RON UNZ—The social importance of competitive examinations was enormous, playing the same role in determining membership in the ruling elite that the aristocratic bloodlines of Europe’s nobility did until modern times, and this system embedded itself just as deeply in the popular culture. The great noble houses of France or Germany might trace their lineages back to ancestors elevated under Charlemagne or Barbarossa, with their heirs afterward rising and falling in standing and estates, while in China the proud family traditions would boast generations of top-scoring test-takers, along with the important government positions that they had received as a result.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Make Trade, Not War: that would be the motto of a Pax Sinica under Xi. The crucial aspect is that Beijing does not aim to replace Pax Americana, which always relied on the Pentagon’s variant of gunboat diplomacy.
The declaration subtly reinforced that Beijing is not interested in becoming a new hegemon. What matters above all is to remove any possible constraints that the outside world may impose over its own internal decisions, and especially over its unique political setup.
The West may embark on hysteria fits over anything – from Tibet and Hong Kong to Xinjiang and Taiwan. It won’t change a thing.
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JEFF J. BROWN—Huawei’s corporate culture is all about collaboration and win-win. Furthermore, it can afford to be magnanimous, since it is reaping the benefits of spending 10-15% of its revenues on R&D. Incredibly, 53% of its employees work in research and development, 30% of those in basic research and the balance in applied, customer-centric fields. As a result of a generation of hard work and devotion to this vision, Huawei today has over 100,000 active patents in 40,000 different patent families across the globe, and is continuing to outpace its nearest competitor, Samsung, by 2-to-1 in new applications.
I ask you,
Is it any wonder that Huawei has over 100 patent and cross-licensing agreements in the US, EU, Japan and Korea?
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PATRICE GREANVILLE—China is clearly a civilization on the march. Bathed in optimism about the future, as America itself once was; fueled by a genuine fraternal and egalitarian philosophy, it continues to set new records for human accomplishment in innumerable areas. But its new ascendancy to global power status, which it enjoyed once for many centuries, instead of harming humanity, benefits it. The images below illustrate why she is feared by those whose own squalid thinking prevents them from believing peaceful coexistence is not only possible but imperative in the 21st century.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Xiang reminds us that a market economy – including private ownership, free land transactions, and highly specialized mobile labor – was established in China as early as in 300 B.C. Moreover, “as early as in the Ming dynasty, China had acquired all the major elements that were essential for the British Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.” Which brings us to a persistent historical enigma: why the Industrial Revolution did not start in China? Xiang turns the question upside down: “Why traditional China needed an industrial revolution at all?”
