Chinese-born Min Luo, who represents the top .01 % of the Chinese intellect, has lived over half of his life in the United States. He has a foot in both countries, and has watched both places grow and change. I asked what he thought were the challenges facing the United States. The first one he mentioned was America’s knee-jerk reaction to “getting rid of the bad guys.” (See Interview part six.)
“Number two: media needs to make people aware and educate people so we can elect good leaders. If you look at the U.S.—like the newspaper—they rarely have international news. If you go to China, the newspaper has many foreign clips and people are very aware about the whole world and what’s happening. The U.S. people are very centered –‘I like my sports, I enjoy my life.’
“I have a good friend and I asked, ‘Why don’t you travel to China and India for fun?’ He said, ‘Why should I? My life here is so good? If I go there, do I need to bring bottled water?’ Very close-minded.
“To me, if you go to China, go to other countries, people are very aware of the whole world. The U.S. people are always thinking, ‘I’m the best. I deserve the best.’ Why do you deserve the best? It’s kind of like old China—the center of the Universe.”
(In Mandarin Chinese, the early—circa 1000BC—name for China translated as, “Middle Country” or “Kingdom.” These early people, unaware of the outside world, believed their empire occupied the middle of the earth, and was surrounded by barbarians.)
“You have to be aware of what’s going on so you can get yourself motivated to keep doing better. If we just thinking of ourselves, I’m thinking twenty or thirty years later we’re not going to be as strong as we are today. I guarantee it.
“For example, 22 years ago in China there were no highways. Not even one. Now China has as many highways as the U.S. Fifty years ago, there was no rapid train at all. The train speed was lower than the U.S. speed. Now, if you go to China, everywhere there are high-speed trains. You look at the GDP. You look at the change.
“The U.S. highways probably haven’t increased much from 20 years ago. We don’t have high-speed trains. We don’t change much. The world is changing and we are not. How can we be competitive? We need to have an open mind and understand that maybe somebody else has something to learn from.
“Do you feel China’s population is sufficiently educated?” I asked.
“China is very interesting. They claim to have 5,000 years of civilized history—well it may not be civilized—but history. During that 5,000 years of history they never truly had a Democracy system. Never. So, all this time we’ve always been hoping that we have a leader who is wise and clean (meaning not corrupt).”
“We’ve been having that activity for many, many, many years. Even the leadership—some of it, not all—some of the leadership just naturally they have their kind of –because they’re leaders they want to have their name left behind in history for many years. So they try to do a good job.
“Honestly speaking, I still felt that Jiang Jie Shi (Jiang Kaishek, Guomingdong), Mao Tse Tung—I truly believe they wanted their people to have a good life. Even though Mao Tse Tung did something really bad, Jiang Jie Shi did something really bad, but I believe they were good leaders, they had good motivation. They just didn’t know how to do it. So, you know, like Deng Xiao Ping is another example. Without Xiao Ping, I don’t think China would have what we have today. We all appreciate Deng Xiao Ping. No Deng Xiao Peng. No us sitting at this table.
“He’s not a perfect person, but he did change China. Even Xi Jinping, the current president, I’m thinking he’s really trying to change China. To answer your question, I don’t think China is ready for Democracy yet, but China people still want to have a good leader and people are still hoping that Xi Jinping is the one that can keep the country changing.
“My question wasn’t about Democracy,” I clarified. “But about information. Do you feel Chinese people have sufficient information?”
“If you go to China and look at a newspaper,” Min said. “At least 25% of the news is related to the world. If you compare the U.S. Facebook to China’s We-Chat, in China you see so much news. I look at my daughter’s Facebook. She’s always taking pictures of good food, good place to eat, or maybe some “Chicken Soup” kind of thing. If you look at my We-Chat, I post a lot of things about the world. I’m not saying China is doing better than the U.S., but generally speaking I think China people are much more aware of the world.”
(…to be continued. Next: The U.S. Doesn’t Deserve to Waste.)
No comments:
Post a Comment