It has been an amazing twelve years. The first political columns started in summer 2010. In 2011, I predicted that Taiwan would be recognized—a prediction which has not yet failed, but continues to push forward. Since 2014, the Times has published articles consistently, for a few years in order to keep up with work at then China Daily Mail, now China News Stories.
Through the years, weekly columns tracked the very much foreseeable rise in conflict in the Eastern Pacific, with that foreseeable apex involving Taiwan as part of a Chinese conflict. That prediction has sadly remained accurate.
At the Times, I also predicted Trump’s election in 2016 and his re-election in 2020—but not the dubious election rigging in precincts necessary to argue Trump’s loss, evidence for which the Times obtained before it was fully wiped from the anti-Trump social media platforms on which it was released. That said, I also sustain that Joseph Robinette Biden is the rightful president because Congress has the final say in US elections. But, I stand by my election accuracy in saying that many things are foreseeable.
The most foreseeable and predicted outcome concerning Trump was that he would do too good of a job and thus gain too much respect. The events of January 6, 2021 show that this prediction came true sooner than anticipated. Maybe that was a mercy. God forbid any good leader gain too much respect after more than four years of power. I won’t comment on the morality of the so-called January 6 Insurrection, except that it demonstrated that Trump had more respect than he could live up to. The Capitol breach and the defeat of those involved was arguably the most damage the nation took in his tenure, as seen from both sides of the political fence.
While some things are foreseeable, other things are not. There are always surprises in history. This was one reason my father did not put much stock in conspiracy theories—because conspiracies and machinations themselves can’t account for all that will affect the results. Outcomes are determined alone by the same God who alone controls Time. I simply recorded and interpreted those times as they happened. Knowing and understanding history is the key to foresight, as much foresight as mortals are capable of exercising.
Indeed, revival in America is a stage set and the awakenings have already begun. China and the United States continue to point one finger at the other, with three of their own fingers pointing back at each. China is not the villain the lock-step press paints it to be, China it has sever fatal flaws unnoticed by the presses. Taiwan is not the innocent poster boy the lock-step press paints it to be, but it is, in a word, “cuddly” and certainly worth saving. If there ever were any evidence that the Western press narrative is penned by Western governments, it is that even the US-government funded Sesame Street was able to engage in the illegal activity Taiwan’s then Labor Department took limited action on, without a peep from the presses, and with no action from the US government itself. Silence on Sesame Street was one thing the press and the US government agreed on in deed. Injustice and human trafficking are everywhere and every government turns a blind eye. The US government has no moral platform to point the finger at China over Xinjiang. It was foreseeable and could have been stopped with trade law, but because it wasn’t it was engineered. As one Taiwanese friend said in sorrow, “The West just fattened China like a cow, and now the West wants the slaughter.”
Government was never the solution to our problems. Blaming China is merely bait for the public. No history-savvy mind would hate China for behaving with foreseeable Confucian values of shameless shame to guide autocratic oppression. China did what anyone with an eye for the neighbors knew China would do. The same values can be seen at almost any Chinese church in America, as many an ABC will tell you. China gained its power through finances granted by the coupon clippers who abandoned downtown merchants for discount you-name-it–marts. In any democracy, Asian or American, the people have the government they deserve.
Christians in America voted for the immorality they blame shifted onto MTV when they imposed their morals without the love for vibrancy that their own moral handbook describes in Psalm 119. We’re supposed to have lots of sex and love it the whole time, but by treating it as a taboo topic—or at the very least petrifying it by treating it as a “reverent” topic—those Christians relegated sex education to the sector that despised any moral compass along with any light that could guide us away from sexual disorientation. The moral mess Christians complain about was created by Christians themselves when they went MIA for an unnecessary shame. The non-Christians led the charge. Everyone got the government we deserve.
In 2020, Trump would have won by a rig-proof landslide if his supporters had spent less time shaming and more time persuading. Everyone over-reacted to mask and vax alike. Taiwan didn’t, and Taiwan has no such chaos. I know because I’m here.
Masks are about control. So what. So is chaos a means of control. So what. Get calm and carry on. That’s what Taiwan did. But, by refusing citizenship to married foreigners and diligent foreign workers, Taiwan pushed away the very people who would have built the technology Taiwan needed to gain independence—not from China, but from Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. That’s not to say LM and GD needed to lose money, but Taiwan could and would be the brains of their operations if Taiwan had simply treated foreigners with the equality Taiwan asks for from others. Taiwan got the government it deserved so far. Whether that government becomes a recognized separate entity from China or becomes Communist China itself will be whatever Taiwan’s people deserve. The same is true for America and China.