Articles & Posts

We are lucky to have lived experience of 2025. In 25 or 50 or 100 years historians and writers of all stripes will want to know about 2025, another year that everyone will remember for its singular event in history – when the US gave up the “shining city on a hill,” the last best hope of mankind, the leading scientific and technological country for the prior 150 years, the leading economy of the last hundred years, the proudest achievement of the Enlightenment, the one country that – even now- people clamor to come to, the place that said “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” And to be fair to the US, we didn’t get beaten. We just … retired. Left the field, particularly in science and technology. You know the perspectives of the current president of the US. It’s hard to fathom. The US government has left the field in just about every discipline of policy, foreign and domestic. China is already leading the US in most fields of advanced tech. If you wish, you can peruse the report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute  ASPI’s two-decade Critical Technology Tracker  that finds China leading …

You remember “China speed,” right? When infrastructure and residential developments were going up so fast it was hard to credit. Plenty of caveats went unnoticed – workers with few or no safety protections, no rules about work hours or conditions, poor quality in lots of projects, lack of supervision or inspection, round-the-clock work at base pay rates, residential projects deemed complete when unit windows and entry doors were installed. Usually work was done by immigrants (rural migrants) and it was often hot, dirty, and unsafe. But millions did the work to build a life for their families back in the village and for themselves. It was “move fast and build things.”There was a time when the US worked at “China speed” as well. That was the height of the industrial revolution circa 1870-1920, when cities like Chicago were the fastest growing places in the world. Immigrants (immigrants!) were flocking here to build a future for the US, cities, their families and themselves. The work was hot, dirty, and unsafe. Millions did the work. You remember Carl Sandberg on that unfathomable upstart Chicago –… I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back …

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Some of you recall Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, the 1971 gonzo journalism piece by Hunter Thompson. This was a bizarre reflection on the culture of  the 1960s – disconnected, frightening, crazed, stupid for the sake of being stupid.Late at night I’ve encountered YouTube videos depicting German and Japanese prisoners of war in the US, circa 1942-45. The videos are based on letters sent back to Germany and Japan and reports filed during interviews at the camps and after. The videos are from several different sites, but all formulaic – prisoners arrive at some camp in rural Texas or someplace, half-starved, frightened, suspicious, minds convinced by home propaganda that America was starving, decaying, finished. Then the prisoners get their first meal, usually chicken or beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, bread and real coffee. More food per meal per prisoner than their military officers might get in several days back in the war. Three thousand calories per day, just like – always referenced –  as required by the Geneva Convention. America, it turns out, had such abundance that prisoners got hot water in showers and real soap and real …

There is plenty written on the American Dream. We all have an idea of what that means. It is part of our civil religion, as Robert Bellah might have suggested in his 1967 Civil Religion in America.

The term “American Dream” was popularized by James Truslow Adams in 1931, saying that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.In our cynical age, much of that writing notes how unattainable might be a story of improving generational prosperity. It nevertheless remains that every year millions of people still seek to come here and if fewer of them are European than before, it need only mean that the dream values of democracy, freedom, and the possibility of individual achievement away from government approval have taken firm root in Europe. The Dream persists.There is plenty written on the Chinese Dream Zhōngguó Mèng. The term was used before, but only became part of ideology when articulated by Xi Jinping in 2012. The dream, he said, is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation – under guidance of CCP. Xi’s formulation was translated in English as “the dream of the people.” But in fact it is pushed …

A bit long, but worth perusing …. use the red highlights to skip around …
 An introductionThe US and China are two big countries and big countries with modern economies will necessarily have some similar problems. Middle class Chinese have concerns quite similar to those of middle class Americans. We write all the time about differences between the US and China. Amid the anxiety and paranoia about ascendant China it might help to consider a few ways in which the US and China are similar. Just for some perspective. I’m not suggesting identical causation, only similarities in the way people experience the world. I ignore a lot of other similarities and all the differences in this short list. Some items might be interesting or fun or a bit of nourishment for you. No one should take this as an intimate analysis of those similarities that I do find. I am not making an argument here, just listing some elements of culture or economics that I find similar in China and the US.Following below –To start – physical size and locationRegional disparitiesDecline of population and decline of population growthFamily structuresIsolated malesFamilies and childrenKid bullyingHousing crisesHouseholds and debtGovernment debtThe local fiscCities and infrastructureLocal …

There are several good American lawyer blogs on Chinese law. Most prominent in my mind is Harris Bricken, which contains information on current and past cases dealing with businesses and law in China. The China collection features posts by several academic attorneys with China experience, including Donald Clarke, Ling Li, and Carl Minzner. Don Clarke has some comments on the new Foreign Relations Law. I’m not a lawyer – I don’t even play one on tv – but three comments on Don Clarke’s comments. (1) Most important – and this is something I’ve thought about for years, but never seen made explicit – is the intentional vagueness of law. Clarke – Overall, the FRL doesn’t really do very much in terms of actual law. In a country like the United States, with a constitutionally divided government, you need a concept of foreign relations law and a set of associated doctrines in order to sort out which branch of government has the authority to do what. In a unitary Leninist state such as China, that kind of law is unnecessary and indeed makes no sense. There is a single party-state, and it has the inherent authority to do whatever it wants. The FRL basically says that the …

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