----A significant factor was the election of Donald Trump
（Washington
Times，2019-10-2）
In these
times of near civil war, Americans agree on almost nothing. Yet, sometime in
2019, almost all of America finally got “woke” on China.
For years,
our leaders had yawned about Silk Road neo-imperialism in Africa and Asia, and
gross abuses of human rights against Chinese religious minorities and political
dissidents.
Almost every
assumption Washington made, both by Democratic and Republican administrations,
was logically flawed at best. And at worst, these calculations were a weird mix
of conservative commercial greed, liberal political correctness and shared
screwball naivete.
American
trade and political appeasement were never interpreted by Beijing as
magnanimity to be reciprocated, but always as weakness to be exploited. It was
always ludicrous to think that the more concessions on trade and human rights
the United States gave, the more China would Westernize and begin to resemble
America or an EU nation.
Even sillier
was the old shibboleth that China’s embrace of capitalist reforms — as if by
some unwritten, determinist economic law — would lead to constitutional
government. But the ability to buy a new cellphone never ensures the right to
vote for a candidate of one’s choice.
Instead, all
China did was auction off large sections of its new and more efficient economy
to crony Communist pseudo-capitalists and corrupt provincial officials in order
to modernize the country, beef up the military, warp the international trading
system — and make itself very rich.
Why did
America act in such a suicidal way on China?
Cheap Chinese
labor and lax American laws motivated hundreds of U.S. corporations to shut
down their domestic assembly plants and relocate to China. At least at first,
they were free to pay substandard wages and were mostly unregulated.
Once American
businesses got hooked on mega-profits, the Chinese government slowly started
stealing their technology, infringing on copyrights and patents, dumping their
own merchandise on the world market at prices below production costs, running
up huge trade surpluses and manipulating their currency.
But by then,
American corporations were so addicted to laissez-faire profit-making that they
turned a blind eye and paid their hush money.
Universities
cashed in too, both by setting up lucrative satellite campuses in China and
admitting tens of thousands of Chinese citizens. These Chinese students paid
full tuition (and sometimes premiums and surcharges), turning once
cash-strapped campuses into profitable degree mills.
Most college
deans and presidents simply ignored the dreadful human rights record of China,
not to mention occasional expatriate espionage rings designed to steal engineering
and high-tech research.
If profits
had blinded corporations to exploitive Chinese partnerships, political
correctness conveniently offered academia and the media political cover — as if
a mostly monoracial China was a 1.3-billion-person diverse “other” with
historical grievances against a supposedly racist America.
The result
was that everyone profited and all remained willfully blind to the ascendant
cutthroat and dictatorial colossus.
The domestic
winners in the appeasement of Communist China were the two American coasts —
the New York financial industry, the Washington political lobbying nexus,
Silicon Valley’s high-tech companies, and the coastal mega-research
universities such Harvard, Stanford and Yale.
Suddenly, the
intellectual and informational classes could sell their wares in a new global
market, and they profited enormously.
Few cared
about the “losers” in the now-hollowed-out Midwest and in rural America. For
corporate America, domestic muscular labor could be easily and cheaply replaced
by millions of Chinese workers. Outsourcing and offshoring pulled investment
capital out of America and put it overseas, as Chinese-assembled products
brought far greater profits.
Academics
could not have cared less that the deplorables and the working classes were
being wiped out, given their politically incorrect social and cultural views.
What finally
woke America up were two unforeseen developments.
First, the Chinese overreached and
systematically began militarizing neutral islands in the South China Sea. They
derided international commercial treaties.
In racist
fashion, they treated Asian and African countries as if they were 19th-century
colonies. And they unapologetically lifted technology from America’s biggest
and most powerful corporations to turn China into something akin to George
Orwell’s “1984.”
Meanwhile,
Beijing began rounding up dissidents, cracking down in Hong Kong and
“re-educating” millions of Muslims in detention camps. All that brazenness
finally drove the left to drop its multicultural blinders and accept the truth
of renegade Chinese oppression.
Second,
Donald Trump got elected president, all the while screaming that the Chinese
emperor had no clothes. The cheerleaders finally listened and admitted that
China had been buck naked after all.
Now we will
learn whether America woke up just in time or too late. Either way, no one will
credit the loud Trump for warning that China was threatening not just the
United States but the world as we have known it.
（V. D. Hanson, a classicist and historian at the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University)
几乎所有美国人对中国觉醒了
（万维博客，2019年10月05日）
《华盛顿时报》发表加州大学荣誉教授、斯坦福大学胡佛研究所军事史高级研究员韩森的文章说，【在2019年的某个时候，几乎所有美国人终于对中国“觉醒”了】
多年来，美国的领导人对北京在非洲、亚洲“丝绸之路”的新帝国主义，对严重侵犯中国宗教少数民族、不同政见者人权的行为不闻不问。民主、共和两党的政府对中国的几乎每项设想，都是保守的商业贪婪、自由主义政治正确性的大杂烩。
北京从未把美国在贸易和政治上对中国的绥靖政策看做宽宏大量，而是当作可资利用的弱点。如果认为美国在贸易和人权作出的让步越多，中国就越西方化，会越来越像美国或欧盟国家，那就太可笑了。
更愚蠢的是相信老而又老的教条：中国拥抱资本主义改革将导致宪政。中国人有能力购买新手机，却绝不保证他们有权投票给自己选择的候选人。相反，中国为了国家现代化、充实军力、歪曲利用国际贸易制度，使自己发大财，所做的一切，只不过是将其新的、更有效率的经济，大部分拍卖给裙带关系的共产党伪资本家以及贪污腐败的省级官员。
美国为什么以如此自杀性的方式对待中国？廉价的中国劳动力，加上美国法度松弛，促使数以百计的美国公司关掉国内的组装厂，迁厂到中国。因为至少在初期，他们可以自由偿付低于标准的工资，而且基本上不受监管。
一旦美国企业被巨额利润吸引，中国政府就开始慢慢窃取他们的技术，侵犯知识产权和专利权，以低于成本的价格向世界市场倾销其商品，积累巨额贸易顺差，并操纵他们的货币。此时美国公司沉迷于自由放任的发财方式，对上述情况装聋作哑，为此付出代价。美国大学也从中捞一把。他们在中国设立获利颇丰的卫星校区，招收成千上万的中国公民入学。这些中国学生支付全额学费，有时还包括保险费和附加费等，把校区变成了赚钱的学店。
利润蒙蔽了美国企业的眼睛，大多数学院院长和大学校长，都对中国糟糕的人权记录视而不见，更不会提那些派遣到国外，盗窃工程及高科技研究的间谍网了。结果是人人获利，所有人都对中国这个独裁巨人视而不见。对共产党中国绥靖政策的赢家，是美国东、西海岸，如纽约的金融业、华盛顿的政治游说网，硅谷的高科技公司，以及哈佛、斯坦福、耶鲁大学等大型研究型大学。
很少有人关心被掏空的美国中西部和农村的“失败者”。对美国公司来说，国内的劳动力很容易被中国的数百万廉价工人取代。由于中国组装的产品带来巨大利润，外包业务促使投资资金从美国流到海外。
【最终唤醒美国的，是两项不曾预料到的发展】
第一，中国过度扩张，开始系统地将南中国海的中立岛屿军事化。他们毫无悔意地从美国最大、最强的公司窃取技术，把中国变成了类似乔治・奥威尔名著《1984》描述的地方。
北京围捕持不同政见者，镇压香港抗议民众，拘留数以百万计的穆斯林进行“再教育”。这些无耻行径最终迫使美国左派摘下多元文化有色眼镜，接受中国人民反抗压迫的事实。
第二，川普当选美国总统，一直大声警告中国是赤裸裸的威胁，不仅威胁美国，而且威胁世界。现在我们将知道美国是及时醒来，还是太晚醒来。
