1800s Western Empires back by military sold Opium to China in exchange for Teas & Porcelains; 2021 China wants to buy Computer Chip, Advance Weaponry, AI to balance trade with US, but US won’t sell. Who’s faults?

1800s Western Empires back by military sold Opium to China in exchange for Teas & Porcelains; 2021 China wants to buy Computer Chip, Advance Weaponry, AI to balance trade with US, but US won’t sell. Who’s faults? 1800 年代，西方帝國利用強大的軍隊將鴉片強迫賣給中國以換取茶葉和瓷器； 2021 中國想購買計算機芯片、先進武器、人工智能以平衡與美國的貿易，但美國不會出售。誰的錯？

Video: China anti-corruption, poverty eradication, COVID19 containment, Gov’t of the people, by the people, for the people with tangible and measurable results

Video: China anti-corruption, poverty eradication, COVID19 containment, Gov’t of the people, by the people, for the people with tangible and measurable results, not like US, empty promises cater only to the 1% elites. 中國反腐敗, 消除貧困, 遏制新冠病毒, 政府為人民, 代表和服務人民, 可衡量, 不像美國, 全是空頭支票祇爲1%精英和軍火商服務.
https://vimeo.com/622992415
https://youtu.be/NBV7xa5IBCM
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/579021153321214/?d=n

How Old Is the Maltese, Really?

How Old Is the Maltese, Really?

Many dog fanciers like to trace their favorite breed to antiquity, but the researchers who study the modern and ancient DNA of dogs have a different perspective. By James Gorman Oct. 4, 2021

“The tiny Maltese,” the American Kennel Club tells us, “has been sitting in the lap of luxury since the Bible was a work in progress.”

This is also the opinion of my friend the Maltese owner (the dog is also my friend), who recently invoked the Greeks and the Romans as early admirers of the breed.

I have these conversations on occasion with people who are devoted to one breed or another and I usually nod and say, well, maybe, sort of. True, Aristotle did praise the proportions of a kind of lap dog described as a Melitaean dog. Scholars debate whether this meant the dog came from Malta, or another island called Melite or Miljet, or maybe a town in Sicily. It was a long time ago, after all. Aristotle also compared the dog to a marten, a member of the weasel family, perhaps because of its size. And yes, the Romans absolutely loved these dogs.

So there is little doubt that there were little white lap dogs 2,000 years ago. The question is whether the modern Maltese breed is directly descended from the pets Romans scratched behind the ears.

I have not mentioned this to the dog herself, who would prefer to remain anonymous because the internet can be vicious. And I doubt she would pay much attention to genealogical intrigue. Her interests, from what I can see, run more toward treats, arrogant and intolerable chipmunks and smelly places to roll around in.

It’s not just Maltese fanciers who are interested in their breed’s ancient roots. Basenjis, Pomeranians, Samoyeds, Salukis, terriers and others have supporters who want to trace the breeds back to ancient times. But the Maltese seemed a good dog to discuss because the historical record is so rich. Obviously the Maltese is an ancient breed. Right?

I brought this question to several of the scientists I turn to when I have dog DNA questions. Is the modern Maltese breed, in fact, ancient? The scientists, you will be shocked to learn, said no. But, as with anything involving dogs and science, it’s complicated.

“Tobias and the Angel,” by Antonio del Pollaiolo, 1460, with a possible Maltese in the lower left corner.

A friend of the author, who wished to remain anonymous.

A couple of points to set the stage. All dogs are descended from the first dogs, just as all humans can trace their ancestry to the first Homo sapiens. None of us, or our dogs, have a more ancient ancestry than any other. What people seem to want to know is whether those ancestors were mutts or nobles, William the Conqueror or one of the conquered, a dog on a lap who got into a portrait, or a dog on the street who got into trouble.

I’m not looking at this from the outside, by the way. I’ve been there myself, digging as deep as I could into the long and honorable history of my cairn terriers and Pomeranians. I’ve also tried to trace my family’s O’Connors and O’Learys and Fallons and Goritzes. (I haven’t found any conquerors yet.) But the idea of valuing genetic purity feels creepy sometimes, even if it is in animals who like to roll in cow pies when they get the chance.

Elaine Ostrander, a dog genomics specialist at the National Institutes of Health, has gone as deep into breed differences and history as any scientist. She said the hunger for old breed ancestry is similar to the desire to reach back to the Mayflower for human antecedents. “We think that way about ourselves. So we think that way about our dogs.”

“The Pharaoh hound people were the first to approach me and ask that question,” she recalled.

“Do our dogs really date back to the time of the Pharaoh?” the breeders asked. Unfortunately not. That breed, Dr. Ostrander said, was “totally recreated by mixing and matching existing breeds” after World War II.

Other breeds were established by picking an existing group of dogs in the Victorian era and classifying them as a breed with a definition that meant only dogs whose names were in a registry or whose ancestors could be identified as being in that registry, fit the breed. And 2,000 years ago, she said, “the concept of a breed did not exist.”

A Maltese competing in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in Tarrytown, N.Y., in June.

Nor does DNA show any direct line from ancient to modern Maltese. To understand what dog DNA research is all about, it’s worth taking a step back. The genetic markers that Dr. Ostrander and other researchers use in genome comparisons to identify breeds are mostly not the genes that contain the recipe for floppy ears or bent legs or a certain color coat.

They are not seeking a genetic recipe for a Bassett Hound or Beagle, but a way to see how closely related one is to the other. Most DNA in humans and dogs has no known function. Only a portion of a genome makes up actual genese. And repetitive stretches of DNA of unknown purpose, if any, have proven to be useful in comparing groups and individuals. They change more from generation to generation and so offer more variation for scientists to work with in comparing breeds. What researchers develop is a breed fingerprint, but not a blueprint.

Neither Dr. Ostrander nor Heidi Parker, a colleague and collaborator at N.I.H., gave a firm answer on how far back a breed could be traced, but they agreed that it basically depended on how long a breed club had been keeping records, not on what’s in a dog’s DNA. Before that time, breeding was not so regulated.

The genomes of the Maltese, the havanese, the bichon and the Bolognese (the dog not the sauce) are all related, Dr. Parker said. The breeds may have split from a common ancestor a few hundred years ago and that common ancestor may no longer exist, or it might have been closer to one of the breeds than the others. But there’s no DNA line to be traced to the time of Aristotle.

When I asked Greger Larson, of the University of Oxford, who studies ancient and modern DNA of dogs and other animals, whether any breeds date to antiquity, he looked, as best I could tell from his Zoom image, like I had asked him if the Earth might really be flat.

“Breeds have closed breeding lines,” he said. “That’s the idea. Once they get established, you’re not allowed to bring anything into it. And that concept of breeding toward an aesthetic and closing the breeding line — that whole thing is only mid-19th century U.K.”

“I don’t care whether you’re talking about a pug or a New Guinea singing dog or a basenji,” he said. Breeds, by definition, are recent.

Queen Elizabeth I with a suspected Maltese.

Mary Queen of Scots, with her own small white dog.

There have, however, been lineages of dogs bred to the chase, or the lap, or to herd the sheep, for a long, long time. One such lineage, call it Maltese-adjacent, might be defined as “really small dogs with short legs and they require a lot of attention and people are in love with them,” Dr. Larson said. That lineage was certainly around in ancient Rome.

My friend the Maltese partisan sent me images of old paintings. Mary Queen of Scots has some kind of little dog in a portrait from around 1580, but I have to say it looks more like the ghost of a Papillon than a living Maltese. Queen Elizabeth also has a small dog in a portrait from around the same time, which looks like a little white dog, more or less.

There are lots of others, but I doubt they would qualify for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And none of this means that the modern Maltese or any other modern breed is the same as the dogs of antiquity.

“We want to say that our dog is very old in its current form, that it hasn’t been changed,” Dr. Larson said. “Like the Maltese is the Maltese for the last 2,000 years. And that’s just clearly” not true. Although “not true” was not the expression he used.

“People have not been breeding dogs in the way that we do now for very long, at all,” he said. “What we lack in our vocabulary is a word for dogs that mostly look the same, doing the same kind of a job.”

But, setting words aside, I asked, what about the DNA. Does the DNA tell us how close a dog that looks like a Maltese now is to a Maltese then? He said that dog breeding in the past was never done to physical type, that dogs moved as people moved, from Rome to Britain, and back to Spain and Rome, and that nobody kept track of pedigrees. In addition, when breeds were established, they were based on a limited number of dogs admitted to the breed at that time. That is known in genetics as an extreme bottleneck. And all modern dogs are descended from just a few, unless there is interbreeding and mixing to change the look of the breed, which can happen.

Hank, a Maltese being groomed for competition in the Westminster dog show in 2014.

A Maltese Lion Dog was exhibited at the first Westminster dog show in New York in 1877. After that, Maltese dogs were sometimes crossed with poodles, and some are said to show poodle traits now. The stud book, or registry, was started with two females in 1901 and reached about 50 dogs in the 1950s.

You can now find out if your Maltese is really a Maltese by checking its pedigree or, if you want to dig into its genome, by sending some saliva (the dog’s) off to a company like Embark, with more than 100 employees chasing the secrets of dog DNA, or an academic venture like Darwin’s Dogs, part of the Darwin’s Ark project at the University of Massachusetts. (The ark, no judgment here, includes cats.) The scientists involved in this work also get pulled into the question of breed antiquity by curious dog owners and journalists.

Adam Boyko, the co-founder of Embark, and a geneticist at the Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine, agreed that modern breeds, with their “closed populations” are about 200 years old.

He said there’s no question that little white lap dogs have a long history. “They were very popular in Roman times. They may or may not have come from Malta or some other Greek island.” But he said, it’s an open question what kind of genetic continuity there may be with modern little white lap dogs.

A terracotta relief of a Maltese dog from Smyrna, Turkey, dated to the first century B.C.E.

The British Museum

“The White Duchess,” by Francisco Goya, 1795.

Even in human genealogy, where one can trace the human equivalent of a pedigree back 1,000 years, the idea of genetic continuity is divorced from the reality of genes.

Over the ages, each time a man and woman produce offspring, they take half the DNA from each parent. The genetic deck is shuffled and half the cards discarded. This shuffling occurs over and over. In each generation, it is as if two decks of 52 cards are shuffled to come up with a new deck that still numbers 52.

“When you go back 10 generations,” Dr. Boyko said, most of those ancestors, 10 generations back actually didn’t contribute any DNA to you. It got shuffled out.” It’s the same with a Maltese. Even if there were a documented direct line, which there is not, the descendants wouldn’t have much of the ancestors’ specific genetic variation.

In the end, of course, explained Elinor Karlsson, a genomics researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who runs Darwin’s Ark, we cannot reach complete clarity on dog breeds because “breed” is used to mean different things by different people.

Speaking of dogs in art, she said: “It could be either that the dog in the painting simply looks like a Maltese and is entirely unrelated to the Maltese around today. It could be that that dog actually has exactly the same genetic variant that causes a Maltese to be small or causes a Maltese to be white.” But, she added, “I don’t know whether that makes them the same

China pledged to buy more US products, China could buy US$200 billion of computer chips, advance weaponry, AI technology, but US won’t sell. The problem is on US sides, not China.

China pledged to buy more US products, China could buy US$200 billion of computer chips, advance weaponry, AI technology, but US won’t sell. The problem is on US sides, not China. 中國承諾購買更多美國產品，中國可以購買2000億美元的計算機芯片、先進武器、人工智能技術，但美國不會出售。問題出在美國方面，而不是中國.

In the trade deal, signed in January 2020, Beijing pledged to buy at least $200 billion more U.S. goods and services over 2020 and 2021, compared with 2017. The agreement paused a trade fight between the U.S. and China, which dragged on for about two years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/us-china-trade-ustr-katherine-tai-vows-to-enforce-phase-1-deal.html

How Old Is the Maltese, Really?

How Old Is the Maltese, Really?

Many dog fanciers like to trace their favorite breed to antiquity, but the researchers who study the modern and ancient DNA of dogs have a different perspective. By James Gorman Oct. 4, 2021

“The tiny Maltese,” the American Kennel Club tells us, “has been sitting in the lap of luxury since the Bible was a work in progress.”

This is also the opinion of my friend the Maltese owner (the dog is also my friend), who recently invoked the Greeks and the Romans as early admirers of the breed.

I have these conversations on occasion with people who are devoted to one breed or another and I usually nod and say, well, maybe, sort of. True, Aristotle did praise the proportions of a kind of lap dog described as a Melitaean dog.

Scholars debate whether this meant the dog came from Malta, or another island called Melite or Miljet, or maybe a town in Sicily. It was a long time ago, after all. Aristotle also compared the dog to a marten, a member of the weasel family, perhaps because of its size. And yes, the Romans absolutely loved these dogs.

So there is little doubt that there were little white lap dogs 2,000 years ago. The question is whether the modern Maltese breed is directly descended from the pets Romans scratched behind the ears.


I have not mentioned this to the dog herself, who would prefer to remain anonymous because the internet can be vicious. And I doubt she would pay much attention to genealogical intrigue. Her interests, from what I can see, run more toward treats, arrogant and intolerable chipmunks and smelly places to roll around in.

It’s not just Maltese fanciers who are interested in their breed’s ancient roots. Basenjis, Pomeranians, Samoyeds, Salukis, terriers and others have supporters who want to trace the breeds back to ancient times. But the Maltese seemed a good dog to discuss because the historical record is so rich. Obviously the Maltese is an ancient breed. Right?

I brought this question to several of the scientists I turn to when I have dog DNA questions. Is the modern Maltese breed, in fact, ancient? The scientists, you will be shocked to learn, said no. But, as with anything involving dogs and science, it’s complicated.

“Tobias and the Angel,” by Antonio del Pollaiolo, 1460, with a possible Maltese in the lower left corner.

A friend of the author, who wished to remain anonymous.

A couple of points to set the stage. All dogs are descended from the first dogs, just as all humans can trace their ancestry to the first Homo sapiens. None of us, or our dogs, have a more ancient ancestry than any other. What people seem to want to know is whether those ancestors were mutts or nobles, William the Conqueror or one of the conquered, a dog on a lap who got into a portrait, or a dog on the street who got into trouble.

I’m not looking at this from the outside, by the way. I’ve been there myself, digging as deep as I could into the long and honorable history of my cairn terriers and Pomeranians. I’ve also tried to trace my family’s O’Connors and O’Learys and Fallons and Goritzes. (I haven’t found any conquerors yet.) But the idea of valuing genetic purity feels creepy sometimes, even if it is in animals who like to roll in cow pies when they get the chance.

Elaine Ostrander, a dog genomics specialist at the National Institutes of Health, has gone as deep into breed differences and history as any scientist. She said the hunger for old breed ancestry is similar to the desire to reach back to the Mayflower for human antecedents. “We think that way about ourselves. So we think that way about our dogs.”

“The Pharaoh hound people were the first to approach me and ask that question,” she recalled.

“Do our dogs really date back to the time of the Pharaoh?” the breeders asked. Unfortunately not. That breed, Dr. Ostrander said, was “totally recreated by mixing and matching existing breeds” after World War II.

Other breeds were established by picking an existing group of dogs in the Victorian era and classifying them as a breed with a definition that meant only dogs whose names were in a registry or whose ancestors could be identified as being in that registry, fit the breed. And 2,000 years ago, she said, “the concept of a breed did not exist.”

A Maltese competing in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in Tarrytown, N.Y., in June.

Nor does DNA show any direct line from ancient to modern Maltese. To understand what dog DNA research is all about, it’s worth taking a step back. The genetic markers that Dr. Ostrander and other researchers use in genome comparisons to identify breeds are mostly not the genes that contain the recipe for floppy ears or bent legs or a certain color coat.

They are not seeking a genetic recipe for a Bassett Hound or Beagle, but a way to see how closely related one is to the other. Most DNA in humans and dogs has no known function. Only a portion of a genome makes up actual genese. And repetitive stretches of DNA of unknown purpose, if any, have proven to be useful in comparing groups and individuals. They change more from generation to generation and so offer more variation for scientists to work with in comparing breeds. What researchers develop is a breed fingerprint, but not a blueprint.

Neither Dr. Ostrander nor Heidi Parker, a colleague and collaborator at N.I.H., gave a firm answer on how far back a breed could be traced, but they agreed that it basically depended on how long a breed club had been keeping records, not on what’s in a dog’s DNA. Before that time, breeding was not so regulated.

The genomes of the Maltese, the havanese, the bichon and the Bolognese (the dog not the sauce) are all related, Dr. Parker said. The breeds may have split from a common ancestor a few hundred years ago and that common ancestor may no longer exist, or it might have been closer to one of the breeds than the others. But there’s no DNA line to be traced to the time of Aristotle.

When I asked Greger Larson, of the University of Oxford, who studies ancient and modern DNA of dogs and other animals, whether any breeds date to antiquity, he looked, as best I could tell from his Zoom image, like I had asked him if the Earth might really be flat.

“Breeds have closed breeding lines,” he said. “That’s the idea. Once they get established, you’re not allowed to bring anything into it. And that concept of breeding toward an aesthetic and closing the breeding line — that whole thing is only mid-19th century U.K.”

“I don’t care whether you’re talking about a pug or a New Guinea singing dog or a basenji,” he said. Breeds, by definition, are recent.

Queen Elizabeth I with a suspected Maltese.

Mary Queen of Scots, with her own small white dog.

There have, however, been lineages of dogs bred to the chase, or the lap, or to herd the sheep, for a long, long time. One such lineage, call it Maltese-adjacent, might be defined as “really small dogs with short legs and they require a lot of attention and people are in love with them,” Dr. Larson said. That lineage was certainly around in ancient Rome.


My friend the Maltese partisan sent me images of old paintings. Mary Queen of Scots has some kind of little dog in a portrait from around 1580, but I have to say it looks more like the ghost of a Papillon than a living Maltese. Queen Elizabeth also has a small dog in a portrait from around the same time, which looks like a little white dog, more or less.

There are lots of others, but I doubt they would qualify for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And none of this means that the modern Maltese or any other modern breed is the same as the dogs of antiquity.

“We want to say that our dog is very old in its current form, that it hasn’t been changed,” Dr. Larson said. “Like the Maltese is the Maltese for the last 2,000 years. And that’s just clearly” not true. Although “not true” was not the expression he used.

“People have not been breeding dogs in the way that we do now for very long, at all,” he said. “What we lack in our vocabulary is a word for dogs that mostly look the same, doing the same kind of a job.”

But, setting words aside, I asked, what about the DNA. Does the DNA tell us how close a dog that looks like a Maltese now is to a Maltese then? He said that dog breeding in the past was never done to physical type, that dogs moved as people moved, from Rome to Britain, and back to Spain and Rome, and that nobody kept track of pedigrees. In addition, when breeds were established, they were based on a limited number of dogs admitted to the breed at that time. That is known in genetics as an extreme bottleneck. And all modern dogs are descended from just a few, unless there is interbreeding and mixing to change the look of the breed, which can happen.

Hank, a Maltese being groomed for competition in the Westminster dog show in 2014.

A Maltese Lion Dog was exhibited at the first Westminster dog show in New York in 1877. After that, Maltese dogs were sometimes crossed with poodles, and some are said to show poodle traits now. The stud book, or registry, was started with two females in 1901 and reached about 50 dogs in the 1950s.

You can now find out if your Maltese is really a Maltese by checking its pedigree or, if you want to dig into its genome, by sending some saliva (the dog’s) off to a company like Embark, with more than 100 employees chasing the secrets of dog DNA, or an academic venture like Darwin’s Dogs, part of the Darwin’s Ark project at the University of Massachusetts. (The ark, no judgment here, includes cats.) The scientists involved in this work also get pulled into the question of breed antiquity by curious dog owners and journalists.

Adam Boyko, the co-founder of Embark, and a geneticist at the Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine, agreed that modern breeds, with their “closed populations” are about 200 years old.

He said there’s no question that little white lap dogs have a long history. “They were very popular in Roman times. They may or may not have come from Malta or some other Greek island.” But he said, it’s an open question what kind of genetic continuity there may be with modern little white lap dogs.

A terracotta relief of a Maltese dog from Smyrna, Turkey, dated to the first century B.C.E.

“The White Duchess,” by Francisco Goya, 1795.


Even in human genealogy, where one can trace the human equivalent of a pedigree back 1,000 years, the idea of genetic continuity is divorced from the reality of genes.

Over the ages, each time a man and woman produce offspring, they take half the DNA from each parent. The genetic deck is shuffled and half the cards discarded. This shuffling occurs over and over. In each generation, it is as if two decks of 52 cards are shuffled to come up with a new deck that still numbers 52.

“When you go back 10 generations,” Dr. Boyko said, most of those ancestors, 10 generations back actually didn’t contribute any DNA to you. It got shuffled out.” It’s the same with a Maltese. Even if there were a documented direct line, which there is not, the descendants wouldn’t have much of the ancestors’ specific genetic variation.


In the end, of course, explained Elinor Karlsson, a genomics researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who runs Darwin’s Ark, we cannot reach complete clarity on dog breeds because “breed” is used to mean different things by different people.

Speaking of dogs in art, she said: “It could be either that the dog in the painting simply looks like a Maltese and is entirely unrelated to the Maltese around today. It could be that that dog actually has exactly the same genetic variant that causes a Maltese to be small or causes a Maltese to be white.” But, she added, “I don’t know whether that makes them the same

New York Times: China Doesn’t Respect Us Anymore — for Good Reason – We’ve stopped following our formula for success. By Thomas L. Friedman – Columnist

New York Times: China Doesn’t Respect Us Anymore — for Good Reason – We’ve stopped following our formula for success. By Thomas L. Friedman – Columnist

《紐約時報》上的這篇文章掀起一場圍繞中國的大辯論 “中國不是我們的問題，我們自己才是問題。”

“中國不再尊重美國，他們有理由這樣做”，知名記者和專欄作家湯瑪斯•弗裡德曼最近為《紐約時報》撰寫的這篇文章掀起一場大辯論，時報在留言區放出的評論數多達2018條。中國特別是“中國VS美國”的話題在美國輿論場中一直很熱。在百年未遇之大變局下，這場大辯論，或許也是變化的一個注腳。

犀利的“自我剖析”

弗裡德曼經常為《紐約時報》供稿，但似乎很少會像這篇評論在網路上引發如此大的關注。

先來看看文章寫了啥，讀完之後可能會震驚于作者的“自我剖析”。

作者首先借用喜劇演員比爾•馬厄的一句吐槽概括出美中兩國的鮮明對比：“中國仍然可以搞定大事。美國則不然。”

具體而言，中國領導者專注于真實的成功指標，他們非常注重業績——尤其是圍繞就業、住房和空氣品質。相比之下，美國政客的“執政已經成為體育競技、娛樂或僅僅是無腦的部落戰爭。難怪中國領導人視我們為一個衰落的帝國，靠美國‘例外主義’的余灰為生。”一句弗裡德曼式的犀利語言極盡諷刺。

既然認為中國有理由不再尊重美國，那麼“理由”是什麼？文章直接上了一幅美國“亂象圖”：上任總統激勵追隨者洗劫國會大廈；共和黨中多數人不承認民主選舉結果；一名國會議員認為是猶太人操作的太空鐳射引起了森林大火；左翼無政府主義者被允許接管波特蘭市中心的一部分，造成數月之久的破壞；在大流行期間，中國增發貨幣是為了投資更多的基礎設施，而美國增發貨幣以幫助消費者保持支出——相當一部分商品是中國製造的；美國的槍支暴力已經失控。

弗裡德曼當然不滿足於指出問題而不去解決問題。在他看來，美國的亂象根源在於美國已經不再遵循其成功公式。為此，他給出的解決方案是，必須重新並加倍使用美國的成功秘訣。包括教育勞動力，使其達到並超越技術所需要的水準；建設世界上最好的港口、公路和電信基礎設施；吸引世界上最具活力和高智商移民以加強大學以及開展新業務等等。

否則結果會很糟糕，“我們對中國乃至整個世界的影響力都將逐漸減弱”，而且還會輸掉“2025年奧運會”——美中高科技產業競賽。

無法妄加揣測弗裡德曼緣何會撰寫這篇評論，不過有一點似乎很明顯，楊潔篪在中美阿拉斯加對話上說出的那句話——“你們沒有資格在中國的面前說，你們從實力的地位出發同中國談話”，在美國人聽來估計是振聾發聵，深深刺激了包括弗裡德曼在內的許多美國人的神經（弗裡德曼也在文中加以引用），加劇了像弗裡德曼這樣的人對美國衰落甚至未來會輸給中國的憂慮。

“我們憑什麼被尊重”

《紐約時報》網站顯示，這篇文章下方的留言達到2018條，而這只是時報公開顯示的結果，落選的評論“遺珠”應當無數。

流覽這些評論，發現似乎比弗裡德曼的文章更精彩、更尖銳。

最直觀的感受是，弗裡德曼之論引發強烈共鳴。網友更是直接拋出反問——為什麼中國以及其他國家非要尊重美國？美國憑什麼受別國尊重？

按讀者推薦數量排序的留言榜裡，置頂一條寫道：“為什麼中國要尊重美國？當一半美國人認為科學是一種陰謀論時，這充分表明美國公民已不是最好的人民。美國不需要擔心中國，它需要擔心自己，並且永遠不要想到或說出‘我們是第一’這句空洞的口號。”

排名第二的留言是：“為什麼他們（要尊重美國）？當中國在規劃下一個五年計劃時，我們正忙於兩黨鬥爭，一項1.9萬億美元的新冠病毒拯救法案在國會滯留數月後兩黨仍未達成共識；當中國只花一周時間建造兩所收治新冠肺炎患者的醫院時，美國人仍在討論口罩和漂白劑注射是否有效；當中國通過把最優秀的學生送到美國來大力投資技術和基礎設施時，共和黨人標榜市場經濟決定一切，並拒絕採取任何行動；當中國簽署世界上最大的經貿協定RCEP和中歐投資協定時，美國退出了可能會孤立中國的TPP。毫無疑問，21世紀是中國人的世紀。”

“為什麼會有國家尊重一個混亂的美國呢？大規模失控的槍殺事件、攻擊國會試圖叫停一次合法選舉、一個完全破碎的政府幾乎失靈、一個主要政黨不相信科學或戴口罩能遏制疫情大流行……”

“為什麼他們，或者任何國家，會尊重我們？我們也不尊重其他國家。我們告訴幾乎所有國家到哪裡去買天然氣，應該選誰，應該炸死或殺死誰，應該和誰交朋友等等……這對中國是例外，他們不會被任何人欺淩，那樣的日子已經過去，就像美利堅帝國結束一樣。”

“不祥之兆”與巨大反差

留言中充斥著人們對美國現狀的不滿，各種吐槽有如黃河之水滔滔不絕。

“妻子和我打算離開美國。”這名美國網友寫道，接著舉出種種他認為的“不祥之兆”，幾乎描繪了美國衰象“全景圖”：美國已變成一個臃腫、無能的強盜政府，被巨大的不平等、系統性的種族主義和只讓最富有者受益的經濟所困擾，政治體制賦予少數人以統治權；對新冠疫情的反應完全失控；城市陷入混亂，首都被洗劫；公共教育系統就是一場鬧劇；基礎設施就是個笑話；大規模槍擊事件每月都會發生，包括在學校；由於氾濫的貪婪，金融系統處於崩潰邊緣；由於中央銀行每次印鈔救市，導致多次經濟崩潰；中產階級已被掏空，等待死亡，醫療保健系統像禿鷹一樣捕食他們；關鍵健康指標（壽命、嬰兒死亡率、肥胖）越來越糟，生活成本也越來越高……

還有一個住在上海的美國人，以親身感受對比中國與美國十多年來的巨大發展落差。

一邊是中國的發展奇跡：上海的地鐵線路從5條增加到17條；僅僅用了10年多的時間，中國從沒有高速鐵路發展成為世界上最大的高速鐵路系統；中國人被激勵去改善生活，並堅信明天會比今天更好；中國人重視教育，並把這些價值觀傳授給他們的孩子。

一邊是美國的一成不變甚至倒退：父母家門前的路還是和高中時一樣坑坑窪窪；一個肥胖和懶惰的國家，且不斷回頭尋找偉大；無知似乎被大肆宣揚，以至於一半人相信關於選舉造假的謊言；像安撫奶嘴般固守著槍支武器。最後，他得出結論，“比起美國的重生，我對中國的崛起更有信心，雖然這對我這樣的美國人來說很悲哀。”

“我們自己才是問題”

在這些留言中，不僅有情緒的宣洩，更有深刻的思考，試圖挖掘中國不再尊重美國以及“美國病”的深層根源。

有對體制的抨擊：“華爾街寡頭、科技壟斷企業和軍工聯合體，這些真正控制我們國家的勢力，會放棄過去30年積累的巨額財富和權力集中嗎？我們是財閥而不是民主政體。”

有對美國自身品格的質疑：比如傲慢，“我們正在因毫無緣由的驕傲和傲慢窒息。不僅僅是在中國，包括在全世界，我們作為一個群體被視為自私、不誠實、不尊重、不值得信任的吹牛者。我們的品格比我們的基礎設施崩潰得更快。”

比如反智，“相比其他工業化國家，美國的人口素質相對較低……很大一部分美國人也是反知識份子……這樣是不會‘贏得未來’的”。

比如無知，“美國人的部落意識和無知令人震驚。我們是愚蠢的……我們社會的很大一部分人似乎陶醉於他們的無知。”

有的歸結於美國濫用霸權與道德偽善：“美國在很長一段時間裡嚴重濫用其在世界上的權力。沒有哪個國家像美國那樣暴力，破壞國際法，並表現出虛偽。美國談論新疆人權，但是否可解釋為何資助和慫恿以色列佔領巴勒斯坦。”這條留言還直接反駁弗裡德曼關於美國“道德”的斷言，“美國在國際事務中的道德，一直是由美國掠奪他國財富和資源的能力來定義的。”

“弗裡德曼沒有指出美國不再有道德的權威，當員警殘殺少數族裔，有著最多的囚犯，無論從絕對數量還是人均上，外部世界已經不再相信美國了。”另一名網友也持相同觀點。

有的還追溯到“嬰兒潮一代”文化。一名網友寫道，1979年，克里斯多夫•拉什（Christopher Lasch）預言，“嬰兒潮一代”的“自我一代”將毀滅美國，將美國轉變為一種“自戀文化”，而中國總是以成年人的專注和能力在嚴肅行事。

有的則將中國哪裡做對了來“點醒”美國哪裡做錯了：“中國人不是考慮眼前利益，他們不是思考一年後的事情，而是50年甚至更長久……中國人做事基於事實和現實，我們為了政治目的否認事實，為了利潤創造了現實……中國人耗費鉅資為未來創建基礎設施，我們依賴市場只為今日攫取最大的利潤但無人關心明天……這就是為何他們不尊重我們。”

正如有美國網友一言以蔽，“中國不是我們的問題，我們自己才是問題。”

建議美國做好兩件事

針對弗裡德曼提出的重啟成功秘訣，也有網友給美國提出自己的建議和忠告。

一名加拿大網友建議美國做兩件事，第一件事是不要再去貶低共產黨，共產主義成為一個無意義的咒語，中國政府是為中國人服務的。第二件事是不要再搞霸權，中國不是美國衰落的替罪羊。美國很久以前就失去世界領導角色，但這不是不光彩的事情，而是世界人口和經濟發生轉移的結果。

“在合作競爭的精神下，美國和中國都有發展經濟的空間，但美國正在進行的遏制中國野心的計畫將會失敗並導致災難。”這名網友說。

還有人認為，美國衰落中國興起是不隨意志轉移的歷史趨勢，美國必須接受這個現實。

一條留言寫道：“美國在過去幾十年的主導地位是拜歐洲自相殘殺的戰爭和亞洲的欠發達所賜。但這是暫時的，亞洲正在成為世界的主導力量。要習慣這一想法。”

“世界需要一種新的力量平衡。”還有網友寫道，西方大國只是權力的一極，而其他國家（包括中國）可以有不同選擇，其他大國的崛起將成為力量平衡的一種方式。

不過，也有人並不認同文章“黑”美國以及提出的解決之道。

有人認為“美國一直是一個混亂的馬戲團，這才是真正的自治”；有人則表示弗裡德曼沒有抓住問題本質，“西方世界（尤其是美國）幫助中國成為一個經濟巨人。我們盲目地將生產外包到中國，使我們成為中國產品的主要市場……美國人（以及一般西方人）首先要做的是，限制消費主義生活方式，以及對中國製造產品的依賴。蘋果等美國公司應該把製造業從中國轉移到其他國家……這才應該是西方與中國打交道的方向。”

Anti-China RSF has more actors than audience in its play against ChinaHu Xijin Oct 02 2021

Anti-China RSF has more actors than audience in its play against China
Hu Xijin Oct 02 2021

The French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched its Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) transparency tool designed to “identify and reward trustworthy news sources” to combat false information. This online program requires the media to first conduct a self-assessment, which involves an internal check of conformity with the “JTI Standard.” Next, the results may be “voluntarily disclosed to the public.” The final stage of the process is an external evaluation by a third-party to certify a media as “trustworthy news sources.” The supporters of JTI are basically Western news and social organizations, including major US internet companies and the “Association of Taiwan Journalists.” Chinese and Russian news organizations are not involved.

The RSF describes JTI as “a game-changing transparency tool.” However, the spread of information on the internet is based on another set of logic different from traditional media. It is questionable whether tradition media, with its declining influence, can regain the public’s attention and influence by adding the tags of credibility.

The idea of JTI appeared in 2018. After the official launch in May, there was basically no actual response in the communication industry. Information about the project and how it operates is hard to come by on the internet.

I have again picked up such a topic that almost no one cares about, because the RSF is very anti-China. When it launched JTI, it obviously took the China factor into account, hoping that this online program, once becomes influential, can form another barrier to prevent Chinese voices from being heard in the international public opinion field. Its failure is destined.

Being full of ideological fanaticism, Western organizations such as RSF are fully hostile toward China, a socialist country. No matter what they do now, they will always regard damaging China as one of their goals. The world they want to shape is a spiritual kingdom irreconcilable with China. By forming and rewriting various “rules” and “standards,” they will draw a gap between the world and China to demonstrate China’s “self-isolation” which is incompatible with the so-called universal values.

In fact, the RSF is one of the worst liars in the contemporary world, and it has been committed to building an alliance of lies about China. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. The reality of China’s vigorous development is a strong proof that China’s path is not wrong. In their annual “world press freedom index,” China is always listed at the bottom. But the public opinion field in China can always discover and expose various problems in time and generate public opinion and pressure to solve these problems.

In contrast, the public opinion field of the US and other Western countries has almost done nothing to promote solutions to their national problems. The concept of “freedom of the press” has long been hallowed out by them, becoming the lipstick on Western countries’ face. By listing China’s “press freedom index” at bottom, they aim at boosting their own morale and entertaining themselves.

On some fundamental issues in today’s world, the Western public opinion regards position, instead of objectivity, as their priority. They do not hesitate to call white black. The COVID-19 epidemic has repeatedly caused humanitarian disasters in Western countries, but Western public opinion agencies have collectively regarded China, a country that has successfully fought the epidemic, as their first target of attack. The US and several other Western countries who have been waging wars have labeled China, a country that has not fought a war in several decades, a “threat” to world peace. Not only did US warships declare “freedom of navigation” by repeatedly crossing the Taiwan Straits, but even British warships have done the same despite being so far away from home. Obviously this is a provocation and a cheap trick, but it is falsely praised as “rules.” Has the eyeballs and conscience of the Western media been dug out together?

The RSF is one of the many Western organizations that have smeared China the most. They have supported almost all attacks against China. They realized that it’s not fun enough to oppose small countries. They believe they can have enough audience, show off as much as they want and set off unprecedentedly huge ideological storms by cursing China. Thus, they can finally find themselves something to do and develop a “career” that the entire West will fully support.

The RSF cannot control the internet. As I previously mentioned, a Western NGO cannot modify and reset the logic of the spread of false information on the internet. What the organization is really interested in is to create troubles for China, and it is much easier for them to find political and economic sponsorship by doing this. Their starting points may differ, but their political explanations to the West, especially to the US, will ultimately fall on creating an iron curtain of public opinion against China. This is the “value of their times” for Western ruling groups.

It seems that JTI has become an awkward play with more actors than audience. But organizations like the RSF are cheeky. Like a wild dog, it will haunt the road ahead of China from time to time. Therefore, we must carry a stick in our luggage when forging ahead.

The author is editor-in-chief of the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

TSMC Refusal does carry the risk of kidnapping & extortion by US just like Meng Wenzhou of Huawei. Taiwan’s TSMC says it won’t disclose client info to US

TSMC Refusal does carry the risk of kidnapping & extortion by US just like Meng Wenzhou of Huawei. Taiwan’s TSMC says it won’t disclose client info to US – Concerns grow as chipmakers including TSMC, Samsung asked to offer confidential data By Huang Tzu-ti, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) on Thursday (Sept. 30) reassured its clients that it will not reveal their information to the U.S. government.

The issue is getting attention following South Korean media reports that the U.S. Department of Commerce had asked TSMC, Samsung, Intel, among other companies, to provide data regarding their sales, inventory status, and details of their clients.

The request was made during a semiconductor summit at the White House on Sept. 23, to get a better hold of the world’s chip supply woes, according to Business Korea. Participants at the summit have until Nov. 8 to respond to the request, which contains 26 questions in a survey published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, per the National Development Fund.

TSMC will not disclose the confidential data of its clients nor engage in practices that jeopardize the rights of its clients and shareholders, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) told a legislative interpellation after reaching out to TSMC and the Ministry of Economic Affairs. NDC is a major shareholder in the chipmaker.

TSMC said it has received the full support of the government and will seek assistance if the need arises, wrote CNA. Industry observers believe compliance is voluntary but chipmakers may consider it obligatory as Washington might invoke the Defense Production Act to penalize those who refuse to comply, Korea Joong Ang Daily reported, citing a source at a company involved in the request.

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4302207