The Main Three Problems in U.S.

Mathematician, control theorist, and retired Harvard professor, Dr. Larry Yu-Chi Ho moved around a lot as a child, following his Nationalist Army (Guomindang) father to various places in the interior of China during WWII. (See post one.) At the end of the war, Larry and his families escaped to Taiwan. When he graduated high school at age 15, he came across the Pacific to attend MIT.  He met many helping hands along the way. (See post two and three.) He graduated, found a research position in one of the first-ever washing machine companies, and won the immigration lottery. (See post four.) He returned to school, this time to Harvard where he was one of a handful of students.( See post FiveIn 2001, Larry tried to retire. Instead he was asked to provide guidance to the MIT of China. (See post Six.) With one foot in each country, I asked Larry what he saw as some of the challenges. He mentioned that while China is trying to woo students home, many of them remain in the U.S. to enjoy freedom. (See post seven and Eight.)

Larry saw three challenges facing the U.S.:

MONEY: “We owe China a lot of money. We are living beyond our means. So many people feel so much entitlement.”

Larry says we are hanging by a string, both intellectually and monetarily, in our schools. “Without all the foreign students—I’m not talking about Chinese students—the U.S. University would collapse.  There would be no graduate students... A lot of U.S. students don’t aspire to be educated at the graduate level in technology, and so forth.  And, that’s actually—I view it as one of our biggest problems. 

RESOURCES: “The world is finite. If China becomes stronger, you have to share some of the wealth of this earth. I mean we—the U.S.--consumes 30-50 times more resources than the rest of the world. That situation cannot last. We export all kinds of pollution out of our country to other places. In fact, until very recently, to China.  All that garbage was dumped there in the ocean. That  kind of situation cannot go on. We have no right to consume that much resources compared to other nations. We have to learn to change."

ATTITUDE: Larry sees the U.S. as suffering from its hold on the past. “We should accept the fact that China is now a rising power, and we cannot have the same kind of influence and domination of the Asia region. You have to let China have some influence there. After WWII, and in the 50’s, we were the only single power, and everybody listened to us. But, now we have to learn to accept the situation that we are not the only superpower in Asia."

Larry insists that, “China has very little desire to acquire more territory or be—what is it called—a hegemon. I mean they are acting civilly. They are not seeking to take over some place—maybe a couple of islands in the South China Sea. That’s about all. They have no interest in taking over, say, Southeast Asia. Or for that matter, the Philippines. So I don’t think we need to worry about that. But we have to accept the fact that we have to live with them."
(To be continued. Next: Ok with China as Superpower?)