Apakah betul rakyat Tiongkok mengharapkan Trump menang lagi?kalau saya lihat
CGTN (China Global Television Network) kok isinya banyak mengecam Trump.
On Saturday, June 13, 2020, 06:00:21 PM PDT, ChanCT [email protected]
[GELORA45] <[email protected]> wrote:
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 will miss the Trump administration, if, and
when, it goes.
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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 the Chinese leaders think long-term and strategically, as they are wont
to do, they could also calculate that the Trump administration may have helped
China. Clearly, the Trump administration has no thoughtful, comprehensive and
long-term strategy 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 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 as the more competent country 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 the Financial 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.
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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.
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Kishore Mahbubani is a professor in the practice of public policy at the
National University of Singapore and the author of Has China Won?
Image: Reuters
