The author, Peter Man, shares his personal experiences, secret thoughts, and outlandish ideas on the multifarious subjects he is interested in, which is practically everything under the sun, as well as beyond the solar system to infinity. Be sure to comment if you wish to learn more, especially about the mysteries of the trilogy.
AuthorBorn and bred in Hong Kong and educated by a Catholic English school, the author immigrated to Canada and established Canada’s first national Chinese language television station. He later worked in China in the broadcast and telecommunications technologies industry for many years, experiencing that country’s meteoric rise. Archives
October 2022
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What is China? (21/8/2019)17/5/2022 (24/8/2019)
(19,300 views on Quora) It appears people from all over the world, including some from China, are confused about China. Practically all the media in the West have been marinating our minds with their version of China, which is a horrible, smog-choked, authoritarian hell-hole where godless people cheat and steal and where brutal communist goons try to take over the world by conquest, depriving everyone of freedom. I was born in Hong Kong when it was still a colony, baptized Catholic at birth and educated by Catholic Irish brothers in a rather elitist English boy's school (La Salle College). The first part of my adult life was spent in Canada. I worked in the mainstream media business. I know a bit about what mainstream means. I have also witnessed China's largely unsuccessful attempts to battle this deluge of disinformation and false narratives over the years. Being from Hong Kong, we were not taught modern Chinese history at school. Most of us opted out of history anyways and took science courses instead. Even after Hong Kong's sovereignty returned to China in 1997, the population of the self-administered city protested when the government proposed to include modern Chinese history in school curriculum. Learn something about China? God forbid! Both my parents were staunch anti-communists. My father was actually an ex-communist. He was a renegade from Yan'an. I experienced in person the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong. People were writing slogans everywhere, some protests were quite violent, and a well known radio performer was killed by a home-made fire-bomb. Sounds familiar? My mother was a career teacher in Hong Kong. I've been to the Hong Kong Teacher's Association. It's a viper's nest fomenting venom on all things from China. No real investigation of the truth is allowed; forget about having balanced views. What do you think will come out of impressionable young minds if not ignorance and extremism? Ironically, these teachers are all holding government jobs. There is not enough room to enumerate all the organizations, government or otherwise, that continue to utilize public funds and take advantage of government inaction to incite social instability. Despite all that, I have kept myself apolitical* because I refuse to have an entrenched opinion on a subject I do not understand. Unfortunately, for some people, their minds are made up, do not confuse them with facts. While in Canada in the early '80s and working in television, I made friends with officials from both the Taiwan representative's office and the Chinese embassy. Interestingly, I once spoke one-on-one with Chiang Hsiao-yen (pinyin: Jiang Xiaoyan; 蒋孝严), the grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, without knowing who he was. His name at the time was Zhang Xiaoyan (章孝严). He was in charge of overseas Chinese affairs for the government of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. He even gave me his phone number and address and invited me to visit him in Taiwan. Chiang Hsiao-yen was an illegitimate child of Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo (pinyin: Jiang Jingguo; 蒋经国). Years later, his Chiang lineage was verified and he adopted the Chiang family name. He actually returned to his grandfather's hometown in mainland China and paid tribute to his ancestors.** I would only learn about Chiang Hsiao-yen's story many years later. Without knowing or caring about the differences between the KMT (Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party) and the CPC (Communist Party of China), I hired a Taiwanese as the TV station's news director. Her husband was in fact a KMT legislator. I was friends with them for a long time and trusted that they would not make a fool out of me. On the other hand, I was probably guilty of being politically insensitive. Meanwhile, I was also friends with the Chinese embassy's cultural attaché who did not speak English and, given China's lack of resources at the time, had a hard time understanding the Canadian society. He was an older gentleman who was a journalist for Xinhua News Agency prior to 1949. The official's name was Kang Chongru (康崇儒), which means 'worship Confucian teachings.' His name betrays his bourgeoisie family origins and probably got him into no small troubles during the Cultural Revolution. Once Mr. Kang complained to me that he couldn't even watch a Taiwanese movie at the cinema because he was so obviously a Chinese official and that would have been inappropriate. Without understanding the ramifications, I went directly to the Taiwanese office and borrowed maybe ten movies in 16mm reels and delivered them in person to the embassy in Ottawa. I told the Taiwanese officials that their mainland compatriots wanted to watch their movies, and they happily assented. They were not such bitter enemies after all. This was the first time I realized why China had such a hard time telling its side of the story. They didn't really have qualified people to fight a very difficult battle, and they didn't trust anybody else to help them, probably because they had trusted the wrong people and no longer knew who to trust. In 2011, which was the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Communist Party of China, I wanted to read something about the CPC to educate myself on the subject. I used to fly quite a bit in China during those days, and I went through many airport bookstores. There were thousands upon thousands of titles on how to make a fortune, but not a single book on the CPC. In utter exasperation, I went to Beijing Xinhua Bookstore where they dug out some dust covered books from storage. I got one from the late 70's, one from the seventieth anniversary in 1991 and a contemporary version. This was during an anniversary year. I wondered if China had given up trying to tell a more accurate story of itself.*** When I returned to Toronto recently, I was surprised to discover the existence of strident anti-China and anti-communist groups. The Falungong group with their dance troupe and multilingual free newspapers seems to have unlimited funds. From a bystander's point of view, they may even have more presence than China on the street. When the Confucius Institute sponsored Mandarin classes for the Toronto Education Board, so that any student wanting to learn Mandarin can do so for free, anti-China groups made a big stink about insidious communist messages hidden in the Mandarin lessons to corrupt Canadian children's innocent minds. With not a single person, organization, or media to stand up and speak on behalf of common sense, the Confucius Institute quietly withdrew their sponsorship. Have you ever heard anything as asinine as this? Is it possible that a country as powerful as present day China cannot even give away free Mandarin lessons (which my daughter would have loved to take)? It is a failure they need to acknowledge or their foreign relations with Western countries will never improve. We need to have a more accurate story of China. I went to China to live and work from the end of the '90s until recently. Bit by bit, my eyes were opened to the dishonest nature of the mainstream media's narrative on China. For most of the people who have not been to China or learned anything about China outside of their normal channels of information--or disinformation--they will fall victim to the millions of seemingly innocent little lies. Rather than arguing the veracity or falsity of what we read and watch every day, which will be tedious and may take forever, I will share the following excerpts from a documentary film about China, which was made by a non-Chinese Western organization. I will disclose who made this documentary at the end of the excerpts. "… to understand China, three facts must never be forgotten. China is History; China is Land; China is People. Chinese history goes back for more than four thousand years … … more than four thousand years ago, the Chinese empire was already in existence, and more important, so was the Chinese civilization, a civilization of art and learning and peace. China is also Land… this vast area consists of China Proper, and for outer provinces, to the north is Manchuria… next to Manchuria are Mongolia and Sinkiang (Xinjiang)… To the west is Tibet. … of every five persons on the face of the earth, one is a Chinese, and since one-fifth of all the human beings in the world are Chinese, we should know what sort of people they are. Well, in all their four thousand years of continuous history, they have never waged a war of conquest. They are that sort of people. They developed the art of printing from movable type. They invented the mariner’s compass, without which no ocean could be crossed. They were among the first astronomers and their observation of the stars and planets made possible the accurate measuring and recording of time. They are that sort of people. And why do we call our dishes china? Because the Chinese invented the art of making porcelain. And as we all know, they invented gunpowder, not as weapons of war, but as fireworks to celebrate their holidays and religious festivals. And it was one of China’s great philosophers who five hundred years before the birth of Christ gave mankind these words: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” (Confucius's Golden Rule: 'You should not do unto others what you do not wish others to do unto you.') They are that sort of people, enriching the world in which we live. Why are the Chinese, when … in all their four thousand years of history have never waged an aggressive war been forced to fight…? The people of China, the people who wouldn’t surrender; the people determined to fight for their freedom, their good earth; people who can't be beaten … in the struggle that is as old as China herself; the struggle of freedom against slavery, civilization against barbarism, good against evil. upon their victory depends the future of mankind, and we must have it ..." These are excerpts from a documentary film directed by Frank Capra, the director of "It's a Wonderful Life" and many other Rockwellian films of Americana. If he had lied, we would never watch "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve again. The film was produced by the War Department Signal Corps, Army Service Forces, United States Department of Defense. The title of the film is "The Battle of China" of the series "Why We Fight?" These are the men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend America and the world from fascism. Could they have lied? It appears America knows about China, after all. China herself couldn't have said it better. Ask yourself why you do not know the truth when the truth is known all along. Is it possible all your media and all your journalists practicing the freedom of the press do not know? Is it possible that we prefer to believe the lies because the lies fit our prejudices? If we accept hypocrisy and lies when it suits us, shouldn't we expect hypocrisy and lies to be exercised on us? It's called "blowback." Why do you think we have democratically elected leaders and representatives of the people who don't give a rat's ass about telling the truth? We have met the enemy and he is us. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair (on mainstream journalists and editors) "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -- George Santayana "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell * To this day, I have no political attachments. I'm neither liberal nor conservative. Maybe I'm both because both have merits. I'm not pro-China and I'm not pro-America. I know both countries and both cultures very well. Maybe I'm pro-truth. I know what I'm against. I'm against self-serving liars and hypocrites. ** Ironies of ironies. Chiang Kai-shek's ancestral home and family burial grounds in mainland China are protected by his enemy the PRC, while all of Chiang's statues in Taiwan have been defiled, decapitated and unceremoniously removed by the current ROC government dominated by the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong were inveterate enemies, but they both agreed that Taiwan is a part of China. *** History books in China about the Communist Party of China are officially sanctioned books which do not go into great details and are rather concise accounts. Reading about the same event described by books from three different eras can help a critical reader understand the changing views of the times, even if they are official. A famous motto in China is "march forward with the times." Being inquisitive and critical in nature, I also read books from Taiwan and from Western scholars. Archives are gradually being made available to the public, and real historians can always study actual documents to better understand historical events. I tend to give greater credence to books that reference and quote from archives. Personal accounts are also useful, especially from diaries not meant for public scrutiny, such as the diaries of Joseph Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek. They do provide a glimpse into the mind of decision makers involved in historical events. Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research. Comments: Garwin Kim Sing: A great answer. It’s an intractable problem though. For as long as very few non-Chinese reporters can read or write Chinese and very few ambassadors of China can command the respect and credibility of a western audience, I doubt if China can increase its soft power in the world in the face of western media conglomerates. I wonder what Madam Chiang Kai-Shek would do? Wenhong You: "… to understand China, three facts must never be forgotten. China is History; China is Land; China is People. Chinese history goes back for more than four thousand years …” As soon as I saw those words, I knew which documentary film you were talking about. I have watched it so many times, often with tears in my eyes at just how beautifully this American-made film portrayed China. Also, loved the fact that the film’s theme song is “The March of the Volunteers,” which a few years later would become the national anthem for that fifth of humanity. Aeo C: “They didn't really have qualified people to fight a very difficult battle, and they didn't trust anybody else to help them.” This really is a sharp observation.
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(2/7/2019)
I would like to share my comment on New York author David Rosen's Counterpunch article: Is Socialism possible in America? Hi David, This is a very enlightening article for those who may be interested about socialism in the US and the rest of the world. I would add the Taft-Hartley Act as the ultimate stab in the back by the Democrats. The result of all these is of course Trump. The revolutions failed because the enemy is powerful and ruthless. You can't take a bullhorn to a gunfight and expect to come out alive. The illusion of money in capitalism is strong magic. It is the mirage on which all our beliefs are built. We know of no alternative. We're born into the bullshit. We breath it, we consume it, we regurgitate it, and we die in it without knowing there can be flowers. One revolution is however still standing. It is not strange that most in the West do not understand the Chinese Revolution. The established powers in fact exhibit great fear of the country transformed by the Chinese Revolution. What is China trying to do? They are in fact trying to beat the devil in its own game. Deng Xiaoping and the moderates did not say how they must achieve their goal (white cat black cat -- pragmatism rather than ideology) and they did not say when they must achieve it. Chinese civilization has a long and unbroken history of four to five thousands years. The people will be patient. There is no need to believe in the mainstream media's narratives that China is any more repressive than America. I lived in China as an expat for almost twenty years. Quite frankly, it opened my eyes to the dishonesty and hypocrisy in which I was born and bred. I will never take the words of any Western mainstream pundit on face value. Upton Sinclair commented on journalists: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Journalism under capitalism is the reason why we cannot afford the truth. It may be worthwhile to study the Chinese Revolution to learn how they did it. "The Revolution has not yet succeeded, my comrades.* You must continue to strive for it." -- Dr. Sun Yat-sen For those who have not heard of Dr. Sun or who do not know his history very well, Dr. Sun is the Father of modern China. He was educated in America and founded the first Chinese republic based on the American system. But after being spurned by the West which gravitated towards the warlords, Dr. Sun received support from the USSR. He cooperated with the Chinese communists and accepted communists into his party. He died in 1925, after which Chiang Kai-shek took control of the Nationalist government known as the Republic of China (Taiwan is run by this government; Taiwan passport says Republic of China, not Republic of Taiwan), the Nationalist party known as Kuomintang, and the Nationalist army. Chiang purged the communists and started the Chinese Civil War, which was eventually won by the communist side. Dr. Sun is revered by both the Nationalists and the Communists. Peter Man * in Chinese, 'comrade' means those of like mind
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(11/6/2019)
I would like to share my comment on Dr. George Koo's article on Asia Times: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/opinion/help-the-american-imbeciles-are-coming/ Dear Dr. Koo, Methinks the American Imbeciles are not coming. They are already here and they're in charge. The imbecility is everywhere. When I read or watch the mainstream media nowadays, there is no longer any attempt to apply finesse or subtlety to insinuate or equivocate. I used to work in that business. How I miss those golden days when lying should not be bald-faced. With very few exceptions such as yourself, every talking head or pundit is either an ignoramus, a liar, a hypocrite, or any combination of the above. As for politicians, Americans keep electing the most brilliant imbeciles and the worst liars, so if they don't lie and do something stupendously stupid, Americans will think that it's not democratic. Watch the Democrats clamor for more democracy, which has produced our own Imbecile in Chief, among earlier less grievous ones. You'd think politicians should have a minimum threshold IQ and morality to be eligible. H.L. Mencken said in the fifties, "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." I thought he was talking about Dubya Bush. I thought that the American voters couldn't do worse than that, until they re-elected Bush, then I wasn't so sure. What is the chance that Trump is the lowest we can get? Maybe people like Shumer will take up the slack. Soon they'll be outlawing Sweet and Sour Shrimp Balls and Chicken Fried Rice. They'll ban Bonanza reruns because Hop Sing was a Chinese spy. Mencken also said: 'Nature abhors a moron." Do we have hope? Peter Man
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Normandy Landing (10/6/2019)17/5/2022 (10/6/2019)
The Allies forgot to invite the greatest contributor to their victory. Here is a Winston Churchill quote dated June 10, 1943 from Parliamentary records: "On the European front, the most important development of the past year has been the crushing offensive of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German army. Those Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more of the armed power of our enemies—troops, planes, tanks, and guns—than all the other united nations put together." He was talking about the Battle of Stalingrad which ended four months earlier. The German eastern front had lost over a million soldiers which could not be replaced. The Germans also lost the myth of invincibility. In another couple of months, the Germans would lose another major battle (Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle ever) on that front, leaving them defenseless against Soviet advance into Berlin. Stalin took his sweet time for a detour into Eastern Europe, but in the end, it was the Soviet army that entered Berlin. The Soviets had turned the tide of the war. This happened while they had not received any direct assistance from their Western allies, and despite unfulfilled promises by their Western allies that a second front would open on the Atlantic coast in 1942. The German war machine was irretrievably broken nine months before Normandy. The Soviets also paid the greatest human cost. They had sustained 27 million deaths, of which 14 million were Russians, about 13% of their whole population. The Americans suffered 450,000 casualties, about the same as the Brits. This serves to fill in the memory gaps created by Western historians and mainstream media. "History is primarily the glorification of murderers as told by liars to idiots." -- anonymous To understand more about the Second World War, read Jay Janson's article below about how it was possible for the bankrupt and the hyperinflation-wrecked Germany to miraculously transform into the world's mightiest military power during the 1930s, when the world was in the throes of a great depression. Jay is a nonagenarian who fought in the Korean War and has seen much of the world. https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/wwii-holocaust-could-not-have-happened-without-corporate-usa-rearming-germany-to-destroy-the-ussr Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research.
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(29/5/2019)
I wrote a message to Marjorie Cohn commenting on her OpEd article "An attack on Iran would violate US and international law." I have followed her articles for many years and it is important that there are people like her working for peace. But in order to cure the sickness, one must understand and acknowledge the disease. I share my message here: Hi Marjorie, Unilateral sanction of Iran and forcing other countries to follow suit is already an attack. Remember the Iraq embargo that purportedly caused unnecessary death of 500,000 children? You don't need bombs to slaughter people nowadays. Violate laws? Haven't they been doing that for a long time already? What do you call the devastation of Iraq and Libya among myriad other examples? Did anyone stop them? Who granted them the power to commit these atrocities? Who gave them the unlimited war budgets to cause havoc, death, and suffering? Who granted war criminals impunity? The answer is not some intangible "they." America is the greatest democracy in all of history; it has a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. The people are therefore responsible. Until the people of America see the blood on their hands and do something about it, nothing will change. We have met the enemy and he is us.
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Free Lunches (5/1/2019)17/5/2022 (5/1/2019)
Everyone says there are no free lunches. It is patently false. Everyone has spent their early years eating free lunches provided by their parents and family members. Then they grow up repeating this drivel that there are no free lunches so that they can justify their cruelty towards their fellow humans and vilify the free lunch system that perpetuates the human race. Yes, the system that keeps us alive is the one that sustains and helps the helpless, and it is not based on greed or capitalism. Have you seen any contracts signed by the babies to repay their parents for the free lunches with floating rate interest compounded annually?
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(24/11/2018)
Dave Lefcourt posted the following article as an urgent call for peace: End the provocation to Russia and China that could lead to war, a war that the US cannot win. Dave Lefcourt is a left-wing peacenik. My comment is not meant to denigrate Dave or his work, but to present a different point of view. Here is my comment: If protests ever worked, there would be no war. To those in power, a peaceful protest is but a slight irritation less significant than a flea bite. After all, who are the US leadership? They are Americans elected by the people and given unlimited power to wage war. Notice how there is never any arguments from the people about being saddled with unmanageable debt to fund all these wars, so that the 1% and military industrial complex can profit from them. Notice how the people send their sons and daughters in harm's way so that they can come home in pieces to be buried in honor. Notice how these democratically elected leaders threaten, sanction, starve, terrorize, torture, bomb, and slaughter millions from all around the world with impunity, and then they retire with honor, glory, and wealth. Most good people do not know all these are happening under their nose of course, because we're mostly informed by our free media. To be fair, we should not blame it on Trump or the 'leadership.' The people allow it to happen. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best, "A man can't ride your back unless it's bent." If the people of America really do not want war, all they have to do is the following: Gain control of the three branches of government and de-fund the military. Make them apply and justify for everything. You can use a fraction of the war budget to fund free college, Medicare for all, housing allowance, and basic income for all Americans. What's left can go to infrastructure and vocational training. If war-mongers want to advocate for wars beyond defending the homeland from invasion and wars which are unsupported by constitutional declaration of war by legislators, then let the advocates (1) pay for a license and a higher tax rate for war advocacy; (2) pay for all war expenses (non-tax-deductible) out of their own pockets; (3) send themselves and their own children into the line of fire (the children may of course disown their parents and denounce them publicly to avoid going); (4) receive no political protection if they are charged by international courts for war crimes; (5) put up a hefty bond in case the country is sued for damages; (6) be disowned by their country if they're ever captured; (7) be banned from taking public office or corporate directorship for life; (8) be deprived of any overt media support on pain of prohibitive fines for both the advocate and the offending media, (9) be forbidden from gaining any profits or benefits from their wars, and (10) if they come home after not winning a clear victory and gaining peace with honor, be given to the angry mob and thrown over the Tarpeian Rock. Peaceful protests sounds nice, but if the people of America want to stop the war-mongers, they'll have to take the war to the war-mongers. Let the war-mongers have a taste of their own wars, then peace will have a chance.
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Mainstream Media (May 17th, 2022)17/5/2022 (17/11/2018)
The following is a true story. In 2005, I was introduced to a gentleman with a historical background in China. His name is Sidney Rittenberg.* He is an American who had spent thirty-eight years in China since 1945, sixteen of which under wrongful incarceration, mostly in the form of solitary confinement. Sidney said that he was invited to a foreign correspondent gathering in Beijing. They invited him because they thought that he would stand on their side in their campaign against China. Sidney went and listened to how these foreign 'journalists' discussed and coordinated their actions to smear China. The foreign journalists were not very thorough in their assessment of Sidney Rittenberg. His autobiography "The Man Who Stayed Behind" was rather clear on where he stood. Sidney never blamed anyone for his being caught up in the turbulent currents of the times. Despite everything that happened, he still loved China. On the other hand, he expressed disdain for these foreign journalists, who were not in China to report the news truthfully. Sidney confirmed what I had for some time suspected, that the freedom of the Western Press is really about their freedom to prevaricate, equivocate, and obfuscate. Sidney wondered aloud why these people were allowed to hold this kind of gatherings in Beijing right under the nose of the Central Government. In any case, I would afterwards always read Western mainstream news reports carefully, and I would always do more research if I want to understand the events being reported. On the other hand, people who have cultivated a biased view from a lifetime of consuming BS will be happy to believe in any lie as long as it reinforces their prejudice. It will be very hard to convince them that there is a different reality beyond the lies, and therefore I will not try. * Read Sidney Rittenberg Obituary
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(9/11/2018)
In the course of reading European history, I was surprised to learn about people everywhere that are said to be Germanic. I think Caesar first used the term in his Gallic Wars. They were barbarians east of the Rhine. Later on, we learn that there were Germanic tribes west of the Rhine as well. In fact, the Celts and the Germans were very similar. Maybe they were the same but with regional differences. Now studies show that their languages are different branches of Indo-European. Later the Germanic Goths showed up. The Ostrogoths ruled Italy and caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They were followed by the Lombard, who were also Germanic. Italy was basically Germanic. Even Dante’s family was Germanic. The Visigoths also sacked Rome, but settled in Iberia. So Germanic people were in Spain and Portugal. The Franks, who became the French, were a Germanic people converted into Roman Catholics, learned to speak Latin, and were Rome’s allies. Charlemagne formed the Holy Roman Empire from his Frankish kingdom. The Germanic Vandals went to North Africa and built a kingdom that included Sicily. The Angles and Saxons that went to Britain were Germanic. England means Land of the Angles. The Nordic Viking was Germanic. They went everywhere, including Ireland, Britain, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, France, and Sicily. The Normans came from settled Vikings in Normandy. They too formed the kingdom of Sicily. The Normans under William the Conqueror conquered England and his descendants still occupy the throne. It’s just that I had thought that Germans were always in Germany, but actually they were all over the place.
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Who Lost China? (11/7/2018)16/5/2022 (7/11/2018)
To understand the truth, one has to dig a little deeper. Most of us have heard about the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion; these disasters for China occurred during the last half century of the Manchurian Qing dynasty. We have to clarify that the Manchu tribe that ruled China for 268 years under the Qing dynasty was a foreign tribe originally from south Siberia. The Qing’s weakness in its waning years caused many Chinese scholars and military thinkers to consider reformation or revolution to deal with the Western onslaught. The progressive Emperor Guangxu (光绪) wanted to adopt constitutional monarchy, but the plan was thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧). The only other choice left for the Chinese was rebellion and revolution, replacing the Qing dynasty with a Chinese republic. One of the first revolutionaries who took up that stance was Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Dr. Sun was educated in America and adapted the American system with Chinese characteristics for China. A local uprising in 1911 at the city of Wuchang (a part of modern Wuhan) accidentally succeeded, leading to widespread rebellion, and culminating in the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. Dr. Sun however did not have an army, and the republic was quickly hijacked by the military. Thus started the Era of the Warlords. Dr. Sun had hoped that his republic would be supported by the West, but it was in vain. Western powers in China had enjoyed the privileges and benefits of semi-colonialism, and it was easier for them to continue the plundering with the warlords in power. The Chinese warlords were constantly fighting among themselves and triangulating between competing Western powers and Imperial Japan for support. The foreign powers obviously felt that a fragmented China was easier to control and exploit. Without Western support, the revolution led by Dr. Sun failed. During the First World War, the Beijing warlord was considered the legitimate government of China by foreign powers. The Chinese government entered the war on the side of the Allies, and sent 150,000 laborers to the European front-lines. Approximately 10,000 Chinese workers would die for the common cause. Chinese academics were hopeful that after winning the war, China could rid itself of semi-colonialism under the principle of self-determination expounded by Wilson’s Fourteen Points. But at the Paris Peace Conference in early 1919, China did not have a voice, and the previous German colony in Shandong was ceded by the victorious Western powers to Japan. China was the only ally who did not sign the Treaty of Versailles. China was completely on its own. It could not depend on a single ally to stand up and speak righteously about this travesty. This is where it all began. Chinese academics and students were furious. They started a national protest known as the May Fourth Movement. Many of them realized that they could not depend on the good will of the West to gain true independence. Dr. Sun meanwhile gave up on waiting for American support and, with the uncertain backing of a fickle warlord, set up his own government in the province of Guangzhou (old name Canton) in the south. When the Russian Bolsheviks fought a civil war to bring communism to Russia, some Chinese academics became attracted to this new form of political ideology which brought about a successful revolution of the common people. Thirteen academics got together in Shanghai and formed the Chinese Communist Party (in the absence of its two founders). Dr. Sun Yat-sen realized that to unify China and to rid the country of semi-colonialism, he needed an army. Dr. Sun received the help of the Soviet Union and he co-operated with the Communist Party of China (CPC). Many senior members of the CPC were also members and senior executives of Dr. Sun’s Kuomintang (or KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party). The two political parties under the leadership of Dr. Sun and with the help of the Soviet Union established the Whampoa Military Academy. The school would churn out most of the military leaders who would defeat the warlords, fight the Japanese, and fight among each other in the Chinese Civil War. Dr. Sun died prematurely from liver cancer. The KMT, the government of the Republic of China (ROC), and the Nationalist army came under the control of one person, Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek with the support of the Western powers purged the communists and persecuted them in a period of so-called White Terror. Thus started the Chinese Civil War. Eventually, the Chinese Communist Party won the Civil War. America backed the wrong side, and it would not be the last time. America actually had a lot of China Hands who knew the situation in China and advocated for engagement with the Chinese communists, but the powers that be in Washington would have none of it. When the soul of America gave rise to Joseph McCarthy, rapprochement between the two countries was hopeless. China went its own way, as if the Americans had never come … until Nixon. According to this story, the original cause of the break between China and the US goes back to the end of the First World War, when China's Western allies betrayed China's aspirations in order to placate Japanese demands, causing the May Fourth Movement, which was led by one of the Founders of the Chinese Communist Party, Chen Duxiu. The rest, as people say, is history. Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research. |