Obama’s Appetite for Researching China Grows Larger

From Obama’s recent string of talks, we can see that the black president is stepping up to learn Chinese culture, integrating it into his daily work. Recently in China, the popular film, “Let the Bullets Fly” was followed up by Obama’s “let economics fly”. Both have created intense enthusiasm. As Obama emphasizes the study of Chinese education and culture, it is evident he is paying a high amount of attention to China. Obama said, “Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped… China is building faster trains and newer airports…China became the home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer.”

Since World War II, every U.S. president has diligently researched China, hoping to find the answers to perplexing issues that they had no way of understanding. The difference between Obama and presidents of the past, however, is that he is not only researching Chinese political, economic and military affairs, but he is going deeper by researching Chinese education and culture. The more Obama understands about China, the larger his appetite becomes. He stresses that the potential for China-U.S. cooperation is extremely immense, anticipating that U.S. goods exported to China will double from their 2010 level of 100 billion U.S. dollars to $200 billion or more. He also believes that China-U.S. business exchanges are crucial to relations between the two countries; only if the U.S. continues to expand trade with China will American industry be able to further open the massive Chinese market and find a way out of its current predicament.

Obama thinks that while people always applaud champion athletes at sports competitions and present them with flowers, they do not pay enough attention to the victors of technology competitions. If only people paid attention to scientists the way they did sports stars, then the country would have hope for the future. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently announced the results of its assessment of each country’s students: in technology, mathematics, and culture levels, Shanghai ranked first in the world, while American students were not even in the top 20. Obama thinks that the U.S. should study Chinese and Indian education, start children’s education earlier, extend the school day and pay more attention to mathematics and science education in order to improve student performance.

Pay attention to China’s fastest computer

He explained the United States’ present financial situation is extremely difficult, but the world has already undergone a profound transformation which requires hard work in the following three areas in order to stimulate and realize a true economic recovery: innovation, education and basic infrastructure. In his hour-long State of the Union address, Obama mentioned China four times, repeatedly urging that the challenges of China and India must be met. He revealed that many people believe China uses its low-cost labor advantage to easily steal away manufacturing jobs, and that this old-fashioned idea must be broken. Obama’s government will invest 3 percent of the United States’ GDP towards technological innovation to avoid being abandoned by the world.

Recognizing the flaws of American-style democracy

For a long time, the U.S. has implemented a policy of foreign expansion, undergoing multiple large-scale wars with North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. War has made the U.S. lose its vigor and its economy went into a landslide. Obama acknowledges the deficiencies of the United States’ financial system that made Wall Street become the source of an epidemic. Mistakes in deciding policy, flaws of the system, implementation of harmful policies and limitless military expansion reveal that American-style democracy is far from perfect. The largest economic crisis in a hundred years has already caused the integrity of the United States and the U.S. dollar to plummet. The “China threat” theory, which goes by many names, and the selfish thinking that blames one’s own disasters on other countries are both incompatible with traditional Chinese civilization.

In the process of researching China, Obama also revealed his own unhealthy state of mind. In an interview with Australian television, he said, “If over a billion Chinese citizens have the same living patterns as Australians and Americans do right now then all of us are in for a very miserable time, the planet just can’t sustain it, so they understand that they’ve got to make a decision about a new model that is more sustainable that allows them to pursue the economic growth that they’re pursuing while at the same time dealing with these environmental consequences.”

Hypocritically, he went on to say that the U.S. certainly does not want to restrict China’s development, but that in developing, China must shoulder its international responsibilities. “The only thing we want to make sure of is that a country like China as it is growing and inevitably will end up being the largest economy just because of the enormous size of their population, that they are also taking their international responsibilities seriously and that they recognize that with great power comes great responsibility,” he said. Yet knowing that China’s high-speed rail leads that of the West by a wide margin, he also said in a separate interview, “there’s no reason why Europe or China should have the fastest trains when we can build them right here in America.”