China: The Past, Present, and Future

    I just finished reading a 10 page special report about the youth of China, the jiulangghou, or something like that. In the Economist. This magazine is one of the best on the planet. Check it out.

[I started this in March; I will finish it now in April, 2021, hopefully].

 

      Some 118 million? or 180 million of their generation born in the ... 1990s? Or 1980s? I have to re-visit the details to make it right, but the point was how a large cohort of Chinese younger generation are doing things in patterns and trends that affect China now, and into the future, and thus the world.

 

    China is obviously a huge part of our planet. It always has been; in some ways in the 21st century it will be more important than ever. Why? The large population and the long, rich, deep history of China has always been an intrinsic part of our shared human history, but now the flows of money, influence, power, military, and cultural politics is bigger than ever because the Chinese government, which in its unique way represent the many more than billion people of the this now wealthy and strong nation, a juggernaut that continues to up-size and expand, will have ever more sway in all the goings and doings, comings and goings of our interactions. Prices, fuel, drugs, commodities, ecosystems and pollution, arms, space travel, technology, art, communication, legal battles, maritime claims and fishing, human rights and religious freedoms, art, travel, academics. They are one fifth of the world's input, if not output, in many ways.

   Xi Jinping is the head of the people, and the Communist Party, as the other presidents before him, taking the reigns from Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin before them, one from 2003 for the previous ten years, and the latter from 1993 through '03.  Could we envision a female Chinese leader? Not yet. How do the Chinese deal with LGBT+ issues? Not as open as the West, assuredly.  Apparently their plans are more about economic prosperity and might, a much more collective vision of success than the rest of the more free thinking and liberal Western world, where rules of human behavior have their free thoughts of individuality and expression, beyond the needs of the millions, the West has turned toward the lone consumer and his/her/their rights rather than some super collective which was Marx and other communists' dreams, which resulted in the countless nightmares of all of us.

    All of this is subjective to me and my knowledge and impressions, which is not the least informed of my contemporaries; I follow quite a bit of conventional wisdom, albeit Western-based, and religious from my angle. But I do read the major articles from American and other sources, to include the British-based Economist and few other foreign sources. Sure, I am an American, and I tend to think conservatively, but I am open minded and realistic to fathom that the world can be very good and cooperative and also can be very bad, very dark and scary. Both things can be happening at once, even.

    Take this pandemic, for example. Likely started in China' they are acting as if they did not start it purposely, in a science lab in Wuhan, that only some 4,000 plus died of it, less than 100,000 contracted it, and that they are not to be blamed for all the misinformation and since obfuscation of the truth and records that have tracked it, grossly impairing the rest of the world in the scientific and medical communities and likely costing millions of lives and heartache, not to mention the loss of employment, education, stress, increased drug use, violence, suicide and death. We have all witnessed this, or most of us have in the United States. China needed to cooperate more fully and they have not. Ask international bodies like the World Health Organization, not just the Atlanta-based CDC (Center for Disease Control). China has been woefully non-transparent, which is par for their course.

 

    The Uigher of Xinjiang have been amassed in concentration camps in the hundreds of thousands for the intent of "re-education", mass forced labor, and more recently I have come to find out systematic rape and abuse.

    No, China. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

   Fact check: The youth of the 90s in China number 188 million now. They have many more men than women, and would currently be in their twenties. Most are singletons.

   Other facts gathered from the special.

   1. Many youth are returning home to their rural roots after college education. It is not as necessary to stay in urban centers to be successful and get along.

   2. The city of Chengdu appears to have a rebellious vibe, a place where original people of expression and almost dissent is the trend.

   3. Civil and political rights in Hong Kong have now become normalized to the rest of the nation, to the chagrin of many of them and the rest of the world.

    China offers much good, much bad, and simply a lot to chew on. Do some Americans and others choose to raise their children learning Chinese still? Is this the continued pattern in the West?

    Will Chinese controls on pollution work to reduce gases and dangerous toxins from the environment and atmosphere? Will Chinese foreign students commit intellectual espionage which will only go to benefit their military (People's Liberation Army) and the Communist Party?

   There was more I was thinking about in the past regarding this great nation, as Western countries exploited China in the last centuries, and there is ample resentment from that, not to mention the occupation of Japan last century... 

   But this will do for now.

   Chew on it.