Aging Capriciously

Let’s start with the most obvious reason.  Without the Chinese there would be no Chinese restaurants.  No egg rolls.  No chop suey.  No fortune cookies.  No egg foo young.  No dim sum.  No cute little sayings to make me think about my life.  No Confucius.  No wonderful tea.  No China plates.  But the biggest reason, is that without the Chinese we would have no one to hate.

China being half-way around the world, makes an ideal enemy and scapegoat.  Let anything go wrong in the USA and we can blame China.  We can blame China for the Corona Virus.  We can blame China for a system where communism seems to work fairly well.  We can blame China for having the audacity to become a world power.  We can blame China for Tik Tok.  We can blame China for a complicated language that seems difficult to learn.  We can blame China for huge buffets with unknown foods that taste wonderful.  Have you ever been to one of the Chinese restaurants where they have a gigantic buffet full of great Chinese food?  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.  Of course, I always eat too much.  The third go-around is what usually kills me.

We can blame China for all our economic problems.  If things are going bad in the USA, it must be because they have stolen all of our ideas.  If our stock market declines, it must be because they have stolen all of our patents.  If our GDP is in the tank, it must be because they have stolen all of our great innovations.  If our country is in deep debt, it must be because the Chinese have a flourishing successful economy.  And now they want to steal a cure for the Corvid-19 virus.  How selfish these Chinese can be?  Don’t they realize that we will be more than happy to sell them a cure for the virus at billions of dollars of profit for our drug companies.

A major reason why I love the Chinese is based on the old saying that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  My biggest enemy on the face of the earth is a man so despicable, so immoral, so degenerate that he has no scruples or conscience about destroying thousands of lives as long as he can get what he wants.  The man has identified the Chinese as America’s biggest enemy.  That is reason enough for me to love the Chinese.  Not only are they the enemy of my biggest enemy, but if a man who lies every time he breathes is now telling me that the Chinese are my enemy, I can seriously doubt that anything he tells me about them is true.  If he says that they cannot be trusted or that they are trying to destroy our country, I am not about to believe one single word of what he tells me.

Another reason I love the Chinese is based on something that Muhammad Ali once said when he was asked why he did not want to be drafted during the Vietnam War.  To quote Ali:

Muhammad Ali. Speaks With Journalists After The Sentence For Refusing To Enlist. 1967. (Photo by: EyeOn/UIG via Getty Images)

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?  No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end.  I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars.  But I have said it once and I will say it again.  The real enemy of my people is here.  I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom, and equality.  If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow.  I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs.  So, I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

Times have not changed since Ali refused to fight a war that we now know in hindsight was unjust and immoral.  A war with China would serve no more purpose than the war in Vietnam served or the war in Iraq served.  Except to kill millions of people who are doing no more than we are in the USA and just trying to make a living.  I have no desire or need to fight China.  China is not destroying Democracy in my country.  The Chinese have expressed no hatred for me or desire to come over and kill Americans.  The Chinese have not started any wars with the USA, nor have they threatened to start a war with us.

In 1989, Karen and I obtained permission to visit mainland China.  The occurrence of our visit coincided with the death of Communist General Secretary Hua Yaobang in April 1989.  The uprising associated with what has been called the “1989 Democracy Movement” had already begun when we arrived.  We stayed in China for three weeks.  We left a few days before the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4.  In fact, we left just a day before the airports in China were closed for foreign travel.

We traveled to China by ourselves.  We were not on a tour nor did we have a guided itinerary.  We arrived in Shanghai.   We went south to Huang Zhou, then we went northwest to Huangshan or the Sacred Mountains.  We then went east to Nanjing and then finally back to Shanghai.  We traveled by foot, train, bus, bicycle, and rented car.  On our trip we met many wonderful Chinese people.  Some took us on local tours of their cities.  Some hiked with us.  Some invited us over for dinner. Some became our long-time friends.  Some even emigrated to the USA and have become citizens here.  No one expressed any hostility towards us during our travels.  No one cursed us.  No one insulted us.  Many desired to speak to us about our country and some simply to practice their English.   Let me tell you one funny story that happened while we were walking about.

One day while Karen and I were out sightseeing, a bunch of soldiers saw us and came over to engage us in conversation.  Everywhere we went, people wanted to talk to us.  There were about fifteen soldiers in the group who were all heavily armed.  They jostled to take turns talking to us.  We had been warned about staying away from politics while in China but somehow the conversation drifted to our respective political leadership.  Someone asked who our president was.  I noted that George Herbert Walker Bush was our current president.  Immediately, the person who had asked me this question replied in clear English that “Your president is an asshole.”  Now, I had not voted for Bush nor did I particularly like him.  However, my immediate reaction was defensive as my country had been attacked.  I replied without thinking “Your chairman Deng Xiaoping is an asshole too.”  Karen caught her breath.  I thought she might have a heart attack.  Suddenly, a voice said “You are right.  He is too.”  Everyone started to laugh ridiculously hard.  We went our way amidst many hand shakes and pictures that they wanted to take with us.

I bought Karen her wedding ring in China.  We were married three months after we returned from our trip.  Several years after we returned from China, Fu Xibo, a man we met in Shanghai who helped us to arrange some of our travel while in China contacted us.  We had met Fu and his wife Mary and his daughter Dan Dan in Shanghai.  We had been invited to their apartment for dinner and we had traveled on part of our trip with Xibo.  We had many things in common and we quickly established a bond together.  We kept in touch via email after we returned from China.  Nevertheless, I was surprised at the request Xibo made.

Xibo expressed a desire to immigrate to the USA with his wife Mary.  He wanted to know if we would sponsor him as a US citizen.  Despite our friendship, I had my doubt or perhaps qualms.  I would be financially responsible for Xibo and Mary if they had no visible means of support.  I had to submit three years of my tax returns to show that I had the financial ability to support Xibo.  Karen and I discussed this and the resultant problems it could cause us financially.  I am not a rich man.  We lived in a house that Karen bought in 1970 for thirty thousand dollars.  I was working as a consultant and educator.  We had about a $100,000-dollar yearly income between the two of us.  Nevertheless, we decided to support Xibo and Mary in their desire to become US citizens.  It was perhaps one of the best decisions we have ever made in our lives.  We have never had any regrets.

Xibo and Mary now live as retired senior citizens in San Francisco.  Their daughter Dan Dan (Diana Fu) married a wonderful Chinese man in the states and has become a full US citizen.  Dan Dan and Woo have two sons and a daughter.  Xibo and Mary have become the day care providers for their grandchildren.  It is a job they undertake with joy and passion.  They are ensuring that the children learn Chinese and appreciate their cultural heritage.  We have visited them in San Francisco twice during the past few years and they have come to Wisconsin to visit us.  Xibo still has an apartment in China and wants us to come again to Shanghai and see the many changes that have taken place since 1989.  I love Xibo and Mary.  We have become Aunt Karen and Uncle John to Dan Dan and honorary Grandma Karen and Grandpa John to Aidan, Braydon and Corrina, the three grandchildren.  They are in the picture below with Dan Dan and her husband Wou.

I do not see the Chinese as the enemy of our country.  I see a country that in 2020 has 1,439,323,776 people according to UN data.  The Chinese population is equivalent to 18.47% of the total world population.  It is a country whose immigrants have helped to build the United States.  It is a country that fought with us against the Japanese in WWII.  It is a country of hardworking industrious people who all want the same things we do in the USA.  Freedom, equality, and justice.  I can think of nothing more despicable than using the Chinese as a scapegoat for our own economic problems.

I have been a business educator and management consultant for over thirty years now.  I have advised some of the largest organizations in the world on process management and quality improvement.  I have worked with leading experts in the field of business management.  If there is a single thing that I have learned in my thirty years of consulting, it is that we make our own problems.  Business leaders will tell you this.  We are responsible for our economy.  China is not responsible.  We claim to embrace capitalism because competition is vital to a growing robust economy but then we attack China because they are a competitor.  Business leaders look for solutions to problems.  Politicians look for easy answers and scapegoats.

• Blame China for the virus that our leaders have helped to spread.

“Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered.” — “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” The Atlantic, Ed Yong, September 2020.

• Blame China for our national debt that relies on loans from China.

“Japan and China own about 5.2% and 4.6% of the U.S. debt, respectively. Japanese-owned debt doesn’t receive nearly as much negative attention as Chinese-owned debt, ostensibly because Japan is seen as a friendlier nation and the Japanese economy hasn’t been growing at a 7% clip year after year.” — How Much U.S. Debt Does China Own?

• Blame China for cheap imports that Americans readily buy.

“Suppose, overnight, Americans stopped buying Chinese products. Some store shelves would be empty, and prices would be higher. One way or another, our economy would shrink.”  Forbes, May 2020

• Blame China for stealing trade secrets but trade secret theft is a common occurrence among US companies.

“The National People’s Congress of China amended the Anti-Unfair Competition Law (AUCL) in April 2019 to protect the trade secrets of companies doing business in China.  We consider these changes to be major improvements to Chinese trade secret law, giving more protection to companies doing business in China.” — Trade Secrets 2019 Year in Review

Its about time we stop blaming the Chinese for our problems.  Think very carefully before you point any fingers at the Chinese.  No doubt they engage in some unfair trade practices.  No doubt they steal some trade secrets from us.  No doubt they have spies in the USA.  But you are a complete fool if you do not think that we are not doing the same thing to them and other countries.

Trump Administration Proposes $86 Billion Spy Budget to Take On Russia and China — New York Times

“When we understand people;
when we understand situations;
when we understand what matters;
when we understand the why’s, the what’s and the how’s;
when we understand the trigger of actions, we least inflict pain on ourselves and unto others.”  ― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah