National Day

Recent days have been full of news, from the crowd of over 110,000 watching the flag raising ceremony at TAM square, conclusion of tax evasion case of actress Fan Bingbing, and Trump’s tariff war against China. I want to touch bases here before my month long visit to China later this month. We’ll travel to Shanghai, Changsha to visit Shaoshan, Mao’s birth place, Guiyang to hopefully see FAST telescope, Chengdu, Xian, and north to Yan’an, then Beijing. I hope I’ll be able to write about my travelogue and see the changes in China since my last visit 3 years ago. We’ll be going on the high speed trains which make this type of travel feasible and enjoyable.
The case of Ms. Fan is obvious a case of killing chicken to warn he monkeys, the entire entertainment industry and officialdom are now under scrutiny and warning. There will no longer be excuses and punishment will be severe. The corruption endemic in Chinese society past and present will take a long time to correct, human nature being what it is, even Mao can only temporarily stem the tide.
When Mike Pence said China is interfering in U.S. politics to help Democrats, I can’t help but laugh, for as I said before Trump is helping China in understanding U.S.’s true face and accelerating the decline of U.S.. Sure, China will probably suffer short term from the tariffs more than U.S., but the long term effects will be very beneficial; from the downgrading of western economic experts to strengthen China 2025, from the restriction of Chinese students and researchers in U.S. and immigration to reverse brain drain to 1-belt-1 road initiative, from trade with Iran and switching of petrol-dollar to petrol-yuan. Meanwhile while the stock market of U.S. is going gang buster at present, I predict that in 2 years it will be sinking fast as excess money will not hold it high forever.
NYT recently has an article about young communists and Marxists causing trouble for some local governments in China. It gladden my heart that young students graduating from Beijing’s elite universities no longer pursue material gains at the expense of studying and changing society.