Lalu, ... kalau dilihat dari sudut pandang rakyat Tiongkok, bukankah
mereka sangat mengharapkan Trump dalam pemilu yad ini TETAP menang dan
meneruskan jabatan Presiden-nya lagi???!!!
Hanya saja dengan demikian, rakyat Amerika yang jadi tambah kewalahan
dan menderita! Dan, entah bagaimana mengatasi wabah Covid-19 yang belum
juga nampak terkendalikan, sedang TUNTUTAN BEKERJA kembalii sudah makin
mendesak, bagaimana pulihkan ekonomi dan mengatasi pengangguran yang
terus menanjak!
Jonathan Goeij [email protected] [GELORA45] 於 2020/6/14 上午 02:37
寫道:
kelihatannya para analis/penulis mengambil asumsi Trump Administration
segera berlalu.
saya kira juga begitu umurnya tinggal dihitung bulan, cuman yang jadi
pertanyaan besar bagaimana kalau "Trump steals the election" ataupun
kalau kalah kemudian ngotot tidak mau ngaku kalah dan tidak mau pergi?
On Friday, June 12, 2020, 11:52:07 PM PDT, 'B.H. Jo' [email protected]
[GELORA45] <[email protected]> wrote:
Artikel ttg geopolitik/ekonomi yg menarik/bagus utk di-simak.
Salam,
BH Jo
On Friday, June 12, 2020, 11:32:54 PM PDT, ChanCT [email protected]
[GELORA45] <[email protected]> wrote:
Strange as it may sound,China
<https://nationalinterest.org/tag/china>will miss the Trump
administration, if, and when, it goes.
57,774
Undoubtedly, the Trump administration has been the most aggravating
administration that China has had to deal with since the normalization
process that Henry Kissinger began in 1971. It has launched a trade
war that has damaged the Chinese economy a little. Restrictions have
been placed on technology exports to China. A massive effort has been
undertaken to cripple Huawei. Yet, the most galling move has been the
effort to extradite Meng Wanzhou. Applying Western laws to Chinese
citizens reminds the Chinese people vividly of the Century of
Humiliation when Western laws were applied on Chinese soil.
Yet, if theChinese leaders
<https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-challenge-123271>think
long-term and strategically, as they are wont to do, they could also
calculate that the Trump administrationmay have helped
<https://nationalinterest.org/feature/pandemic-pressure-coronavirus-antagonizing-america%E2%80%99s-relationships-159431>China.
Clearly, the Trump administration has no thoughtful, comprehensive
andlong-term strategy
<https://www.amazon.com/Has-China-Won-Challenge-American/dp/1541768132>to
manage an ever-rising China. Nor has it heeded the wise advice of key
strategic thinkers, like Kissinger or George Kennan. Kennan, for
example, advised that the long-term outcome of the contest with the
then Soviet Union would depend on “the degree to which the United
States can create among the peoples of the world” the impression of a
country “which is coping with the problem of its internal life” and
“which has a spiritual vitality.” No such impression has been created
by the Trump administration.Post-coronavirus
<https://nationalinterest.org/feature/great-power-consequences-coronavirus-158721>and
post-George Floyd, America is delivering the opposite impression. In
relative terms, the Trump administration has raised the stature of
China, which is now perceived asthe more competent country
<https://nationalinterest.org/feature/abandoning-world-health-organization-will-benefit-china-160951>in
the world.
To be fair, America’s internal problems have preceded President Donald
Trump. It is the only major developed country where the income of the
bottom fifty percent has gone down for a thirty-year period leading to
the creation of a “sea of despair” among the white working classes.
John Rawls would have been appalled to see this. Indeed, as Martin
Wolf of theFinancial Times says, America has become a plutocracy. By
contrast, China has created a meritocratic governing system. A
meritocracy could well out-perform a plutocracy.
Equally importantly, Kennan emphasized that America had to assiduously
cultivate friends and allies. The Trump administration has seriously
damaged relationships with friends and allies. In private, the
Europeans are appalled. Walking away from the World Health
Organization (WHO) when the world never needed the WHO more,
especially to help poor African countries, was massively
irresponsible. Not one American ally followed the United States out of
WHO. The Trump administration has also threatened tariffs on allies
like Canada and Mexico, Germany and France. All this does not mean
that the rest of the world will rush to embrace China. Indeed, the
Europeans have developed new reservations about working closely with
China. Yet, there is no doubt that diminishing global respect for the
United States opens more geopolitical space for China. Madeleine
Albright once said “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and
we see further than other countries into the future.” The Trump
administration may succeed in making America a dispensable nation,
presenting another geopolitical gift to China.
The Trump administration has also ignored another wise piece of advice
of George Kennan: to not insult one’s adversaries. No other
Administration has insulted China as much as the Trump administration.
Trump has said“China’s pattern of misconduct is well known. For
decades, they have ripped off the United States like no one has ever
done before.”
In theory, such insults could have damaged the standing of the Chinese
government in the eyes of its own people. The effect has been the
opposite. According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, the country
where the people have the highest trust in their government is China.
It is 90 percent. This is not surprising. For the vast majority of
Chinese people, the past forty years of social and economic
development have been the best in four thousand years. Kennan spoke of
domestic “spiritual vitality.” China enjoys it today. A Stanford
University psychologist, Jean Fan, has observed that “in contrast to
America’s stagnation, China’s culture, self-concept, and morale are
being transformed at a rapid pace—mostly for the better.” The Chinese
people are also acutely aware that China has handled the coronavirus
crisis better than America. If America had the same rate of fatalities
as China, then it would have had one thousand deaths instead of
one-hundred thousand. Against this backdrop, the constant insults
hurled at China have only provoked a strong nationalistic response,
boosting the standing of the Chinese government. One small but
critical point needs to be added here: no other government in the
world hurls insults at China. America stands alone in this dimension,
ignoring once again Kennan’s valuable advice: “And if there were any
qualities that lie within our ability to cultivate that might set us
off from the rest of the world, these would be the virtues of modesty
and humility.”
If he were alive today, then Kennan would first advise his fellow
Americans to step back and thoughtfully work out a comprehensive
long-term strategy before plunging into a major geopolitical contest
against China. Any such strategy, heeding the advice of thinkers like
Sun Tzu, would first require a comprehensive evaluation of the
relative strengths and weaknesses of both parties.
There is no doubt that America retains many magnificent strengths. It
remains the most successful society humanity has created since human
history began. No other society has sent a man to the moon. No other
society has produced a Google and Facebook, Apple and Amazon, in short
order. Even more remarkably, two of its biggest corporations, Google
and Microsoft, are run by foreign-born citizens. No major Chinese
corporation is run by a non-Chinese. China can tap the talents of 1.4
billion people; America can tap the talent of 7.8 billion, including
talented Chinese. It would be a huge mistake for any Chinese leader to
underestimate America. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that is not
likely to happen.
Report Advertisement
<https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-trump-administration-has-helped-china-161641#report-ad>
By contrast, in evaluating China’s relative strengths and weaknesses,
the Trump administration is making the mistake of underestimating
China. Here the supreme ideological conviction that democracies will
always triumph against a communist party system creates a particular
ideological blindness in America. In reality, functionally, the CCP
does not stand for the Chinese Communist Party. It stands for the
Chinese Civilization Party. The key goal of the CCP is not to revive
communism globally. It is to revive the world’s oldest civilization
and make it again one of the world’s most respected civilizations.
This is the goal that energizes the Chinese people and explains the
unusual vibrancy and vitality of Chinese society. Equally importantly,
the Chinese civilization has historically been the most resilient
civilization. As Professor Wang Gungwu says, it is the only
civilization to have been knocked four times over four thousand years.
Each time it stood up again. There is no doubt that Chinese
civilization is now a great renaissance.
It is therefore unwise for any American strategic thinker to assume
that Americans cannot lose. It’s true that America hasn’t lost a major
contest in over a hundred years but it has never had to deal with a
competitor as formidable as China. Equally importantly, if the primary
goal of the CCP is to improve the well-being of its people (and
thereby revive Chinese civilization), there need not be a fundamental
contradiction with the primary goal of any new American
administration: to once again improve the well-being of the American
people. Hence, when the Trump administration goes and America tries
again to work out a more thoughtful long-term strategy towards China,
it should consider a now unthinkable option: a strong Chinese
civilization and a strong America can live together in peace in the
twenty-first century. The world will be relieved and even cheer this
outcome. And the American people will be better off.
57,775
/Kishore Mahbubani is a professor in the practice of public policy at
the National University of Singapore and the author of/Has China Won?
<https://www.amazon.com/Has-China-Won-Challenge-American/dp/1541768132>
/Image: Reuters/
