ZAY Blog

Ok, so we have the first black president, the first black first lady and the first black family (and the first black barber for the president, according to the news, the black Presidential Barber???)

However, put all the jokes aside, what would it mean for Obama, a Democrat to hold the office with a senate that is clearly working in his favor?

Clearly, the Americans have put in a lot of hope, either from the inspirational speeches given by Obama, or the track record from the Bush administration, in hoping that the change of government will offer them a better economy, and more peaceful lives.

Unfortunately, the young (and somewhat inexperienced) president-to-be has some serious challenges to face:

First of all, the economical crisis that started off by no one else but the greedy investors seeking to maximize their returns in Wall Street. From the oversight of the previous administrations (either purposely or otherwise), the practice of leveraged trading has become a norm among the investment companies. When times are good, of course, leveraged trading will generate a lot more profit than the fully-funded ones, but when things gets bad, the corresponding downside risk is magnified with the borrowing as well.

The next big issue is the war in Iraq. After spending trillions of dollars (hence making the executives in companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing wealthier than ever), the Bush administration did nothing else but killed Saddam Hussein, someone who attempted to kill his father and someone that was supposedly to have weapons of mass destruction that were never found. Yet, the Americans seems to have made very minor progress every day with huge cost, and the sinking oil price recently has made commercial profit that could be reaped from the war, diminished even more than expected. Therefore, it basically makes both economical sense as well as political sense, for Americans to be out of Iraq.

The question is: how?

No one would like to confess a defeat, especially when the mainstream media are depicting the so-called “winning” in the war (like what they did in Vietnam as well). Therefore, no one could simply say: Let’s get the hell out of here because we are wasting too much of our taxpayers’ cash and we are not making any sense with the war. Instead, finding a “glorious” to withdraw the troops (and hopefully not leaving Iraq in the mess that they are in right now) would be an issue that the new administration have to face.

The next issue is, inevitably, China.

Obama has a half-brother in China, if in case you do not know that, and Democrats are, in general, more open towards international trade. However, there is always a “but”. Obama is also a firm supporter of the protection of the domestic manufacturers, and anything that is “Made in China” would mean losses of American jobs to him. Unfortunately, the fact is that Americans are so dependent on importing primary goods from China, that many people of realized that it is impossible to say no to the goods from China. Therefore, there is another issue that Obama has to decide on balance between the votes from workers in manufacturing industry and the fact that Americans are already fairly dependent on the cheap import from China.

The landslide victory for Obama means that most of the Americans are placing their hope on this man, but the road ahead is very thorny. Although his powerful speeches have inspired millions of people, but the ability to manage the country is something he’ll have to learn down the road, perhaps in a very painful manner.

At the beginning of every single term, one thing that I will definitely do is to make a trip to the office of the campus newspaper and ask for a refund.

Not that I am short of the 3.50 dollars, and not that I think it is nice to chat with the cold-faced person who treated me no better than some rats, but I still make the trip every term.

And the reason is because in my opinion, the campus newspaper simply has a couple of students looking for a good reference but who are actually too lazy to understand about this world.

Therefore, it is not surprising that in one of the recent editions of the campus newspaper, someone threw strong support behind Stephen Harper, who claimed that:

“(Canadians) don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

And the article simply went on and on about the presumed torturing of people who disagreed with the Chinese government, and the presumed abuse of people who wants to topple CCP.

First, I have to say that I am ashamed. As a Chinese, I am ashamed to see that some of the people in my country, for some very selfish reasons, to make insulting remarks about the Chinese government.

If you can read Chinese, and if you happened to go to one of the more prominent Internet forums in the Chinese communities in North America, you would inevitably find tonnes of posts asking how would it is possible to apply for refugee status in Canada or US.

And if you start to think that those people are a group of persecuted victims by the communist regimes, nothing could be more wrong than that.

In fact, they are a group of people who are either not talented enough, or not hardworking enough to earn a decent job in Canada or US and to fulfill the criteria to immigrate to these two countries, or who are just simply too lazy to go through the regular route of immigration.

These people are not wanted and welcomed in China, but Canada tend to take them with high regards, because it is simply another opportunity to stir the sentiment of the presumed Chinese human rights record.

When I was walking to my work everyday last summer in downtown Toronto, I actually saw some ladies in their 60s, who did not speak English properly, trying really hard to give the anti-China newspaper to the passers-by. Remind you, those people who are exactly brought up by the Chinese government, the government did not mistreat them, and the government was actually kind enough to let them see the world, and they are holding newspapers that is attacking the very government that helped them to survive for 50 or 60 years in their life, unharmed and safe.

And then it was the Celil case, who is no more than another loser trying to topple the Chinese government after acquired a Canadian citizenship through the generous refugee program.

I do believe the organization that he was involved in: East Turkestan Liberation Organization (ETLO), the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the World Uyghur Youth Congress (WUYC) and the East Turkestan Information Centre (ETIC), are declared as terrorists. And almost every single Chinese, regardless of the Han Chinese or the Uyghur Chinese, agrees that they are the terrorist from any perspective. They explode bombs in buses, and are well-armed to fight against the People’s Liberation Army and to kill the soldiers of the government. And I am not simply hear this from the government newspapers or TV stations.

To my fellow Canadian friends, does that remind you of the Quebec sovereignty movement in the 70s? How did the almighty Canadians treat them?

Oh, by the way, did I mention that during the so-called Tiananmen Square massacre, all students leaders eventually received their US citizenship and become professional authors to anti-Chinese publications? Did I mention that those students leaders were spotted eating in a small restaurant, which was considered as a luxury in 1989, while their fellow schoolmates are starving?

And these are the people that the Canadian and US government are offering sympathy to.

Please, if you do not know anything about the Chinese government and the Chinese history, and just want to hide in your campus newspaper office to earn some positive remarks, write anything you want, but don’t insult my country.

By the way, I am by no means affiliated with the CPP, and I’ve been exposed to western media since I was 13. I do not think everything with the CPP is perfect, and I think I’ve been discussing this issue with many people, but yet, in my entire life, I have not suffered from any so-called persecution that the western media has portrayed.