only ones who have been protesting. When I visited the country nine years ago, protests were happening all over mainland China, in cities and rural areas. Citizens were getting “disappeared”, even in broad daylight. What’s more, gangsters run rampant in China. They have a comfortable relationship with the corrupt Communist officials, who use them in order to get things done. China is far from an all-powerful Big Brother state; and when Xi took dictatorial powers and a “cult of the personality” upon himself, I could see that he is trying, in a ham-fisted Communist way, to keep things from spinning out of control.
The people Xi is the most afraid of are religious people in general, and Christians in particular. China has spy cameras and informants everywhere; but the one thing the CPC can’t spy on is the human spirit. This terrifies the leaders, with the greatest fear of all: the fear of the UNKNOWN.
China has scared leaders, but some pretty fearless citizens. In the US, almost the reverse is true: President Trump confounds his enemies on a daily basis; but many Americans are terrified of the Antifa and BLM brown shirts, the coronavirus, and every MSM-generated bogeyman.
I am not personally afraid of these things. What happens on Nov. 3 will have a tremendous effect on the US and on the world; but it is in the Best of hands, namely, God’s. I pray to Him on a regular basis about such things; and because of this, I don’t have to fear for myself nor for my family; though I have to admit, at times I want to “nuke” some people more than Laura does.
Thanks for posting.
@ Michael S:
Michael, some people have certain problems, and every now and then they get a hold of a device with an Internet connection when they are not being watched where they reside.
They can’t control what they are saying.
@ Laura:
” Michael S:
I don’t give a damn about your family…”
…nor anyone else’s. I can see that. You must be a Democrat.
@ Michael S:
I don’t give a damn about your family. I care about my own. If your family chooses to live there, they get what they deserve. China has caused pain and suffering to millions around the world, and that evil nation, its people and its psychopathic government need to pay with their lives. Annihilate China with nukes and screw off, michael. At the very least we should launch an EMP attack on them.
@ Laura:
Laura, nuke the shit out of yourself. My family lives in China.
It’s time to nuke the shit out of china.