Dear CCI Friends,
It’s worth breaking my month of silence to send you this assessment by Bill Totten, who as can be seen, is no one’s fool. Totten is Chairman and Representative Director of K.K. Ashisuto, Japan’s leading independent distributor of packaged computer software for large organizations. He was born, raised and educated in Southern California.
Totten analyses the situation with the U.S. and the world accurately… without anger, projection, resistance––just plain facts we all can observe, Democrats and Republicans alike.
Warm wishes to all of you during this challenging year ahead!
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
This heading is from another American CCI follower who sent me Totten’s piece:
Like China, like Russia – this is the American problem, not the Chinese and not the Russians. America has not understood its role is declining due bad decisions, lack of good long term strategic policies and practices, waste in military spending and perennial economic and political and corporate corruption. Other countries are not bogged down with these typically American problems . . . . at least to the same extent that America is . . .
https://billtotten.wordpress.com/2021/01/16/americas-five-stages-of-grief-over-chinas-rise/
America’s Five Stages of Grief Over China’s Rise
September 27, 2020
By Bill Totten
Whenever people face a huge loss in life – like a sudden divorce or death of a family member – they go through five stages of grief. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. The US is about to lose its top spot as the biggest economy and is, in a textbook manner, going through the same stages.
Denial
Some people like Kishore Mahbubani predicted twenty years ago that China will eventually be the leading economic powerhouse. But Americans chose denial and laughed at the concept. The popular beliefs behind the denials were:
* China’s economy will collapse any moment now!
* China will eventually become just like the West and then we will have nothing to worry about.
* China is a totalitarian, communist country. They don’t understand capitalism or free market, and thus will never be rich.
* China can never innovate. The workers are just slaves and bots.
* China makes only crappy products and thus can never compete with western brands.
* As soon as Chinese people travel to the West and see how glorious the West is, they will go back to China and overthrow the tyrannical and corrupt communist government.
* China’s GDP numbers and other stats are fake!
* China’s patents and scientific publications are of low quality.
* Chinese products will never succeed outside China.
* We can always nuke China and maintain our hegemony.
* COVID-19 will surely bring China down. And all the countries will start decoupling from China.
Alas, none of those happened. China miraculously kept advancing. As the chart below shows, China kept catching up with the US, while Americans kept finding ways to denigrate China’s progress.