Chapter 2 1. "As soon as you go abroad, you feel patriotic"

After the publication of "China Shock", the response was not small. Many places invited me to give speeches. As long as conditions permit, I will interact with the audience. Every time I tell the audience: You can ask any question, and the sharper the better, it must be open Debate is okay too.Indeed, what is the point of studying the Chinese path and Chinese discourse if it cannot withstand the doubts of others? Our research should be able to withstand the most critical doubts.Not long ago, while talking about the rise of China and Chinese discourse at a well-known university in Shanghai, a young teacher stood up and asked a question unhurriedly.He asked like this: "Mr. Zhang, after listening to your lecture, it seems that Chinese people are living happily, but why are so many Chinese people asking to emigrate? Can you persuade them not to emigrate and stay in China?" ?” Many people below laughed, probably feeling that this was a tricky question.But I also laughed, and I told him: "You are asking the right person, because I know too many overseas immigrant friends." I said, "Not only will I not persuade people not to immigrate, I will encourage them to immigrate. , because I have a rough estimate for the Chinese who immigrated overseas: as soon as they go abroad, they love their country, and this proportion is at least 70%. Foreign countries have imagined too well, and their impression of Europe and the United States is what they see in movies and advertisements, which is far from the real West, and as a result, many people are disappointed after going out.” I told the questioner: “Once you go abroad, you will Patriotic, the effect is better than the party's education."

I told him by the way: "If you want to immigrate to the United States, let me give you a tip. I am familiar with New York. If you want to go from Shanghai to New York, you might as well take off from Pudong Airport or Hongqiao Airport and land at Newark Airport. You can first feel what it means to go from an airport in the first world to an airport in the third world. If you have the courage, I suggest you also try to stay in Newark for one night and see if you dare to go for a walk at night. "I also told him an additional piece of information: There is a medical school in Newark, and a friend who had studied there told me that the most developed subject in this school is gunshot wounds, because there are frequent fire accidents there.

Some of our public intellectuals are blowing up the United States and fooling the Chinese people.But anyone who knows a little bit about the real situation in the United States knows that the United States is a country composed of "three worlds".If you are unfortunate enough to fall into the third world in the United States, your fate may not be much better than in many African countries: drug abuse, robbery, street fighting, etc. may be with you every moment, and your greatest feelings may be disappointment and fear.If through your own hard work, like many Chinese students studying abroad, you have entered the ordinary middle class in the United States, but judging from the situation in the past 20 years, the situation is not good, you may wish to ask yourself: What is your real income over the years? increased?Has your property increased in value?Are you confident about your future retirement life?I am afraid that there will not be a small number of people who answer negatively. Maybe you will, like many Americans, question the reasons for the fading of the "American Dream" and even sympathize with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.Of course, if you break into the first world of the United States through your own efforts, I also congratulate you, but the probability of success may be much lower than your probability of success in China.

In fact, the world has changed drastically in the past 30 years: if you live in China, your wealth may have increased by three or five times; After catching up with the financial crisis and shrinking by a quarter, it is not easy to return home today.Missing the great era and opportunity of China's rapid rise, and catching up with the financial crisis, debt crisis and economic crisis in the West, it is still a pain in the heart of many overseas Chinese. It is really "30 years in Hedong, 30 years in Hexi"! Behind all this is a simple fact: China is rising with momentum and scale never before seen in human history, and the wealth of most people is growing rapidly. Of course, this process has also brought many problems, while the United States is indeed going downhill. , In the past 20 years, the wealth of most people has not increased, but decreased.Whether the United States can reverse its overall decline depends largely on whether the United States can promote substantive reforms.The world is undergoing tremendous changes. China is making rapid progress, and the United States is also retreating rapidly. Once advancing and retreating, the gap between the two sides has narrowed, and the situation between the two sides has begun to reverse in many fields.The situation of poverty and weakness in China is gone forever, and people's living standards have been improved unprecedentedly. China is catching up with or even surpassing the West in more and more fields.

I have lived in the West for more than 20 years, have been to the United States countless times, and visited all Western countries.For a long time, in the impression of Chinese people, the West has become synonymous with "developed countries", but the more I travel in Western countries, the more I feel that there are huge differences within Western countries, and the situation of "underdeveloped developed countries" abounds , "Third Worldization" within developed countries is already a common phenomenon.In the book "China Shock", I once quoted the American "New York Times" columnist Thomas Friedman's lament after visiting Shanghai, Beijing, and Dalian in 2008: "In comparison, New York is more like the third world. ", this feeling is real.All major cities in the United States have huge third-world neighborhoods inside, which outsiders are generally afraid to set foot in.The suburban joints of large and medium-sized cities in France, the large urban areas of Marseille, most of the southern parts of Italy starting from Naples, etc., all give people a feeling of the third world.In recent years, there have been more natural disasters in the United States than in previous years. Due to the serious disrepair of infrastructure, many places have experienced "power outages in every disaster", and millions of residents have suffered greatly.Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson (Bill Richardson) exclaimed that "the U.S. power system is still at the level of a third-world country, and there has been little progress in the past ten years. The fragmented power grids in various regions have led to inefficiency and poor disaster resistance." , He said that "China is a model for the United States to learn from", hoping that the United States can invest in and transform its various infrastructures on a large scale like China.

The "third worldization" of the Western world is also manifested in other aspects: a heat wave in France in 2003 caused more than 10,000 elderly people to die abnormally; every New Year's Eve in France, thousands of cars were burned by unemployed people; The law and order in the capital Paris is also deteriorating. In recent years, the local Chinese even said: "There are only two kinds of Chinese in Paris: one has been robbed, and the other is about to be robbed." In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern United States, and The government's disaster relief was haphazard, and New Orleans instantly became a capital of crime and death; Naples, the largest city in southern Italy, has been full of garbage for many years, and the smell is so bad that politicians can't even reach a consensus on how to deal with urban garbage.A former Italian leader once said to me personally: "I suggested to the Chinese Prime Minister that Chinese companies should pay for the acquisition of Alitalia and Rome Airport and let the Chinese manage it." I also said to Greek scholars myself that Greece The government's governance level is indeed not high. If a team is sent from China, it can be managed better.

Today, some people in China are still belittling their own country every day, talking about the West. For those who really understand the West, it is a bit ridiculous.In fact, both the West and China have their own strengths and weaknesses.Today's Chinese should neither look up nor look down on the West, but look at them at the same level. Only when they look at the West can they see themselves and each other more clearly and accurately, so that they will not be easily fooled by others. There is a saying in China: the West is "good mountains and rivers, so lonely", while China is "so dirty, messy, and lively". There are "good mountains and good waters", and after a long time, I feel lonely.But this statement only sees the "beautiful mountains and rivers" of the West, but does not see the "dirty and messy" side of the West.The "Third Worldization" of the West I'm talking about is mainly characterized by dirty, chaotic, and poor quality, plus the rampant drug abuse and frequent occurrence of various crimes.Similarly, China does have a "dirty and messy" side, but China's magnificent and beautiful rivers and mountains are still there, and there are also many places with "good mountains and good water".Although China has also paid a heavy environmental price for its own industrialization, as in the history of the West, the Chinese model is generally more capable of correcting errors than the Western model.It is believed that in the near future, China may lead the world's new energy revolution, and finally realize the sustainable development of "harmony between man and nature".Now, China's development has entered the "icing on the cake" stage of realizing a well-off society in an all-round way from the stage of "giving charcoal in a timely manner" to solve food and clothing in the past.Through continuous efforts, China's "dirty, chaotic, and lively" will definitely be transformed into "good mountains, good water, and wonderful." The ancients said that from "chaos" to "governance" also contains this truth.

Let's go back to the topic of immigration.With the rise of China, the immigration issue will become more and more depoliticized, and become what Qian Zhongshu called the "city besieged" phenomenon, that is, "people in the city want to go out, and people outside the city want to come in", another way Life has long been a common phenomenon after globalization, and there is no need for too much political interpretation.In addition, China is the most populous country in the world. Any rumor may fool a large number of people who do not know the truth. A rumor of "going to Iraq and getting rich" can probably fool 100,000 people, and a rumor of "going to Afghanistan and getting rich" , probably can fool another 100,000 people.In recent years, the beautiful and beautiful American stories compiled by Chinese "public intellectuals" have reached their peak. No wonder many Chinese who immigrated to the United States think that the United States has "generous social welfare" and have no regard for capital supervision, taxation, inheritance, etc. in the United States. I didn't know it, and I didn't realize it until I immigrated to the United States, but it was too late to regret.

China has a large population base, and the proportion of immigrants is still very small so far.According to my own observation, even today the so-called middle-class people who immigrate to Europe and the United States due to various reasons, most of them keep their roots in China, including their own enterprises and assets, because they also understand that at least twenty or thirty years from now Within the year, China will still be the country with the most opportunities in the world.The annual inflow of funds into China far exceeds the outflow of funds. Our foreign exchange reserves have jumped from US$2 trillion in 2009 to US$3.99 trillion in June 2014, far ahead of Japan, the second largest country in the world in foreign exchange reserves. $1.28 trillion (32% of China's foreign exchange reserves). "The return of overseas students has become a trend. In 2012, the number of returned overseas students reached 272,900, a year-on-year increase of 46.56%, accounting for about 70% of the number of students studying abroad that year, forming the "biggest return wave in history". In 2013, the The number of students studying abroad hit a record high again, reaching 353,500, an increase of 29.53% over 2012, or 80,600 people. In contrast, the number of people studying abroad in that year only increased by 3.58%. We will usher in a historical inflection point where more people return to China than go abroad. China will change from the world's largest country of talent outflow to the world's most important country of talent return. Some people are worried about emigrating from corrupt officials, but we don't have to worry too much. As China further With the rise of the Communist Party of China and the increase in international influence, corrupt officials will be wanted and repatriated sooner or later. Lai Changxing has been repatriated. How long can other corrupt officials continue to be at large?

From a mid- to long-term strategic perspective, the benefits of moderate-scale immigration to China far outweigh the disadvantages.The most immigrant people in the world are definitely not the Chinese, but probably the Anglo-Saxons, which are the main ethnic groups in Britain and the United States. They have immigrated to the world in the past three centuries. According to the proportion of the population, they must be the most diligent immigrants. ethnic group.But looking back, the effect is good. The influence of the UK has spread to the world along with its immigration and language, so that the UK enjoys an international influence far exceeding its national power.Those who always like to politicize the Chinese immigration issue may wish to think about another issue: Taiwan has been "democratized" for more than 20 years. Tens of thousands of Taiwan compatriots work, live or study in the mainland. If we must explain it ideologically, isn't this "voting with your feet"?

We can also compare the phenomenon of such a large number of overseas students in mainland China over the past 30 years.According to statistics from the Ministry of Education of China, in the past 30 years of reform and opening up, as of 2013, the number of international students has totaled 3,058,600, and 72.83% of them returned to China after completing their studies.Assuming that the number of Chinese immigrants can reach the same number as the number of foreign students, it will only be around 3 million. Even if it is doubled, it will be more than 9 million, which is less than the population of our city of Suzhou.Whether these people come back in the future, whether they stay overseas for a long time, whether they retain Chinese nationality or become foreign nationality, it is a very good thing for China.China's interests have covered the whole world.If a group of people are willing to overcome many difficulties, set up camp overseas, and finally join in the cause of promoting Sino-foreign relations, Chinese at home and abroad will work together to promote the rise of the entire Chinese nation in the world. This is a truly spectacular prospect. I mentioned in the book "China Touched" that some media asked me, do you think China is better than Europe and the United States, I said, I never said that Europe and the United States are better than China, nor did I say that China is better than Europe and the United States, Because such a comparison is too general and too simple.If what you value is the per capita GDP calculated by the official exchange rate, then Equatorial Guinea in Africa is better than China, but half of the residents in its capital do not even have running water.If you, like most Chinese, think that happiness can only be achieved by owning real estate, then China is much better than Switzerland, whose home ownership rate is only half of that in China.If you like places with good social security, then China is infinitely better than the United States.If you like western food then France is better.If only from the perspective of quality of life, a Chinese with a certain accumulation of wealth should live in Shanghai or Hainan much more freely and comfortably than living in New York or London.For a young man who is still struggling, China can provide far more development opportunities than the West. Suddenly, I thought, isn't the last trump card of the extreme liberals in China the incomparably beautiful Western world they imagined?When this trump card also fails, what else do they have left to help the United States fool China?And the increasing failure of this trump card is already a trend.The breadth and intensity of China's rise and the massive development opportunities it provides have never been seen in the entire history of mankind. One who can personally experience, participate in and witness this era full of miracles is truly lucky.Wouldn't it be great if someone wanted to give up this luck and immigrate, giving up his place in the country to someone else, and possibly cultivating more patriotic zeal?

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