Ying Ma's Blog, page 9
October 10, 2019
Ying Ma talks to “Tucker Carlson Tonight” about NBA in China
October 4, 2019
After a Hong Kong protestor is shot, the cycle of violence threatens more tragedy
NBCNews THINK, October 4, 2019
A tragedy appears ever more imminent in Hong Kong.
As anti-government, anti-Beijing protests continue into their 17th week, clashes between law enforcement and protesters have become increasingly ugly and more violent. On Tuesday, as Beijing celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, an 18-year-old protester in Hong Kong was shot in the chest with a live round by the police.
It has become commonplace for the radical elements of the city’s democracy movement — namely, young protesters — to do battle with the more powerful police force. Weekend after weekend, violence rages on. Unless something changes, it is only a matter of time before a real tragedy involving fatalities occurs. Further escalation in violence could also lead to a much more severe crackdown by the Hong Kong government or a military intervention by Beijing, making the achievement of the movement’s goals all the more difficult.
To read the rest of the column, please click HERE.
September 17, 2019
Trump and Hong Kong protestors have more in common than you think
Washington Examiner, September 17, 2019
President Trump has been widely criticized for his failure to support the historic pro-democracy movement currently raging in Hong Kong. Although the president’s statements have been confusing and contradictory, he and the protesters in Hong Kong have far more in common than meets the eye.
Trump came to office promising a foreign policy based on concrete U.S. national interests, not soaring human rights rhetoric or careless military interventionism. At the same time, having led a historic political movement to win the White House, he has an instinctive understanding of the large-scale galvanization of a people’s political aspirations.
What this means for Hong Kong is that even though Trump will not mouth support for the protesters, he respects the scale of their movement.
To read the rest of this column, please click HERE.
September 9, 2019
I was once a Chinese nationalist; Hong Kong changed my mind
NBC News THINK, September 9, 2019
As mass protests in Hong Kong rage on, some of the harshest criticisms of the protestors have come from their Chinese compatriots.
Hong Kongers are marching for autonomy from Chinese Communist rule and for democracy, but citizens of mainland China, who are supposed to be the ultimate beneficiaries of broader democratization in their country, have trashed the protestors as selfish, spoiled and unpatriotic. Among Chinese citizens who are well educated and well traveled, nationalism runs at a fever pitch.
I was once a Chinese nationalist with similar proclivities. Hong Kong — with its rule of law, vibrant free press, and freedom of association and assembly — changed my mind.
To read the rest of the column, please click HERE.
August 18, 2019
What if democracy is not what the Chinese people want?
Washington Examiner, August 16, 2019
Protesters in Hong Kong have been waving the American flag and singing the American national anthem to signal their desire for democracy and opposition to the Communist Party of China. American politicians ranging from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have reciprocated by declaring their support.
Of course, the reality of fighting for democracy is far more complicated than the wishes of U.S. politicians.
As it turns out, many citizens of mainland China, who are supposed to be the ultimate beneficiaries of democratization in China, do not feel nearly as inspired as those in Washington or Hong Kong. In fact, resentment of Hong Kong’s protests runs high among segments of the mainland population.
To read the entire column, please click HERE.
August 6, 2019
Google’s anti-Trump bias calls attention to its questionable ties to China
Washington Examiner, August 6, 2019
Google is getting bad press for doing business in China, and it’s only getting worse. The widespread perception that Google is anti-Trump and anti-conservative is further fueling its China problems in Washington.
Last week, billionaire tech investor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel penned an op-ed in the New York Times accusing Google of doing business in China in a way that is “Good for Google, Bad for America.” Specifically, Thiel condemned the company for agreeing to work with the Chinese — but not the U.S. military — on artificial intelligence.
He’s right: While Google runs an AI lab in China, it refuses to work on AI with the Pentagon.
“A.I. is a military technology,” wrote Thiel. So why is Google sharing it with China, America’s chief strategic competitor?
To read the rest of the article, please click HERE.
August 2, 2019
Trump and Elizabeth Warren actually agree on one thing
Washington Examiner, August 2, 2019
At Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren sounded a bit like Donald Trump in 2016.
She criticized Trump plenty, and noted that every candidate on stage could do a better job as president. Yet she distinguished herself from the pack in one way that was similar to what Trump did in the last presidential election. Much like him, she called for big changes, not just random tinkering at the edges.
Her core message sounded like his in rhetoric, and she even used some of the same words he did.
To read the entire article, please click HERE.
July 3, 2019
Biden’s Flip-Flops on China
The National Interest, July 2, 2019
Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden has been ridiculed for his recent flip-flopping on China, but few have noticed that his original pronouncement actually revealed a disagreement with former President Barack Obama.
Here is what Biden said while campaigning in Iowa in May: “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. . . . They’re not competition for us.”
In New Hampshire, a few weeks later, he reiterated these sentiments: “Our workers are literally three times as productive as workers . . . in Asia.”
In both cases, Biden was characterizing President Donald Trump’s current adversarial approach to China as an overreaction without a strategy. Yet, Biden seems not to recall that back when he was vice president, it was his boss who told everyone that China was going to eat our lunch.
To read the rest of the article, please click HERE.
June 9, 2019
Trump’s tough stance on China is what the world needs
Fox News, June 9, 2019
President Trump’s critics like to denounce him for coddling dictators. Among those he has been criticized for openly admiring is Chinese President Xi Jinping. But the trade war between the United States and China has exposed quite a bit of incongruity between reality and wishful Trump-hating.
Whatever praise Trump may have showered on Xi, he has doggedly pursued what he believes are America’s national interests (especially in trade) and has aggressively challenged China in ways that no American president has done for four decades.
Certainly, Trump’s comments on Xi have been weird at times, undignified at others, and absurdly entertaining almost always.
Xi is “now president for life. president for life,” Trump once marveled during a speech at Mar-a-Lago, “No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Exactly how a democracy is supposed to give that a shot someday is not clear. In the case of Xi, he became “president for life” by purging his enemies, abolishing term limits, suppressing dissent, and strong-arming his way to staying in power. It would not be a good look for any president of the United States.
If Xi is a king, his biggest headaches come from the U.S. president who bequeathed him that title.
Of course, Trump was not suggesting that America get rid of the rule of law or free and fair elections. He might well have been engaging in the usual Trumpian habit of fawning over and flattering his interlocutors to forge a personal relationship.
What’s more absurd and entertaining at the same time is that Xi likely might not even have welcomed Trump’s flattery.
At a dinner in Washington in April, Trump recounted a conversation with Xi. “I call him ‘king,'” Trump recalled, “He said, ‘But I am not king, I am president.’ I said, ‘No, you are president for life, and therefore you are king.’ He said, ‘Huh … huh.’ He liked that. I get along with him great.”
Zhang Zhexin, an America-watcher at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies — a prominent Chinese think tank — told the South China Morning Post that it was bad enough that Trump called Xi “king” and then even worse for Trump to say that Xi liked it.
After all, however brutal or effective the Chinese authoritarian leader might be in amassing political power, he has zero interest in being compared to rulers who govern by fiat, whim, or overreach. It is not the image he seeks to portray in front of his people or his political adversaries.
Yet Trump’s off-key rhetoric and grand theatrics have not slowed him down from taking actions that incense Beijing. Having long accused China of having taken advantage of or outright “raped” the United States in trade, Trump has proudly and noisily waged a trade war against China, something that no recent U.S. president — all far more dignified in their rhetoric — has come close to threatening.
The Trump administration began imposing tariffs on Chinese imports last July. As bilateral trade negotiations dragged along, the tariffs increased along the way. By last month, after Chinese negotiators reneged on a number of agreed-upon terms, Trump increased tariffs to 25 percent on $250 billion in Chinese goods, nearly a third of all Chinese products coming into the United States.
Around the same time, the Trump administration blacklisted Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei as a risk to U.S. national security and effectively barred the company from U.S. communications networks.
Huawei has long been condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike in Washington for stealing U.S. technology, spying on behalf of the Chinese government, and posing grave security threats in general.
It took a president that the foreign policy establishment regularly denounces as a lapdog of authoritarian leaders to stab this Chinese company with a pitchfork. Perhaps his predecessors were too dignified for this task as well.
Outside of the trade arena, the president’s administration has been similarly harsh on China.
In its National Security Strategy of 2018, the administration said China wants to “shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests.” The administration indicated that it is determined to respond as China “challenge[s] American power, influence, and interests” and as it attempts to “erode American security and prosperity.”
Last fall, Vice President Mike Pence delivered an anti-China speech at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. He criticized China not just for the trade practices Trump likes to rail against, but also on human rights abuse, religious persecution, military aggression, meddling in U.S. elections, and spying on the United States.
None of this looks like a strategy of coddling dictators. If Xi is a king, his biggest headaches come from the U.S. president who bequeathed him that title.
This is something to think about for all the Trump=haters who cannot stop getting red in the face criticizing the president for fawning over dictators.
June 7, 2019
Washington needs to reexamine assumptions on China
The National Interest, June 7, 2019
[image error]President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday, November 9, 2017, in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
The raging U.S.-China trade war has inspired much commentary on America’s China policy. The conventional narrative among the foreign-policy establishment is that the United States has engaged with China because for too long, Washington has mistakenly believed that trade would weaken the Chinese Communist government and bring greater political freedoms to China.
Increasingly, one could walk away from such discussions not knowing that two decades ago, U.S. support for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which drastically expanded Washington-Beijing bilateral trading relationship, had anything to do trade and economics.
Certainly, China has disappointed Washington both politically and economically, and has emerged as America’s most potent strategic rival. Yet devising solutions to China’s challenge requires that policymakers not fall into amnesia. As such, a walk down memory lane is a useful exercise.
To read the rest of the article, please click HERE.
