When I was Beijing bureau chief for United Press International in the early 1980s, we press hacks used to joke about visitors making their first trips to China, spending perhaps two weeks in the country. They could write entire books, they were so confident of their knowledge. But if a visitor spent two months in country, he or she could only write a magazine article because they weren’t so certain. And if you spent two years in China, you couldn’t write anything–because you had learned about the tremendous complexity of the people, the culture, the languages and the nation.
So here comes New York Times columnist Tom Friedman making a one-week trip to China. He wrote this essay, which is entitled “What I Learned Most From My Trip to China.” (The headline appears to have been swapped out on the Times website, perhaps because someone pointed out how laughable it was.) He concentrates primarily on the economic and technological competition between the United States and China. Here are two key excerpts:
“Only the U.S. and China working together with the IMF and World Bank will have the resources, power and influence to stem some of this disorder (in the world) which is why I repatedly challenged my Chinese interlocutors: Why are you hanging around with losers like Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Iran?”
And the grand conclusion: “China and America are compelled to work together if there is going to be a stable 21st century. If competition and collaboration give way to confrontation, a disorderly 21st century awaits both.”
What Friedman completely fails to understand is that China is trying to overthrow the American-led world order. It is partnering with Russia and Iran for that very purpose. Friedman fails to mention the Chinese penetration of America’s telecommunication networks, which means anything connected to the Internet is wide open to them. He fails to mention how China is using TikTok for watch and persuade 170 million Americans. .He fails to mention what his colleagues such as David Sanger have reported on the front page: China is using AI to generate fake social media posts aimed at dividing Americans. He doesn’t mention that China is knowingly manufacturing the components for fentanyl and allowing cartels in Mexico to flood American cities with the finished product.
What is necessary, and what Friedman and his editorial department colleagues don’t recognize, is for America to wake up to the pattern of conquest that China is engaged in. It is seeking domination of the world and particularly the United States, whose democracy and values pose a direct threat in Xi Jinping’s view to the brand of Marxist Leninism he believes in. America is already losing a global confrontation. The New York Times seems to think we should keep whistling by the graveyard and pretending everything is just swell. It is doing a tremendous disservice to every American.
