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“I would advise none of the countries to panic. I wouldn’t try to retaliate because as long as you don’t retaliate, this is the high end of the number.” This is the ceiling number Bessent told countries around the world about the Rose Garden Tariffs chart of April 2, 2025. Just don't retaliate and negotiations would work things out. Bessent said some countries say they would work with China. I have this to say to Spain about China, he said, it is like someone with brooms and a bucket of water, it keeps on going, production never stops, that is the Chinese model. What Bessent is saying is that the Chinese model is to keep doing what they have always done non stop with no intention to change- build capacity, overcapacity, and ship production overseas to saturate markets with production and destroy industrial base of other countries- from computers to solar panels to electric cars. China is also looking at it's very recent history just the last 15 years as proof of its superiority in cost and quality and efficiency in production as evidence that US and EU is in decline. Forgetting that this was possible with US assistance and desire to lift the Chinese people out of centuries of poverty. For the 19th and 20th century Britain, the US and Europe were leaders in cost, quality and efficiency. US , India and the EU are coming back using their ingenuity, creativity and talented workers and engineers. ...

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Obesity in the US is as high as about 40% in West Virginia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. It is lowest about 25% in Colorado, Vermont and Hawaii. About 22 states have obesity rate over 35%. Compare this with China which is seeing obesity increase from about 15% in 2023 to 20% in 2034. Real competition between the two countries starts with areas like health care coming out of the pandemic when looking at the true interest of both peoples instead of geopolitics creating a huge distraction from problems of health, climate change and education. Meat intake has tripled in China and a return to more vegetable and fruits and ancient grains is something that is needed badly, also helping tackle climate change. The states in the South and midwestern US have higher rates of obesity followed by northeast and western states. This includes in the South Kentucky, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas. In Midwest it includes Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Kansas. It is useful to note that this is in Voice of America news which is aimed at an overseas audience and this kind of information is not seen widely in US media. Robust food programs ae needed especially for people living in poverty. Health consciousness needs to be emphasized in all aspects of life and worklife, workspaces, living locations and transportation options all need to be devised around this. Bussel of the Robert Woods Foundation says even ten years back no state had over 35% of the population being obese. Clearly headed in the wrong direction with all the discussion in media run by billionaires on everything but what most affects the quality and ease of living of ordinary people. ...

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Lee says India started fom alower base but has made greater gains for the rural poor.India's urban-rural income gap has steadily declined since the earlier 1990's. And in the last decade economic growth in rural India has outpaced growth in urban areas by almost 40%. Rural India acccounts for almost half of the GDP, up from 46% in 1993. Lee points out that in the period of Deng's reforms right upto the Tiananmen Square massacre China made 80% of th poverty reduction, but since 2000 poverty and illiteracy have doubled in China, while they have been halved in India. DOmestic consumption as apart of GDP has fallen to 35% from around 60% in the 1980's. Lee is a foreign policy fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, and avisiting scholar at the Hudson Institute.

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Pena Nieto, the new president of Mexico, says that this is a new generation and a different PRI party from the one in the past. His focus is to learn from efforts made by countries such as China, Brazil and India in modernization and reducing poverty, so that Mexico can fulfill its potential. His goal will be to avoid ideological positions and patronage, and achieve measurable progress against poverty in Mexico. He cites the Mexico's Office of National Statistics figures showing Mexico's growth rate at 1.7% for 2000-2010, and the lack of reforms in the energy sector, labor markets, education and social security.

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The northeastern region of Brazil, the poorest region of Brazil, has benefitted from the economic expansion in Brazil. The region's GDP went up by 4.2% a year for the last ten years compared to 3.6% for Brazil. Bolsa Familia, President Lula's anti-poverty programme has benefitted the northeast, but the Getulio Vargas research institute shows three quarters of growth coming from earnings and expansion of export based agriculture in soyabeans and other products and from mining export industries. Projects in the northeast include development of the port and industrial area around Suape. A petrochemical plant, a shipyard and a Petrobras refinery, are under construction. A new railway will link Suape to the interior. Much of the development is for export industries in soyabeans and iron ore, and for the rail and port infrastructure that supports these exports to China. As a result the development looks similiar to what is happening in Australia with the huge expansion in rail and port infrastructure in that country to support iron ore and other mining exports to China. Any slow down in China will affect Brazil as the IMF has recently warned, because of an overdependence on commodity exports to China. Alexandre Rands of local Datametrica consultancy points to this when he says that infrastructure booms while helpful are not enough to sustain development. Big firms train the workers they need which is how Brazilian companies cope with a weak educational system. Schools in the northeast are however not getting the financial support to improve education, a situation that affects Brazil as a whole, but is even more evident in the northeast....

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The World Bank annual report on development focuses on agriculture as the means to reducing poverty in Africa and Asia, with the poorest farmers in Africa, South Asia and parts of China

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Speaking at a fireside chat at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C. Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman describes the task of lifting hundreds of millions from poverty in India done over the last 10 years. When China did this for about 400 million people by 2000 it had the support of the people of the US and Europe and the US opened its doors to favor China in its supply chain. How will the US and European Union respond to the same situation in India? This was accomplished in the US and Europe by the 1930's building on the work in the 1900 period. "We are reaching near saturation in providing the basic facilities to the people of the country. Have we removed these many number of people from poverty and lifted them out." "And that is to give them some good house to live in which is made of concrete and not of thatched roof with toilets in them, with drinking water reaching them through pipes, electricity, and a good road, not just the village, but also to streets in the village, and then connect them to the nearest highway; connect them with good transport facility and so on. And financial inclusion so that each member of the household has a bank account and they get every such benefit, which has to reach them, but directly into their bank account rather than through a middle agency. On skilling people "We are now focusing very much on skilling people, each according to their level. Skilling centers are now spread all over the country. The gradation of the skilling varies according to the individuals. Businesses and private sector entrepreneurs are also tied into it so that there is a link between the kind of training businesses want and actually those who are getting the training so that immediately they can get recruited. There will be a lot of skilling emphasis. On expanding the formalization of the economy getting rid of "the grey layer" India's digitization programme will be going on at full throttle and it'll cover most aspects of our lives. Today it covers health, education, and financial transactions. We expect it to move on to other areas as well so that there is greater ease of living and transparency, the economy gets even more formal. And therefore with that, you find  the economy gets its full strength coming on board, rather than having a second layer, which remains in the grey area. ...

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Some key takeaways from the Biden State of the Union- Biden has a vision for the future and the way forward for the US to a new frontier and new progress, where his predecessor really has none or has shown none. On China under his predecessor the US was shown as being behind and the US did little to sending of advanced US technologies to China. Today the US is growing and has the strongest economy of the G-7 and China is falling behind, flow of advanced technologies to China is stopped. On investing in the US. It is there plain for everyone to see. If the US has fair taxes the US can rebuild its infrastructure, modernize, invest in education and the working people of the country, and yet cut the deficit by large amounts. The thousand billionaires in the US pay only 8.2% in taxes. At 25% tax what a firefighter or policeman or teacher pays this would cut the deficit by $500 billion over 10 years. The oil companies and other corporations are similarly only paying less than what ordinary Americans are paying. This at fair tax rate of a minimum of 21% instead of 15% would further cut the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars after investing in the infrastructure and modernization of the economy that his predecessor has no plans for and instead given a tax cut to the corporations which studies show was really not paid for. Negotiating drug prices for Medicare with drug companies would save the country hundreds of billions of dollars. This could be reinvested in cutting child poverty, in free preschool education, in raising teachers wages. Sitting next to Jill Biden the First Lady was the prime minister of Sweden. What it told the US was that countries like Sweden and Finland in NATO had strengthened the alliance and it was for mere political reasons that Ukraine aid was prevented by his predecessor from being passed in the House after passage in the Senate by 70-30 with bipartisan support that also exists in the House. ...

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In August 2023 the Ukraine war is reduced to small unit tactics after a stalled Ukraine offensive. The results of the war over the last 2 years is a broadened NATO with Sweden and Finland inside NATO increasing the borders of NATO with Russia. On the Russian side some of eastern Ukraine on the Black Sea and the Dnieper river are now part of Russia in addition to the Crimea. The Ukraine offensive is stalled. Russia's economy has shifted from its western European orientation for energy exports and auto other imports to a Chinese orientation.  These changes are likely to remain with a shift of supply chains back from China and its suppliers to the US and the EU. This acts to restore the factory bases in the US and EU and revive communities built around factories in small towns across the region. This will bring back regions in the EU and the US that suffered from the loss of factory jobs and public services they supported. Overall this is a healthier situation for the people of Europe and the US. For China also the situation reverses to better quality yet slower growth, and a pause to take stock of the immense changes that happened with explosive growth in trade- the damage to the environment, floods and heat waves from climate change, the explosion in debt to three time its GDP, higher unemployment, rural poverty, and devise solutions to these problems. The war has accelerated the unraveling of the existing economic, social and trade arrangements that had stopped working for many years. ...

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Because India is still largely rural with about 65% of the population in the countryside rural poverty is a matter of huge importance. In a country of a billion people this is easily about 600-650 million people the vast majority of the world's poor. Though low inflation in agricultural produce and in agricultural wages have increased concern for rural poverty in India there are changes in multiple dimensions that have raised the quality of living in a big way. There is a major thrust in government programs directed at multiple levels for clean India, housing healthcare, cooking gas, electricity, banking, in the rural villages. About 4 million homes are built annually with government assistance and investment in rural programs has more than doubled in the last 7 years.  The National Food Security programs NFGSA guarantees purchases of rice and wheat at very low prices -set at 2 rupees per kilogram of wheat and  3 rupees per kilogram of rice or about $0.03 per kilogram.  This reduces the pressure on migration to cities making cities less inhabitable and finding it hard to cope as in countries like Indonesia, Philippines and in Africa. It gives more time for urbanization to take place in a better way as more resources and infrastructure is created for urbanization. Some states in India are about 50% urbanized with Tamilnadu (Madras or Chennai),  and Kerala (Cochin, Thiruvanathapuram) in the south and Maharashtra (Bombay or Mumbai) and Gujarat (Ahmedbad) in the north west, are at about 50% urbanization rate. The low inflation rate for agricultural wages affecting farm incomes combined with contributions by rural people to complement government contributions for housing, healthcare,  reduces the mount of money available for consumer spending in rural areas, affecting the economy. A problem in the short run, but with synergistic changes across multiple dimensions pushing the country forward across urban and rural areas. With the huge urban infrastructure spending increases creating more space for economic growth across the country. There is a general sense that for development a multi dimensional approach is needed, and a rising tide lift all boats as India urbanizes like China has done in the last 20 years. ...

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A look at the Palestine conflict from 1947 to 2023. The British Mandate for Palestine gave Britain a role in administering this part of the Middle East after it took control of the region from the defeated Ottoman Empire in the First World War 1914-1918. The League of Nations set up the Mandate with intention to take the people in this territory to independence. The UN in 1947 gave about 56% of Palestine to the Jewish people and 44% to the Arab people. When the Arab people rejected this UN settlement and Arab neighbors Jordan, Egypt and Syria invaded in 1947 about 70% of the territory went to the new state of Israel. There have been repeated conflicts almost every 7 years since and there are factions within Israel and inside Palestine Arabs who have protracted the dispute, including over holy sites in Jerusalem, without seeking the kind of settlement that won peace for Ireland after hundreds of years of British rule and discrimination. The world with its billions of people in China and India who seek development and billions of people in Africa and Latin America who seek a way out of poverty, has no interest in prolonging small conflicts that distract from the importance of tackling climate change, infrastructure development and education, healthcare, ...

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The tech monopolies have operated with impunity with one overriding goal of maximizing profits for far too long. Under Theodore Roosevelt the solution was to breakup the oil monopolies of the 1890's. Fighting Tammany Hall corruption in the New York governing structure was just one of TR's achievements, he also fought for better living conditions for workers in New York, for breaking up Standard Oil's grip on the oil industry, and worked hard to rebuild the American Navy to stand up to the European Colonial Powers who impoverished India and China. America can be proud of TR,  and Joe Stilwell who fought the Japanese in China with deep understanding and concern for ordinary Chinese and their struggle against poverty, the wall of indifference of the colonial powers to their condition.

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In all the coverage on the Indian election the impossible having been accomplished that of going beyond the 244 million voters in the US, beyond the 373 million voters in the European Union. The eligible voters in India 2024 are 640 million and all the counting done on one day was accomplished by the Electoral Commission and tackled under leadership of the team by Rajiv Kumar, a civil servant who earlier served as the Finance Secretary of India. The results show that the elections were free and fair as the results speak for themselves that the opposition parties did better than they expected. What was not told in media coverage in the US and EU/UK was that the Opposition and the current government are at odds on one fundamental issue that a continental country suffering from centuries of colonialism can only create a modern nation with the infrastructure enjoyed by the US, EU, China, if it creates a large enough pool of investment in the trillions of dollars, has a master plan of proven execution, with no leakages from this pool of investment. Leakages from the pool of investment only stopped after 2014, and actions of direct deposits to 400 million bank accounts or rural households was essential. For modernization to succeed another condition that had to be fulfilled was to create even through a pandemic a core of about 500 million of 1.4 billion people of the middle and lower classes who would approach the conditions o the US, EU, China consumer base for industry. This the Modi government has done with all its projects and hard work by adding the 250 million people to the consumer base pulled out of poverty. The task ahead is doing what the US, EU, China as continental nations have done to modernize and industrialize 2024-2035 to build the third largest economy ahead of the EU by 2035 and every state and city in India aspires to this transformation, from the south and northeast to the north and the west.   ...

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Insights from Jagdish Bhagwati- 1) Poverty actually declined under the previous government, it was displaced by the Congress not because poverty had increased but by the revolution of rising expectations and the democratic processes functioning in India. 2) The pressure cooker democratization in a place like Iraq is different from democracy in India, because India had democratic processes and rule of law under the British, which was followed by democratic processes functioning under the Nehru years and right upto to the present day. This is almost over 100 years of democratic practice. 3) Minority rights were respected by the post independence governments. 4) In China the government thinks riots are caused by inequality and rural-urban prosperity divide. Actually it is more because of the lack of democratic processes functioning in China to accomodate the revolution in rising expectations. 5) From a perspective of longterm sustainable growth this makes India's democratic functioning a better approach. Bhagawati does not mention the advantages in terms of private initiative that are fostered in a system of private capital and private companies. This dates back to the Tata enterprises under the British going back a hundred years....

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Harris pragmatic approach and willingness to try new solutions applies to Michigan- to find ways to protect union jobs and make the transition to clean cars in a way that increases wages and jobs and creates a bright future for the auto industry. Letting other countries manufacture EV's would hand over the manufacturing technologies to say China and lead to a future collapse of the auto industry in Michigan. This is why there is a transition period which is flexible to 2030 or even 2034, and the curve is for more gains in EV sales in the latter years as prices come down and technology improves. At every step of the way business presents unique challenges, and FDR/Harris "persistent bold experimentation" is part of the answer as China's BYD has come up with a better cheaper in house battery that means it can export EV's at lower prices- the US can't as yet. Electric vehicles sales are plateauing in 2024 growing from 7.4% to 7.8%. The former president describes an EV mandate. No EV mandate for all cars to be electric exists. The action taken by president Biden is for all cars to meet greenhouse gas emission targets that would require 50 percent of cars to be electric vehicles by 2030. Michigan as the home of the auto industry is heavily influenced by the auto industry. Biden walked the picket line here last year to support a UAW strike for higher wages after decades of concessions by workers that reduced wages to near the poverty level for families.  Harris pragmatic approach and willingness to try new solutions applies to Michigan- to find ways to protect union jobs and make the transition to clean cars in a way that increases wages and jobs and creates a bright future for the auto industry. Letting other countries manufacture EV's would hand over the manufacturing technologies to say China and lead to a future collapse of the auto industry in Michigan. This is why there is a transition period which is flexible to 2030 or even 2034 an the curve is for more gains in EV sales in the latter years as prices come down and technology improves. At every step of the way business presents unique challenges and innovation is part of the answer as China's BYD has come up with a better in house battery that means it can export EV's- the US can't as yet. ...

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With so much coverage of other aspects of China,  to really understand China and Xi Jinping one has to understand the rural urban situation in China. Xi's long experience as a teenager in the cultural revolution of Mao was in rural areas, the 8 years he spent there till the age of 22, as this report by James Areddy with help of Yijun, Cheng and Qi aptly shows. It traces the shift and mass migration to cities starting with Deng's modernization drive in 1979. This shift of labor to city and town factories as the U.S. and Europe shifted factories and production to China is the story of our times. How it has both helped and hurt China and how it has become the dominant issue of our times, and a lesson for India in the middle of its own modernization and shift of labor to cities. It has helped China modernize with the shift during 1979 to 2016 and run into a road block with president Trump leading a movement in the U.S. of people most hurt by the outsourcing of factories and production to China. It was not meant to be this way. Yet the shift also led to ripping up the fabric of communities and towns with loss of factories across America over three decades. Because China is a large country the impact was huge decade after decade, leading to a backlash against lost jobs in the U.S. and in Europe.  Xi Jinping has romantic view of rural China as he spent 7 years in Shanxi province rural areas during the cultural revolution under Mao. During this period he toiled as part of farm labor alongside villagers which allowed him to get to know villagers and farmers in the countryside well, and formed his view of the world around him. As it is described in a description of the man in Chinese sources- "He arrived at the village as a slightly lost teenager and left as a 22 year old man determined to do something for the people."  China's system separated migrants from city dwellers not  giving same rights to better education, to schools and housing, and official documents separating the two, city dwellers and migrant populations from rural areas. As a result as China modernized and population shifted -shown here in excellent graphic charts over four decades- in 1979 from about 80% in rural areas and 20% in urban the shift goes to 50-50 by 2001. Today it is 40-60 with 60% in rural areas but a population of 40% suffering from severe inequalities and  low incomes. So that GDP per capita of $10,000 for China is deceiving. The real incomes in average disposable income is about $4300 in urban and $1700 in rural area, according to National Bureau of Statistics. High school education is hard enough to get in rural areas, medical care is very basic and the $1700 would hardly get a room in low income housing in a large town in China, says premier Li Keqiang. Keqiang did his masters thesis on urbanization and has studied this shift from his college days. Just as in Gandhi's India, Mao's China is the story of the villages, with 128,000 villages for 600 million people in Mr. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty drive. Hong Kong other issues have to be understood in the context of these concerns of China's leadership today- the sense that strong central leadership alone can keep the country together and bring a decent life to the people in the villages and in the countryside outside the cities.  Modernization of cities still set in the context of China's vast rural population and essential to its full uplift and progress. Xi has allocated $80 billion each year to bring roads, schools, medical facilities, and other amenities including electricity and modern heating. The idea now is to shift people back to the villages, find opportunities for jobs and livelihoods in farming, tourism with guesthouse facilities, and other occupations in the villages. The villages are being turned into attractive places to live one by one in this party drive and providing new enthusiasm and support for the party's efforts. India can learn from this experience in China. The western nations of the U.S. and Europe can no longer and will no longer undertake the wholesale shift of factories with loss of jobs to China or India to offer the prospect of bringing these countries to the kind of urbanization and overall prosperity of small nations like Japan and South Korea, which are a tiny fraction of the population of China and India+ Pakistan + Bangladesh. As a result China is changing strategy now with a return to some aspects of the informal economy in Chengdu with street peddlers and tiny retail, and return of migrants back to better built and improved villages in the countryside. A better life than in cities is possible this view says for people from these rural areas, if the rural areas are given modern facilities and construction and resources are allocated, job creation locally tackled. The villages can offer better air quality, better quality of life where villagers who earlier migrated to cities with ownership of land, when they are modernized with better roads and have better facilities for education, housing and healthcare, better amenities. The new approach is to strike a good balance for urbanization, by modernizing and investing in villages and small towns, so that cities can cope and overall life can be better than with mass migration and wholesale urbanization. It is also a balance that works well for the U.S. and Europe which can redirect manufacturing to their home regions as part of a better distributed and balanced supply chain than the one that was unwittingly built over the last three decades.    ...

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In this thoughtful essay Bob Davis of the WSJ asks whether the decision of the Clinton administration to admit China into the World Trade Organization was a bad one for the U.S.  Mr. Clinton in 2000 tried to persuade Congress citing words of president Woodrow Wilson that of a dream "of a world full of free markets, free elections, and free peoples working together."  Every year China would have its most favored nation status renewed with help from supporters in Congress. After WTO entry this was not necessary. Chinese leaders saw the entry into WTO as a way to knock down trade barriers, to act a wrecking ball for the planned economy, to give the economy a big boost.  In 1994 China was a relatively backward economy with 60% of the population living on less than $1.90 a day. Hard to imagine today.  Not everyone was convinced that it was good for the U.S. This included a trade attorney who had tackled a huge trade deficit with Japan in the Reagan period- Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer was Deputy Trade Representative negotiating with the Japanese. His prediction was that no job in America would be safe once China entered the WTO, that China would become a dominant trading nation.  Robert Cassidy, 73, trade negotiator for president Clinton looks back on that time and says that he regrets what has happened, that all his work night and a day only benefited business and hurt workers. David Autor, MIT economist and his colleagues,  in a later study documented loss of 2.4 million jobs to Chinese competition between 1999 and 2011, in many manufacturing towns dotting the landscape of America, particularly in the midwestern states. And the expectation that the higher economic growth would lead to less political control did not turn out to be true.  In the process multinationals rushed to China after WTO entry and China became the world's manufacturing floor. By 2013 China's per capita income reached $7000, after years of fast GDP growth approaching 10% a year.  About 400 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty from living on less than $1.90 per day from 1999 to 2011, according to the World Bank. A big problem was that the U.S. did not plan for the change from WTO entry. No resources were allocated for the plan to let American workers adjust through worker retraining and special trade handicapped income support, to allow for a slow planned shift. Instead the pace of growth was faster than that which the U.S. faced with the Japanese export offensive in the eighties. China experienced double digit growth after 2000. The irony is that the Republican administrations that followed Clinton followed a policy of free trade to the advantage of China's state run economy when working class Americans voted mostly for the Democratic Party. Little was done and little said in the media from Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the establishment during this time even after Mr. David Autor documented the effects of trade in the U.S.  Till Mr. Trump recognizing the alienation in communities hit by job losses from trade upended American politics, shifted this part of the electorate to the Republican base. Mr. Lighthizer's view is that complaints about China should be left out of WTO because it is naive to tackle it that way. With a $375 billion China trade deficit for 2017 the challenge has to be met in a different way, and the U.S. has to rely on regaining its economic strength within a fair trading framework. Having negotiated with the Japanese Mr. Lighthizer sees the approach adopted then as the one right for today. During the long negotiations Lighthizer is said to have received many negotiating positions of the Japanese signifying no change in long sessions. He once simply made a paper plane and sent it right back, in one of these sessions. He meant that the U.S. was serious about reversing the imbalance in trade. ...

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For the largest electorate in the world India is relying entirely on electronic voting machines. It is massive - 970 million voters over several phases in different regions taking place in May 2024. The Election Commission is monitoring the election and India's Supreme Court gives it's ruling to protect the democratic process. It is unlike anything in the world. It all started in 1945 with the negotiations begun by Labour's Attlee government - the most successful British government of the 20th century, Clement Attlee's government created the Bank of England and the NHS, and brought freedom to India and started decolonization in European empires. A new Constitution was written by 1947 with the guidance of Gandhiji (Mohandas Gandhi) who led the struggle for Hind Swaraj in 1905. The democratic process was established with elections that elected Nehru, a series of coaltiion governments and since 2014 a government focused on Vikshit Bharat, modernization similar to Japan and China that is taking place in India. Already 250 million people have been lifted out of poverty. And free food rations have ended hunger in India, Swacch Bharat has made sanitation modern and available everywhere, water and gas connections are now down to the last household to fulfill Gandhi's dream of reaching the last person in the line. Solar and renewable energy are being undertaken, along with fast modern transportation and cost effective digital connections. A target is set for 2047 for Vikshit Bharat. ...

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This look at China and leaders Mao, Chou-en-lai, Deng, Xi Jinping through the lens of the Hoover Institution series on authoritarianism "The Party's Interest Come First," by Hoover research fellow Turgian makes the same errors as is evident from expert at Oxford University/ Kennedy School Rana Shantasil Mitter of Indian descent. Which is to see China as an academic, not by immersing oneself in China of 1890- 1950 into the lives of China's millions of ordinary people. And how is one to immerse oneself into these lives. One can do this through the eyes of General Stilwell who loved and immersed himself in China like it could be said no other American of that period in Barbara Tuchman's well researched account of this China of 1890-1950.  One clue to this is also that Tuchman unlike Torgian or Mitter by a long shot is the only writer who met Mao in Beijing in the 1970's. In 1971 she met Mao and made observations on the lives of the people in "Notes from China- If Mao had met Roosevelt in 1945." As a result of Tuchman's account of Stilwell's personal experience of China since 1900's being lost to most Americans, there is no concept of what China had experienced with the gradual collapse of China's economy and politcal structures, its defense as China, like India, and Asia as a whole failed to experience the opening up to science and technology and modern ways of thought since 1600. The results were catastrophic for the Chinese people and for the people of India leading to economic destruction on a scale unknown in history and lives shortened and reduced by poverty.  ...

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The leaders of India and China, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping will meet at a 2 day summit in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, China, on April 27, 2018.  The meeting is significant because for the first time the 2 leaders will meet on a one on one basis for a significant part of the time without aides to get a better understanding of each other, and a get a sense of how to establish a good relationship between the 2 countries. Ma Jiali of the China Reform Forum, a think tank affiliated with the Communist Party's Central Party School says a better relationship would serve China's interests for regional calm, so that China can focus on internal issues of tackling poverty in the interior of China, tackle economic issues arising from a difficult trading relationship with the U.S. including the tariffs of the Trump administration.  China's leadership have not anticipated the decisions made by president Trump and the Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to take a strong stand on correcting an imbalance in trade that leads to about $1 billion in trade deficit each day for the U.S. with China. Previous administrations in the U.S. have not taken action. Also at issue in the U.S. China relationship is for the first time transfer of technology for "Made in China 2025." China's earlier advances were made with a free flow of technology from the U.S. and Europe.  The last time the two leaders met was in 2014. This time the issues of border relations in the Himalayas, and the relations with China in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean region, the growing relationship between Australia, U.S., India and Japan, are seen in a different light with the strong disagreements on trade relations with the U.S.  China sees a need for improving relations with India. Prime Minister Modi faces new elections in 2019 and the need to focus on infrastructure and development to win a second term in office for the ruling BJP Party.  A reduction in tensions serves the interest of both countries and leaders.   ...

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Biden has put forward a new initiative to strengthen democracy by getting increased commitments to key features for democratic processes in the world. The idea is not to limit partnerships with other countries says Anthony Blinken, Mr. Biden's main adviser and secretary of state. This means India a key partner in both democracy and the Indo-Pacific can for defending its thousands of miles of border in the high Himalayas with enroachment of China into border areas such as Tibet, maintain its good legacy relationships with Russia as happened in last weeks Modi-Putin meeting.  The idea says Blinken is- "The US does not want to limit your partnerships with other countries. We want to make your partnerships with us even stronger." This means the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, can maintain economic and development related ties with China which contribute to their economy, and build stronger relationships of culture and democratic processes with the US, India, European Union and Japan. For this reason the White House has emphasized that this is not about the US giving stamp of approval or disapproval of which country is a democracy and which is not. Too much of that happened under previous governments including Reagan, Carter, Bush, Obama.  The situation of Turkey relates to independence of judiciary and the unwillingness to take another look at problems. There is also the issue of technology is to be used so that citizens are protected from undue surveillance. Mistakes can be made but judiciary acts as an independent branch under the arrangements of checks and balances in American, British and now European frameworks of democracy built over centuries of struggle between monarchies and the people dating back to the Magna Carta in Britain. Neglect of workers and families also is an issue for democracies as for instance the effort now taking place in Germany under Scholz to "respect" workers and families. Lack of this led to the movements in US and European democracies giving room to vent that could ultimately lead to subverting democracies in the homeplace of democracies in the US or Britain. Why such a large gathering of 100 countries? Biden understands that the processes of democracy are always being improved and are a work for each new generation. For this reason there is no perfect scorecard- an ever renewing effort to make the process work in the best interests of the people of the country one generation at a time, to improve the quality of life and do this by preserving the right of peoples to choose their governments.  Why exclude China and Russia, till recently China had a consultative arrangement to run the country and Russia has elections? On this question the response of the Biden administration is that countries commit to the process and back initiatives to "counter authoritarianism. combat corruption, and promote respect for human rights."   Pakistan because it struggles with a long legacy of shortfall in the area of education after the collapse of Mughal rule that was seen under the British, and the general poverty of the Indian subcontinent that is striving to preserve the practice of elections, judiciary, and other democratic processes that were introduced in the Punjab and Sind provinces, and elsewhere since 1900. This is true for much of Africa, and also in parts of India, where aspirations of the people are for democratic process but faced with difficulties, corruption and poverty. In India the efforts of Naoroji, Gokhale, Gandhi, Nehru and Rajagopachari, Govind Pant, almost all leaders of the period since the 1850's, and able well meaning administrators since Lord Mayo in 1868 were to let democratic processes gradually find deep roots. Biden see aspirational in the face of difficulties as acceptable, even truly remarkable, with a willingness to learn from other countries to strengthen its own processes for democracy. It is no longer an Anglo-Saxon model alone as Germany and Europe are part of this process to be renewed by each generation. So are India and Japan. India after a century of elections since 1900 gradually expanding voters from one million to 5 million in the 1930's and to 900 million in 2019, with independent judiciary in a system of checks and balances as in the US.    ...

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America had forgotten it's workers built America in a Clinton-Trump world. The Federal Poverty Level is $35000 - $40000 when entry younger UAW workers at lower tiers make $34000 a year during wage negotiations and a UAW strike in 2023. The contrast from 2016 could not be greater- no president in history except Biden on a worker strike picket line yesterday, Mrs Clinton oblivious about unions in the midwest in 2016. Mr. Trump saying wage negotiations not important as he visits Drake Enterprises, automobile parts supplier, in Clinton Township, Macomb County, Michigan. The Guardian reports most were small business owners, with  few autoworkers. Enthusiasm of small business owners high for Trump in this swing county in Michigan. In stark contrast to the 2016 campaign president Biden was seen the previous day with a bull horn at a UAW auto workers strike picket line, becoming the first US president in history to do this. Biden said "workers built the middle class." Trump said China was the enemy not low wages or incompetent bosses, saying "the current wage negotiations are not as important as you think," when workers had tiered wages from previous concessions on wages, with entry level wages starting at about $17 an hour. That is only slightly above the $16 minimum wage in California. America in the Clinton-Trump world had truly forgotten that workers in its factories built America, and workers families made America what it was for most of the century since Lincoln and the Industrial Revolution. ...

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The short story collection, "Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh," and "Garlic Ballads," provides an uncoventional view of rural life, and provide pictures of arrogant officials and rural folk just trying to survive. Mo Yan says: "As long as humans live, there is pain." And he provides a humorous view of the situation. There is poverty and conditions are difficult he says in a preface: "the people struggled to keep death from the door, with little to eat and rags for clothes." His recent work "Life and Death Are Wearing Me out," shows life in rural China since 1949.

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How China is reviving memories of its struggles with Japan since 1900 and its efforts to modernize since 1950 under the leadership of the Communist Party led by Mao and Chou-en-Lai. Who were followed by 1990-2010 by a technocratic class of engineers and professionals, and now reverts back under XI Jinping -a son of one of the founders of the revolutionary armies that fought the Japanese- reverts back to its revolutionary ideologies that defined its emergence as a modern nation. Only American business interests fail to understand the China of president Xi Jinping because they like Tim Cook have not read or understood the modern history of China. In the book "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" by Tuchman, a lot of this can be experienced first hand as we see West point colonel Joe Stilwell experience China first hand since 1920's through the phase of nationalist sentiments, outright Japanese invasion, and the setbacks as North China and the Yangste Valley fall to Japan's Kwantung Army elements who run the government by 1939. Then comes the Second World War, Marshall is appointed chief of the Army by FDR in 1939 and he makes Stilwell brigadier general and responsible for China for the next 8 years. This is a China Stilwell loved and understood from daily contacts with the ordinary people of China that are on every page of this book. Jinping's father grew up in this way leading the revolutionary armies that fought the Japanese, and some of this passed on to his son even though he suffered from the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution of the 1960's, but understood the significance of what his parent's generation had accomplished in creating modern China free of centuries of unimaginable poverty, indifference of the ruling classes, and oppression made worse by foreign powers. ...

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Negative interest hurt the vulnerable the most- consider how much in interest would have to be deposited in retirement accounts savings of retirees to make up for lost interest over two decades. It could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It has added to the poverty in the Nation as interest income went gradually to negligible amounts. It also disincentivised savings,  and reduced the cost of capital so that hundreds of billions of dollars of retirees and other people's income was shifted into startups and dubious investments that did little to add to essential public services, education, healthcare, that would improve the quality of life for workers, families and children.It was in effect a misuse of economic policy to serve one section of the population at the expense of the large majority of the people in the Nation, and a shift of hundreds of billions of dollars over two decades from the vulnerable who needed it most to other uses. And aggravating the situation resulting from the failures in investing in manufacturing in the US that put whole communities at risk, neglecting the investment in infrastructure that helps ordinary people the vast majority in the nation the most. Only now are these investments being taken up by the Biden administration reallocating funds to infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy, to retirees, and to communities across America. During this time of two lost decades for America, and into the future, the great nations of Asia, China and India, have advanced and are advancing with focused attention on the needs of all the people in their nations, and most importantly of all in advanced infrastructure and advanced manufacturing.  ...