You can imagine how humorous it was when Mr. Rumsfeld questioned he could not understand why China was increasing its military spending at a time when he couldn't figure who was threatening China. I will tell you who is threatening China. According to Newton's third law about motions, actions always cause the equal amount of reactions. Equally puzzled were the Chinese as to who they were threatening when they were merely trying to catch up with rest of the world in their standard of living. Their annual GDP per capita have still barely touched the thousand dollar range, which is far from the tens of thousands dollar range for developed countries. If not this many Western countries keep on mentioning theory of Chinese threat when seeing its GDP growth, then China would not feel as much threatened. Otherwise, only fools would try to create wealth without thinking about guarding the wealth. To quote a famous American statesman -- Daniel Webster: 'seeing their neighbors with wealth could be an open invitation to plunder, pillage and revolution' words similar to that.

I really don't know where the facts of 'China threat' theory come from. But I have a guess about the motivations. The motivations consist of "fear mongering" by governments or "get headlines and sell newspapers" by private sectors. To me, $1000 is far away from $30,000. I have another guess about motivations of why countries in the West pretty much follow the choir of the 'China threat' and that is: in a foot race featuring a hare and many tortoises, if the hare determined to pick a tortoise as the next superpower or a threat, other tortoises would probably be happy to chime in and point fingers at the picked tortoise and say "it's him, it's him, it's him. . ."

About democracy and human rights abuses, I really don't think it is that bad of a condition in China as long as its economy is growing, inflation is down, unemployment rate is low and most importantly, the country is politically stable. This is not exact scientific statistics, but I believe more than 90 percent of the Chinese people in the country would happily tell you that the country is way more stable under communist party rule than without it. I always admire the American wisdom: "If something is not broken, don't fix it". That is one of the wisest axiom I have learned after living in United States. Speaking of democracy, can you name a dictator in China today? You can't. Many people criticizing Chinese political system would point out that China wrote in its constitution about "the country is under the leadership of communist party". How big a sin really was that comparing to other countries, such as: Japan wrote in its constitution that Emperor is the head of its state or Canada, UK, Australia all stated Queen is the head of their states in their constitutions? If Queen Elizabeth I was able to earn the glory and throne for her many generations of successors with the Speech to the troops at Tilbury, what is wrong if Chinese people want to give a party its constitutionally unique position because of its past sacrifices and glories? Communist party did what Queen her majesty said to the common soldiers also that was to "to live and die amongst you all". It's much more practical and useful to watch a country's deeds than its propaganda. Unfortunately, China had to go through extra efforts to be acknowledged as a market economy and it had to go through extra miles to access WTO all because it was perceived as a "communist" country.

If communist party abuses its power, there would be social instabilities automatically and like Jesus said "they have their rewards", but there is no need for Western media to smear its image and be allergic to its name. Was it in Western teaching about laws of nature, which was what American democracy was based upon, that 'no thing can come out of corns but corns, and nothing can come out of neddles but neddles'? Prince Diana got this loving image of "people's prince" because of shaking hands with the commoners or poor people. Do you know how many common and poor hands Chinese communist party leader have shaken with?

Then there are the reports about human rights abuses. Yes, it was true that for a long time, China had a birth control policy that allowed one family to have one child. Then I do not see reports about new changes now that the "only child" of the family marrying another "only child" of the family, are now allowed having two children. Yes, China kills more criminals each year than any other countries in the world. But I do not see media conducting a Gallup poll among Chinese and see if more or less criminals should be killed after the survey. From my private survey though, crime rate in China is getting much higher than 10 or 20 years ago. It is very hard to argue that these policies did not help stabilize the country or help its economic growth. Of course, to the Western media, reporting Rudy to be tough on crime in New York City would not attract as much attention as reporting a communist party to be tough on crime in China.

When studying carefully, many of the human rights abuses reported about China were simply like Democrats criticizing Republicans in the United States. But reporting anything positive about China is not going to sell newspapers in the West, on the other hand reporting anything negative about China would definitely help media businesses. One such example is Dalai Lama vs. Mao Zedong. Dalai Lama is a Lama who simply said some of the things that many Lamas knew and did something many Lamas did. Then his words, characters and charms were so affectionately and overly exaggerated in the West that made him such a rock star. He is a man of great achievement and character, but an even greater man in many respects, Mao had been simply smeared as a treacherous and wicked dictator in the West. Mao is a much greater thinker, philosopher, scholar, poet, organizer, strategist and motivator who helped unified China and helped brought peace to the world, but only known as "the bastard who killed many Tibetans" as one of my fellow graduate student said in US. William the Conqueror was a bastard, but Mao was not. Nor did he or China "invade" Tibet. Tibet was married into China around the 7th or 8th centuries pretty much like how Europe was merged together by husbands and wives in the fashion of the "Holy Roman Empires". Then the Mongolians broke China apart about the same time they broke Eastern Europe. When China was pieced together by Qin Dynasty, Tibet was actually put into the big puzzle in about 17th century too. If you watch the "why we fight" series of video tapes produced by US government during World War II, Tibet was part of China. But after Chinese communist party took over China, then the story in America became that "China invaded Tibet in the 1950's".

Mao's army actually went through Tibet in the 1930's when he was chased after by the Nationalist. That was not an invasion but a trip to seek refugee, and no one mentioned that trip as "invasion" of course, because it was before the "why we fight" series. Then he went back in the 1950's after communist party gained power, and that trip became an invasion. The guy didn't know what he did wrong really, because he probably simply thought of himself as entering another part of his country that didn't need a passport.

In a lame man's eyes, Mao built a country with average life span of its citizens being under 40 before 1950's. And now the average life span is over 60 for all people of all races. He also brought peace and prosperity to 1/5 of the world population in an area that used to randomly spill blood by warlords for most ridiculous and trivial reasons. Such a man can not be called anything else but a "great man", yet he would probably never enjoy such a status in the Western culture.

He did cause a lot of death in his later years when even an average Chinese would call him an old fool. For the period, the Communist party finally gave him an official verdict as 70% success and 30% failure. Living in the West, more than 90% of the people would not give him 10% of the credit he was due. But Mao is undoubtedly in many regards, one of the best of the Chinese that have ever lived. If you like any of my work ethic, that was because of Mao's teaching. And I believe your IT department would be a much more productive place if people just learned to eliminate gossips among co-workers and try to appreciate their responsibilities, which were taught in Mao's famous article "Do your job" (反对自由主义).

Ironically, one of Mao's famous "old fool" remarks was "You are either with us or against us" (凡是敌人反对的我们就要支持，凡是敌人支持的我们就要反对), which my friends and I laughed our rears off when a communist member tried to quote it in our university after Tian An Men Massacre. I had no idea where President Bush got that idea though. President Bush also demonstrated with his invasion to Iraq another Chairman Mao's famous and controversial quote of '枪杆子里面出政权'. This quote was often cited by the West as a blatant disregard of law and justice by dictators. But Mao said it when his small guerilla band was hiding in the mountains to avoid brutal slaughters by the Nationalist armies, more than 20 years before Communist party gained power. Mao said that more in a way of expressing frustration and did not expect the statement became an accurate description in the affairs of the international politics.

Since I am a traitor of three countries, China, US and Canada, I have to make a fair statement that no people are to be blamed for failing to learn the truth about the other peoples. One of the jokes I heard between Canadians and Americans is this: When Americans traveling to Canada, Canadians often ask "What do you Americans think about us Canadians?" And the replies from the Americans typically are: "We don't. I am sorry, but we just don't". While 90% of the Canadians probably know who the American president is, it's probably true that there is probably no need for 10% of the Americans to know who the Canadian prime minister is. For everyday life, it is perfectly OK to be like that. There could be long term effects to that, but who cares about the long term effects as a regular human being?

Trying to mesh Chinese thinking and American thinking into one brain, has always been a logically sloppy and messy process. When I first arrived at the United States, I simply couldn't understand the terms "conservative" and "liberal". Because People's Republic of China was founded on leftist ideas, so "conservative" in China meant all the "leftist ideas" while "liberal" meant the "rightist" ideas, which were totally opposite to how the term were used in United States. After I straightened out the "conservative" and "liberal" ideas in America, with helps from Rush Limbaugh, Larry King, and fellow workers, I always got a kick out of it when Rudy Gullialli refused to shake hands with then Chinese president Jiang Ze Ming. Rudy must have felt like a hero as this American "conservative", who refused to shake hands with this Chinese "liberal". But in fact, Rudy and Jiang both were mayors of the biggest city in their respective country; both were for big businesses and both were tough on crime, both made names out of the crisis in their respective countries, and needless to say, both had presidential aspirations. But I guess in the eyes of the West, Chinese are pretty much like what has been said about the white witness looking at Black people and said: "they all look alike".

In the meantime, Chinese look at Americans and think they all look alike too. Since China had been so poor and oppressed for so long, starting from the 1840 Opium War, the entire country first even look at everybody in the West as all look alike. Notice communism was never a native product of China. It went to China from Europe after Chinese looked upon many other Western religions once or twice to look for messiahs. Another earlier attempt to use Western ideals to save the country was the 太平天国 around 1851. For a long time, China along with many countries in Asia have been trying to imitate the West pretty much like 6th graders trying to imitate 12th graders. Finally, China was able to tell that Westerners are not entirely all look alike. And still as a 6th grader finally found that while many 12th graders are cool, but there is this extremely cool kid in school which is immensely popular and that is: America.

In many ways, China is more American than American these days, it is not hard to see the country is filled with conservative American ideas that focus on economic growth intensely with pragmatism. For one, did conservatives always wanted to lower taxes? For all I know, the tax rate for average Chinese is just about zero. Many Chinese are feeling the country is too obsessed with money and economics and therefore are trying to introduce religions, moral standards and western ideologies into the system, but unfortunately, most of the cultural imports were turning into the "coolest kids imitating syndrome" again and again. Many imports from the West were things that happened to be deemed popular at the time. Some examples are, because of valuing importance of the English language, Chinese language were deemed not as useful; because of importing Western medicine, Chinese medicine were doubted as not really working; because of importing Christianity, traditional dragon image of China were feared; because of importing productivity, environment was regarded as less importance and pollution ran rampant.