China vs. America: Who Built The Country?

Written by Frank Li

In my first book (“Saving America, Chinese Style”), I made an observation: “America is becoming yesterday’s China, while China is becoming yesterday’s America“.

In this post, I will present a simple case to further substantiate the observation, by asking and answering a single question: who built the country?

1. Who built China?

There are two answers to this question:

1. Yesterday’s answer (1949-1976): the Chinese people.

2. Today’s answer: some great men (and women), including both politicians (e.g. First Emperor, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping) and entrepreneurs (e.g. Jack Ma, Lu Guanqiu, and Robin Li).

A more specific question: who built the Great Wall?

1. Yesterday’s answer: the Chinese people, including many slaves and laborers!

2. Today’s answer: the First Emperor started it by linking many small walls together. It was greatly expanded and largely completed, as it stands today, throughout the Ming Dynasty that begun with Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang.

2. Why two answers in China?

Both yesterday’s answers and today’s answers are technically correct, because neither China (as it is today) nor the Great Wall would exist without the laborers and the leaders. The difference is emphasis.

Yesterday, the emphasis was on the proletarians, who really did not have the knowledge or the wherewithal to build anything significant, other than to be part of the massive labor force. But the proletarians had to claim credit for everything to justify taking power. So they simply obfuscated to distinguish the indistinguishable: the people!

Today, the emphasis is on the rainmakers, who truly distinguished themselves and made real differences in their respective times.

Fortunately for China, today is far better than yesterday!

3. Who built America?

There are two answers to this question:

1. From the left: the American people.

2. From the right: some great men (and women), including both politicians (e.g. Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln) and entrepreneurs (e.g. Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Alexander Bell, and Steve Jobs).

A more specific question: who built Capitol Hill?

1. From the left: the slaves!

2. From the right: some great leaders and architects (Benjamin Henry Latrobe, William Thornton, and more).

4. Why two answers in America?

Both the left and the right are technically correct, because neither America (as it is today) nor Capitol Hill would exist without the laborers and the leaders. The difference is emphasis.

For the left, the emphasis is on the laborers, who really do not have the knowledge or the wherewithal to build anything significant, other than to be part of the massive labor force. But they want to claim credit for everything to justify taking power. So they simply obfuscate to distinguish the indistinguishable: the people!

For the right, the emphasis is on the rainmakers, who truly distinguished themselves and made real differences in their respective times.

Unfortunately for America, yesterday was better than today, because the country has been moving from the center-right to the center-left, well on the way to the far left.

5. Discussion

Emphasis is everything for a country!

When the emphasis is on the rainmakers, the country advances, because the rainmakers are real leaders and real heroes, who pull everybody up. In contrast, when the emphasis is on the people, the country falls behind, because most people are followers at best. When the followers are leading, everybody is pulled down!

Emphasizing the rainmakers is capitalistic, while emphasizing the people is socialistic or even communistic! For more, read: ‘You Didn’t Build That’: A Fifth Similarity between Communism and Democracy.

Real history is written by, and about, the real heroes. Two examples:

1. Great politicians set their country on the right track for decades, or even centuries. Two distinguished examples: China’s First Emperor and America’s Founding Fathers.

2. Great entrepreneurs create great wealth not only for themselves, but also for millions of people. Two recent examples: America’s Steve Jobs and China’s Jack Ma.

False history is about the faux heroes, who have little staying power. One of the worst examples in falsifying history is perhaps China from 1949 to 1976. Fortunately for China, her true history is now emerging.

Is America writing a false history now? Yes! For example, in today’s America, everybody wants to, and can, be a hero, including political candidates (e.g. Hillary Clinton’s “Dodging Sniper Fire in Bosnia” Tale), journalists (How Brian Williams’s Iraq Story Changed), lawyers (O. J. Simpson murder case), teachers, policemen, or firefighters!

Worse yet, America has become a dream-world utopian society, in which even work is optional for many (The Answer Is Work; The Question Is Why) and foreign war is perpetual (America: A Culture of War).

Worse still, many American politicians keep selling democracy as the foundation of a utopian society both at home with limitless Democratic Socialism and abroad with shameless Democratic Imperialism!

Worst of all, most Americans are blithely unaware, or simply in denial, of it!

America, it’s time to truthfully re-write our history over the past 50 years, at least (Civil Rights Act: 50 Years Later.), just as what the Chinese have been doing to their history over the past few decades!

China stumbled badly after being the largest economy for the first 18 centuries of our 2015-year-old calendar, and it has taken her some 200 years to recover. But they are up and running on the right track now!

America, when will we recognize and admit that we are actually falling?

6. Closing

Because America is moving heavily left, even while China, having learned her lesson, is rapidly moving right, America is becoming yesterday’s China, while China is becoming yesterday’s America.

Case made?