All Work and No Play Unmakes China

It is hard to imagine how one of China's innovative business leaders or beautiful movie stars could look at the Chinese loyalists hunched over their desks at a Chinese Communist Party Congress and commit all their energy to further the will of Chairman Xi. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who decided to end the 1989 democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Sq uare by force, proclaimed, "It is a glorious thing to be rich." Yet, Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, who is said to be among the leaders receiving the highest remunerations in the world, does not pocket any interest on her funds. Prompted by fear of US sanctions, she has no bank account and keeps her cash at home. Mr. Deng neglected to include joy, happiness, fun, freedom, beauty, truth and privacy on his list of glorious pursuits. In AMERICAN FACTORY, the Netflix documentary film about a Chinese factory in Ohio, a Chinese factory manager reveals he has had to commit to two years working away from his family. Even so, the factory manager is one of the lucky men his age who has a wife. China's earlier one-child policy has left 30 million men without mariageable women in 2020. And China's well educated urban women expect to marry men with money; they are not about to settle for villagers. While the Chinese Communist Party focuses on collecting data to control its 1.4 billion Chinese population, the Chinese people entertain other ideas. Ignoring social distancing and assorted restrictions imposed to prevent the coronavirus, China's young people flocked to see Mickey Mouse as soon as Disneyland reopened in Shanghai in May, 2020. For relief from China's "996" work schedule requiring labor from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week, fun-loving Chinese also ignore the government's distain for the lack of socialist values associated with playing Tencent's "Honour of Kings" or watching amateur dancers, singers and comics on Douyin, China's version of TikTok. Some have discovered they can discuss taboo topics away from censors on the Clubhouse app. Unfortunately, a team of Buddhist monks and nomad sheep and yak herders failed to play in a 2019 international basketball tournament because their participation was canceled by Chinese police who felt they might be unable to control a crowd of fans during the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Watching the Chinese Horse Club owners cheering when their Triple Crown winner, "Justify" won the 2018 Kentucky Derby, no one would have known China bans gambling. China's race horse buyers and trainers also can be seen at the New Zealand Jockey Club. Casinos on Macau, the former Portuguese island that is now a Special Administrative Region of China, continue to attract wealthy Chinese. Less affluent Chinese hide in the woods to gamble on mahjong games. At the same time, the Chinese culture that cultivates cheating and lying to achieve business objectives caught up with Lin Qi, the billionaire developer of "Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming," who died of poisoning on Christmas Day, 2020. Founded in 2009, Mr. Lin's Chinese YooZoo Games studio launched his popular strategy game in 2019. Accordig to the BBC, Mr. Lin was poisoned at the hands of a suspect, identified by Shanghai police only as Xu, but later as Xu Yao, the head of YooZoo's film productio unit. YooZoo holds the film adaptation rights to the popular Chinese sci-fi novel, THREE BODY PROBLEMS, the first of a trilogy by Liu Cizin. Like other Chinese movie projects, the plan for the book's film adaptation never developed. But Netflix now seems ready to adapt THREE BODY PROBLEMS for television. China expected its 1.4 million-plus population and twice as many eyes to serve as waving strobe lights attracting film-makers to Qingdao's new 2016, $8 billion film production complex. At first they came, but they soon refused to deal with the demands of censors in China's State Administration of Press Publications, Radio, Film and Television. China's popular film star, Fan Bingbing, was on her way to international fame until the government charged her with tax fraud, and she disappeared. Nowadays, the fledgling movie industry that made a Netflix romantic comedy despite electricity outages in poor little Zimbabwe offers more promise than China. Just as China allows its population limited film fare, readers have to be content with propaganda slogans on factory walls. In 2015, the owner of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay Books was arrested and charged with the "illegal sale of books," the political thrillers and bodice-rippers the Central Propaganda Department decided the Chinese population should not read. Before moving his bookstore to Taiwan in 2020, he observed, "Contemporary China is an absurd country." No doubt, most cowed Chinese will self-monitor their activities to conform to Beijing's control requirements. But some will defy personal recognition by shielding their faces with umbrellas and masks, wear black-face makeup to trick artificial intelligence into thinking they are apes, point lasers to disable surveillance cameras and travel on crutches or in wheelchairs to "disguise" their gait. What will the top tier geniuses China needs do? As some have done in the past, they will tire of finding their natural human desires unsatisfied and flee to Silicon Valley.

Vietnam and U.S. Demonstrate the Value of Short Memories

Chances are, looking back on your life, you remember having an enemy who later became your friend. Kids also go through those off and on enemy-friend relationships, as do countries. Turning Germany into a friend after World War II proved far better than trying to condemn the country forever following World War I.

     In the U.S. we learned at Senator John McCain's funeral service on September 1, 2018 last Saturday, even though he was captured and tortured for over five years in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese now recognize him as someone who helped bring about the reconciliation of the United States and Vietnam.

     Haiphong harbor, once mined by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, now is valued as an import/export hub needed to handle U.S. trade pulling out of China. In February, 2019, President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un chose Vietnam for their meeting to discuss demilitarization of the Korean peninsula and lifting the crippling economic sanctions that keep North Korea from enjoying the prosperity South Korea and Vietnam now enjoy.

     Today, both the United States and Vietnam continue to contest China's claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands and their adjacent waters in the South China Sea. After declaring in 2015 no intention of militarizing its artificial islands there, China now has radar installations, reinforced concrete bunkers, and missiles on three Spratly Islands west of the Philippines, a compliant challenger dependent on Chinese investment. China also has landed bombers in the Parcel Islands disputed with Vietnam.

   Vietnam, nonetheless, with its powerful military force, successfully prevented China from locating an oil exploration rig in its waters. At home, Vietnam has experienced anti-Chinese protests. Meanwhile, in its ongoing challenge to excessive maritime claims by all countries violating the international Law of the Sea Convention, a U.S. destroyer's Freedom of Navigation Operation sailed within 12 miles of one of China's seven artificial islands in May, 2018. Then, the US canceled an invitation to China to participate in annual naval drills off Hawaii and invited Vietnam instead.

     Vietnam also has challenged China's claims in the South China Sea by building two of its own artificial islands on the Nanhua Reef in the Spratly Island chain. According to China, the reef where Vietnam built is only above water at low tide, and typhoon "Jasmine" washed away much of the reclaimed land dredged up from the ocean floor. China also was proud to add Vietnam used a technique inferior to the way China sucks up sand for its taller islands.

     Both low tech and high tech industries benefit from Vietnam's and the US's short memories. Check clothes labels, and you probably will see a number of items were made in Vietnam. At the same time, the oncology treatment IBM's Watson chose at Phu Tho General Hospital enabled a patient to move and eliminate the need for painkilling medication. Google Brain and technology experts also applaud Vietnamese Dr. Le Viet Quoc's effort to make deep learning a reality and to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into advertising research.

     At "Age of AI and Vietnamese Enterprises," a Hanoi summit on July 25, 2018, more than 400 AI, economists, and financial experts and delegates from Vietnam's leading firms heard Harvard's James Furman urge private-government cooperation on AI research and applications. Vietnam's own Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment told the summit's older generation to eliminate obstacles preventing companies from making full use of younger employees with math skills and an interest in new technology.

     Modeled on Silicon Valley, California, Vingroup JSC, a Vietnamese conglomerate worth about $3 billion, intends to consolidate its diversified businesses in VinTech City, where the focus will be technology development (including development of new generation materials), applications, manufacturing, and services. A sub-unit will house the Big Data Institution and Vin Hi-Tech Institution.Vietnam finds the key to using Big Data effectively is creating teams that include Big Data technology experts and those with a full understanding of the industry using the data. Working together, technology and industry partners are best able to incorporate unstructured data about customer activities, such as internet use and applications, with structured and semi-structured industry data in order to develop new digital products and services. Just like in the United States, Vietnam knows data found to have great long-term value for a company, needs to be protected from nearby and distant competitors, even if they are friends.