I think it is wonderful and ironic that my Chinese relatives know more about actual American news than some of my American counterparts. I also think it is stupid that many of us Americans know nothing about China since they only own most of our debts, produce most of the products that we use on a daily basis, and are a significant chunk of many people’s retirement funds.
So decided to just highlight the amount of times China was in the news on a single day. So here is my NYTimes subscription going to work for you all from July 12, 2015.
On the negative end of the spectrum which many of my Chinese friends see as China bashing from western news media. Seriously the title does have significant negative connotations, “China Fences in Its Nomads, and Ancient Life Withers,” I wonder why some people think that way… Essentially the Three Gorges resettlement plan revisited.
If you are blase about international news, at least care about the Chinese stock market because your mutual funds, retirement plans, and/or the companies you work for are invested in the Chinese market. Really scary these days that the Shanghai Composite has lost 1/3 of its value in the last few months.
The one thing that Americans “generally know” is that China has human rights violations. Normally, American news articles are filled with human rights violations. While I do not agree with the arrest of public interest lawyers in China, I hope people realize that not everyone has the same definition of human rights. Even all those countries at the UN who have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights periodically violate “human rights” just because they do not agree with the definition. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/world/asia/china-arrests-human-rights-lawyers-zhou-shifeng.html
Human Rights as most of the world knows it is actually an American construction thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt – one of my personal heroes, drafter of the Universal Human Rights Convention, and first American Ambassador to the UN. History of the document and actual document can be found here – http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/history.shtml.
If anything, thanks to all the free speech on the internet of late, you should all realize that expressing your opinion may be fine but you also cause incidents like an idiot teenager shooting people in a church because he was too stupid to know right/wrong and fact/fiction from white supremacist websites or the ISIS recruitment videos which are trying to convince women to join their cause as suicide bombers and sex slaves. Oh, for those of you who think that education matters, it does not – educated people can be brain washed too, if nothing else think WWII or you can just watch real news, not internet commentaries…
ISIS Luring Americans – http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/22/politics/isis-recruits-american-arrests/.
ISIS $2B Budget to Recruit Americans – http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/27/opinions/aamer-isis-recruiting-western-teenagers/
For those of you who think that only British School Girls are the only ones who are susceptible – US boys are especially so… Our Detroit case happened way before those girls in London disappeared and the 3 wives took all their children with them to Syria. http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/world/isis-western-draw/