America: The new sick man of Asia?

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

08/10/2012

America: The new sick man of Asia?

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America: The new sick man of Asia?
By Peter
Lee

The tag line for United States President Barack Obama's appearance
at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Honolulu was "The
United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay".

The question
is, is the United States a leader bringing economic and security solutions to
the Pacific, or is it the new "Sick Man of Asia", infecting the region with its
imperial malaise.

Obama was in full scold mode at the meeting, telling
the Chinese their economy was "grown up" and it was time for Beijing to "stop
gaming the system".

Chinese President Hu Jintao, smarting under the lash
of American condescension, was perhaps muttering to himself that the main