BEIJING: I have lived and worked in Beijing, China since October 2010, while my wife is a Chinese woman and we have a young son. Meanwhile, I remain an American patriot, strong supporter of US President-elect Donald J. Trump and fervently embrace the ‘America First’ agenda. But how could a man -born in Dallas, Texas, as well as a lifelong Roman Catholic who attended Catholic schools from grade school to college transform into a China-friendly person?
One might deem this dichotomy of character as incomprehensible and impossible. Yes, I believe Trump will likely become one of the greatest US Presidents of all-time and I do endorse his policies to boost US domestic manufacturing, favor higher tariffs on imports to protect US industries and companies, while reaffirming the Chinese government should make further progress on protecting IPR (intellectual property rights), creating fairer conditions for inbound FDI (foreign direct investments) and encouraging Beijing to pursue a partnership with Washington.
Yet, my evolution as someone who is both pro-MAGA (Make America Great Again) and pro-China did not happen overnight.
Surprise prediction turns true and not exactly by choice
The first signal I could find myself living in China came as a college student. One autumn weekend I overheard students saying they planned to meet someone who allegedly can foretell people’s future. So, we traveled from our campus in Merrimack, N.H. to a retreat in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
While awaiting with students to learn about our fates, a few came out of their meetings being told that they will enjoy successful careers as lawyers, professors and politicians and be happily-married husbands and wives with good children. But a few were disappointed when they were told that they would suffer from prolonged poverty, undergo divorces and family separations. Hence, I entered my session with trepidation.
And when I completed my meeting, I walked out in a daze. A friend asked if I had seen a ghost. Apparently, the so-called fortune teller predicted I would spend most of my adult life on the other side of the world living in China with a mission to strengthen US-China bilateral relations as a peace and prosperity messenger.
My fellow classmates were shocked, and we all agreed that my fortune would never come true. They pointed out that I never showed intellectual curiosity about China, I was awful at STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects and most of all, I believed at that time in mid-1990s’ that China was the most evil country.
Hence, we all shared a good laugh and I didn’t give it another thought for the next ten years of my life (1994-2004).
My earliest memories had deep connections to China
Although it’s commonly believed that most Americans are anti-China, we should understand that such attitudes stem mostly from ignorance, apathy, cultural misunderstandings and reflections on China’s history. I was raised from a religious family with strong conservative ethics. My formative years as a child, teenager and young adult were from the 1980s and 1990s.
This time period marked the end of the Cold War era and emergence of the globalist age that had promoted the spread of democracy, capitalism and free trade. Meanwhile, China was moving forward on its ‘Reform and Opening Up’ policy launched by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s.
I was born in 1975 and our family moved from Dallas to Washington as my father worked in the Reagan administration (1981-1984). My earliest memories were from August 1982 when President Ronald Reagan signed a third joint communiqué with the People’s Republic of China to normalize relations. I recall my dad taking me to his office on a Saturday morning and the streets were lined with Chinese and American flags.
I overheard a man joking, “What’s with all these Chinese flags? Did China conquer the USA and nobody told me about it?” And for the rest of the day, I would often look out the window and stare at the Chinese flags.
My grade school also celebrated by having our teachers talk more about China and taking field trips to learn more about Chinese civilization. We discovered that the Chinese invented fireworks and gun powder, which we thought was cool. Another time, our class visited a museum of Asian Art Collections and I saw a pretty Chinese woman as a guide wearing a red silk dress, called a qipao. I was fascinated by Chinese female beauty ever since.
We discovered the glories of ancient Chinese civilization and a few of my classmates hailed from Asian diplomatic families. The Asian students were diligent workers, kind-hearted and loyal to friends, which I found as endearing character traits. My closest friends were Asian students.
Learning bittersweet lessons after returning to Texas
In January 1985, my family moved back to Texas. I experienced culture shock. When living in Washington DC, you think the capital city is the center of the world. Hence, local residents are prone to live in a bubble atmosphere thinking that politics, diplomacy and foreign affairs are all deeply connected and little else matters.
I came in for a rude awakening in Texas to discover that my fellow students didn’t care about politics. It didn’t help that I was skinny boy with a voice sounding like Bobby Kennedy, brother of the late President John F. Kennedy, who had a deep Boston accent, and I showed little interest in hunting, fishing and camping.
Accordingly, I was subjected to merciless bullying and didn’t have friends or a girlfriend in high school as well. I was teased for looking wimpy, acting overly sensitive, and anytime I spoke up, fellow classmates would impersonate my accent, which they claimed was the most annoying sound.
The relentless bullying had lasted for years and didn’t end until I entered a small Catholic college in New Hampshire. Nonetheless, I learned important lessons from those humbling experiences. Popularity is meaningless. My cruelest tormentors had been popular students who would smile and laugh while hitting and insulting me. Be careful about trusting people.
I befriended a student who thought it humorous to pretend to be my friend in order to sucker me into telling my secrets in order to gossip about me. But I also discovered that people lie and many people, who are targeted for bullying, are misunderstood. The public labels them as fools, jerks or stupid without providing them an opportunity to respond in a fair platform.
I was the school boy falsely labeled and could not persuade the students I was a normal human being just like them. Therefore, I read many books in high school, because my only friends were books back then. Later on, I discovered that many Asian-American students suffered similar indignities as students.
Many Asian-American students were good students academically, but they didn’t excel in sports and popularity. As I grew older and met more Asian-Americans, I felt a close kinship to them. Hence, the impact of bullying made more sympathetic to misunderstood people and to promote fairness as top priority. It’s not “might makes right.”
China is my heart, despite all its flaws
No country is perfect and we should not expect otherwise. Let’s move on to the present and its commonly understood that many Americans don’t see China in a positive light. They look at China and see a villain since the Western mainstream media has been effective at labeling China as a dark force. But is that really true?
I have lived in Beijing for over 15 years, witnessing the good, bad and ugly of the country and its citizens. We Americans hold a propensity to view international relations in a similar manner to watching a Hollywood blockbuster action film. A US movie follows the same format: good guys fight bad guys and win.
But international affairs are much more nuanced. China is a rival to the US as a geopolitical power and economic competitor but that should not equate to genuine “enemy status.”
A year ago, I visited Washington DC and attended a forum on Asian topics connected to US foreign policy at a prestigious think tank. An American expert on China said, “we, as Americans, must prepare for the inevitable war with China, because if we don’t the Chinese will defeat our great nation.”
In response, I asked, “have you considered the possibility that the Chinese government might not prefer to wage a military war against the US?” Well, the expert looked perplexed. So I asked, “Can I assume that you had ever been asked or pondered this question before?” He disclosed that this was true for him, alongside all other American experts on China that he was working with in DC.
Many so-called China experts in Washington have been so busy preparing for war against Beijing that they never paused to ask, “does China want war with USA?”
Perhaps, I’m naivete to conclude that a US-China hot war can be averted, but I still feel morally obligated to serve as a messenger or peace and prosperity. I call that, “America First,” for Americans, but the Chinese can also think, “China First” as patriots for their beloved homeland. Yet the primary goal for both sides is to maintain an enduring peace between both great nations.
(Tom Pauken II., author of US vs. China: From Trade Wars to Reciprocal Deal, AFAI Senior Fellow, Geopolitical Consultant based in Beijing, China)
X: @tmcgregochina
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